“Who is Bekelé: The Drum That Remembers”

The name is not merely a name. Bekelé is invocation — a call to the deep within, and the echo beyond. A sound forged in ancestral sweat and future fire.

In a world that stumbles ever forward while forgetting its footsteps, Bekelé insists on the remembering. His work — carved in rhythm, chanted through drum, theatre, and motion — is not performance for performance’s sake. It is protest. It is prayer. It is pedagogy.

He walks with the drum not as ornament, but as oracle. He teaches not merely to instruct, but to awaken. For every child who taps a beat beneath his tutelage is being taught, too, to tap into memory — to reach inward for that which colonial schooling has long taught them to deny.

And yet Bekelé is not content with the inward alone. No. His outward reach is just as firm. Whether through Jamatics or the gospel of rhythm preached on street corners and school floors, he stretches culture across canvas, screen, and classroom — reminding this nation that art is not a luxury; it is legacy.

The boy from garrison spirit becomes the griot in full. He does not wait for permission. He builds the stage. He trains the troupe. He writes the play. He bangs the drum. And in doing so, he calls a people — fractured, gifted, glorious — back to themselves.

Bekelé, then, is not simply a man.

He is movement.

He is mantra.

He is the inward stretch and the outward reach.

And Jamaica would do well to listen.