To serve, to heal, to unite! Roots Grown Deep presents Seed To Fire Southern Africa, a traveling musical fire kitchen & seed bank
“Food is medicine, and medicine is food. To be a seed carrier and guardian is a very special job! There are many special people here in Africa ready and willing to be just this. The music is within us, and Music is Life!”
Seed to Fire is a traveling, off-grid, musical and story-telling fire kitchen and indigenous seed bank. We travel from village to village, community to community, sharing organic seeds for gardening and food security, holistic and indigenous knowledge, and world-class music and poetry – a powerful combination of practical rural skills and creative storytelling which is critical in this new epoch of ecological restoration, local interdependence, and community reconciliation.
Central to these interactions, we continuously cook delicious, nutritious cuisine on the communal fire, around which we share and re-create the stories and music of our people, celebrating our culture, and cultivating the ways of the gentle and abundant path. At every village, a new recipe is born, adding to our Indigenous Fire Kitchen Cookbook which will be published and continuously updated.
Seed To Fire is produced and guided by the Roots Grown Deep multi-disciplinary arts ensemble, an experienced and diverse family of musicians, artists, healers, chefs and builders based in South Africa. Roots Grown Deep has been curating unique, community-based music tours across southern Africa since 2014, pioneering a re-indigenisation of the purpose of music in cultural life, while preferring the natural wonders of our rural communities and landscapes over commercial stages and venues. Our philosophy of “music with the land and the people” has always taken precedence over financial gain or popularity, and we have constantly sought inspiration through cultural exchange with land-based communities and the spirit of Africa’s wild, natural ecology.
Now, Roots Grown Deep is well prepared to merge our artistic endeavors completely and fluidly with the mission of sustainable community development and wellness through the curation of Seed To Fire, which combines all the essential elements of positive human culture—arts and music, healthy food, natural medicinal health care, local interdependence, and ecologically harmonized agriculture.
At each location of community integration along this journey (formerly called the “tour”), we document and share the sacred ways of ceremonial plant-based food preparation, working with all the elements, invoking celebration and collaboration with talented and courageous spirits across this diverse, rainbow nation of South Africa and neighboring African countries.
We produce audio and printed cookbooks which clearly and creatively explain how to prepare affordable, locally-sourced, high-quality, high-frequency, nutritionally dense African world-fusion meals. Tasty ideas that will blow your mind AND nourish your soul, and also easy to re-create and adapt. The cooks and the cookbook invite all participants to join in our infinite journey of learning through compassionate ways of food medicine.
Food, music, story-telling, medicinal healing, prayer and gratitude in celebration go hand in hand, like the unspoken laws of the loving powerful connection between the moon and the sea, Mother Earth and Father Son. This is the sacred art of fire-cooking and honoring the value of healthy, organic food. These are the ancient ways being revived and retold, moment by moment, by faith.
Seed To Fire is a woman-led initiative directed by Tanith Christie Scott and Qhawekazi Giyose. Tanith is an experienced mother, acclaimed bush chef of The Learning Clan, jeweller, off-grid wizardess, and widely respected medicine woman and servant of many people and families along the Cape and eastern coastline of South Africa. Qhawe is a musician, artist, jeweller from East London, and co-founder of the Eastern Cape-based musical groups Found At Sea and IZANUSI. Additional members of the team include Zoxolo Mcobo, Lantern Seka Maleka, Liesl Haasbroek, Odwa Nokwali, Amandla Zamxaka, Snoux Poswa, Ntando Mbatha, Joel Karabo Elliott and Nokuzola Chalufu — all of whom specialize in various forms of art-making, permaculture, healing modality and community service.
Our route for Seed to Fire is outlined in detail below, but as a summary: we will be connecting with communities and village matriarchs based in the quiet heart of the Western Cape’s Overberg, the indigenous forests along the Garden Route, onwards to the wild coastal and mountain-side African villages of the Eastern Cape, through to the dramatic mountainous river bends of the Underberg and the high plains of Kwa-Zulu Natal, up into the warm, lowveld bounty of the GaModjadji and Tzaneen of the Limpopo province, and all the way to the warm tropical seaside province of Inhambane, Mozambique … and beyond, as our network and communities grow!
Every year, we return to our various community projects along this route to grow and co-create new recipes, gardens, and stories with the seeds we have collaboratively grown with these villages. This is a conscious, continual, circular journey. We invite you with us. Now is the time to put the seeds in the soil and nurture them to grow.
Together, our ensemble with our partner communities seek to re-create the post-colonial and post-pandemic reality, establishing new musical, culinary, medicinal and agricultural pathways for positive change and collaboration.
Hambe Kahle Mbalenhle
Estamos Juntos
Realeboha, Re a lotsa
Camagu
Links & Contact
Patreon : become a monthly supporter of Seed To Fire
https://www.patreon.com/seed2fire
Facebook : follow us via Roots Grown Deep
www.facebook.com/rootsgrowndeep
Instagram :
@seed2fire
@rootsgrowndeep
For phone inquiries, please contact:
Qhawe (known as “Q”)
+27836668060
Tanith
+27725514766
Email:
seedtofire@protonmail.com
Listen to the sounds guiding us …
Moonlight
https://soundcloud.com/rootsgrowndeep/moonlight-mu…
Rise
https://soundcloud.com/ntandobasslyn/rise-roots-gr…
Pure Soul
https://soundcloud.com/qhawekazi/pure-soul-roots-g…