{"id":847,"date":"2020-10-23T11:50:45","date_gmt":"2020-10-23T11:50:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/imaginedtheatres.com\/?post_type=theatre&p=847"},"modified":"2020-10-21T16:56:04","modified_gmt":"2020-10-21T16:56:04","slug":"yeah-i-said-it-suck-your-mum","status":"publish","type":"theatre","link":"https:\/\/www.imaginedtheatres.com\/yeah-i-said-it-suck-your-mum\/","title":{"rendered":"Yeah, I Said It. Suck Your Mum."},"content":{"rendered":"

Optional reading soundtrack: \u201cSYM\u201d by Kano<\/a> (<\/i>Hoodies All Summer, 2019).\u00a0<\/i>“SYM” (Suck Your Mum) is the closing track from British Grime-pioneer Kano\u2019s sixth and latest album release <\/span><\/i>Hoodies All Summer<\/span>. On Friday November 8, 2019, Kano took to the stage to perform \u201cSYM\u201d live on Later\u2026 with Jools Holland, which was broadcast on BBC Two.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

When I listen to the final track on Hoodies All Summer<\/em>, I imagine myself sitting in between the \u2018Sunday Best\u2019 piano accompaniment pulling me into the pews of the church of Grime, and the choir of gospel singers bobbing side to side like bottles in an ocean, harmonizing one of the finest cusses with finesse – <\/span>\u201cSuck your mum.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/i>At the altar, I see Kano and his perfectly-fitted suit, standing in all his vindication and protest and beaming at the worn-out congregation while wearing a contagious smirk across his face that tells us he\u2019s tired too, and he sings, \u201c<\/span>Suck your mother and dad.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

This is a non-negotiable call-and-response to all of Britain\u2019s terrors, and an ode on behalf of all of the children of the empire. \u2018SYM\u2019 feels like the Harvest of Sunday\u2019s church; the one integral service that knits together all elements of lost faith, making you remember what it felt like to believe in something wholeheartedly and wanting to spread the good word unto others, or the one scripture you come back to because it\u2019s the only one you know off by heart, or the prayer you turn to when the rock and the hard place form an allyship.<\/span><\/p>\n

From <\/span>Pardners<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>Windrush<\/span><\/a> to the school-to-prison pipeline and slavery, Kano builds a climax of \u201cfuck you\u2019s\u201d to the legacy of British colonial ruling, and when we sway with him, we sway in solidarity, in understanding, in equal and justified anger and acrimony and fire and burning and burning and burning. The people that sit on the rooftops of anti-Blackness, the ones that have been dancing on the graves of Black bodies for generations, sway with us at the beginning. And then they stop. How betrayed they must feel to bop to the beat of this severe beating down; how hurt they must feel that this is <\/span>to<\/span><\/i> them and not <\/span>for<\/span><\/i> them, even though they consider themselves the anomaly. Even though they\u2019re the good ones. This, at its core, is theatre at its finest. These onion-shaped stories that unpeel themselves to reveal layers of conflict and secret languages and joy only a couple of people will understand. This is what I consider to be the bricks and mortar of theatre that Black communities across the diaspora have created for centuries.<\/span><\/p>\n

My Imagined Theatre is one that acts as an accountability partner\u2014one that speaks truth to hardship and authenticity to bullshit on any podium or soapbox that can be made with what we have and with no permission needed from \u2018The Man\u2019 and his son. This doesn\u2019t mean stripping the art of its entertainment values\u2014I\u2019m sure the plenty of people gleefully singing <\/span>\u201csuck your mother and dad\u201d<\/span><\/i> at the top of their lungs were having a grand old time before reaching for the second line and wiping the nervous sweat from the top of their foreheads. Those are the moments I live for; the duality of theatre.<\/span><\/p>\n

If this is my understanding of theatre, then it is impossible for theatre to exist within the binaries of institution-led kudos and structures. If I am to think of what I know theatre to be, I can map this evolution in the oral traditions, musical translations, and poetic tellings of my ancestors, and perhaps the purpose of my Imagined Theatre is to come back to the source; back to where we started and where those before me have already stood. Binding performance to stages with proscenium arches or large auditoriums with tiered seating is the inevitable death of theatre, and the lackluster thinking that something as radically expressive as theatre could be whittled down to the boundaries of white institutionalism is not only a mockery of the legacy of performance Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities have embodied for millennia across the globe, but also an undermining of how much these communities have done, can do, and will continue to do outside of the institutional definition of \u2018culture.’<\/span><\/p>\n

When reimagining the framing of theatre, particularly within the context of Blackness across the diaspora, I think of the oral, musical, and movement-based rituals of performance that have been handed down over generations. Not all of these forms and performances exist for everyone. There are codes, secret alleyways, and hidden dialects that speak directly to the few about the many; about modes of survival; about translating our documentation for future generations; about what it means to be our full selves, all day, every day. The Imagined Theatre that exists in this world isn\u2019t one that blindly and untruthfully pretends to speak in a non-existent universal language, but rather implicitly states in its ethos that language is to be shared and spoken genuinely and with legitimacy, and those who are meant to hear it, will.<\/span><\/p>\n

To be able to imagine should hold a power of freedom beyond expectation and present realities. Instead, the imagination has been capitalised as a bartering tool to dictate who defines culture and who culture belongs to\u2014who is allowed to imagine and have those imaginings exist without being gaslit, undervalued, and undercut. Despite this, what I continue to learn is that Black cultures\u2014in all their hues, impacts, and differences\u2014carry the art and life of performance and theatre in their bones, and Kano teaches me that the Imagined Theatre I wish to form holds true and fearless work that comes from the freedom and validity of the imagination, ourselves, and our communities.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So, if I want to tell Britain to \u201cSuck Your Mum,\u201d I can. And I will.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Optional reading soundtrack: \u201cSYM\u201d by Kano (Hoodies All Summer, 2019).\u00a0“SYM” (Suck Your Mum) is the closing track from British Grime-pioneer Kano\u2019s sixth and latest album release Hoodies All Summer. On Friday November 8, 2019, Kano took to the stage to perform \u201cSYM\u201d live on Later\u2026 with Jools Holland, which was broadcast on BBC Two. When […]","protected":false},"menu_order":0,"template":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.imaginedtheatres.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/theatres\/847"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.imaginedtheatres.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/theatres"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.imaginedtheatres.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/theatre"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.imaginedtheatres.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}