Greetings beautiful Creator, 

Hope you've been taking good care of yourself and your heart.
I pray this project meets you in a moment where it's ripe and ready for you. 

UTOPIA: A Sonic Anthology

What’s a Sonic Anthology?

An anthology is a collection of voices and ideas — A curated chorus. What I love about anthologies is that they involve multiple authors. Harmonizing hearts & minds this way is a key building block of a liberated near-future.

Sound syncs spirit and matter. It’s the natural vehicle for a collective timeline jump.

Whose World Is This? A Tracklist.

Through research and rigorous intuitive excavation, I’ve identified 5 Utopic Worlds.
Each has unique medicine, learnings, and limitations. I’d love for us to use these frequencies as starting points for our soundscapes — Perhaps in our imagination, they can form a federation of Free Worlds.

  1. Drexciya: An underwater aquatopia populated by the unborn children of pregnant African women who were thrown off of slave ships; the babies have now adapted to breathe underwater and created a flourishing deep water queendom. The world was created by Detroit House band Drexciya, imagining worlds of matriarchy, Black liberation, and reparations over lush, fluid synths.
    Themes: Whale songs, matriarchy, running waters, reimagining reparation.
    Read More: Drexciya: How Afrofuturism is inspiring calls for an ocean memorial to slavery, Ayana V. Jackson on Drexciya, Drexciya: The Quest (1997)

  2. Shambhala: A luminous mythical underground city of Inner Earth, prophesied to be the home from which the next great prophet will emerge. According to the prophecy, the messiah that emerges from Shambhala will usher in over a thousand years of peace, using heart-based frequencies and light codes to dissolve evil and ignorance on the Earth’s surface.
    “When the world declines into war and darkness, the warriors of Shambhala will ride forth — not to conquer others, but to awaken the hearts of humanity.”— Kalachakra Tantra
    Themes: Meditative, Heart opening, Crystal caves, Warrior-monk frequency
    Read more: Kalachakra Tantra or Summary, Shambhala & The Future, New Age Perspectives

  3. Libertalia: A pirate republic in Madagascar that targets enslaver ships to free people and loot, practicing egalitarian governance in a feudal world. Imagined as a multi-racial and multicultural community of ex-sailors and Malagasy locals, Libertalia is post-national and anti-monarchic. It acts as a hinge between African, Arab, and Asian cultures in the Indian Ocean commons. Rather than identifying with any nation, residents called themselves simply “liberi” and worewhite flag. The settlement is said to have been eventually wiped out by a storm.
    Themes: Fugitivity, Undercommons, Oceanic Maroon, heist, post-national worlds
    Read More: A General History of Pyrates, Atlas Obscura’s summary & take, Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia by Dave Graeber

  4. Calafia Island: An island of Black warrior women who domesticate Condors and Griffons, wear gold, and are fiercely sovereign. During the Spanish Conquest of the West Coast, a colonizer story imagines a Moorish Muslim army attempting to stop and dethrone Christian colonial efforts. This army is joined by Queen Calafia. Linguists say Calafia’s name reflects the Arabic word “Khalifa” or “Caliph” referring to a religious leader. Queen Calafia is a fierce woman with dark skin, clothed in gold and hailing from the island of “California”. In this story, California is an island that is home to a matriarchal society of Black women who have tamed Black condors and Griffins. Calafia’s story ends with her falling in love with the colonizers and traveling to Spain, marrying a knight, and returning to California to rule as a Christian monarchy.
    Know that to the right hand of the Indies was an island called California, very near to the region of the Terrestrial Paradise, which was populated by black women, without there being any men among them… of vigorous bodies and strong and ardent hearts and of great strength.. Their arms were all of gold, and also the harnesses of the wild beasts on which, after having tamed them, they rode; that in all the island there was no other metal whatsoever… If they gave birth to a female they kept her, and if they gave birth to a male, then he was killed… Any male that entered the island was killed and eaten by the Griffons.
    — Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo’s “Las Sergas de Esplandian”
    Themes: Queer queendom, borderlands, staying feral, island sanctuary
    Read More: Las Sergas de Esplandian (Written 1510), Calafia and Borderlands

  5. Sheba: Historically known as the Sabaean kingdom, Sheba was the capital of a prosperous sovereign civilization that flourished between the 800-500 CE in modern-day Yemen and parts of Ethiopia/Eritrea, across the Red Sea. It was a rich matriarchal queendom rooted in pre-Abrahamic spirituality. This queendom notably brought frankincense and myrrh as well as gold, spices, and other valuable artifacts to kings of the Levant.
    Themes: Sensuality, ritual & ceremony, gold coins and bangles clinking

    Read More: Ethiopian Christian perspective on Sheba meeting Solomon, Quranic perspective on Sheba meeting Solomon, Biblical account 1, Biblical account 2


So, Now & Next.

Feel into the worlds above.

  • Which ones resonate?

  • Which soundscapes are already taking shape?

    • Which might you want to lend your voice to?

I’m updating the Sample Bank with new material this week. My hope is, you can start developing a soundscape independently, and then we can work together to plug samples and vocals in to each track. In the meantime, I’ll also plan for us to meet on Zoom sometime in November.

Again: My hope is that each track is super easy to create! Nothing complicated needed.
Each track is intended to be put together within a couple of sessions.
This project prototypes collective worldbuilding over a few gatherings.
My prayer is that it feels easy, natural, and simple to create!

And I hope this exploration of UTOPIA and worlds we’re calling in creates nourishing, fertile soil for your and our practices ongoing — in resistance, and remembrance.
Thank you for you 💧 With lots of love.

Why UTOPIA?

The collective imagination is overrun with dystopic visions right now. People imagine destruction more readily than they imagine life-affirming realities. What we put mind & heart to, becomes matter.

UTOPIA is a balm for the radical imagination: It echoes, amplifies, and creates new visions of harmonious and life-affirming possibilities. It reaches into parallel worlds of nourishing reciprocity, repair, and realization of Earth’s natural abundance.

Through sound, this project draws those worlds into the present moment. Through samples — of chosen ancestors, living luminaries, medicine places, and healing sounds including our own voices — the project puts different sources in conversation. On the same track we may hear you, a mystic, a revolutionary, a river, and an ancestral song. Each of these is an anchor point holding a piece of the world we want.

There is a loud, insistent call right now to articulate and animate utopic imaginaries: We must start envisioning what comes after the rain.

For me, this project is an answer to that call, and
an experimental step into liberatory possibilities.