Sikan I - III is an original collection of works from Chicago sound collage artist Norman W Long. It has a pretty clear lineage and origin story coming out of a set of collaborative performances inspired by the Cuban visual artist Belkis Ayon, coordinated by Honey Pot Performance as part of the IF/THEN: New Works Festival back in 2021. Like Belkis's visual pieces, Norman's found sound and synthesizer performances are starkly outlined and bold in their content, possessing an organic grain and the quiver of an enigmatic ambiance. The album is primarily inspired by one of Belkis's own points of fixation, The Princess Sikan, mother of the Abakua Society. The Abakua was a secret syncretic, all-male fraternal order that made its way to Cuba from Africa through the slave trade. A mixture of Christianity and various Nigerian tribal beliefs, the Abakua believe that their founder was born of the corpse of Princess Sikan after she was sacrificed for divulging her knowledge of a sacred fish that could speak and convey great power to all who heard its voice. The great irony of the society is that while it owes its origins to a woman, women are barred from joining. The Abakua's traditions are all oral, and have no representational depictions of their legends, making Belkis's patrols of their mythology somewhat controversial- a particularity of the society that she conspicuously references by depicting the character's in her works without mouths. Similarly, there are no words in Norman's compositions, allowing him to tell stories about myths that are bound up in silence and in a manner that skirts impiety while remaining discernably transgressive in his presentation of the placid as well as the divine.
