In Africa it is said that each person has a rhythm to which they alone dance. What I’ve learned about this cultural proposition is there is a journey involved in finding one’s rhythm that will likely take you to unexpected places… the highs, lows, and in-betweens of which depend upon how genuine one is about self-discovery. The question of me/”self” was not going to be answered through academic inquiry, no matter how off-the-beaten-path ethnomusicology may have seemed by the time I had to decide on a graduate program to enroll in. Though I remained clueless about how to respond to the musical call that had compelled me to make my south-west journey from Kenya to the US in the first place, I was grateful that my university gospel choir was a space where I could return to organic call-response flows and break from the academic humdrum of musicology discourse. Many years and countless lessons later I’ve come to appreciate that while this path provided a necessary critical lens on the western knowledge industry, I was being guided step-by-step by a higher universe back to my culturally and spiritually authentic/integrated self…

Beyond the gates of academia, my burgeoning awareness that I was not on this journey alone seemed to veer between real-life versions of Escape Room and the Hunger Games as I navigated the most public of spaces where I couldn’t ignore the pirated, objectified, marketed, curated presence of displaced Africa-centered figures and symbols. It began to dawn on me that the sheer in-your-facedness of Cleopatra’s Needles… Oscar… the Statue of Liberty… the Washington Monument… etc. were actual cues by my unseen Escape Room team members for me to put skin in the game. Each of these presences awakened their own resonance within my cultural chakras, but it was around the expropriated symbol and mythology of the Tkhn where it all coalesced and eventually settled into a definitive rhythm, order & flow for me. HaNtu – the cultural concept that answers questions of when & where in BaNtu space-time – had located the very beat of my heart. Suddenly I was in synch with the centering power of the Tkhn & could no longer ignore its performance role & symbolic standing as the time-conjuring cultural initiate who had, at some key moment in our joint evolution, transcended the matrix to establish his unique healing path as a Master Drummer.

In his book The Healing Drum: African Wisdom Teachings, Yaya Diallo explains that in the Minianka tradition of Mali, a would-be Master Drummer is always “called to the drum,” usually from an early age. They undergo training and several rite-of-passage trials along the way, but can only be initiated into the ranks of Master Drummer by other Masters, some of whom may be Ascended beyond the limited scope of our 3D senses. Some of the great Master Drummers may have stopped drumming in the 3D realm, because they have nothing more to prove as far as their technical agility, but they will always shepherd &/or exorcise any wayward spirit attempting for better or worse to infiltrate (often through lower-ranking drummers &/or trixters) the communal heartbeat under their watch. The Master Drummer thus plays a critical spiritual mentorship and leadership role through his own self-discovery and the aesthetics of Africa-centered oral traditions.

The DNA of these oral-aesthetic practices can be traced through the high-level Jamaican Rastafari embrace of Nyabingi traditions which, in concert with kumina practices inherited from BaKongo, fostered the heartbeat that pulses in the reggae, ska, and rock-steady musical stylings of artists such as Peter Tosh, Black Uhuru, Count Ossie, Burning Spear, and Bob Marley who preached ubuNtu in his song ‘One Love.’  Their musical recordings were initially broadcast via mobile DJ units in Jamaica, an island tradition that became key to the development of hip-hop’s seminal heartbeat in early 1970’s America. During this time, DJs such as Jamaican-born Kool Herc arrived in the Bronx as an adolescent already versed in the island tradition of toasting, mobile Dj-ing, and battling for status between partygoers. He further developed a technique of isolating the musical breaks on vinyl records, repeating them through a hands-on technique of scratching, which evolved into him using two turntables simultaneously. Afrika Bambaataa (of West-Indian descent) informally studied Herc’s style and emerged as his competitor in the mid-1970s, promoting hip-hop through his Zulu Nation.

The signature heartbeat of hip-hop which had matured from the early 1970s went on to gain global attention following Grandmixer DXT and Herbie Hancock’s performance of Rockit at the 26th Grammy Award ceremony in 1984 during which Michael Jackson’s record-breaking Thriller was recognized. Grandmixer DXT’s performance on Rockit during this globally viewed ceremony inspired a new breed of turntablists, including Filipino-American DJ Qbert. Years later during a separate ceremony honoring these latter-day DJs, DXT conferred the title of “Grand Mixer” onto Qbert, essentially inducting him into the Master Drummer ranks for his mastery as a turntablist after the Africa-centered tradition of Master Drummers inducting initiates who’ve successfully proven their worth to join their ranks thru this life-calling. Unfortunately, low-frequency industry/matrix agendas & its trixters often override the traditional Master Drummer‘s ongoing oversight role over the well being of the communal drum. In Doug Pray’s 2001 documentary Scratch, “Grand Mixer” Qbert describes turntable-ing as “the zone… Nirvana. It’s like you’re not playing the instrument. It’s like you’re the instrument & the universe is playing you.” He adds: “I believe everyone is one… connected… everyone affects everyone… everyone is part of you.”

