NDigiTale
Soundtrack: The Coup — Dig It
An algorithm is a set of processes or procedures or instructions or rules in order to answer a question or solve a problem or make a series of calculations. If I search a word in a search engine, the algorithm will go through this process in order to give me a series of results. I am in the same process
Can I ax you a question?
What is NDigiTale?
Can you dig it?
“When one fundamentally understands an African language and the symbolic cultural concepts generated by that language, one must wonder where technological direction the African traditional concept of knowing [zaya] is heading. Can we today, with our present system of coding and decoding cultural concepts, be able to unearth that yet unknown dimension?” — Kimbwandènde Kia Bunseki Fu-Kiau (Tying the Knot: African Cosmology of the Bantu-Kongo (https://mukanda-capoeira-angola.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/African-Cosmology-of-the-Ba%CC%82ntu-Ko%CC%82ngo.pdf pg 125)
Dig? Do you mean degg from Wolof — to understand or hear? ( 1) https://www.hawaii.edu/satocenter/langnet/definitions/aave.html 2) https://jangawolof.org/dictionary-wolof-to-english/ )
Do you mean tuig from Irish-Gaelic — also to understand? (https://irishenglishisms.home.blog/2020/05/09/you-dig-me/ )
Do you mean deik or deyg from Proto-Indo-European — to point out or show or be a twig, or to pierce or to plant? ( 1)https://www.etymonline.com/word/*deik- 2) https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dig
What is an indigenous technology?
What do we think of when we say technology?
According to etymonline, technology is from the 1610s, "a discourse or treatise on an art or the arts," from Latinized form of Greek tekhnologia "systematic treatment of an art, craft, or technique," originally referring to grammar, from tekhno-, combining form of tekhnē "art, skill, craft in work; method, system, an art, a system or method of making or doing," from PIE *teks-na- "craft" (of weaving or fabricating), from suffixed form of root *teks- "to weave," also "to fabricate.”(https://www.etymonline.com/word/technology )
Does that mean we can technically say technology is a conversation or even a thesis? A pros/thesis?
Let’s have a conversation on the digital:
Dictionary definition:
1: of, relating to, or utilizing devices constructed or working by the methods or principles of electronics
also : characterized by electronic and especially computerized technology
2: composed of data in the form of especially binary digits
3: providing a readout in numerical digits like a digital clock
4: relating to an audio recording method in which sound waves are represented digitally (as on magnetic tape) so that in the recording wow, the distortion in which there is a slow rise and fall of pitch, and flutter, a similar distortion but in higher pitch, are eliminated and background noise is reduced
5: of, relating to, or using calculation by numerical methods or by discrete units
6: of or relating to the fingers or toes
7: done with a finger
Soundtrack: Ready for the World — Digital Display
Tank and the Bangas —“Flick of the Wrist” from Dreaming Crazy Reloaded Quick (Woods stage, Watch a Concert a Day) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZIuxVVWoHE
The last set of definitions is where I want to start. Echoes remember? Ever heard of prestidigitation? That was another name for magic tricks. Sleight of hand. To be nimble or quick (presto was a conjuror’s word for quick) with your fingers (and by extension toes). A juggler. Or even a dancer.
According to etymonline, prestidigitator:
"a juggler; one who performs feats requiring dexterity and skill, particularly of the fingers," 1843, from French prestidigitateur, a hybrid coined [in] 1830 by Jules de Rovère (who sought a new word, "qui s'accorderait mieux à ses nobles origines” [who or what would be a better fit for his noble origins] to replace escamoteur [magician or conjuror, coming from the word for fish scales, and physicien [physicist]), roughly based on Latin praestigiator "juggler" (see prestigious); influenced by Italian presto "quick," a conjuror's word (see presto), and by Latin digitus "finger" (see digit).” (https://www.etymonline.com/word/prestidigitator )
So, if that is the meaning, that means we can extend out what the meaning of digital is.
