The Secret Institute

The Secret Institute led by Nkisi is a research platform that focuses on investigating ancient sonic traditions, sonic experimentation and the mysteries of the subtle power of vibration and intentional sound waves. The Secret institute aims to challenge the aural paradigm. For the new radio series at SAVVYZΛΛR, Nkisi will be presenting her sonic research through the exploration of ancient sonic concepts intertwined with performative auto-ethnographic accounts of her own initiation into the vibrational sciences of her Kongo heritage. 

Nkisi is the alias of Melika Ngombe Kolongo, an electronic musician, producer and artist. Her ongoing sonic research focuses on rhythm as ancestral technology and sound as multi-dimensional intelligence. 

11.07.2021    Episode 1 
Cosmic Darkness, the Beginning of Everything

For the first episode, Nkisi will present an experimental sonic scan on cosmic darkness, the beginning of everything, that birthed our macro and micro systems in nature, and is still ongoing. Through radio waves, Nkisi will be focusing on our aural senses, acknowledging our ears as decoders of electromagnetic information while going beyond the sciences of the visible. Experiments of trance will be used as systems of embodied knowledge. 

It is advised to use dance and movement while listening to connect to our material and immaterial bodies through dance and movement.

26.09.2021    Episode 2
Red Gestures

The gravity of the earth, the lightness of the air, 
the vitality of the water, the energy of the fire…

Nothing exists ex nihilo.
Where are the high priestesses?

Red is for the alchemical process,
the coal warms up and changes its state.
Red is for action and its fire for purification...
Red, to see the invisible realms as it connects us to our inner darkness,
what we don't yet know about ourselves...

Red for Blood

06.02.2022  Episode 3
The Unspeakable, a Vodun Experience 

no words can explain... 

The Sacred Forest,
The Waning and Waxing Sea,
The Celestial Power,
The Door of No Return,
The Tree of Return, 

everything always happens close to the shrine...

06.03.2022  Episode 4
When Myth and Reality Collide 

The sacred gestures of the occult stories pertaining to initiation are meant to charm us with impossibilities, these fantastical allegories exist to descend on us as windows to infinity, to activate our mirror neurons and unlock hidden powers.

Here, a tale as a key:
Once upon a time somewhere in space, a party was being planned in the most beautiful flowering garden. In preparation for the gathering, chairs of all different sizes had to be collected. Some chairs were small, some chairs were high. Once the preparations ended the guests started arriving. One of them, the one that can not be named, started carefully scanning the park where the party was taking place when his eye catches a glimpse of the highest and tallest chair available. He decided that the highest and tallest chair was the only one he could sit on. On his high chair he could look over all the lands on planet earth, but strangely every time he laid his eyes on a particular continent or region, the region and people living in the region would suffer intense and horrible things, like famine, wars, and disasters. His eyes began terrorizing and bringing immense misfortunes to many many peoples. Then suddenly it started raining, and this rain started filling up the underground rivers that were flowing under the park where the party was taking place. The ground became wet and porous, the highest chair wiggled and fell down. 

A big hole created in the ground started becoming overflowed with the water and the ocean was created, Kalunga Katiopa. A bird emerged above the ocean, flew over the earth, and consoled all the many people traumatized by the suffering they experienced through the gaze on the highest chair.

03.04.2022  Episode 5
Lâché Prise! Cross-rhythms and offbeat phrasings can disorient the dancer enough for them to let go

The magical combination of Dance and Rhythm become entangled expressions of spirit, 
Spiritus as breath and life, a vitality in expansion... 
An intensity of being that overflows into many dimensions… Visible and invisible…
The visible only being the smallest fraction of its manifestation…
Dance and Rhythm are the most important and highest form of initiation, as it is how we connect to the Cosmic Rhythm… 
When every body and every item in the space vibrates at the same frequency and intensity… 
The drum becomes the collective heartbeat...

15.05.2022   Episode 6  
Becoming Sound

In this moment we are in a crucial phase: as the electromagnetic rate of the earth is rapidly changing in relation to solar flares erupting in the direction of the earth. What we learned from the ancient priestess lineages is that these great transmissions of solar energy can be used to maintain the vibrational stability of the planet. Through sound syncopation, we can receive large databanks of vibration that can open energy centers of mind and body as we channel ideas, visions, and prophecies to better societies. As we become sound…

03.07.2022   Episode 7 
When the storm comes... 

"A storm was usually triggered by an elder’s death and an ancestral song would be performed to gather the rain's electricity to a specific area. A song line was interconnected to the magnetic lines where indigenous people resided for billion of years.

The storm would cross the continents triggered by the song line and magnetically activated by vocal projections, growing large plasmic winds that are embedded in our biology. These scalar wave methodologies were especially important for our ancestors for living with that song line on the ley lines for hundreds of generations.

If you would walk barefoot on a ley line, the magnetic line would know you.”