Poetry performance by Ashanti Dinah Orozco
Abstract
- Abstract
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In November 2022 the Cluster Project "Black Atlantic revisited - African and South American UNESCO-world heritage sites and "shadowed spaces" of performative memory" presented this poetry performance by Ashanti Dinah Orozco. The performance was titled "Muntú: palabras liberadas del cepo y el latigo" (Muntú: words freed from whip and clam). The event was moderated by Gilbert Shang Ndi.
Ashanti Dinah Orozco is a doctoral student in the Department of African and African American Studies at Harvard University, with a primary field in Romance Languages & Literatures. Her research has focused on investigating and analyzing the literary works of Afro-Latin American authors. She is the author of the collection of poems Las Semillas del Muntu (The seeds of Muntu).
Origins & context
- Title
- Poetry performance by Ashanti Dinah Orozco
- Language
- English
- Date
- June 11, 2023
Identifiers & sources
Full text
- Transcript
- ladies and gentlemen thank you for for coming my name is Gilbert shanzi from Cameroon and Colombia I should say and it's a pleasure to have you this evening uh in kurtu house by right welcome to the University of biroid to Africa multiple cluster of excellence and specifically to the research group black Atlantic Revisited where we seek to study narratives of transatlantic slavery and slave trade from the West African Coast to the Americas specifically we are focusing on the Colombian Caribbean coast and Salvador Bahia so today we began our day with a keynote by Dr Javier Ortiz from the University of katahena and we are continuing this time in poetry performance with Ashanti Dina Orozco from the neighboring city of Barranquilla Colombia so it's a pleasure to have you accompany us for this for this poetic evening for one and a half hour uh we know that many people are following on us on YouTube and it's our pleasure to to really have them because uh during coffee we learned that we have several priorities but to spare time and be with us for one hour 30 minutes uh we are really grateful for that so welcome and keep your comments coming on YouTube even if we are not able to respond to the comments live uh Ashanti will look at the comments later on when the YouTube videos are published and would of course respond and and of course we are going to have we also have a live audience here and please feel free at the end of the day to also uh have your question so we are going to have uh Ashanti horoscope with us performing uh poetry who is Ashanti Orozco Ashanti horoscope is a doctoral students at the University of Harvard in the department of African and African American studies with the primary field of romance languages and literatures she has a degree in education from the University there then atlantico in Barranquilla Colombia and a master's degree in Hispanic literature from the institution Bogota which is a very important Institute as far as afro uh Colombian studies are concerned or afro-latino studies generally are concerned her research has focused on investigating and analyzing literary works of afro-latin American authors mainly from the Caribbean from the perspective of social criticism of literature cultural studies postcolonial the colonial and feminist studies and they have also focused uh on investigating how language ideology and racism circulate in school textbooks to reveal strategies of power manipulation and reproduction of stereotypes and ethnic asymmetries she's the author of a collection of poems from which she's going to to present la semias del Monte the seats of Montu published in 2019 and she's also uh she's also won several Awards I would name just three uh benkos biojo award 2016. benkos biojo is a very emblematic and iconographic figure in the history of Colombia but also Beyond as the the founder of the which is the first freed community in the Americas and it's a very strong symbol in in Colombian history but also afro-latino history in general she also won an award as the afro uh which is called the afro descendant woman recognition award in 2019 for her work both as a poet but also as a as someone who is very active in the in the public sphere and also had the um major mention uh as you know from the minister of culture in Colombia and Ministry of culture is very key in Colombia because of the cultural you know the the cultural complexity of this country so when you have the minister of culture in Colombia you basically can do a lot to promote um The afro-columbian Presence so uh she's got this Awards and I think uh given the nature of her work many more awards are coming when I see the potency of her poetry we are aiming at minimal Awards coming apart from your PhD which you're going to defend I'm sure in the next few years I know when we are the students here about deadlines they're always a bit you know yeah but but uh welcome Ashanti and it's wonderful having you here but I must remind you that she was part of our Workshop uh in two in that's early this year in June and she could only