Current Issue
SOLIDARITIES
Bonds forged through common experience, religious devotion, and political resistance abound in Transition’s new issue on solidarities. Miska Mohmmed’s “Features” graces the cover. Visit our online store to purchase a copy.
From the Archive
The Spirit of Dancehall: Embodying a New Nomos in Jamaica
In T125 Religion, published in 2017, Khytie K. Brown explores dancehall as a spiritual ritual that falls within the tradition of African indigenous practices–where “the sacred and profane can exist simultaneously.” (Brown recounts Kwame Coleman, a priest and dancer of the Cuban Palo Monte telling an audience at Harvard that the first time he was possessed by an orisa was while he was at a nightclub.)
More than an ethnographic study on a genre of dance, this essay casts dancehall as a politically subversive cultural sphere where the marginalized communities of the “garrison” (or inner city) can forge new expressions of sovereignty, identity, and belonging. With its sexually explicit lyrics that “leave nothing to the imagination” and the lewd acts and dances that accompany the music, dancehall rebels against Jamaica’s profoundly Christian culture, but also casually absorbs it. Brown begins her childhood experience of ecstatic Christian religious practice in Jamaica and deepens quickly into multi-faceted analysis. Jamaica may be known for the spiritual aspects of reggae, but dancehall as spiritual practice was neglected far too long before this essay appeared in our Religion issue.
Artist Spotlight
Thameur Mejri
Maragaret Nagawa, Visual Arts Guest Editor for T137 Solidarities, chose Thameur Mejri’s work to accompany Xolela Mangcu’s urgent essay “Black, White, and Rainbow Solidarities, Our Choice,” which begins by recounting his part in the anti-apartheid and traces his understanding of solidarity, white, Black, black, and rainbow, up to the present day. It’s no surprise that Nagawa chose Mejri’s dynamic works for an essay the various solidarities people choose in times of crisis. The fragility of Mehri’s media in these paintings–charcoal and pastel–conveys the precarity of the body, which is often in parts and set amidst the chaos of bold acrylics. His paintings cite Picasso and Basquiat and like them, he is an unabashedly political artist.
In “Fallen Archetypes 2,” to your right, one steady hand holds itself out as a perch for a black bird that looks away from the falling mess of limbs and clothing, and household objects. Another contorted hand, reaches up to grasps nothingness.
Thameur Mejri (b. 1982) lives and works in Nabeul, Tunisia. He studied painting at the Institute of Fine Arts in Tunis. Currently teaching at the Higher Institute of the Arts and Crafts in Kairouan ,and he completed his Ph.D. in Sciences and Technology of Arts
See more of his work at Selma Feriani, which represents him.
Podcast
Transition on the Wire
Transition on the Wire is the monthly podcast of Transition Magazine, hosted by author Sarah Ladipo Manyika. In our latest podcast, Sarah sits down with Mónica Macías—daughter of Equatorial Guinea’s first president—to discuss her memoir, BLACK GIRL FROM PYONGYANG: In Search of My Identity. In recent episodes, Sarah interviews best-selling, Booker-Prize- winning author Bernardine Evaristo, rapper, singer-songwriter will.i.am, and actor Delroy Lindo. And poet and creative scholar DaMaris Hill and curator and cultural historian James McNally discuss Black collage in Hiphop and all genres.
Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, or directly from Soundcloud. Join us each month for a new interview with authors and artists of the Diaspora.
From T135 SPECIES
Our History
The Longest-Running Pan-African Cultural Magazine
In immediate postcolonial Africa…the various decolonized or soon-to-be decolonized countries didn’t know too much about one another…
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