BBC Documentaries

Jamaica’s sacred heartbeat

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At a hillside gathering in Watt Town, Jamaica, drums, prayer, and song converge in a living tradition that reaches beyond the island and across the generations to Africa. Kirt Henry is part of the community of revivalists who worked to secure Unesco recognition for a practice long misunderstood and marginalised. In this intimate journey into Jamaican spiritualism, scholar and practitioner, Kirt, reflects on faith shaped by memory, resilience, and ancestral connection. Through stories of healing, trance, ritual clothing and the sacred language of the body, Kirt explores a spiritual world where the boundaries between the earthly and the unseen are fluid. Revivalism emerges, not as a relic of the past, but as a way of life, one that carries the weight of colonial trauma while offering belonging, continuity and hope.
This episode of The Documentary, comes to you from Heart and Soul, exploring personal approaches to spirituality from around the world.
28 May 8PM English United Kingdom Education

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