attend virtually because of reasons Beyond her control so we thought that maybe we could postpone her presentation her performance as you know performance cannot be done virtually so she participated in round tables and panels but then the performance was shifted to the time when she will be able to be with us physically for us to feel her presence so thank you so much Ashanti and welcome uh thank you so much for inviting me I'm just feeling like an emotional I have emotional feelings to be here it's my first time I'm coming in Europe in my whole life so that's really huge because it's German Germany the the you know the road the path who who invites me in this in this in this time of my life I don't know my second life and the my past I don't know if I visited this place in my last past talking about my spirits uh but I'm feeling very well here and I feel like uh being in a familiar environment at the atmosphere uh is getting colder but I really don't feel the cold place don't be in panic I feel warm and safe um yeah we are going to to start I'm going to read some points in English and and in Spanish I use it to to my brother here that uh I usually I don't read poetry in English this is um this is a translation Edition that has that it's coming in the Nets in the next semester he's being published by in in the United States but um I have a I have a good translation Loba [Music] and he made a great word uh I think great very great great work and and I'm going to read some points in in Spanish that I feel that I cannot read it and in English because I don't feel the mood to really read it in in in English there are some words that mention my my spiritual background my connection with my Hispanic heritage that I feel that it's better to to do it in Spanish but you are invited of course to feel in your skin my words and the presence of your ancestors because everybody has ancestors so welcome here yeah surrounded by our spirits maybe before she goes ahead to to start I just want to say we are going to do it in sequences so she will present two poems and then I for the first sequence I will be the only one to dictate I have the microphone and the moderation I will ask her some few you know uh uh just to trickle her and and let her speak about her poetry and then she will do the second sequence and from there now the audience can also come in with questions exactly and interact with her and we also doing so because I mean like she would read some few poems in in Spanish because we also have a very huge Spanish uh speaking audience online uh on YouTube following uh so so it would be very unjust for us to monopolize English uh simply because we are the ones who invited her but she we want to be as inclusive as possible is [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] okay okay let's start with two points astronomy body I am actually Cosmic being all the elements of my organism were in the science of creation since geological age millions of years ago it was hydrogen powder floating like a thread of smoke orbiting like umbilical cord piling like a garbage over the Dark Void of the space from the Holly turbulence the gases condensed into orbs and became a start and started to Glow between Ottomans I'm a miniature constellation a my John body still warm by the hands of ladumari beats with the noise that created life I'm a Vestige of millennial fire I contained in my first cell particles that concentrate the sense of everything that vibrates and flows nebulae net worth linger in my heart I'm a dream a question so when they asked me what is the planetary system made of I answer of ourselves [Applause] destination of the Moon too first the peacock leans onto my window and says fate is woven by the skin of time we are related to The Seven Elements Heaven our God Airsoft water out blood fire ours up Earth Our Roots fauna our veins Flora our dreams and don't forget Dina that we tie the boys of the heart to the constellations second Aguero de Quail knocks at my door and tells me we are part of the astrological plant animal and human family and we are twined with the volcanoes and the stones we match our breath with the current of the birth and the wind we breathe in every pore of the soul that the trees at seal we interwine their strength and their intuition in continuous movement in continuous arrival and departure in continuous reciprocal flow and don't forget Tina that we are not forged from the beginning of the circle third in my kitchen is chirps and tells me and just like the cosmic womb we carry within within us filaments of planetary orbits particle frequencies and atomic Energies we are continent and content we ourselves neurons hormones we are Alchemy medicine and healing we are infinite nature we are passengers of the journey the firmament that walls and the consciousness of our body is dividing by The Horizon that's why we express the day and the night the moon and the song with their cycle and reflection and don't forget Dina our origin is terrestrial but our destiny is Heavenly [Applause] yes so thanks so much uh Ashanti and interesting uh