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manofmanyvirtues · 5 years

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The Pure Truth

This is my fifth acid trip and my most profound.

July 6 at around 6:20 PM I dropped 450 micrograms of Lysergic Acid Diethylamide, the week prior I had spent time cleansing my mind of anxiety in preparing for this trip by handling things in my life that needed to be handled, such as: cleaning tensions between my ex and myself, telling a few people a few things I've been meaning to, finishing up my online summer school class with most of my baggage off my chest and 4 days off from work.

I was ready to buy 3 tabs good Lucy ,which is the most I've done, today. My dealer Eric met me in my alley which is pretty stereotypical, we made the exchange, I walked inside and put it in my drug box, talked to my family, and had dinner for a few hours before receding into my room for the next 10 hours.

6:20 PM I cleared my head and dropped. We played Fortnite on my PC with my friend Jay. We played for maybe an hour and a half. An hour and I begin to feel the oh so familiar feeling of my teeth and skin, tongue began to crawl with little electric pin pricks around the same time the game began to look more and more realistic and vibrant until it began to look like my character was running in front of my face, off my screen. I was already beginning to be surrounded by the flow of everything in my visual field, I started to have trouble communicating with Jay and playing the game started becoming impossible. I remember specifically glancing down at my hand well I was using the keyboard, I saw my bones move as if my skin was nearly transparent. Everything around me became vibrant began to shimmer. I knew that in was in for a big one. By now I manage to mutter: I'm gonna have to lay down to J, before logging off covering myself with blankets on my bed.

Around 8:00 PM I put on Grateful Dead Station. Since it’s the middle of summer, the sun had not completely set yet and the low Star cast deep yellowish and orange streaks through my blinds and onto my walls, as I lay there completely invested in the music and still coming up fast, my walls and carpet and blinds began dancing with the music. There were waves on the ceiling and rhythm with the song surrounding my vision. If I were to look closer in anything, I could see every individual particles making up the object for instance. I could see every cell in my hand in every thread of my blankets. I listen to the whole album and then after it finished put on Pink Floyd’s “The Dark Side of the Moon”. I remember half way through the oven my body began to vibrate with the sound. There's no way of articulating this feeling, but the sounds are quite literally a part of my touch, I could feel each individual sound holster my body to accompany it some kind of visual would pop up in front of me.

Up until this point my psychedelic journey this was as far as I'd ever managed to dose. Far as I ever got. I managed to always dose myself low enough to make my physical being and perception feel completely bizarre and alien but I never managed to go deeper. I think this is far as most people go and... But I knew there was something more to be known. I wanted to go into the places that I heard Terence McKenna and Alan Watts talking about... I never saw The Light, The Profound, The Other, The Unspeakable. On one trip prior I remember feeling the very beginnings of my ego dissolving but nothing more. This trip was different. This overwhelming sense of understanding began to build from the moment I started tripping, so after doing trivial things like watching the walls become great city scapes or watch the ceiling fan melt into the floor, which I've done plenty of on trips prior, I decided that this was still coming on stronger by the minute and I thought my ego begin to dissolve.

By now it's around 1:30 AM and completely dark outside. Turn off all the lights in my room and put on my headphones, began listening to binaural beats for meditation. Leading up to now I had subconsciously felt that there was some sort of struggle in my mind. My internal voice became frantic, asking questions that I've never asked before, giving answers that made sense in a way I can explain. I felt every part of my life be taken away from me one by one, my ego and everything that I had built for 17 years up until this point begin disappearing. In their place my ego was pure understanding and being. A lost memory of my mother, myself of any of my friends, of anything I ever cared about I became nothing while simultaneously I was everything. I remember feeling my body dissolve into my blanket, then into my bed, then into everyone and everything I've ever known. I become the universe.

I felt all things began to piece by piece decide that this was it - that this is the answer - that this is all I am meant to do is experience simply and in complete balance. I understood that the ultimate state of being is to understand that there's nothing to understand, and up until this point I had tried with everything I had to make sense of things on a daily basis and refused to believe that the answer was so simple. The whole time I was presented with amazing visuals of vast impossible landscapes, as if I was eye with no body. Far off places with tall mountains and planets and multiple places at once, streaks of color I've never seen before. Snakes slithering into each other and plants growing infinitely, spinning constantly changing flowers and list geometry and impossible shapes that don't exist in our reality.

