Skin Ya Teet - Voice, Body, Meaning, Care.

There is a Jamaican expression I grew up with. "Skin ya teet". It means show your teeth. Smile. Not the polite, managed kind, the kind that comes when something inside you is so full it has nowhere else to go but out.

That is what this painting is. That is what last Wednesday was.

When the Energy Arrives Before the Words

It began at the V&A Eastbank, at an exhibition called The Music is Black. A celebration, full, unapologetic, and overdue, of the fact that the rhythmic and sonic architecture of almost all contemporary global music has a single origin point. The instrumentation, production techniques, and vocal styles that now shape the modern world did not arrive from nowhere. They travelled. Across oceans, across centuries, across everything that was done to separate a people from themselves, and yet the voice remained. The rhythm remained. The body remembered what the history books did not always name.

The friend who brought me there is not from the African diaspora. She is someone from my boxing journey, someone who understood what the room held and opened the door. Sometimes the most important thing a person can do is know which door to open for someone else. The separation that might have said this room is not for her was never real. It was imposed. And we walked through it together.

There are rooms that tell the truth. That was one of them.

One Evening. Three Encounters.

From the V&A, the evening continued, and what unfolded felt less like a series of events and more like a single, extended, embodied conversation about what it means to be fully present in your voice.

DJ AG brought his free, open-air energy to the SXSW London Festival, music as a gift to public space, no velvet rope, no barrier between the sound and the people. My friend, Sonna Rele, performed as a guest that evening, and into her second song, she did something that stilled the space. She spoke the words before she sang them.

I am abundance. I am the truth. I am successful. I am living proof.  I am. Yes I am.

She planted the meaning first, and then the music carried it deeper. The affirmation arrived before the melody, and the song landed somewhere it might not have otherwise reached.

I kept thinking: that is the correct order. Truth first. Then expression. You cannot reverse it and expect the same result.

Later, Taal Haus performed, a South Asian ensemble rooted in classical, folk, Sufi, and ghazal traditions. I did not know the words they were singing. I felt every single one. And there was a woman beside me, also from the Asian diaspora, who turned and looked at me, because she could see the music moving through me. We did not need to speak. The embodiment was the language.

The Body Knows First

That moment stayed with me. Because we talk so much about communication, finding the right words, the right framing, the right message, and yet the most profound moments of human connection happen before language arrives. They happen in the body. In the energy of a room. In the felt sense of whether you are welcome or whether you are tolerated.

Those are not the same experience. And people always know the difference. Not intellectually. In their body. Before anyone has said a word.

What Organisations Miss

Organisations spend a great deal of energy on the words. The mission statement. The values on the wall. The language of inclusion printed carefully in the annual report. And people walk through the door and feel none of it, or all of it, before a single word is spoken to them.

That is not a communication problem. That is a misalignment between what is said and what is lived. And the people inside feel it the same way I felt Taal Haus, not through words but via translation through the body. Through the grounding energy that is either present or absent the moment they enter the space.

The entry point is not the message. The entry point is the experience of being in the room.

Music is not only decoration. At its most honest, it is infrastructure. It carries what language sometimes cannot hold. It moves across cultures, across languages, across centuries — because it speaks to something in the body that precedes words. The Unabashed Narrative Pillars work the same way. Voice. Body. Meaning. Care. Not merely a communication framework. A body framework. You find the truth first. Then you let it move through you. Then — and only then — does it become something others can truly receive.

When those things are aligned, people do not perform their welcome. They feel it. And when they feel it, they skin ya teet for real. Not because the room requires it. Because something inside them is finally full.

The Painting

Skin Ya Teet was waiting for this week to make sense of itself.

The individual in the image is not performing joy. Her eyes are closed. She is not looking at anyone, seeking approval, managing how she lands. She is simply full. The energy beside her, ancient, textured, layered, is not separate from her. It is moving through her. It is hers.

That is what voice looks like when it is aligned with body, with meaning, with care. It does not announce itself. It simply is.

And when it is, the room feels it before you say a word.

If you are navigating spaces where the energy doesn't match the language, or if you are responsible for creating the conditions people walk into, the Narrative Alignment Reflection is where this thinking becomes specific to your situation.

And this week's Unabashed Conversation goes deeper into what I experienced, and what it reveals about how we build belonging, not just communicate it.

Because here is Where Art Becomes Your Strategy.