and and I have a series of questions and I mean some of which we have already touched upon in our initial interview but uh one just came to me as you were reading um because I've actually had time to go through like a collection of uh poetry by a Colombian female poets that which was published by the ministry of culture recently it was like recently it's about 10 years ago so of course in poetry time is Cosmic so 10 years is no time so so um and most of the poets in that collection actually preoccupy themselves with mostly social issues uh day to day uh but in your poems I see a tendency of course it's not exclusive but I see a tendency to focus more on the cosmic the planetary uh kind of really ontological questions planetarity and you there's something that is quite peculiar you you your poetry is about air it's about water it's about fire what uh Greek you know pre-socratic philosophers called relation age of philosophy what do this this symbols mean to you that you are so much concerned with this activistic images you know water like fire yeah I have mainly concerned and occupied about the way the astronomy the cosmos alineated with a human being and I have called in this like using like I I kind of counter Counterpoint with eagle a phenomenology of the spirits a way to produce an ontological and phenomenal phenomenological uh way of thinking in the African ambition so this way is um a kind of this political decision for me and why not a social social political decision uh in terms of sled or the shoes any specific voices and words that I want to to tell to my audience and these are fire water because I really they are related with the Eco ecological Crossings of the slaves in the in the Atlantic you know the black Atlantic uh slave trade so I want to reposition it all these Cosmos elements that we have lost because sometimes we have lost the connection with Africa and that's the way that I try to directly connect with my ancestors and the spirits without it goes right at the heart of my question and then I will connect that with another question in terms of when you you begin to talk about your collection that has been translated uh from English from Spanish to English but when you write I I also have another approach to translation in terms of poetry or any sort of creative writing in the Americas it's is it not also a types of a type of translation in itself because you you are your poetry is concerned with also questions of origin Africa so are you not also doing kind of ontological translation of wanting to a translation which source as uh Javier was telling us there's not exact Clarity you know of the source culture uh the target culture might be clear out but the source culture is not clearer so you are are you not also trying to translate also the culture the religion the mythology into your American space in some way yeah this is a diasporic Counterpoint because I'm aware of the African vision and philosophy but also as a diasporic woman who were born in in Colombia in the afro-colombian you know as fear and as a public you know intellectual ones um I I think there is necessary to use the tools of translate the cultural background and the African ambition into the diaspora itself and as a as a practitioner as a Yoruba practitioner as a princess I'm a daughter of a goon and Oya yansa in Santeria tradition I consider that we have recreated all the Yoruba wisdom in Latin America I mean the the Caribbean the Caribbean space um I I I took a class with a professor I just I just mentioned to to Feliz Professor felis whose name is Jacob or lupuna and at Harvard University and at the end of this class the professor professor lupona said something that I cannot forget at all because it's very important to to maintain to keep a mind it was is a he said uh the diaspora people in Cuba and in Brazil they are the people who keep in mind and maintain the sources of jerus wisdom in the global in the global Society because we used an creative in a aesthetic movement some of the knowledges that in jeruva itself have lost there is interesting see how we recreate all of the the music the ceremonies the use of the drums in a creole size and transcultural way so this is a kind of transcultural and creole side translations actually romantic translations yeah to use a term that is used by Julio Ortega the Peruvian critic and a well-known writer thanks so much so we will continue and my my autonomy and meditation has expired so the audience will be able to ask questions in the next sequence so you read you present two poems and then the audience will then be able to yeah okay I wipe my right now I wanna I wanna yeah you do another sequence okay I'm going to I'm going to read the the two seconds and in Spanish okay yeah okay yes we have a very well multilingual audience I loved it La Vida de los Muertos Muertos estacionesistencia song [Music] vidas braces de la is this is [Music] foreign [Music] Del Alma friendas e Flores is OS cantarles animalesos Latigo foreign [Applause] [Music] [Music] Isola information this ending foreign [Music] muerte is wow thanks so