Fantastic moments and mountain moving friends
An account of me and my friends' event: 'The BooksDem Rooftop Cookout'
Tonight, I have had the night of a lifetime. I have danced till kingdom come, unleashing euphoria and joy from within my soul, but I have also been spiritually enriched, empowered to tap into prior untapped potential. This energy was everywhere. You could feel it rippling through casual conversation, booming from the mouths of poets and performers and bellowing from rooms of intellectual salons. It was beautiful, but what was it?
Me and my friends, Dejuan and Nadia, have been organising an event called The Books Dem for the past few months. It is a literary workshop organisation that builds shows and online conversations around what are perceived to be marginalised cultures. It is important to understand that this is a flawed perception because cultures such as Jungle MCing, Somalian female guerrilla fighters and 1960s African American radicalism all exceed the boxes of niche periphery that they are typically confined to. Instead, they are expressions of wider spiritual, political and social contexts, of which the literature is rich and the impact is continuous. And in respecting these cultures, we respect the autonomy of those that have shaped them, because it is up to these individuals to tell their stories. We understand that we are making history too by telling these stories and creating new moments for people to exist within. So it is important that we partake in an ethos of respecting authentic autonomous storytelling because our moments are stories that we will tell too. Those that are impacted by us will feel these stories- and in doing so- preserve them.
Our first ever night was in Soho House’s Shoreditch studio, where we had an open mic night and a concert featuring artists such as KRXZE, Dochi, Nayana IZ and Keyah Blu. This night was history in itself as we sold out the venue- one of the most prestigious venues in the British creative industry- and we were able to do something which very few are able to do in this day and age: materialise an engaged in-person audience from a purely online following. This is a testament to the value of The Books Dem as a community centre that people invest in and that actually means something.
For over a year, The Books Dem had only been an online page curated by Dejuan and Nadia exploring history and culture that they were fascinated in. It existed in parallel to The Black Lives Matter movement, where many were searching for an outlet to express themselves in the face of oppression. But it did not exist within this moment- it was not a curation of useless infographics, performative acts and unnuanced herd mentalities. It was beyond this in many ways, creating joyful, intellectual and unique conversations that gave value to parts of black and other cultures that had been lost to the modern age. This creates a pathway for individuals to reimagine themselves in a new idyllic future that we craft together.
At the end of 2021, I had a phone call with Dejuan about a dream of hers to create a non-conventional school in which she could disseminate knowledge and vital skills to her community and my ‘KEYS Project’, a mentorship initiative partnering with specialist industry experts that I created in 2020. We had a subsequent conversation with Nadia over bottomless brunch in March 2022, about how we could mobilise people to become aware of this reimagining of self. Nadia specifically was passionate about afro-futurism, a political style which lends itself to this notion, and so this shaped our second event tonight: ‘The Books Dem Rooftop Cookout’, at On.road in Shoreditch. At this event, we had an opening workshop, an open mic and rappers BXKS and Reek0 performing live.
The food (I cooked some amazing mac and cheese, barbecue wings and vegetarian curry) and music were alluring but everyone knew that this was more than just a party. I disseminated a workshop on surrealism and futurism, exploring their radical power in reimagining ourselves and their abstractive nature- they use dream elements to face worldly material conditions. I critiqued the art forms for their humanist elements- focussing too much on the radical power within us- rather than the radical power of the metaphysical, that which is beyond human nature, and I was able to talk about how my own work reflects this. Specifically, I explored how the metaphysical nature of my debut novel, ‘The Escape’, allows us to have a deep holistically spiritual and political understanding of our social problems. I also spoke on how ‘Less Talking’, my upcoming conceptual club night at Brighton Soho House on 12th August, reflects the revolutionary mobilisation of surrealist ideas- once we realise our full potential and the potential that we can access through the world beyond us, how do we work as a collective group to make the world around us reflect those changes? The event does that through encouraging collectivism through art, house music and other sensory vectors.
