#TakinBackSunday: Ring Shout Resistance

Ecstatic voices rise, feet stomping, hands clapping to rhythms made by breath and body. Our people have shuffled, danced, and sung their way in circles of multigenerational, intertribal healing for ancestral time immemorial. During the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, enslaved Africans were forbidden to play the drum. With strong roots in the West Indies, the Gulf South, and West Africa, the Ring Shout emerged as a counterclockwise circle of shuffling, polyrhythmic body percussion, and soulful vocalizing—a subversive strategy to conjure collective power and touch Freedom amidst the most oppressive circumstances. Its medicine has evolved with the influence of Native American ceremony (such as in Congo Square) and taken contemporary forms as seen in traditionally African American churches today. This #TakinBackSunday service centers the Ring Shout as ancestral technology for healing and resistance. Join #DignityInProcess Artivist Director, ChE in an artivist talk exploring the Ring Shout as a framework for Afro-Indigenous Creatrix mythology grounded in intersectional gender justice. Then root to rise in an immersive performance ritual with Queer Black Aesc(th)estic Sonic duo, Black Moon Monastics.
* You are invited to bring an item for our ancestral altar which will be returned at the end of service
More About #TakinBackSunday, A #DignityInProcess Queer Black Church Series:
“In the midst of oppression remaining awake becomes a powerful resistance tool and a precursor to contemplation.” ~Barbara A. Holmes, excerpt from Joy Unspeakable: Contemplative Practices of the Black Church
#TakinBackSunday is about stayin’ woke. Facilitated by the gender expansive aesc(th)etic duo, Black Moon Monastics, this Trans-denominational service is an artistic act of Queering Black* Church. Celebrating intersectional Queer/Trans/Two-Spirit/Gender-Nonconforming Life, we reconnect with ritual routes of Indigenous/Creole/Afro-Diasporic* origins. A #DignityInProcess Folk-medicine circle series woven with Black Feminist scripture, Indigenous Creatrix storytelling, somatic-centering, Freedom Song ciphers, and ancestor reverence—our meditation is for Liberation! We conjure healing justice by honoring the use of sanctuary as site for both sacred and social movements. We touch Afro-futurities, bending space-time as we rise in the counterclockwise shuffles and claps of Ring Shout processions. Part participatory performance, part Freedom School, part Shout House, we lean into Afro-Indigenous cultural cosmologies where the community process to Create, steward Wisdom, and Conjure are One.
Simply, we embody the Living church of Queer Black* Magik.


FOLLOW THE SERIES: http://che-art.life/#/takinbacksunday/

UPCOMING #TAKINBACKSUNDAYS:#TakinBackSunday: In the beginning was Blacknesslocation: Destiny Arts Center, 970 Grace Ave, Oakland, CA 
date: Sunday, May 20th, 2018 from 4:30-6:30pm
#TakinBackSunday: QEARevival
location: Destiny Arts Center, 970 Grace Ave, Oakland, CAdate: Sunday, June 3, 2018 from 4:30-6:30pm#TakinBackSunday: Food Folklore Freedomlocation: RedBay Coffee Roastary & Bar (Headquarters), 3098 E 10th St, Oakland, CAdate: Sunday, June 10th, 2018 from 4-7pm

More About Black Moon Monastics:
Black Moon Monastics are a Queer Black Aesc(th)estic Sonic duo weaving Soul-Folk, roots & rhythms, healing harmonies, and ancestral incantations to Awaken all beings to Freedom F(l)ight. Reflecting soular light, these expansive extraterrestrials cross genre, time, and space, conjuring unapologetic Black Magik with austronomous audacity. Impossible to confine to traditional musical methodologies, these Black Fe Folk play cast iron skillets, gumbo pots, medicine jars with sticks & stones, igniting our bones. These contemplative conjurings subversively inspire prayerful processionals that mobilize the Invisibilized. Descending with Dignity, this interdisciplinary duet brings reverence for Blackness wherever they land.  #MoonLanding2018 #RootToRise

Black Moon Monastics is the collective medicine of #DignityinProcess Artivist Director, ChE, and Director of Freedom Freequencies, kei slaughter.