much Ashanti and we take a post that and give the floor to our audience maybe they have some emotions es Pro Felix you need to use the mic so that you can feature in the online swimming uh thank you moderator good evening everybody good evening and thank you our eminent Poets of this evening it's so warm to be here you know listening to this Embrace of poetry coming from across the Atlantic I listening to your poem are you really gives me a very happy feeling but at the same time there is a question that I cannot refrain from asking they I can see that your poetry deals a lot with ancestrality that your ancestrality that Africana that comes all the way with you now uh uh pensada solos los Muertos [Music] maybe you can also render it in English because you of course so so you just select okay because yeah we are going to have the the video register so that we can have like fluid okay multilingual thank you uh well my question was on uh black ancestral Roots which she saw she's carrying so happily and I was asking her that does this black ancestrality limit itself to a relationship to the dead ancestors or is there a place for the living ancestors in that particular configuration because yeah it's a trap that I'm actually bringing because in the relationship of Africa with Latin America we have these vibe that has to do with the past and the presence and most of the time while they take us to the past we are very eager to know their presence thank you oh thank you they are absolutely great that's a very good question thank you so much yeah I'm thinking about this concept of moon two that's why my my book is called la la semias del Montu the seat of mundu muntu is an ontological and philosophy uh concession about their relationship with uh the human being the human being with the animals plants and it includes all forms of life and when I'm thinking about animals on the fauna and Flora and thinking about the communication the spiritual communication the presence of this spiritual tradition because a bird can say everything this is the manifestation of the the universal being on the well-being you know and how can you translate the the singing of the bird in your life when you touch a tree you know you can feel and encompassing many sins and your in your blood this is a an ancestral communication with the ancestors with the spirits but also with the nature itself the communication with the whole spirits is the spirits of the nature itself I don't know if if you are understanding what I'm saying but this is Allah you know a tidality movement that kamu Broadway uh uh products in in here in in his book arrivals now the way that the waves the ocean the river communicates ourselves telling us many things many things in the Deep Side of the ocean there are so many life that can communicate with us this is the way I understand this conceptual and ontological and philosophical um definition of Moon 2 as a as you know as a threshold of life when it's death and life at the same time you have this dialectic dialect and this is life yeah passing through the death and this is the death passing through the life exactly this is a very uh you know present dialogue in your poetry death and life life through death and also death so it's quite interesting uh the way you combine this in your poetry and one just a week ago I was moderating an online poetry festival and um yeah I mean from poets from Cameroon and we had a slot Echo poetry but I I just discovered that when I'm reading you a poem you're a poetry collection I mean there's no I wouldn't say this is an echo poem and the other one is it's some sort of intermed in a way that you find this this Echo poetic element in every poem that you write so the connection between uh you know man and nature is so natural uh that one does not need to say this is this poem is Echo poetic yeah it's so intermed from the very beginning so that's quite interesting uh I find so uh maybe we we move to the next sequence and in English in English Okay in English and then yes you have a chance to ask questions or make comments okay great great grandchildren of the Moon too you will call me a covio what Nets in the enclosure of our blood it is a boomerang that returns to Journey I see song In the Womb of our mothers perhaps a wound crawling in the ladder of birds are they Willows when's the next play a concert to Infinity you tell me a covio why do the great great grandchildren of the Moon to get drawn on the hands of invisible drummers why does a cry break in our pulse where does this dialect that enchants death come from is this cry always dim at the root of the past where does this breath of Wars come from [Applause] my father's River Rafael Orozco Figueroa in each flight Summit and each minute path your hand travels through the burning of my ways do you remember that book about Biko that we eagerly debart now the wrinkles of time chiseled the geometry this geometry of your dreams of the skin of mirrors today in the severity of the hours a whole river of flies corals like a town of nostalgia in your eyes and a spring of rain gathers