WINSTON NUNLEY aka WINDAFIRE, 16
Winston Nunley aka Windafire is an interdisciplinary healing artist whose primary medium is songwriting. Windafire received the majority of his vocal training as a member of the Afro-American Music Institute’s Boys Choir. As an artivist and deeply spiritual person, Windafire is dedicated to bringing about harmony and unity through ancestral healing. For the past two years, he has been a member of Dreams Of Hope, a LGBTQ+ youth theater group whose creative contributions educate audiences, build awareness, and increase acceptance. Windafire collaborates with the rest doula and artist Onika Reigns on their project Black Dream Escape, which offers nap/meditative sessions. These sessions use original music and texts which teach our Black, Indigenous, and queer communities about the power of rest.
Windafire is home-educated and often finds himself involved with his mother’s projects. Recently, he wrote the soundtrack for her short film Given the Circumstances, which was produced as part of Alisha Wormsley’s AfroNauta Project. Windafire is a regular feature at local icon Phat Mandee’s Tune It Tuesdays. He has worked on recording his original music with Liz Berlin of Rusted Root. This year, he will record an EP, The Pool Of Time with Berline, at Mr. Smalls Recording and Mastering Studio. In 2011, Windafire’s sound piece was used for a short experimental film by Natasha Marin for her Red Lineage Project. The film went to several international film festivals.
In 2013, Windafire was a co-collaborator for “Unlisted: Second Steel,” an international performance art collaboration about place, on a vacant lot in Pittsburgh’s Hill District. He created the character Prosper, a rememory of a child displaced by gentrification in Pittsburgh’s Hill District. Windafire and dancer Juan Aldape developed a father-son story around Prosper. Edwin Lee Gibson, an actor, was so inspired that he chose to play Prosper as an adult returning to face his rememory.
Windafire is pursuing his full initiation as an olorisha and contemplating the right college. He plans on releasing his first full EP and offering the Black Dream Escape on a regular basis, funded by The Pittsburgh Foundation’s Social Justice Fund.
Olokun’s Song
by Windafire
Oh water divine, with your current on my mind
Let me find my way, to my island’s bay
Help me find the home, to the people of my own
Let me break the bind of the pool of time
Free, like mangroves in the breeze
Sweet, like mangos on the trees
In peace, like dancing on the beach
Me, to love in harmony
At midnight a girl walks down a crooked street
to the salty shore where sea turtles come
to kiss her toes and guide her feet
onto the velvet laced sea floor,
she walks to the flabbergasted cephalopod
who tips his coconut hat and leads
her to a bed of sea grass
still she’s yearning to be
Free
A woman dressed in the gifts of the waves reclines,
the mother of the sea,
the gush of spring.
Girl treads carefully not to wake her before it’s time
Omio Yemaya
the girl whispers yearning to be
Free, like mangroves in the breeze
Sweet, like mangos on the trees
In peace, like dancing on the beach
Me, to love in harmony
The woman rolls over in her sleep
and calls upon her companion of the deep
He arrives with 30 viperfish in his fleet
She gasps and bows deep
Maferefun Olokun she squeaks.
Only he can reunite her with who she seeks.
Then maybe she’ll finally be
Free
He guides her past the ship wrecks with rum and gold doubloons
With seahorses partying in tiger shark saloons
And the creepy men who hide during the dark of the moon
Right when she is half past hope your Bibi’s up ahead he croons
She’s finally
Free, like mangroves in the breeze
Sweet, like mangos on the trees
In peace, like dancing on the beach
Me, to love in harmony
With my roots braided up and my salt colored leaves
My soul is swaying like mangroves in the breeze
The bones of my ancestors are filled with glee.
When they catch us dancing below the sea.