Akia Dorsainvil (he/they) 30

Jasmine Respess: What's your name?

Akia Dorsainvil: Hello, my name is Akia Dorsainvil.

Akia Dorsainvil: How old are you? I am 30 years old.

Jasmine Respess: And where are you from?

Akia Dorsainvil: I'm from Lakewood, Florida. 

Jasmine Respess: Where is your family, your ancestors from?

Akia Dorsainvil: Um, depends on which ones we're talking about. So I come from a mixed cultural background. My father is Haitian and my mother is African American. 

Jasmine Respess: What would you call your religion or spirituality?

Akia Dorsainvil: I would just say I'm trying to be closer to God and trying to find all the different ways and languages that allows me to feel close to the source.

Jasmine Respess: Okay, how do you do that? What are some examples?

Akia Dorsainvil: I do that by praying. I do that by practicing magic. I do that by trusting in the healing powers of herbs. I do that by listening to my elders. I do that by practicing in the ways that they used to practice. So yeah, it's a mixture of a lot of different religions. Yeah, but I'm learning along the way that helps me feel at peace.

Jasmine Respess: Okay, so since you said you learned from your elders and all of that, like what's your first spiritual memory? My first spiritual memory is seeing someone just with the stroke of holy water catch the Holy Ghost. That's my earliest memory.

Jasmine Respess: Where did you see that? At my, she's not my actual grandmother, but she's my sibling's grandmother. I used to go to church with her a lot and yeah, that was my first, like my earliest memory. 

Jasmine Respess: So with that, you're saying you have a lot of mixed practices. How do you fold that into your other types of practice?

Akia Dorsainvil: So I think it kind of is almost me doing my own excavation of, yeah, my personal archives in the world. So I just try to be as authentic and honest with all the versions of me because I really do believe that we are as wide and expansive as the universe. So I just try to really tap into what those universes look like, particularly for me. I honor it in the best way that I can.

Jasmine Respess: You already kind of touched on this, but like when you're describing your practice to like mixed practice, if you would give it, not like a name, but an overall like feeling or vibe, like what would you describe that as?

Akia Dorsainvil: You know, maybe it's church. It's good. It's church. I like, I grew up, I come from people who had power in the church system. My uncle was the deacon of this exact same church my great-grandmother went to. So I'm baptized in the same churches that a lot of my elders were also baptized in. What kind of church is that? Non-denominational church of Christ. Yeah.

Jasmine Respess: My family's Pentecostal, Baptist, non-denominational. They all kind of flow into each other. I think it's funny. It's like, depending on how like strict you want to be with the rules, you can kind of flow in and out of those, but they're all like a Southern tradition.

Akia Dorsainvil: The grandmother I was talking about earlier, she was more Baptist. They went to more of a church of God. So the church that I grew up going to, you don't even use instruments. It's only your voice. So everything is a capella. 

Jasmine Respess: Everything is a capella. Interesting. So who introduced you? Obviously you probably have a few different people based on how you're describing your practice, but who would you say introduced you to this type of like spirituality?

Akia Dorsainvil: I would say my mother when speaking about spirituality, yeah, my father. I think that in general, I don't know a world where this all doesn't kind of just exist or just is not, just unknown. My family has always known about the power of voodoo and voodoo. My great grandmother is from the deep South of Georgia. So I think as deep as you go in the country, there's bound to be a bit of magic in the room. Cause that's what it takes for Vikers to exist. Yeah. 

Jasmine Respess: That's interesting that like that tradition, cause those are to me, like there's the Caribbean spirituality and they're obviously all African in one way, but those are the strongest lines in my mind. So having like familial ties to that directly on each side is really interesting, you know?

Akia Dorsainvil: No, literally I've always grown up with, like, I can say, I guess like people call it superstition, but as I've grown and learned in my own study, these are voodoo traditions. Like people, like you couldn't dare be in my house and let my mom sweep your foot. You would have to spit on it three times in order for whatever to, yeah, whatever luck or whatever bad juju would come your way or you can't step on any cracks or splitting poles. My mom was really big in that. My great-grandmother didn't believe in crossing Ts. So my grandmother actually has two names that she goes by. So yeah, I don't know a world where spirituality is not like a center. Right. 