in your gaze you are standing here like an epic point in the down of the pupils in the heart of your voice beats a legacy of sweetness that dissipates my sadness with your wings you shelter the landscape of my childhood and with the waves of Your Smile remind me to invite me to Fly Like a Bird woman with the sound of a tree burst in the chests to mate everything for me [Applause] thanks so much Ashanti and then we we have of course a reaction from the audience and maybe before someone asks a question I also have this for you um yes I talked of how you combine the cosmic on the day-to-day and uh on in very few poems then you make reference to a specific persons uh figures in your life Raphael my father exactly whom I had the opportunity to meet but then circumstances did not permit us to meet in in barangay who is a historian I must say yeah yeah yeah what I noticed also that family is actually very important uh of course on the continent but but more so even in the diaspora that the family can can make or break yeah why is family education so so so crucial uh of course in the African diaspora not only in Colombia but the the family nucleus is quite it's quite key in determining your trajectory either as a musician as a poet as an academic family is so so crucial in African diaspora why in in I mean in your case maybe you can tell us a bit more yeah family has been closed my life in different ways I was educated by uh uh two amazing persons my mother and my father belongs to allow class and we were poor I grew up as a poor black child no when I was younger very younger and but I grew up yeah you know uh with dignity with dignity uh and my I always saw my father reading different books historical books and he was always proud of being black and he he told us about about slavery and you know so many things and I learned to how to you know dignify my life in terms of in terms of doing the best thing I I could do like for example um starting um at the University and even going to uh one of the most recognized University uh maybe could be in the the global uh the the global sphere that is which is Harvard University I am the only one who you know could do it uh so I don't have many many many people in my family that could uh study at the University so this is so important for me but the ethical you know the ethical view of being of well-being but healing others is something that I learned to with to my family great now moving from your biological father to your poetic fathers um I noticed that you also have a very strong working relationship in terms of poetry uh with uh Julio Romero [Music] um who is named also after a very important figure that that have we talked about the historical Romero who played a role also in the yeah yeah in The Liberation service of course the person the president yes the historical and the and the pero that that's we we know you know because it's still alive he's a very notable poetic figure in Cartagena and guess the money in particular and um so when you when you present especially when you present I see a lot of like uh you know Pedro's presence also in your way of presentation and then in your writing I I also see a lot about uh I mean what I can link to connect with the Poetry of Jorge ortel or tell who wrote who wrote uh tambores in La Noche especially when you talk about dancing to you know uh get drunk in the hands of invisible dramas I mean this is quite interesting and there are very similar figures uh in the report of artel because of course is poetry is about drums and this also links me towards something which um uh at what side the famous postcolonial critic and Palestinian author and and human rights activist and intellectual public intellectual uh how he defines identity um the trajectory does that does not leave us with a clear inventory of who we are dancing to the tunes of invisible drums uh could those drums maybe be coming from across the Atlantic but then it really defines your being in the Americas so and you talk about Edward Karma brown white and Derek Walker there's always these elements of something invisible but that has such a a huge grip on you in the present it could be sound it could be an image it could be a voice yeah so uh that for me is quite a very it depicts very much uh the transatlantic identity you know that doesn't leave you with a clear inventory uh Javier talks about lack of clarity but there's an effect the affect is there even though you don't have like a clear scientific knowledge of where you're coming from but when you encounter someone you actually feel the effect so for me it was quite it's quite interesting yeah I would like to say I first of all like to say [Music] to say have three three male figures in my life I mean Elder figures male Elder figures the first one uh is my father the second is Pedro Blas Julio Romero which is my literary father and the third is ogun as my orisha my male orisha so Andy bought it those people yeah yeah yeah family and poetic figure yeah yeah but also there are any others like Jorge Hotel means uh brother elder brother some one who has the