...Et Coagula is musical circling through time by way of alchemy where every song represents the same alchemic deity as celebrated through different pantheons. Each track journeys to the next as if it were a neighboring civilization or empire to prompt the listener to take a philosophical look at how each god, the study of alchemy itself and, subsequently, science came to be. Interwoven between the overall journey is the origin story of the Yoruba god Eshu whose existence, which without birth, both ends and begins the album.

The overall inspiration for this beat tape was Giambattista Vico’s ideas of corsi e ricorsi, or cyclical history, as embedded in his book The New Science, published in 1725. After a second reading of Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce and, admittedly, only understanding little more than the first time, I came to the realization that it ended in the middle of a sentence. I wasn’t quite sure if it was just Joyce’s hubris or if he just got tired of proving himself, but when I remembered that the first sentence started in the middle of a sentence, it was then that I realized it looped. To prove it to myself I had to google it only to find out about his fascination with The New Science, which I of course then, had to read.

In the musical sense, I wanted to give thanks, or even praise Africa for all that it has given us. People’s understanding of civilization and, subsequently, art, history, storytelling, music, and science is all too often accredited to Egypt, with little to no questioning on what happened before Egypt, even going to the extent to exclude Egypt from Africa. ...Et Coagula uses alchemy to explore an idea that most people already know. The word “alchemy” itself is widely believed to have an etymological translation to “Black Earth,” which becomes the underlying foundation of the record as a whole, beginning and ending in Africa. The beginning and ending ties together to express the alchemic tenant “as above, so below,” or “solve et coagula,” meaning “separate and conjoin” or “dissolve and coagulate.” While I am without the spoken language of my ancestors, I am using music to honor, communicate with, and continue their legacy.