Often we hear that Jesus was called a carpenter. In the Greek, that word is tekton (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tekt%C5%8Dn ). In Aramaic and Ahmaric, it is naggar. The meaning of carpenter did not just apply to building houses and other structures, it also meant a craftsperson or wise person, someone who could build systems of knowledge, technologies, like the ability to speak ( 1) https://books.google.com/books?id=J1bhA1bByuoC&pg=PA158&lpg=PA158&dq=senasel+etymology&source=bl&ots=kcDwFuTI1x&sig=ACfU3U03P83NUBqO9vt7c-rstZEIWpOQyw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiky-_Jne-AAxVWFVkFHY7NCIYQ6AF6BAgvEAM#v=onepage&q=senasel%20etymology&f=false
4) https://www.balashon.com/2019/11/ )
Naggar sounds similar to NGL. It also relates to the name of a drum found in various Arabic cultures, naggara or nqr, whose root means to peck, to hit, to strike, to dig. It can also mean gathering of people, like a town or village. (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D9%86%D9%82%D8%A7%D8%B1%D8%A9#Arabic ) When a drum is hit, it makes a certain kind of frequency, a sound with an ability to gather a large group of people. The drum has been throughout history associated with talking or speech, as in the Yoruba talking drums. In Mali griots who have expertise are labeled ngaraw. (https://www.jstor.org/stable/40378939 )
NGL - NGR —NQR - NZR — NSR Tech
( 1) https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D9%86%D8%B8%D8%B1#Arabic 2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazar_(given_name) 3) https://www.abarim-publications.com/Meaning/Nazarene.html 4) https://www.abarim-publications.com/Meaning/Nazirite.html 5) https://www.abarim-publications.com/Meaning/Nazareth.html
5) https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/naggar 6) https://blogs.bl.uk/asian-and-african/2016/12/the-christmas-story-images-from-ethiopic-manuscripts.html )
A stick and a drum. A ship or boat rolling down a river. A flow. A shining. A branch. A scattering. A wise person. A truth. An observation. A calculation. A sprouting or springing up. You have been dubbed a diaspora. A sekhem sound. A wise/story.
NDigiTale
What does NDigiTale mean?
Do we want to get rid of the wow, the flutter, the background noise? Shouldn’t that still be a part of what makes the digital exist?
Soundtrack: Mystic Revelation of Rastafari — Carried Beyond album
Gutu Abera - Anatu (Oromo)
Let’s break it down:
A fusion of
iNDigenous: which means to be born within or from, or originating from a location (https://www.etymonline.com/word/indigenous#etymonline_v_6383 )
In the Caribbean, there is a Rastafarian ceremony called grounation (groundation), a celebration of the revered Haile Selassie, emperor of Ethiopia coming to Jamaica in 1966. The word is a fusion of ground and foundation; it is the act of making contact with the soil. Allegedly, the phrase “liberation before repatriation” was mentioned by Selassie and he handed Michael Manley a rod, which was said to represent rods, called matteh/natteh/nt (https://www.etymonline.com/word/rod associated with figures like Moses, Aaron, and Joshua in the Bible. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grounation_Day ) A bit interesting coming from the mouth of an emperor, an imperial leader. Rastafiarianism was named after Selassie’s name Ras Tafari, meaning Chief Who Shall Be Feared (https://www.etymonline.com/word/rastafarian), and those who believe in the faith also believe Selassie was the messiah who returned to earth. But outside of the myth, Selassie was a complicated figure. Selassie did grant Rasta a bit of land Rift Valley for a settlement in Shashemane. However, elsewhere in Ethiopia, some indigenous groups, like the Oromo people, actually saw him as a tyrant and dictator. Also, Marcus Garvey, whose saying “Look to Africa, when a black king shall be crowned for the day of deliverance is near” inspired the belief in Selassie as messiah was misinterpreted; Garvey had condemned him too because at that time Ethiopia had not abolished slavery yet. ( 1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oromo_conflict#:~:text=The%20Oromo%20remained%20independent%20until,language%20dominate%20the%20Oromo%20people 2) https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2019/02/04/the-romantic-rewriting-of-haile-selassies-legacy-must-stop/ 3)https://omnatigray.org/slide-deck/systematic-oppression-in-ethiopia/ 4) https://www.jstor.org/stable/48710291 )
The romanticized myth and the history…It is important to realize how land changes how a story is told. Words spoken from afar are not the same as spoken within and grounded deeply in the histories of a land.