This 5D-level of perceptiveness is the sacred ubuNtu/unity-conscious stakes towards which master-custodians of Africa’s sovereign oral-aesthetic traditions evolve and maintain as the BaNtu community’s art-for-life’s-sake cultural mandate. The Africa-centered Tkhn embodies all of this and so much more in the spiritual/5D+ and terrestrial/3D aspects of its symbolism from ancient to modern space-time. According to E.A. Wallis Budge, one of the ways in which Djehuti (God of hieroglyphic writing) spelled “Tkhn” was identical to his spelling of ‘musician with instrument’ or ‘to beat a drum.’ And because the Tkhn is associated with the mythology from Khmt/ancient Egypt of Ausar-Auset-Heru v Set, the implications are profound in humanity’s evolving state of affairs which can be broken down into the archetypes of the mythology’s principal actors. As god of foreign invaders, plague and chaos, Set represents the antithesis of ubuNtu whose interface with indigenous cultures explains slavery, (neo)colonialism, apartheid, & other forms of western chaos, particularly in pan-African affairs. In the mythology, Set was motivated by jealousy against his brother Ausar’s popular rulership of Heaven’s earthly kingdom of Khmt alongside his wife, Auset. Set usurped the throne after murdering his brother Ausar and scattering the 14 pieces of his mutilated body into a wilderness/Diaspora. Upon searching this wilderness, Ausar’s widow – SaNgoma Auset – was only able to recover 13 pieces which she mummified. The 14^th piece Auset was unable to find is symbolized by the Tkhn/obelisk. It represents the ages-old sacred Mystery of the Resurrection…

Uaset/Luxor | Cairo | Istanbul | Rome | Paris | London | New York

According to A World of Obelisks, of the 21 ancient obelisks still standing, Egypt itself can claim fewer than 5. Rome boasts 13, all snatched from the Land of the Pharaohs in Roman times, and the rest are spread from Istanbul to New York City. The counter-clockwise sequential arrangement of these expropriated Tkhn – Uaset/Luxor | Cairo | Istanbul | Rome | Paris | London | New York – in northern hemisphere space-time is intriguing for several reasons. Of Africa’s pirated Tkhn, those which Pharaoh Tuthmosis III [1504-1450 BCE] can lay historical claim to notably include: (i) The Istanbul Tkhn upon which is inscribed: “Crossing the Great Circle of Naharina in valor and victory at the head of his army, making great slaughter …Lord of Victory who subdues all lands, establishing his frontier at the Beginning of the Earth [the extreme south] up to the Swampy Lands of Naharina [the farthest north]”; (ii) The Lateran Obelisk in Rome, which [@105.6 feet & 455 tons] is the largest standing Tkhn in the world; (iii) “Cleopatra’s Needle” installed on September 13^th, 1878 at Victoria’s Embankment in London; & (iv) The twin “Cleopatra’s Needle” installed in New York’s Central Park in January 1881. [NOTE: The Greek word/name CleoPatra means “Glory of the Father”]

At the raising of this last Tuthmosis III Tkhn in New York, William Maxwell Evarts, then U.S. Secretary of State, declared, “Who indeed can tell what our nation will do if any perversity is possible of realization; and yet this obelisk may ask us, ‘Can you expect to flourish forever? Can you expect wealth to accumulate and man not decay? Can you think that the soft folds of luxury are to wrap themselves closer and closer around this nation and the pith and vigor of its manhood know no decay? Can it creep over you and yet the nation know no decrepitude?’ These are questions that may be answered in the time of the obelisk but not in ours.” This speech was made less than 4 years prior to The International Meridian Conference in Washington DC where Greenwitch, London was voted by northern-hemisphere autocratic agents as the capital of the world’s official north-south zero-degrees [0°] of longitude “Prime Meridian“ [October 1884], thereby dethroning humanity’s Organic Prime Meridian along Africa’s Heavenly-bestowed Nile Valley “Temple of the World” [per God Djehuti]. Evarts’ speech simultaneously anticipated the completion of the Tkhn-replica construction in Washington DC [12/8/1884], whilst prefacing The Berlin Conference aka “Scramble for/of Africa“ – 11/15/1884 – 2/26/1885 by mainly 7 European colonial invaders & pillagers [France, Germany, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Italy, & Britain] – under “GrandMother of Europe” Queen Victoria whose reign [1837-1901] oversaw the rape/colonization of humanity’s organic Womb/Source.