Jasmine Respess: What would you like to tell me about the history of either practice, all the practice, whatever your personal history,? What would you like me to take away from this idea?

Akia Dorsainvil: That we are a collection of all the sound we've ever heard in of prayers. We are a lot, we, our existence is truly magical as Black folks because we're quote unquote, not supposed to be here. It's a beautiful quote that I heard that I reflect back to where it's like, “God does not hate Black people because he keeps having black babies.” So for me, I just want to carry on and really use what I collectively am made up of, and of the wisdom of what I'm made up of, and find really dope and creative ways to share it. Whether that's through my music practice, whether it's from my actual practice as master of ceremony, ceremony practice, or my own, individual research and archiving. I really feel like it's ancestor work I'm doing. My work is traditionally founded it that I'm an ancestor worker. And founded in references, that's why they're able to be my practice because they're reference points. 

Jasmine Respess: Are there other places you would consider spiritual homes besides your physical home?

Akia Dorsainvil: Yes. I was saying, and it's cliche, but the dance floor is that in a lot of ways, especially the work that we're doing as a queer community, the Black Queer community in specific, it takes a lot of magic to make that shit happen. for these spaces, to be materialized? The connection is how we really are able to even foster a real connection with music and the audience and the people that came together to put this out there, whether folks are conscious of the work that they're doing or not, that's dependent on the depth of the human or the depth of the organizer. If you're truly being intentional about the space that you're creating for folks to release, express, and it's all the same thing, you have to pay to go to church by paying your tithe. So when you pay your admission, that is your tithe. 

Jasmine Respess: Right, exactly. And especially because a lot of events, we're working toward having that be on scales that are relevant to people's like experience. And I think that's how it should be everywhere. 

Akia Dorsainvil: I would say, anytime I go home to my mom, that is definitely a spiritual house. Like I said, I come from a family that believes in having a communication with the spirit, with that, they can see spirits or have had a conversation with spirits. I remember stories of that my grandmother, that my mom actually told me about her grandmother, my great-grandmother. They were really close. And she was a spiritual home for my mother because they both had the gift of being able to see spirits. So my great-grandmother would teach her about how to speak to spirits, the kind of voice you need to have. She was her mentor in spirituality. And my mom is, I guess, a bit of that for me. I have gone to get tarot readings with her. It's literally normal conversations for us to just bring up what spiritual experience have we had as a pastor, as a visitor in dreams. Who's having dreams about fish and who's about to get pregnant, everything, everything. We need it, Black people have always needed God and have always needed to have a relationship with God.

Jasmine Respess: But these past few years, I've noticed just a certain kind of trend. Like as we left the church, our great migration from the church into spirituality, which is a general thing. 

Akia Dorsainvil: It is a general thing, but us Black folks have more spaces to go to. Exactly. We're working on this project together to at least give some like insight into what some of those spaces would be. 

Jasmine Respess: There can be a lot of fear, it is not my place to force others to face that fear, when they have traumas I will never know, but I think with that fear, you miss out on the good parts.

Akia Dorsainvil: Of course, they are fearful of things. You're fearing because, you're hearing and feeling things that are not “quote unquote,” materially in front of you, right? But it doesn't mean that it's not real. You know the wind is real. No, I believe they fully believe it's real. It’s just avoidance because that's their fear reaction. And it's interesting, because I feel like a lot of white folk in specific, their way is like, it's just not real, you know? But Black folks get criminalized for it. Always some type of experiment on the black mind, when they're tapping into something. 

Jasmine Respess: Sounds like everyone has been like a practitioner in your family in some way. Who do you think of as he knowledge holder or was the knowledge holder?

Akia Dorsainvil: In my family, specifically, I feel like it would be my dad. Of course, my father got deported back to Haiti and died there. So my whole life is me trying to figure out and get these answers I probably would never get in the flesh. So that's one thing. My mother definitely holds it. I want to say my uncle Pete as well. He's the family historian. Yeah, that's the type of spirituality. He knows all the family stories. He knows he has been very invested. And he's my my grandmother's older sibling, too. For like two, three years, but that's important to him. I feel like those are the main ones in my life, my mother, my father, spiritually. And of course, my own spiritual leaders that I have found along the way.