I invited the founder of Meezan clothing, Dawuud Loka, to lend himself to this topic as he used clothes to ask this question too- evoking the symbol of weighing scales to explore the collective decisions that we must face as human kind. The conclusion from this talk was that revolution must begin within the self. Once an individual can fully and uncompromisingly love themselves and comprehend the power that they truly have access to, they are able to share this love with their community, who should mobilise together with ‘grace’ (in the words of @glowiny). There was also an idea though, that love and all these emotions that we share in come from beyond us, that they are metaphysical and that our revolution is the sharing of this metaphysical. The quote I always enjoy offering in conversations like these is from 1960s social revolutionary Abbie Hoffman who said: ‘The duty of the revolutionary is to make love’. I think this captures this sentiment beautifully.
For an hour, people were captivated by this presentation, which was in some way due to its topical and detailed nature, but it was also due to the bubbling enlightenment which had already been fostered in the room. Before I had arrived- Tatenda Matsvai, spoken word poet and friend of The Books Dem- had created a safe space for people to share their poetry. When I had arrived, I was listening to one of our community members describing a tranquil day. The poem subtly implied that there was revolution in mundanity: a refusal to succumb to trauma’s trappings or misery’s snare and instead the choice to look for stillness and peace. Tatenda explained that this was a beautiful alternative to what we see as surrealism, because the poetry understands that the fantastic can exist within the simple, not just the extravagant. So as I came to speak on self-reimagining, mobilisation and togetherness, the seeds of realisation had already been sown and the community that I was speaking to was just as important as the words that I was sharing with them.
Even later, throughout the night when the dancing and the partying ensued, everything was a realisation of this fantastic nature of community and togetherness. Each conversation, each group of people dancing together, each moment across the room, was truly something spectacular blossoming in process. For example, Miro Mccarthy-Allen, a film director who showcased his short film alongside my presentation, took the microphone spontaneously during one of the DJ sets and delivered an onslaught of potent imagery and emotive language in one of the best verses that I had heard all night. In the garden outside, I was listening to an amazing house track that a producer was sharing with me whilst he was building cultural bridges, communicating with a Japanese person through google translate as they couldn’t speak good English. That conversation ended off with the Japanese person saying: “I am energised to meet you”, which was a perfect phrase for the night. Then there was Raza Tariq: the film director and artist was hovering around each room mischievously airdropping the advert for his new exhibition entitled, ‘I hope the revolution will have air-con’ to everyone’s phones. He was literally creating a buzz.
Each of these moments in themselves are fun, but pivotal. This was a community of people who are making change now, affecting the art world, elevating it and garnering conversations about their work sharing the same space. So just as Tatenda accurately noted, the fantastic exists within the simple and our event tonight was a perfect example of that.
My favourite moment was when I told Kehn, one of our DJs, to start playing house and he panicked, looked through the few house songs he had and then managed to get the room bouncing to Kaytranada, UK garage and UK pop house. In that moment, I gave myself the mantle of conceptual DJ- the musical equivalent of a passenger seat driver. This was a talent which I later reinvoked when I found artists Obi Psalms and Dochi freestyling with each other outside On.road and played them some Kaidi Tatham to freestyle to. The product of this was insane and I’m glad I captured that verse on camera because to me it is the future.
Everything was the future and time was an limitless strip that unfolded before us. I danced, I laughed, I celebrated and I had a blast. All of us who were there tonight are already moving mountains in the creative scene, already affecting the world around us, but together, what we created tonight was memorable, emotional, blissful. It was fantastic.
A list of upcoming events for creatives affiliated with The Books Dem (Please share any with me that I haven’t listed below):
5th August – Marvin Jupiter & The Xutians’ ‘Lo (Instrumentals)’ release, out now on all streaming platforms
6th August- Raza Tariq’s ‘I hope that the revolution will have air conditioning’ at Soho House Shoreditch from 12 noon
8th August- JFest 3.0, Peckham SE15 4QK from 4pm til midnight
12th August- Gabriel Dedji’s ‘Less Talking’ at Soho House Brighton from 19:00-01:00
20th August- Gabriel Dedji presents… Tamilore Awosile (live jazz soirée) at Soho House’s Crouch End studio from 19:00-23:00
31st August- Black Head Students’ Network’s Talent show at Brixton Soho House from 19:00-23:00
October 7th, 8th and 9th- Tatenda performing spoken word poetry (more details TBC)