“Sranan Tongo, the language of my ancestors, it says: when I’m not around anymore, you shall call upon my name. Call upon my energy, my spirit, and I will be underneath your feet. I am the shoulders that you are standing on, that are standing on the shoulders of the ones that came before, that are standing on the shoulders of the ones that came before.”
In this music performance commissioned by sonsbeek, OTION blends elements of hip hop, storytelling, spirituality, and soul, within the DIY setting of his home in Amsterdam, to create a personal musical narrative of entangled Dutch colonial histories embodied by generations that continue to be present and affect the future, asking for some kind of personal reckoning.
OTION (Guillermo Blinker) is an MC, singer/songwriter, poet and dancer based in Amsterdam. Inspired by hip hop culture, neo-soul music and his Afro-Surinamese roots he finds himself standing in the middle of the ancestral and the futuristic, as he aims to create magic in the moment. His performances organically blend dance, live music, sung and spoken word with a strong emphasis on storytelling. His recent works address spirituality and black identity through ritualistic performances that combine elements of hip hop culture, religious symbolism and indigenous ritual practices. So far this year he collaborated with NYC based collective “The Ummah Chroma” for the International Film Festival Rotterdam on the show Spirit Strategies on Raising Free Black Children and premiered his solo work “ICARO”. OTION is also working towards the completion of his first EP which will be released late 2020.