Soundtrack: Petite Noir - Blowing Up The Congo feat. Saul Williams
How is liberation (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/liber#Latin) and land connected? Land is an important part of this conversation because land provides the resources for what we create, our ideas, our symbols, our technologies, like in the digital. Liberation is about people and the people rooted in a space. There is no digital without land. In the previous broadcast, I mentioned the Kongo, where a lot of the resources like coltan and cobalt, something that is addressed in Saul William’s Martyr Loser King and Neptune Frost, goes into our computerized technology. Sound also relies on medium and material to manifest. So, what sounds are embedded in these materials in the ground that we use in our technologies?
Digital: We talked about before
Mattah/Nattah/Jattah/Kattah
Matty/Natty/Jatty/Katty Dread The code received in digging, an extension
From Abarim Publications: “The verb נטה (nata) means to leverage: to manipulate one's environment beyond one's natural powers, but at the price of range, accuracy, diversity, duration, and so on — a price that when unpaid drags the entire enterprise into a net-negative collapse. All technology, including information technology, is leverage, which is always to be wielded with great care, whilst always respecting its inevitable price.” (https://www.abarim-publications.com/Meaning/Juttah.html )
Tale: The word tale is related to storytelling but the word itself is about recounting, accounting, counting. Making a series of calculations, like making tally marks. (https://www.etymonline.com/word/tale#etymonline_v_4334 ) Actually, most words associated with storytelling are also math and science words. Making calculations. Words like tally originally meant a measuring stick and the word tailor, who measures clothes, is also related. (https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=tally) And originally a tailor meant a stone-mason.( https://www.etymonline.com/word/tailor?ref=etymonline_crossreference#etymonline_v_4328 ) What’s even more interesting is that the root of the word tale, “del,” can also mean trick, deceit, fraud or bait for a fish.
Soundtrack: DJ Spooky —Anansi Abstrakt
In the Dub broadcast, I mentioned Sister Nancy, her name a resemblance to the Caribbean and Afro-Diasporic spider trickster character, Anansi. Anansi, a clever, wise being collected wisdom in a pot. Weaving and web creations all involve rhythmic movement. So does the creation of wisdom, like a spider creating its web or feeling vibrations on a web. ( 1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycORz_ECb-s 2) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bzd5HFo9MKs )
One story of Anansi: Anansi had a pot full of wisdom he received from Nyame and wanted to keep it safe. He decided to climb a tree and put it at the top. Carrying the pot of wisdom up a tree was a difficult task. He tied it to his stomach but it was hard to climb. His son came over and asked him, why not try to carry the pot on his back and it worked, but when Anansi reached the top he realized his son must be wiser than him despite him having all the wisdom in a pot. Anansi then threw the pot to the ground and all the wisdom scattered from the pot after it broke. (https://tgowinstitute.com/anansi-the-spider )
In this story you might be able to guess where I am going, that the computerized pots/gourds we have now cannot contain all the wisdom and knowledge in the world because wisdom is dynamic and changing like rhythms, like the movements of rivers and other bodies of water that carried all the wisdom away. What you need is a web or net or conversations.
Is this the same pot Kimbwandènde Kia Bunseki Fu-Kiau mentions, the televisor-pot [n’gânga sènso]?
Just like a spider’s web, our pros/thetic wisdoms are extensions of our cognition. We have developed with our hands and feet, various technologies in order to create digital spaces before even the concept of the digital in which we now know exists.
