Taki Mix

'Taki Mix' experiments with a more playful approach to transcription, as it attempts to register the role of music in oral cultural traditions by exploring the sensibility of music genres, such as Trinidadian rapso (like American rap), where 'music' and 'message' are in inseparable interplay.

Rapso is a Trinidadian contemporary musical form, structured through a proclaimed ethos of "de power of de word in the riddim of de word", which focuses on the enunciation of potent messages through a rhythmic play of the phonic and phonetic character of selected words which are relevant to the message.

'Taki Mix' extracts its messaging content from recorded interviews with Marcel Pinas and Tolin Alexander, both of Ndyuka Maroon heritage and whose interviews provided the foundational field research material. It also enjoys the challenge of editing and mixing the cadence of the abstracted bits of narration to create rhythm; to create a rhythm with a message and to salute the aesthetic dimension of oral traditions.

In the language of the Ndyuka, 'taki' means 'talk'.

'Taki Map' presents two systems of representation by overlaying the 56 symbols of the Afaka syllabary on the cartography of a 1905 map of the Tapanahoni River.

Like the map of the Tapanahoni River, the Afaka syllabic script of the Ndyuka in the early 20th century and is the only creole language form with a dedicated script system.

'Taki Map' suggests that in addition to the physical features of an environment, the sounds derived from human communication (vocal and instrumental) play a role in our spatial assimilation and rendering of that environment.

On cutting through both systems of representation, the collage reveals an underlying layer of river water; a reference to the line in the 'Taki Mix': "You know the river is part of all, ah"