knowledge yeah compared it with the rest is the you know the wisdom yeah the the wisdom uh people the wisdom person who has the knowledge to guide yeah so ekovio is a Calabar um it's a Calabar War based yeah and I think I took on then these images the roof root metaphor of weights ocean Rivers the move of the plants the herbs the leaves the wind the wind all this belongs to the to the nature of movements in the sense that uh is playing into myself that I was born in the Colombian Caribbean so everything has to do with movement with Redmond everything around us is about the drum the drum is everything so I can feel the Drone also in the in the movement of the lips in the movement of the birth so the Drone is an instrument but the draw the the bird is an instrument of the of the drum well that's quite interesting yeah the way you and and when when you you know the this also reminds me of Blake William Blake uh you know when you you actually cite Blake in one of your yeah yeah so uh why are you hiring your European father well I'm sorry okay yeah because Blake is also very present and of course as an Afro-American poet you also attacked from all the rich cultural literary Traditions maybe I have I I am in love and in hate with Higa okay okay thank you so much thank you so much um a Christian yeah thank you so much Ashanti for this wonderful readings when reading since we are talking about influence and the fathers and so on um listening to you reading in English also in a kind of a trans-lingual transformation of your of your voice and the way you present it it reminds me of Martin Luther King actually I don't know what is the influence of Martin Luther King in your wow in your poetry or in the way you um you approach your spirituality because him as well as a as a pastor and a spiritual leader um I I see I see that energy as well of of the phenomenology of the spiritual in in [Music] this uh push or let's say in this movement towards Liberation and and Renaissance of the black uh of the black body wow great question I love this question yeah I must say Martin Luther King is one of the greatest figure of Freedom Black Liberation the whole world but this is a huge yeah enormous and tremendous uh figure in in American in American movement social black movement but also in Latin America so I grew up with the with Martin Luther King references my whole life reading his uh famous I have a dream so I think this kind of movement of his boys made me feel like we have great connections instead of I speak Spanish um but when I first got in touch with Martin Luther King I felt that we have many things in common so when I was a child I didn't understand what he said never yeah but I felt that that he told me he was talking about something that we have in common something that I felt that is about me I don't know why this spiritual connection a kind of network that you can spline invisible network network we were talking we just we're just talking uh in earlier minutes uh yeah ago and that's why I am I feel I feel the Redmond I use the red moon uh that I learned to to Martin Luther King now this is one of the the references in my life I definitely love Martin Luther King and the Beloved Community because African people are Beloved Community in some ways uh around the world the solidarity and and the way his uh his discourses through 300 of people uh means a gospel of life yeah the gospel of the words thank you so much Ashanti uh any any last question before she moves to the next sequence if not then she moves to the next sequence in Spanish or in English ah in Spanish I think yeah can be in Spanish yeah and make let me try to find out okay oh Misa Negra um Dumbo pronunciation is interior brujas is [Applause] hahaha this is a salutation that we used in Palo Monte and it's quite interesting because we use a muslin salutation in palomayombe which is one of the afro-atlantic religion in afro-cubian world and is Congo tradition it's not jeruba tradition it's Congo tradition we used to say we used to salutate ancestors the spirits and they answer someone oh yeah so here we have also the Congo tradition s sarabanda oliadas de tambores [Music] sarawanda president how scooters gave up with sarabanda laguardo misplagarius Mia [Applause] something particular about the Caribbean because this powerful verb that you find in the poetry also in the novels so when you read I also feel Garcia Marquez reading is memoirs like that that potency in the voice is something that is purely Caribbean I think um and you you made a comments about uh you you live currently in the U.S yeah and you you made a comment about the solidarity uh with Africa the diaspora but today we're talking about the the kind of the complexity of that solidarity which means that it's not always um like spontaneous fraternity it could be but then there's always the fact that uh the diaspora is not also homogeneous it has passed through different experiences that have defined even the way the diaspora relates with itself you know within the diaspora and so I would like to know you as an afro-latino uh encountering