REVIEW | DRUMMER WARRIOR STORYTELLER… A LIVE IMMERSIVE MASTERPIECE

The loc­a­tion is Rich Mix, the event is on the way and I enter early after­noon into a gal­lery exhib­i­tion. In the centre of the room is a Machete in a glass case, espe­cially forged for the event by Metal­s­mith Rox­anne Simone. The many mon­it­ors around the room was dis­play­ing visu­als to set the theme for the day. Around the room was pho­tos shot by the amaz­ing Ekua McMor­ris and art that was live painted by Dora Lam on the day of the film shoot. Not to men­tion spe­cially designed one off out­fits by Charl­ita ‘Lita-Styles’ Hall and Honey Malaolu, fea­tur­ing jew­ellery donated by Lucie Gled­hil that were involved in the videos and the theatre show. There was a live show­ing of the films and the music videos attached. Along with stalls selling drums, books and clothes and Kyle’s crys­tals wrapped in cop­per, you knew the fre­quency of what you were about to wit­ness was high.

After the videos were shown and all the art was admired, there was a 2 hour inter­val to allow the chan­ging over to the immers­ive side of the night. The live theatre exper­i­ence.

The people assembled in there num­bers once the doers was open. From 7 — 8 was a beau­ti­ful stream of people com­ing into a dim lit set­ting and the stage had a pro­jec­ted fire that had dif­fer­ent mem­bers of the cast com­ing on stage to con­greg­ate round the fire. With the simplest of touches your already immersed in the immers­ive exper­i­ence being provided.

The show starts. The silky tones of Muti ‘Mutiv­a­tion’ Musafiri, the cre­at­ive dir­ect­or, explains that this is an immers­ive exper­i­ence and things will take place every­where so pre­pare to move about. All the cast leave the stage. The room falls silent and the power­ful affirm­a­tion chant­ing starts. Every­one can hear the voice but don’t know where she’s com­ing from. She chants words of affirm­a­tion as she floats thru the crowd to the stage. Queen Itri­cia had come to open the night and do the bless­ings. As she poured Liba­tion and sang words of affirm­a­tion. You were trans­por­ted into the set­tings. The drum­mers on stage, led by Dem­bis Thioung and Moussa ‘Koroleko’ Dembele provided the soundtrack to the intro. The Drum­mer was in full effect. As the tones trav­elled round the aud­it­or­i­um you could feel the energy being trans­mit­ted.

On stage came the War­ri­or Apex. He stands in awe for a moment soak­ing in the set­tings. Stand­ing stage left he begins shelling songs of revolu­tion as the dan­cers — Cor­rie Onyx Dav­id King, Grace Ogun­dipe and Andre Bright  emerged in full blacked out revolu­tion­ary out­fits. The dan­cing is rep­res­ent­ing the words being expressed and the syn­ergy of what was being wit­nessed was mind blow­ing.

Dressed in beau­ti­ful blue robes came the Storytellers. The poet­ic nar­ra­tion from Poet­ikah and Guy Kelton Jones was a beau­ti­ful mar­riage of words. “Do you know what Noth­ing feels like” the prom­in­ent line uttered but then the poets describ­ing “noth­ing” bey­ond your com­pre­hen­sion.

Being an immers­ive exper­i­ence things were hap­pen­ing every­where. So on anoth­er side of the room the dan­cers per­formed routines in front of a screen pro­ject­ing images of all sorts. These power­ful scenes were accom­pan­ied with Apex’s tracks. The essence of revolu­tion was in the room.

Apex gave power­ful mono­logues through­out the show. Things like his grand­fath­er, and the search for a bet­ter life and dying work­ing hard all his life in the coal mines. To power­ful moments where he showed how in all of his­tory to get what the oppress­ors have got, they’ve always used viol­ence, and how it will take viol­ence to stop the viol­ence. The pas­sion and deliv­ery that went into these moments summed up the spir­it with­in the War­ri­or that is Apex. A no non­sense straight to the point human will­ing to fight for human rights.

Along the way we were giv­en beau­ti­ful moments of love and solid­ar­ity. The mon­it­ors loc­ated around were telling story’s and the sound­scape by Tilé Gichigi-Liperé was per­fectly designed to trans­port you along with visu­als. There’s a song called “You” which is gently delivered and res­on­ated soul­fully. Along with the video on the mon­it­ors and the dan­cing on stage put­ting “You” in a pic­tur­esque moment of tran­quil­ity and unity.

Anoth­er power­ful scene that stands out amongst the many was when the dan­cers were on the stage doing Qi Gong and Muti was float­ing around them like a wise sage, telling tales of cos­mic con­nec­tions. The imagery, present­a­tion and nar­ra­tion was so power­ful that you was hyp­not­ised by this point.

I could go on for days spot­ting out the finer things but in con­clu­sion this is def­in­itely a bold state­ment. A fully immers­ive exper­i­ence that will only grow big­ger as time goes on. The res­ults of 5 weeks rehears­als, one day actu­ally get­ting to do the show in the space, and light­ing that was done on the day. You wouldn’t of been able to tell at all. Cred­it to Vil­lage 101 and all involved that made this come alive.

I met a girl at the show. When she was leav­ing she said bye, but really emo­tion­al. I asked her what’s wrong and her response was “I needed this. This affirm­a­tion of live your life. Don’t let noth­ing stop you. This show was power­ful on many levels.” This response was exactly how I felt and filled me with so much pride to know what was just a body of music, had taken on new life and become a real mas­ter­piece.

Salute to the DRUM­MER WAR­RI­OR STORYTELLER

Keep up to date with Apex Zero and the Drum­mer War­ri­or Storyteller https://www.apexzero.co.uk/

Pho­to­graphy cred­it : Akil Wilson

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Mas Law

Artist/Producer hail­ing from NW Lon­don. Enig­mat­ic storyteller and End of the Weak Eng­land Organ­iser.

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