Jasmine Respess: Do you want to speak more to your experiences with folks outside of your family that you found?

Akia Dorsainvil: Because I grew up in the church, I've always been someone that engaged with it. I was always in grown people's business. So that means I was always in grown people's spirituality and like, yeah, asserting myself in like, yes, you have lived longer than me. And yes, you are an elder, but I have my own spiritual knowing to bring to an environment that's supposed to be advancing spiritually. Kids are some of the most connected. They just directly came from the source. So, yeah, I think I have through those spaces, I've always been someone that just I can engage. I feel like I can engage in a conversation about spirit. So every botanica I've ever been into, I try to really engage and ask questions and be inquisitive. I would say my mentor, Andre Sol, God bless the dead. His spiritual name is Baba Kai, he was a natural born drummer. His family is from New Jersey, and they come from that post Black Panther into the new African identity and like really try to decolonize and put an emphasis on like the Black family. So he grew up in his version of a tribe. And he really tried to impart that in his life and people that he brought into his world. So he was definitely a spiritual leader that I would speak to. And because we both were using music as a form of spiritual practice for ourselves, I was able to learn a lot about how I want people to feel. Yeah, as a DJ, I want people to really communicate and tap in in a different kind of way. It was very a beautiful experience. It was beautiful to watch. And I'm having a beautiful time. I'm thinking about who I'm calling in.

Jasmine Respess: Which you obviously have a gift for.

Akia Dorsainvil: I appreciate that. But I call him in. Yeah, I definitely he's someone I call into the corner. Yeah, so that and then my mambo, Vivi, she is the voodoo queen in my neighborhood in West Palm. Most of my work in life is me really trying to figure out all the versions of me and I have a huge one that's missing. I didn't get my father. So yeah, it's funny how I have been living life. My mom always tells me that I'm living so parallel to the life that my dad was living before he passed. I ended up finding my mambo solely from a completely different experience. My best friend was working at a hair salon that I would visit all the time. And me, the salon owners, and the shopkeepers, we all connected. We found out I had the same last name as their younger brother. So we were always kidding that we were kin, cousin, and family. I then end up finding out later that they're just some of those creative people. And they had a fashion show where of course, your family's going to come to show off for, so I ended up meeting their mother. Their mother was so beautifully regal and they had all these people, just like it was like fanfare. Like, yeah, the diva is in the room. We ended up finding out more and more. And I gotten closer with these people, to the point that they end up sharing with their mother, actually, at botanica. And she's a voodoo queen. Yeah. And that's why the fanfare is there. and then I know, so of course, I am going to the botanica, supporting them, and participating in shows that they would put on. I ended up finding out after telling my mother like, “Oh, yeah, I go here all the time.” I remember as a kid coming into the plaza that the shop is at all the time. In my pre K area, going there. And it's funny that as I go there, and I tell my mom, she didn't stop letting me know that my father used to also come here.

Akia Dorsainvil. At that time, my mom doesn't know at all that I'm practicing voodoo. And I end up telling her and telling her where I go. And she's like, “Yo, dad, your dad actually used to go here.” And at the very last get day ceremony that I went to, I ended up seeing my dad's cousin. It's all ancestral work.

Jasmine Respess: I know you have the gift of like communication, but I'm learning now, it is also listening. When did you realize you had a gift?

Akia Dorsainvil: I think hearing is a large part of it. Yeah, or even like alchemizing things that you hear. I feel like I didn't live in a verbally affirmational home. My parents were so focused on surviving and providing for us that the side of the emotional parenting got completely lost in translation. So I had to figure that out in on my own. But the dance studio that I grew up going to, they were some of the first people to really affirm me and tell me that I'm talented in all these things.

Jasmine Respess: Because dance is communication too. It's all communication. 

Akia Dorsainvil: Exactly. So, and they were a very church going crew as well. So I didn't get that at home, but I definitely was able to see from that point that movement and communicating through movement and music could be a gift. My sister and I used to sing together. So we knew that music is a gift to us. In that way too. But I don't know if I ever really was in an environment that really showed me or told me that these are gifts. I've had to come to come to those conclusions on my own.