the U.S society how is the experience and at the social level but also how does it I mean echo in your writing of course I know that um North American Authors you know have really had a huge influence on I mean on on Latin American authors too and maybe vice versa we always look at the North side but we don't look at the South not too so how does that um the fact that I mean the the black community in the northern part of you know North America has gone to a different experience and is it not also a kind of do you also feel an order you know uh being over that being considered to be an author uh in North America as a black you know column afro-columbian yeah yeah of course I I definitely felt well even within maybe within the black community yeah within the black community in south I mean Afro-American community you know you have a kind of feeling that you are different because you speak Spanish or Portuguese depend off you you are coming from in the Latin America uh geographical area and then you you come to the U.S uh where where there is uh easy money of the English language but also in my department of African and African-American studies look at the name African and African-American studies where afro Latinos people are there is American reference make because I know in Spanish it's always it's always very controversial to say America referring to the U.S to the U.S so is it Africa in this case African America mostly North America yeah yeah and the fields are related with African but also the hegemony is all about African-American people as the only ones who has uh fighting you know Against Racism racial discrimination as afro-latin American people doesn't exist in some ways you know and I felt like whoa what about afro-columbian people and no not only everybody knows about afro-colombian people they used to mention in their studies uh afro-brazilian because of the condom play in Brazil is a huge subcontinent you know they may they used to mention the in and the African studies I mean in the U.S Jamaica because of the Reggae Bob Marley Etc they used to mention Haiti but I would I could lie the the mention of Haiti uh were uh more than they used to do it because we and Haitian revolution was the the first um the huge revolution in the whole world compared it with the French Revolution yeah we have a huge rebellion of black people uh and marunich philosophy and making scenes better for black people in the future and and the other mentioned sometimes Trinidad Tobago because the Shango called and Cuba of course because of the sanderia and because of the others and the political okay the the social the the Revolutionary you know sphere their and the rest of us doesn't exist in this way so we insist in our department that afro-latinist studies needs to be um relocated revelated rewriting yeah and of course this is the the way queen sits every day and our lives to repositionate that that um please exactly don't don't treat me don't treat us as a known being as a non-black being people in in in the in the African studies yeah and Landscape yeah and personally and personally um I felt welcome with some of people African people and uh African Afro-American people there and I live in Worcester which is uh the second largest uh we have the second largest population in Massachusetts um and we have a we have their diversity of people from Ghana [Music] many of them Cameroon yeah but um people from the Arabian world and people from different parts of the Latin America I mean Dominican Republic Puerto Rico um and so on and you and you feel you know you you feel the people and co-passing uh the idea of the diversity in a good way you can participate there yeah definitely I I feel that the there is a lack of uh positionality around the afro-latin studies but at the same time I think we are making possible yeah with our works I think we have to insist that they recognize the one of their or one of our our mayor's figures our political you know representations Manuel is about Olivia yeah we insist please read these books this is our Bible you can you have to read it not not only roots yeah and to also mentioned that uh Olivia was also a great a great influence on uh Garcia Marquez you know and and not only did he also guide him in in you know as a journalist because they were all journalists at some point in Cartagena but also he also influenced customers oh yeah and something that I forgot is the relationship between the Heartland Renaissance writers in New Year in harling and some writers after a lot of American Writers as Manuela Jorge with last on news with counting Carly yeah Langston Hughes exactly so yeah so it's quite interesting I mean Langston Hughes was a good friend of Jorge I've tell also and then I was a friend of uh yeah I'm from Cuba and Luis pales Matos from Puerto Rico so we are yeah we have here like a Blog a black International sphere of black people in in America in the Americas because the only America is not the US yeah yeah and and it's quiet yeah it's quite interesting to see yeah the letters they they interchange interwined through