Oud Xamayca: The Mermaid Project. Workshops

Oud Xamayca: The Mermaid Project

Every culture it seems has a mermaid or water spirit story.

Jamaican Intuitive artist Kapo (Mallica Reynolds) depicted Mermaids in his paintings as did Australian artist Colin Garland who made Jamaica his home for 45 years.  I will be sharing images of their work  with a group of 8 to 14 year old at risk youths in Kingston as well as telling stories of similar Mermaid tales from Jamaica the Caribbean and Africa.   I want to communicate that talented artisans, scientists, families, kings and queens were uprooted from their homeland transported half way around the world and that our ancestors memories live on through cell memory, intuition, dance, the arts, story and myth.  And wonderful things have come out of our colonial past. And countries with a similar background to ours have this connection too.  She always teaches a lesson in these stories.   We will create a magical world where anything they draw can manifest in their lives.

The images attached are that of South African artist Karen Miller. Whose work and especially these images I adore.  I will be using them as part of Oud Xamayca's visual art workshop with under served and at risk youths in Kingston.  The majority of which consist of Jamaica's population of African origin.  Xamayca is the Taino word for "Wood and Water" they were the original inhabitants of the island of Jamaica.  The Neo Tainos of the Caribbean had a mermaid /water spirit goddess who they called Aycayía.  The Europeans who came also had mermaid stories.
In the ocean near Haiti in 1493, Christopher Columbus (probably glimpsing a manatee) reported seeing three mermaids but said they were "not as pretty as they are depicted, for somehow in the face they look like men."

 The ships the Europeans came on when they docked in Africa before coming to the New World sometimes had carvings of Mermaids on the bough of the ship.  These images along with European mermaid tales of the comb and the mirror helped to shape the image of the African Mami Wata, water spirit goddess.  Mami Wata  from  Africa is said to have the body of a snake and the upper torso of a woman, by the time her people arrived in the New World, European imagery and folktales had an influence and as such in the Caribbean she ended up with a mermaid tail and not the body of a snake.  But her story is still alive, in Jamaica she is known as the River Muma, she guards fresh water ways and canals, river and streams, the fish in these waters are known as her children. She also has a golden table located at the bottom of the river and comb. In Haiti she is one of three sisters who are powerful water spirits La Sirène, Erzulie and Simbi. In Trinidad & Tobago she is known as Maman De l'eau.

 Oud Xamayca: The Mermaid Project explores themes of identity, femininity and interculturality through the use of metaphors and myths of the African Diaspora, particularly mermaids and water goddesses. Through the unique intervention of North African/Mid-Eastern dance, in addition to the exploration and connections with National Xamaycan dances, Oud Xamayca strives to offer a culturally enriching, socially progressive and empowering bodyworlding experience to participants and audiences. Visual arts and movement arts come together in Oud Xamayca to create new modes of expression and wider global contexts. Oud Xamayca is a community outreach and performance project that recodes notions of womanhood, individual articulation and cultural relativity.

Jamaica is a patriarchal ruled society with households run by matriahs.  Anything considered  not christian is viewed as evil or of the devil especially where religion is concerned.  I have come back to a country where some members of society are bleaching their skin, men, women, and some children and some upper  and lower classes are spooked by anything 'African'.  So I have called in for reinforcements in the form of Tiffany 'Hanan' Madera an academic who will be facilitating the dance workshops with at risk girls, teen mothers and pregnant teens.  She allows one to dance from within and  to connect to your core. Dance is rooted in ritual, when one dances as if no one is watching or makes visual art, becoming lost in time and space and has no concept of time, is a form of prayer or communication with god.  During my darkest moments it was the dance that woke me up and breathed life again into me.  Middle eastern dance in particular, perhaps it was the community of women of all shapes and sizes, the rhythmic, curved movements, the drum beats and the winded instruments which carried me faraway in my mind. To another place and time.