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Located in SOMA in San Francisco, CounterPULSE is a non-profit theater, performance space, community center, and gallery with roots deep in the Bay Area’s provocative performance and dance scenes. CounterPULSE produces its own shows, helps support local artists and activists with its programs and can be rented for productions and rehearsals.

Place, Setting and The Beginning

by Opal / September 14th, 2009 / Posted in: CounterPULSE, Opal Palmer Adisa, Performing Diaspora.

Myal, like many African based religion is tied intricately to place, location — the setting and its surrounding fauna/flora play an important role.

Myal was initially believed to simple mean “spirit.”

The first known recorded observation of a Myal ceremony was in 1774 by Edward Long, who documented the performance of a Myal dance intended to persuade slaves that they would be invulnerable to the bullets of the white man. It was said they were told by the Myal leader that Obeah could restore their body to life if they appeared slain, but first they had to be initiated into the Myal dance.

Reportedly, a cold infusion of herbs caused slaves to fall into a profound sleep.  This was probably an combination of Sinkle-Bible ( Jamaican term for Aloe Vera), breadfruit leaf, neaseberry and olive oil combine.

Obeah has been characterized as the opposite of Myal [sic], but to suggest its opposite is to simplify  the complex transformation and melding that these two practices have undergone.  For many there is no difference between Myal and Obeah, both have good, meaning healing practitioners as well as bad, those who engage in evil or spiteful acts.

Once it was believe that only women were Myalist, as they did spiritual work and men practiced Obeah, but there is enough evidence to suggest that it is not divided by gender line.

Among some Maroons they refer to Myal as Rubbing Trash, or Working Science.

The location plays an important role as it must provide privacy as well as place where herbs can be cultivated.

DSC_1037 Mountain region of St Ann, Marron area.

DSC_0962One of the important herbs.

DSC_0964Mural on the wall of the Maroon Museum, St. Ann

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Diverse, innovative and multi-genre, Opal Palmer Adisa is an exceptional talent, nurtured on cane-sap and the oceanic breeze of Jamaica. Charismatic and informed, Adisa’s concerns span the gamut from children to the environment, and as such there is hardly any topic that she has not written about either in poetry, prose or essay. A highly sought-after motivational speaker, Opal Palmer Adisa has lectured and read her work throughout the United States, Europe, South Africa, South American, and the Caribbean. An award-winning poet and prose writer Dr. Adisa has twelve titles to her credit, including the novel, It Begins With Tears (1997), proclaimed by Rick Ayers as one of the most motivational works for young adults. Adisa has been a resident artist in internationally acclaimed residencies such as Bi-national Fulbright Institute (Egypt), Sacatar Institute (Brazil), McColl Center for Visual Art (North Carolina) and Headlines Center for the Arts (California, USA). Opal Palmer Adisa's work has been reviewed by Ishmael Reed, Al Young, and Alice Walker (Color Purple), who described her work as "solid, visceral, important stories written with integrity and love."

1 Response to Place, Setting and The Beginning

  1. Roko Kawai
    September 21st, 2009 at 8:14 pm

    opal,
    it’s a refreshing reminder, your photos of the herbs. that as much as we live inside our studio-head-spaces, there is this very profound other-ecology out there.

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