Jasmine Respess: That’s why I think that I'm happy we've gotten to the point in our lives where we know that this is work that we didn't get from our families, that we can do that for ourselves. And community, thankfully does that for us too, which is beautiful to have. 

Akia Dorsainvil: I feel like there's things I know I can do, but like how I know it's valuable is through community. And I hope as it goes on, it doesn't necessarily have to be that way. It's always nice to be affirmed, but I'd like for the kids to like have that more. 

Jasmine Respess: There's a depth to it that comes with the South and obviously the Caribbean, but also, that depth is not always the softest or the nicest or anything like that, you know?

Akia Dorsainvil: And I see it kind of like soil in that way, basically, there's blood in our soil.

Jasmine Respess: If you can define spirituality your spirituality this way, what does it look like every day, like in your spiritual practice? \

Akia Dorsainvil: Oh God, caring for my body. I think that is a huge one, especially since dance is a beautiful spirituality. That’s worship in itself.  Made in God's image, literally, so being able to be able to physically transform into the silhouettes. God's silhouettes is one. I am very prideful of my temple. That is a huge one for me because this is the only go around that I'm going to get. So, and I need to be a one of quality and the God I serve wants that from me. So I try to do that. Take care of my mind, body, and soul. That looks like praying. That looks like going to the gym. That looks like eating food. It's me using fucking ginger when I can. I instantly feel like I'm the healthiest person on earth when I use ginger. So drinking teas, really listening and being aware of my body, trying to be still and silent so I can really listen to myself. Praying out loud, not just in my head. Writing it down, putting out magic spells, reading about magic.

Jasmine Respess: Do you have an altar?

Yeah. I feel like my car is my altar at this point. That's what I'm like. I got my Ezulie Dantor in the car. Actually, Ezulie Dantor is my air freshener. I carry my father's obituary on my dashboard. Right. And yeah, I'm constantly smoking in it now. So we're all getting, we're getting all the elements.

Car altars. Keep that Bible on the dashboard. My mom carries her text, like a verse from the Bible, keeps it open. And cleaning is important, not cleaning necessarily, but honoring. I have this stuff because I've been blessed, so I'm going to try to take care of it. I'm I'm being taught to worship God. It's the same thing I should be doing for myself. It can feel weird to just return to things when they've been like commodified, but they're your things. And I think that's something I think about even like movements and stuff are like our thing. So yeah, just feeling genuine when you're doing things. And even if you don't, like, does it make you feel good? Like, you can, you know, like working through that.

Jasmine Respess: Is your practice is ancestor work? What does that mean to you? 

Akia Dorsainvil: Being curious and using that curiosity to create from your own personal archive, which is your family. I'm deeply invested in understanding how I got here. 

Jasmine Respess: You think that's our responsibility?

Akia Dorsainvil: I think it can be. Yeah. I think nothing matters, if we're being real, you assign meaning to it and you'll thank yourself later. 

So I've assigned that to myself or I've been shown signs that this is something, if I want to go down this path, I can do and it'd be rewarding. And it's been a great yield of reward for me.  

Jasmine Respess: Do you feel like you're provided a path? When you do something, it's your choice, but do you feel like there's a path for you, like ancestors are helping you do this.

Akia Dorsainvil: I do. Yeah. There’s a lot of moments when I, if I think too hard, I'll start to doubt myself without knowing. But for the most part, I'm always reminded that I am on the path for me, like I just told you the whole story about me even finding my, one of my spiritual leaders. I'm not conscious at all, but when I'm actually tapped in and listening to myself and aware and present in my experience, the map is there. You do have to use discernment and think about things, but there's a different kind when you're like not solely focusing on like, it's a church thing, but relying on your own understanding. You’re not supposed to just rely on your own understanding. And that's why like, even the arts that I have chosen, or I have chosen me to focus on, they like, I've been, I

was called to dance at such a young age. And one of the like foundational ideologies within dance is you literally cannot think you need to just do. The moment you start actually thinking, you lose yourself from actually being in syncopation with the pattern of your body, your muscle memory, actually the musicality. 

