Funk of Rematriation - O. Diane Enobabor on carceralgeog.commons.gc.cuny.edu
“Funk is a way out, and a way in.” —George Clinton, Parliament, and founder of P-Funk
“Santi bon, Koute Che (If it smells good, it costs alot).” —Haitian Proverb
Funk, disrupted commercial rock and jazz as path out, measured by the virtuosity of the bass instead of the lead guitar. Funk(y) works to repeat to us the resonance, harshness, depth of a tone, and asks us to build on that tone as a foundation. That tone works as bare life, and we as listeners are led to follow its witnessing of continuous dispossession as that tone does not initially mark its “home” within a major scale. If I can make the comparison here, in Funk, there is no “home” as a destination, for there is no melody, but there are distorted harmonies that are relational yet opaque.
...we understand rematriation to force an ethical relationality that “understands mutual implications, puts indigenous epistemologies at the forefront, and requires a public form of memory”. The Funk of Rematriation speaks to how relationality (where for our work we place in land), and the arduous work that this calls for, between human and non-human entities, is where we must pivot from to arch toward liberation in co-habitation with our ruins.