Tania Abdul

Tania is currently developing a nonprofit called Breathe, helping to build the movements for racial, environmental and climate justice by leveraging media that features community activism and performing arts with interactive web technology. She is an event producer, an artist, and an activist, and is intrigued with innovative community organization.
In 2020, she served in the debut year of the Femtheogen Collaborative, a women-led funding initiative in the greater psychedelic field supported by the RIverstyx Foundation. Tania is also a leader in People of TechnoColor, an informal organization supporting BIPOC, who bring their own unique lens and diversity of experience to psychedelic exploration. Her work for the Women's Visionary Council includes helping organize the 2019 Congress and creating this community site, in the hope of increasing access and building our ability to connect with and empower each other.
"The Power of Rhythm and Ritualized Entrainment"
Tania's 2019 WVC presentation communicated the power of entraining regularly with a group in rhythm, song, and dance, which creates a beautiful medicine and a joyful bond. She has studied Brazilian music and arts since 2008. Attendees were delighted to learn some powerful dance moves in the way people dance on the street in Brazil – by playing follow-the-leader – while her all-female troupe played, sang, and danced.
The tradition of maracatu music from the northeast of Brazil has a unique history of cultural resistance and has represented the spiritual communities of people of color there since the time when they were enslaved. In recent years the joy of maracatu has spread and people across Brazil and around the world study and perform it, including an Oakland-based group called Maracatu Pacífico and this offshoot, the all-female Mulhercatu (from mulher which means "women"). Women are breaking through traditionally limited roles to get loud and play all the parts, as in many other drum traditions today.

Attached below is her 2019 slideshow, and an editorial piece she wrote for Lucid News in 2020.

Mulhercatu at the WVC.pptx

The Power of Psychedelic Communities Through the Lens of an Activist PoTC.pdf