You start to overthink when you should just be as free as possible and do what comes really natural. Singing is the same exact way. R&B taught me that. I study the artists that I love and when I'm listening and seeing how they're like, like they are in their most free.

Jasmine Respess: And you can tell, you can tell when they're not, and you can tell when they are. 

Akia Dorsainvil: Exactly, the performance shows. It isn't sliding down walls no more. At all, only poles. 

Jasmine Respess: I know, damn. Can you speak a little bit more to the practices that make you feel the closest to God or to your ancestors? Every time I dance, every time I play music for myself, it's just a release. 

Akia Dorsainvil: I feel closer to God every time I pray. When I make a good ass fucking meal with vegetables, I feel closer to God. I like fish, actually the entire process, like debone it, cut it, fillet. Yeah, I used to be a fishmonger. So when I do that, I feel closer to God because I just feel like I'm doing things in the tradition. It's about getting it out. Exactly. You are hearing and seeing things in your head and it has to come out. 

Jasmine Respess: What are some important like milestones in your practice?

Akia Dorsainvil: One is being granted. Yeah. Definitely a milestone. My work with Masisi in general is such a milestone because I could never have told young, Queer me that. that I get to really create beautiful experiences for other Black Queer people that otherwise, I don't know where they would get it from. Maybe that's not my business on where they get it from, but yeah. And I know that that is a privilege that I get to do that and make my dreams happen through making other people feel comfortable and safe and feel joy. 

Jasmine Respess: Who has found you or who have you found in this work? How does it feel to like find people along this journey?

Akia Dorsainvil: It's been really fucking affirming. Yeah. It's affirming. I feel honored to really be able to do that. I feel like my ancestors did what they needed to do for me to even get to this point where I'm able to do that. Somebody in my family had to go to school in order to create a life that sustained me to this, to that point, to this point, get me to understand music, paid for the music. Like there's so many things and actions that I was not privy to that created the moment I'm experiencing. 

Jasmine Respess: I think about that a lot because we're in the point of our American dream from my grandparents, where we're going back to being, I'm a writer, my cousin's an actor, and my sister's a journalist. Like we still have jobs, but the idea that art could be like our main thing in life, thats where we are at. Because I'm not think I'm more artistically talented than other people in my family necessarily. I just had the freedom to experience that and do that. Like went to grad school for creative writing. Do you think anybody was doing that? It is not to say like it's a ‘spoiledness’ because I honor it all the time or I think about all the time, but it's just something that literally would not have happened previously. And who knows what they could have created if they had that, they were always artists. I’m not saying they weren't. My grandma can like, so do all kinds of stuff. But that was from labor. Yeah. And what would she have done if it was just purely creative? Who knows, you know? But even then that's a dream in itself. 

Akia Dorsainvil: That's somebody, somebody in your family, that was a dream for them. Even if they hated doing it and kicked and screamed the entire way. Yeah. They still made a way to make it happen for you. Cause deep down that was their dream. Exactly. 

Jasmine Respess: When I show my grandma, which I'm always talking about her cause she's my favorite. My journal, you can tell she's like, but she's also like understands in a way that I think like when I write about her and our relationship and like how like we're very different, but that's a style. She's like, and I just think that's interesting. And I think there's something about like ancestor, how you relate to your grandparents, how you relate to your ancestors that aren't even here. Once it's like removed from your nuclear, which I really love my nuclear family, but there's just something about that. I think cause they're proud of you and like the traumas and whatnot that tie us together and nuclear families are, I think wherever they go off, they like have a better understanding or something. And as they get older, some are like closer to that. Cause I'm like, there ain't no way my grandma would be bonding with this little gay kid with all these piercings and tattoos. 

Akia Dorsainvil: But she'd do it through you though. That is something I would not have thought of. And my mom for sure, never have thought it was like a possibility. Never, you know, even if we don't speak certain things, just how I am is already Queer enough that I'm like, that's wild. When I was making this mix, I was using different accents, just voices, to get a better understanding to at least like, or in a way to like make a digestible understanding of what is ancestors. How can you be in a relationship to ancestors? And one of the voices I use was this professor that ends up like really like conveying that your ancestors literally are here to help you, help you through the challenges that they can see, cause they're not in the physical experience anymore. They are looking from the heavens down and you can see it from this perspective or posthood within the struggle with you. 