Soundtrack: Kumina in Jamaica https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V961tzJtnHw
The Vibrating, Moving Structure or Vee as Kimbwandènde Kia Bunseki Fu-Kiau calls it. Let’s read again from Tying the Knot: African Cosmology of the Bantu-Kongo (pg 131)
The Hypertek: A community NeTwork of sense
Soundtrack: The special song sang by the Bonwire Kente weavers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHSXLNbMrbM
“Notes on Weavin' Digital: T(h)inkers at the Loom” by Teshome H. Gabriel and Fabian Wagnuster
(https://www.teshomegabriel.net/notes-on-weavin-digital/)
We are not simply collecting data. We are in conversation with the machines, with our communities, with the past, with our memories.
Soundtrack: Sly & Robbie — Kumina Riddim Version/Instrumental
(Kumina — Kongolese-inspired religion, dance and drumming practice that influenced Caribbean music like Dub 1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumina#:~:text=Kumina%20also%20gives%20it%20name,drumming%2C%20and%20Jamaican%20popular%20music 2) https://morleyradio.co.uk/programmes/the-strangeness-of-dub-ep1/ 3) https://worldmusiccentral.org/2012/05/03/the-giant-banjos-of-lubumbashi/ )
Music is also a social fabric or communicative technology. What are the instruments, tools, extensions that a debtera would use?
A senasel and a maqwamiya, a sistrum and a staff. It is said that the senasel sistrum sound is called Sekhem, which means power in Egyptian. The sound represents power, the ability to force something into being, to gather things together, or scatter things away. The maqwamiya staff is said to be used to control the rhythm of the beats, like a metronome or a conductor’s baton. (Senasel sistrum https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Sistrum; power of sound staff: https://wmic.net/ethiopia-sanasel-sistrum/, 2) maqwamiya conductor: https://www.flickr.com/photos/lindadevolder/5314921487 )
In the previous broadcast, one of the sounds sampled was that from the Ewe people’s Yeve/Yewe cult ritual drumming. The Yeve/Yewe cult allegedly is associated with gods and goddesses of thunder and lightning (https://www.pas.org/docs/default-source/thesisdissertations/22-bds-chapter-21-yeve.pdf?sfvrsn=0 )
The loud booming sound of thunder when the lightning cracks through the sky…A scream?
Drums and other percussive instruments, like the senasel. The drums, the stick, the weaving loom, the fingers, the toes as the first digital technologies.
What is the NDigiTale of the Mother (G)Board? That booming sound…
What are all the back and forth, back and forth, side to side, side to side movements of weaving wisdom that make a digital landscape possible?
Wisdom requires you to be quick and not just stored.
All technology and digital is a trick, a deceit, a mask, an extension, a manufactured entity, a sleight of hand. All human knowledge is essentially a rhythmic dance. But that’s not inherently a bad thing. It helps in our survival, but we should also be careful in how we use it or how we speak with it.
Soundtrack: RAS (Rise Against the Storm) — Lesson Plan: Indigenous Technology https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHkHt3L6g2M
Kumina Riddim – Dub Version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nw557aGpN10
The earth is providing an answer if you pay attention…
We are reaching the completion of…the tales mmmmmmm
(https://www.etymonline.com/word/talisman )
The (K)hummm the self-soothing m/othering sound
Amun
Amen
In
yMMMMMMM
Resonating vibrating wavering capacity
A storehouse of knowledge sensed beyond our perceptibility?
Turning turning turning
A cultivation of knowledge
Tele, as in telephone, meant far reaching or to carry across, but it also could mean completion as in, entelechy. Something all encompassing, a capacity to transform, kwel, kwel, kwel, like the waves, frequencies, a piling up of information in the Atlantic ( 1) https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/frequens#Latin 2) https://www.etymonline.com/word/*bhergh-#etymonline_v_52973 3) https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/entelechy 4) https://www.etymonline.com/word/telos
Tell me a story — A stick craft or grammar https://www.etymonline.com/word/staff
What is the story the ground is telling you? Deeply extended and the dust is rising up.
Soundtrack: Parliament— Deep https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQSqRoIKl7g
We need to raise Atlantis from the bottom of the sea
(Dancing 'til we bring it to the top)
We're going to search...
....searching like you're never gonna see
That's what the searching through is bound to be