And I was suddenly cast into an endless corridor of beautifully colored faces (google Alex Grey's art to get an idea of what I'm talking about). The space roared with noise and archetypal symbolism. I saw every religion symbolism from every culture, I saw the father and I saw the mother, I saw the Yin and Yang in the form of 2 clouds of smoke - one white and one black - colliding with each other but never becoming gray. I came face to face with fear and bad intentions personified, I saw all things that drive everything in the universe, I saw the rule book of life. I knew that this presence was the universal consciousness or God or whatever you wanna call it. He was there with me. It showed me the beauty of Roxbury and it's faces and lists of beautiful perfectly symmetrical hallways and faces. I got the sense that these faces were meant to show me that the human form is purposeful. The face is designed by something we don't understand thrust into our physical reality through the evolution of life on Earth. I get the feeling that I am something immensely special.

Message at this point was to shut up, stop worrying and listen. It showed me that the universe created life of nothing, it showed me that our only purpose is to understand. We look for peace and material and relationships but it never occurs to us how amazing it feels, how amazing it is to feel nothing. Then the trip became slightly sinister and joking with me. They began to play a sad song and were showing me a man in the fetal position searching for relief in our physical world that he finds, that he only finds after death. I was shown this for what seemed like eternity, I remember the words bouncing around: “It's all a joke, this is all a big play can't you see monkey that you have no clue what we are doing?”. At the time I was not at all scared instead in awe and curious as to what was meant by all of this.

By now in the trip I have little recollection of my physical body, but I remember experiencing this beautiful blissful connection to everything and in the distance of my mind hearing myself cry. I felt my body convulse and cry as I was charged with this pure truth and understanding. I had no more connection to anything in my everyday life instead I am just enveloped by love, by bliss, and simultaneously by hate, by chaos, everything was there - so nothing was. I realize now that this isn't all a big joke, less more of a big metaphor, the game to become good at.

You get to choose which you make your purpose in this life. And spend every day working at it or you can minimize from every day it get used to be fed what to do by society. Either way you'll return to nothing so doesn't matter in the end - but it really matters now - now is all we will ever experience in this life. After this enlightening and completely amazing experience I began piecing my life back together one thing at a time. I looked at old pictures and try to text a few friends to ground myself again.

At 2:45 AM I took 2 sleeping pills and I don't remember much after 3:30 AM. My next memory is waking up at 9:30 trying to piece together what the the fuck happened last night. I got up, ate some fig newtons, drank a glass of water, and was sober but mind-blown for the rest of the day. It was beautiful and terrifying and completely invaluable to me having integrated this experience for a month and some change. My life has taken on a new meaning. I'm immensely more relaxed and confident in everything I do. The universe has a large of a larger purpose for me so I need to just do my part in the play with the big experiment of life on Earth as best I can. I played much more music since and can feel other musicians music in a way I never have before. It all feels so personal now. I think this trip represents one more huge step towards me becoming the best version of myself. I haven’t tripped since and probably won't for awhile, because this was the single most life changing trip of my life. And at the moment I don't feel the need to heal myself any further.

Credit: This World (Youtube)

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beatemporium · 5 years

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Recording with Pendo & Leah Zawose and Wamwiduka in 2019 and 2020

Part 1: British Council Trip February 2019

Having spent a small but influential portion of my childhood in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, I was over the moon to be returning to take part in a music production and education project set up by the British Council. I’d be going out into the heat of sub-Saharan summer with accomplished guitarist, fellow music producer and regular collaborator, Tom Excell, to be part of a project I’d been dreaming about for 15 years. I held such fond memories of Tanzania; remembering street corners piled high with infinitely juicy oranges, the lush smell of a tropical climate next to the Indian Ocean, and the warm smiles of the Swahili people, always welcoming with cheeky curiosity. Exiting the airport I felt a strong sense of home wash over me as these thoughts returned to me expectantly.

I was excited to meet the musicians we knew so little about, that would soon change not only my perception of rhythm, but my outlook on what it means to write music from the soul. I discovered that writing and performing music for these particular Tanzanians isn’t so much a creative endeavour or choice, but a necessity. An unstoppable thirst for creative expression that defines they way that they live.