Jasmine Respess: When I talk to my ancestors, they're never judgmental, but sometimes they're sick of my shit and it's so funny. Like if I'm asking them the same question and they already answered it, like I'll use a pendulum and they'll be like, we're just simply not answering this. Like ‘get on’, but even that is different. It's not the same in judgment. It's more like ‘I told you, I told you.’

Akia Dorsainvil: Oh, you're bringing up memories. So my first mushroom trip ever, I had this thing where I was at my best friend's house and we're in this room and the door ended up shifting into an image of my father who was not dead, but the energy essence of him, the energy all of the fathers in my life give me. 

And every time I would ask a dumb ass question, my eyes would naturally just pan over. Like I said, this is a door, but now it's in the image of my father, this white door. So every time I ask a question, my eyes would pan over to the door and it'd be like, the feeling of like, you already know this. 

Jasmine Respess: What's for me is going to be come to me. And my ancestors are not going to allow anything to happen to me at all. Like, even if I don't do something right, I'm, my intention is right. And they'll just deal with it. And I just don't worry about that stuff. And I'm not saying I hear a wilding. I do take it serious.

Akia Dorsainvil: It’s the idea of punishment. 

Jasmine Respess: Yeah, that is so colonial. Yeah. 

Akia Dorsainvil: That's what it is. It's like, you can make mistakes and they'll let you know, but it's never going to be like one plus one equals two and two is bad because that's not, and I'm definitely, I am a repeater of mistakes and it just makes them be like, okay, I guess we're learning this again. And it doesn't feel, it feels always, I don't want to say playful, but I don't feel shame. I guess my point is I think a lot of shame is like a colonial construct and like, it doesn't really occur in my practice. Like when I talk to them, they're just like, you're silly, but we're going to get, it doesn't make me think they'll ever abandon me, I guess at that point. And that's like really like, it's a beautiful, that's all you could even want out of any relationship.  I'll go back to it is because I'm like, well, y'all not going anywhere. Literally y'all stuck with me. And because of that, I want to be better for them. 

Jasmine Respess: What kind of practices is there around death, around birth?

Akia Dorsainvil: So at this point, the closest deaths I've experienced was my little brother and my father. And all this has happened in the past three years, now going on four years together with those two. So I'm like, I'm at the age where I'm learning that and have that before. So yeah, that's been a doozy. And I've had to play a very essential role in burying them. I actually started to really enjoy the idea of “Maybe I should be a death doula.” Cause I'm really taking to death pretty well. And even when I think about what ‘well’ even means, it's really because I was not emotional. I was able to not, I was able to not tap into the distraught emotion around grief because I knew I needed to be there for other people. So that's one. And because I just am not going to force emotions that are not there. I cry for them in my own way, but I'm not going to be distraught over something that I cannot make sense of.

Jasmine Respess: Yeah. And I mean, there's probably something to be said about like the role your family puts you in, you know, in those situations. Cause I agree. 

Akia Dorsainvil: If I want to turn up, it's just different, you know? Or like the understanding of like how my emotions are in my family is probably way different than yours. But what I have noticed within the process of burying them is that I get a level of focus. Yeah. I get a level of focus. Music is so helpful for me. Like that's my processing is when I'm like creating the mix that they, yeah, that the service would be. So, and that's important, especially in like Black expression. I can't even think of anything more important. Oh my God. So yeah. Thinking and keeping in mind what sounds they enjoy, trying to be as authentic to them while also understanding that there's a responsibility, a respectability responsibility there that has to be honored for the family's embarrassment. But yeah, but yeah, I think for me, music has been my way of ritual, a ritual choice. So death, it doesn't mean final, right. We've defined that as that because colonially people have not had a conversation about life after death, right. In a spiritual sense. And I think that's why I haven't really gone through it possibly because I have not fully accepted that they're never going to not be in my life. I just will have a different relationship to them.