According to a native American saying of the Cherokee: “A Woman’s highest calling is to lead a Man to his soul so as to unite him with Source. A Man’s highest calling is to protect Woman, so She is free to walk the Earth unharmed.” There is a consciousness in this saying that connects naturally to humanity’s Nile-Valley Sourced mythology and Twinergy of Divine Masculine-Feminine counterparts, Ausar-Auset… that licenses her passage as Ausar‘s SaNgoma via humanity’s ‘Medicine Wheel’ across Mother Earth’s organic Equator and between her hemispheres. As “She who sees Set & Heru” the Queen of the South understands why Her Drum Circle must remain Unbroken and does whatever is necessary to restore & maintain Divine Order & Balance… ubuNtu/Ma’at. Sorely tested by Set’s jealousy, greed & racially-based chaos [slavery… (neo)colonialism… apartheid… etc.], Ausar comes through for his SaNgoma as the Master Drummer who orders, guides, and guards her journey towards ubuNtu/Ma’at… Their relationship is humanity’s true equilibrium. Along the way, our SaNgoma‘s decoding skills are honed as she tunes in to humanity’s eternal Africa-centered pulse through the transcendent language of Divine Twins as Heaven-on-Earth once again becomes manifest through their sanctified reconciliation.

Oscar, a Eurocentrically-redesigned version of Ptah – god of craftsmen & sculptors who was venerated during humanity’s Age of Growth/Ausar (Taurus earth sign) – serves now perhaps as a Shakespearian reminder that “the world is a stage” within which Ausar-Auset are playing out the ongoing mythology of archetypes that was scripted within a grand Age when earth was the defining element. Amun/Amen (Aries fire sign) brought in the following Age of Law which refers to humanity’s oldest recordings of its codes of justice and moral instruction. Judeo-Christianity’s 10 Commandments arose out of these codes during the subsequent Age of Faith (Pisces water sign) – a period in which Africa was most tested by Set throughout (i) chattel slavery [1619⇒]; (ii) colonialism’s rape & reconstruction of Africa and of humanity’s organic Prime Meridian [1884⇒] which, along with the invention of the Gregorian calendar, reset global space-time around Eurocentric agendas; & (iii) apartheid [1948⇒] meaning “apartness” in Afrikaans, a divide-&-conquer antithesis to the unity-conscious Africa-centered philosophy of UbuNtu: “I Am because We Are…” 

Despite his shady motivations, Set’s expropriation of Tkhns into further reaches of the northern hemisphere, which began during this Age of Faith period of Khmt’s Greco-Roman takeover, has been instructive in its counter-clockwise progression. This trail of stolen Tkhns led to the installation of “Cleopatra’s Needles” in London and New York successively, which happened just prior to the Eurocentric colonial/Victorian violations of Africa via the International Meridian and Berlin Conferences in America and Germany respectively. The Washington Monument replica of the Tkhn adds more chaos to Set’s imperialist messaging, as does the Statue of Liberty which – despite her plagiarized crown, purposely-crafted Greco-Roman handsomeness & other features to support the gerrymandered narrative regarding France-US relations – was purportedly intended to commemorate America’s 1865 abolition of slavery. Furthermore, in more ancient times it was Ascended Master Pharaoh Tuthmosis III [1504-1450 BCE] who notably referred to Khmt‘s Goddess Seshat as Sefket-Abwy, meaning “She of 7 Points,” in direct reference to her original and highly symbolic 7-pointed crown.

The SUN’s own JOURNEY traces the grand Ages of human evolution via a counter-clockwise flow through the western astrological signs: Gemini/Twins (air)⇒  Taurus/Ausar (earth)⇒ Aries/Amun (fire)⇒ Pisces/Set? (water). Perhaps each element had to be mastered by would-be Master Drummer (Heru) whose rites-of-passage include drawing in his SaNgoma (Drum of Drums & Divine Feminine), overcoming his “shadow” (Set), & ultimately restoring integrity to the Temple of the World & its heartbeat. The next, higher-vibing Age of Aquarius is about this re-paired Heaven-on-Earth Drum Circle. Proverbs from God/dess Amun/Mut’s Ipet-Resyt Temple advise: “A phenomenon always arises from the interaction of complementarity. If you want something, look for the complement that will elicit it. Set causes Heru. Heru redeems Set… The Kingdom of Heaven is within you… Know.Thy.Self.”   ∞∞∞🪘🪘🪘❤ ❤ ❤ 🪘🪘🪘∞∞∞