I was recently invited to reflect upon my work as a whole over the last two decades plus. I saw a common thread and when I went to articulate it the term AFROMYSTICISM popped out. I searched for others who have used this term and did not find any examples - surprisingly. So I am voicing this term--not as definition, but as description. I see the ways in which my own spiritual inquiries and longings have been rooted in/have met with/danced with Theatrical Jazz and Afrofuturism. But my work has not easily lived within either of those houses alone.
Through performance, theatre, music, etc. I aim to construct ephemeral, living architectures, and vibrant, temporary communities to invite audiences into what I hope are liberatory, expansive experiences of themselves and one another. I pursue the creation of spaces that are beautiful, rigorous, surreptitiously disorienting, and suffused with truths often lost within absolutes of identity, narrative and social habits. Mystical spaces that engage the imagination and the power of the fantastic to speculate possibilities where there seem to be none. This has been the experience audiences have related to me about Jomama Jones's work. This is at the heart of the ghostly rituals of my play, Phoenix Fabrik; the love and longings in my play, Bel Canto; the particular conjuring coded in the songs that I write. And, for sure, it is the core principle at work in my newest collaboration with my crew (more news on that soon).
I am writing in greater detail about this concept, in context. So more thoughts on the way. But for now... yeah... embracing the need to move in Afromystical Space.