Our roll call was at 10am the morning after we arrived, but with Tom suffering from a mild bout of yellow fever (as a reaction to the jab he had had a few days before) I timidly arrived by myself at Nafasi Arts Space in the Mikocheni area of Dar es Salaam. Aziza Ongala, the creative brain behind the project, arranged us in a circle on the dusty dance floor of the outdoor space for an introductory meeting. There were the four boys in Wamwiduka band, all in their early twenties and wearing trendy clothes - purposefully ripped jeans, slogan T Shirts and a combination of beaded, dreaded and threaded hair that oozed style. None of them spoke more than a few words of English and with my Swahili embarrassingly bad, our introductions were limited to a thumbs up, smiles and hand slap thumb click combo that would be become the standard greeting. The Zawose sisters were next; Pendo & Leah, accompanied by Pendo’s 11 month old son, introduced themselves with a few words in Swahili that were translated for my benefit - they were excited about our collaboration, and had an open mind coming in to the project. Music to my ears! I fumbled a similar introduction for myself that was translated into Swahili, sweating in the 30 degree heat.

Having done a small amount of research beforehand, I had discovered that Pendo was the daughter, and Leah the granddaughter of the late Dr Hukwe Zawose of the Gogo tribe from central Tanzania. Hukwe had found fame with Real World records in the 90s singing and playing traditional instruments such as the illimba (a large thumb piano), zeze (similar to a kora as found in west Africa) and chizeze (similar to a violin). He had supported Peter Gabriel as part of his Growing Up world tour, and become a beacon of East African music when ‘world music’ was getting a first wave a recognition among western audiences. He brought the Zawose family to the UK for the 2000 WOMAD Festival, and released three albums with the label before his untimely death in 2003 from AIDS. Dr Zawose was highly regarded in his own country too, performing for the then President Julius Nyerere under whom Tanzanian arts and culture flourished. He started the Bagamoyo College of Arts in his home town and taught his large family (which consists of 7 wives and 14 children) how to play the music of the Wagogo. Later on I found out that Pendo’s brother, Charles Zawose, had become the de facto band leader when Hukwe had died, but in tragic circumstances Charles was also to succumb to AIDS only a year after his father. The family still perform occasionally, but their days of making a living as a large travelling music troupe are over. In this moment, we realised that Pendo & Leah have an opportunity to take the torch for their family legacy - not only as incredibly talented multi-instrumentalists and singers, but also as women, breaking the mould of their family’s patriarchal past. Their music is psychedelic in parts - motifs repeated with entrancing effects, topped with powerful voices in harmony, and intricate poly-rhythmic drum and percussion parts that bring an upbeat energy. As our relationship with them and their music developed, we realised how important it was to give these women a platform equivalent to the men in their family, and raise the profile of the Zawose name once again.

Wamwiduka tell a different story. The young men are from a small village just outside Mbeya, itself a small town in the far south west of Tanzania. The band consists of Brown as lead singer and banjo player, Peter on shakers and backing vocals, Matcha on a hand bass drum, and Zacharia on babatone, a large homemade instrument resembling something not too far away from an upright bass. The story goes that Brown, devoted to being a musician from a young age, learned to play the banjo from his father, as well as how to build the instrument out of a sauce pan and cow hide, with cycling brake wire for strings. On the daily long walk to gather water for his family, Peter would accompany him, begging him to let him learn too so they could perform together. Peter made his shakers from coffee tins with seeds inside and hand carved wooden handle, developing a highly intricate and energetic performance style. Later Zacharia and Matcha joined, forming a band that would get their whole village dancing on street corners as they honed their craft. Once old enough, they decided to leave the village and travel the 850km across the country to Dar es Salaam, where they stood a chance of making it as professional musicians. With just their instruments on their backs, they would busk in towns along the way to collect enough money for the bus fare to get to the next town, or hitch rides wherever possible. Their heady mix of upbeat banjo-led 3 chord progressions, fast syncopated drums, and 2- and 3-part harmony instantly puts you on your feet, conjuring feelings of island life and care-free joy. Upon arriving in Dar es Salaam, they gigged relentlessly until noticed, building up a reputation as one of Tanzania's most exciting contemporary young bands.