the years and this this increasing recognition is not only in literature it's also in music politics and Peru and I think the the black diaspora also in Latin America is coming together in a way that there's much more communication you know now between the black diaspora and Colombia and Brazil there are projects joint projects between the black diaspora and Colombia and Peru and and in Bolivia I mean people might not even know that there's a huge community of course relatively smaller but it's significant also in Colombia in in area in particular and just some few days ago Jorge Medina Bara the first parliamentarian of African origin in in Bolivia passed away so this is also a chance to call to to Really condo with the Africa yes um yeah these are pioneers and icebreakers also in countries where people in most African countries might not imagine that Bolivia also has a sizable black diaspora Professor Felix was telling us about his research in Venezuela also you would not imagine that there's a sizable and in in Paraguay Uruguay you have communities and doing great work on the difficult conditions but you know resilience and going on so yeah yeah thank you so much and I think we still have the time what time do we have we still have chance for the last sequence of poems then before we we then ask the question we then give the floor to the audience and what time do do we have 20 minutes left 15 20 minutes 20 minutes okay okay okay let me try to two quick poems and then last comments okay game okay okay Symphony of ancestors voices screens Psalms an orchestra of Seagulls that resounds from wedding a symphony of the sunsets of the Soul cheapest memory they are dressed in Ebony and Ivory and with their Warrior smiles and with their Cosmic sense serpent steps they traveled through the region of Dreams in the writing of our bodies the ancestors with their sweet ink draw threes on our pupils mangroves of nostalgia ancient cartographies the ancestors lick our swells of Blues recall our wounds they hide among the drive lips impatiently they peek out with the eye of their tongues they roll along the banks with their seba ores they braid the skins of time [Applause] rogative today a prayer occupies my thought shakes my eyes and draws an omen from the gods where are my ancestors the question becomes immense like the memory of words when they recovered the body of myths I look for answers in the ages of the past on the chores of light in the substance of the dream in the trails of Silence I seek the masters of the hidden in the Scars of Time in the screens of the karimba in the volcanoes between my hands my hands my hands [Applause] okay uh thank you so much Ashanti I don't know if there's a last round of questions from the audience or comments and then we will close the the show for the evening anybody wants to say something like any comments um otherwise I will then ask a very last brief question um the last two last okay uh in Spanish in Spanish yes because we want them to be to be to be awesome yeah bilingual so so I will ask I think you should do the poems first and then I ask the question just for the end yes do the poems in Spanish first at first yes okay okay do you want to yeah you do this the last question just trigger oh that's interesting because I would like to finish with this something this is part of the ceremony um thank you so much [Applause] my reverence to elegua Guardian de me Sendero Los inquisitors senderos De Las Vegas aranya is Del Monte is [Music] sobremi Padre biajeros amigo in La Rivera Madura Del Tiempo [Applause] I just wanted to finish with the with this other point dedicated is the mother of the diaspora itself I think we cross the ocean because deaf and live I mean is difficult to say because we salute Yemaya and we greet Yemaya because we are like we you are in life but we felt like sadness you know because all our ancestors who crossed the Atlantic Ocean suffered in some way that is difficult to to reproduce in this space you know how how we feel Negra Senora Del Mar del Canton estate [Music] foreign foreign [Music] [Music] Aguas thank you thank you so much I felt like joining you in the singing but because I have cold I didn't want to spoil this beautiful so wonderful and um yeah we are blessed to have you here and I hope everyone has enjoyed the evening and um yes so so uh please a last Applause for [Applause] it's our pleasure in the African multiple cluster of Excellence but particularly in the black Atlantic Revisited project to welcome you here from the Caribbean from the U.S uh it's such a pleasure to have exchange with you about your works you know about your feelings and also about your project so I hope this is the beginning uh we're going to have much more to do together and you are still writing a lot so hopefully you'll be back you'll be back to buy right anytime soon and uh Javier also is with us and we always say when you come to Bay Road you will always come back you will always come back yes something will always bring you back to Pirates yeah so thanks a lot and have a great evening [Applause] thank you