So it was with this knowledge that we set out in February 2019 to form a supergroup band consisting of the Zawose women, the four young men in Wamwiduka, Kenyan musicians Ambassa Mandela & Dunga, myself and Tom. We felt very fortunate to be involved and exposed to such inspired musicians, so decided to record as much of it as possible. During the project organised by Aziza (herself the daughter of Tanzanian music royalty, Remmy Ongala) we delivered 4 days of music production workshops in Dar es Salaam, and in Stone Town Zanzibar, as well as performing three 45 minute long sets of original material. On one down day, we took a memorable trip to Bagamoyo - the home of the Zawose women. We spent it on the beach swimming, dancing and laughing, but most importantly, jamming. It was here that I realised how important musical expression is to all of these musicians... they just did not stop! Here we were on our ‘relax’ day, having been rehearsing in a small hot room for 5 days straight, and there wasn’t a single moment in the day where someone wasn’t performing. Their thirst for music is unquenchable - they sing while waiting for the bus, dance across the beach, teach each other banjo while relaxing in the shade. They are singing about the plight of their people, love gained (never lost), and about their gratitude for the experiences they are having through music. There is something about this pure self-reflection and relentless positivity that is so different from western musical culture, and so uplifting. Even if you don’t understand the words, this spirit translates effortlessly through the music. I challenge anyone to listen and watch without a smile from ear to ear.

Our second and only other collective down day was in Zanzibar. We were all staying together in a typical Zanzibari guest house, complete with rooftop breakfast bar. It was on this rooftop, with its shaded area and view of Stone Town ferry port that we built a small recording setup using the equipment we were touring with. By this time I had gotten used to recording East Africa style - with 10 microphone cables of which only 5 worked, and the imminent threat of the power cutting out at any moment - so I knew I had to be clever with my microphone choices and quick in order to capture it all. The Zawose women were downstairs in one of the rooms, writing with the help of Tom and Dunga, while I recorded a rousing 3 song performance from Wamwiduka. Their music is very high energy, and knowing that they are used to playing to excitable audiences I hit record and jumped around like a maniac on the rooftop while they were playing, to make up for the lack of crowd. My questionable ‘mzungu’ dancing got a good few laughs in between the songs and I think we managed to capture their energetic performance.

Next up were the Zawoses who had written their first ever pair of songs. We couldn’t believe it, but such is the strength of the family patriarchy, that the women were never encouraged to put forward their own compositions for performance with the family. The first song, Sauti Ya Mama, was about Pendo's new role as the mother of a son. Baby Yussufu was with us on the trip and just before coming up to the rooftop to record the song, Pendo had been breastfeeding. It felt like the perfect time to record such a personal song, with Yussufu just out of sight but certainly not mind. Tom joined on guitar and a performance was recorded with two illimba thumb pianos and the voices live, with the sound of the nearby port bleeding into the background. As their act is made up of just the two of them, we decided to record some extra drum and percussion parts over the top to give the performance more energy. I watched how Pendo played the ngoma (drum) on every single beat that I did not expect her to play, and missed out every beat my western trained rhythmic brain had expected. All the while it felt like she was dancing simultaneously - a remarkable sight.

Part 2: Recording in Bagamoyo, February 2020

Once we had carried out all of our performances and the project for the British Council completed, Tom and I headed back to the UK. We spent the next 3 or 4 months sporadically working on the tracks we had recorded, adding subtle percussion and bass elements in order to make the production fuller, without taking away from the traditional aspects of the songs and performance. We resolved to return as soon as feasibly possible so we could complete full length recordings with the artists.

Towards the end of 2019, our plans started to come into fruition, and we enlisted the brilliant and enthusiastic help of Pepe Waziri in order to make it a reality. She conferred with the artists, acting as de facto manager for both groups, in a stroke of fortune Tom’s UK band Onipa had been booked to play at Sauti za Busara festival so would be in the area already during February 2020 already, and we felt like the opportunity to get out there and make these records had to be taken. We carried out meetings with UK based record labels specialising in releasing music from Africa, and they were enthusiastic about partnering to work with us on the project, giving us the guarantee of financial support to make it possible. We also received an extremely generous donation from Sue Huxtable, my old school headteacher in Tanzania that enabled us to pay for our initial costs. The next month was spent frantically organising all aspects of the trip - we decided that the location should be Bagamoyo so as to be close to the Zawose family, and found a pair of houses in a small cul de sac where we could stay and also record undisturbed. The Wamwiduka guys would travel from Dar es Salaam to be with us for enough time to record their album in a live setting, as we realised the Zawose record would involve more composition and potentially a deeper level of production. Once all aspects of the trip were in place, we booked our flights and were able to put more thought into the musical development of the project, listening to the music of Hukwe Zawose for inspiration.

We arrived and went straight from the airport to the house in Bagamoyo to meet Pepe and unload our equipment. We felt prepared technically, but with no real plan for how the music was going to play out. We had an incredibly tall order for the two weeks ahead, taking on the recording and partial writing of two entire albums - something that we would have spent months working on had it been done in the UK. Despite this, it all felt very immediate: the musicians seemed to have no lapses in energy or confidence, and we were able to keep up with the pace by working into the early hours each evening after the musicians went home. In order to break up the recording and give some variety to the sound, we decided to do some of the recording on the beach less than a mile from our house and home studio. We took Wamwiduka and a small portable setup with us in Pepe’s 7-seater car, setting up in a big fire pit at the back of the beach to avoid the wind. Wamwiduka performed around 8 songs in this setting as the sun went down, including an a cappella version of one of their songs, and a few that Brown sang without accompaniment. Once we had recorded and incredible 19 songs with Wamwiduka over the course of 3 days, we listened to them all as a group and chose the 12 that we felt best worked together to give the record variety and depth. What we’ve ended up with is a collection of performances that represents their sound completely - from the high octane songs as performed in their live set, to the more intimate performances where Brown’s rich voice tells stories of a life of struggle, and love for his companions.

The album with Pendo and Leah required a bit more planning and involvement on our part. On the first day, we were told that 4 songs had been written for the purpose of this recording, and a potential 5th existed as a collaboration with Leah’s father (also Pendo’s brother), known to us simply as Baba Leah. We were told he had played with Hukwe as part of his band, and specialised in the chizeze and zeze instruments which we had heard on Hukwe’s recordings. Setting out to record the songs already written, we helped develop them structurally and led the women through building up the production on the tracks bit by bit, making decisions as to what instruments might work on which songs as we went. We decided to keep some tracks in their bare forms, opting to maintain the traditional elements, but when it came around to writing new songs we started with an electronic beat that Tom or I programmed, in order to give Pendo & Leah a foundation to write on top of. They responded amazingly well to this - sometimes writing verses in a matter of a few minutes and being totally open to our ideas for the backing tracks. In total we wrote 4 songs from scratch in this way during our time with them. On two particularly special days recording with the Zawoses, Baba Leah graced us with his musical skill and enlightening company. We never asked his age, but his spirited performances belied his years and thin frame - proof that music really does keep the soul alive. His bright eyes lit up as soon as he started singing, and we found ourselves uncontrollably drawn to this experienced performer who had needed help getting out of the car, but could hop and skip around the room with ease when performing. We travelled with the Zawoses for a short recording session on the beach as well, only 50m down from where we had seen videos of Pendo’s late brother Charles make his final group performance before his sad death. It felt like such an honour to be entrusted with capturing their music - this music style that has been passed down for many generations through the Wagogo people.

Amazingly, on the day before we left, we were able to complete the recording for the Zawose’s album. 12 tracks in total that tell stories from the plight of their people, to feelings of collective hope in humanity. After making some video and photo content to use as part of the promotion, our job (for the time being) was done and we departed from Bagamoyo with our heads held high. Great friendships had been developed, as well as a huge amount of excitement for the next chapter of their story. A particularly special moment was when Peter, the shaker player in Wamwiduka, was leaving the Bagamoyo house. He shouted through the open window in his broken English ‘I love you guys, all so much’ with a huge grin spread across his face. It’s this completely genuine display of emotion and enthusiasm that fills the music of both groups, transcending language and borders to uplift the soul of anyone who listens. We really hope you enjoy it!

#recording #tanzania #eastafrica #britishcouncil #zawose #wamwiduka

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