The True Face Of Rain – #Andrea

“Through observation, you encounter the other,” says Jonathan Dumani.

The poet-rapper Jonathan Dumani alias AbSTRAL Compost (the word is a creation from ABstract and ASTRAL) was one of the guests at the Literature Festival in the Swiss town of Solothurn, which was held in May 2025. He had three sessions – a performance with Florence Robins, moderated by Max Lobe, a discussion on his book, Le vrai visage de la pluie, and a rap session.

In his book, published by Edition La veilleuse in 2024, observation starts with insects and continues with the observation of the rain itself.

— “Le dimanche precedent, il a plu toute l’eau du ciel et plus encore” and it’s crescendo in thunder and lightning
(Last Sunday, it was raining all water of the sky, and even more)

— “Sous la porche à l’abri, j’ai lavé les patates douces dans un bac. Tonnere soudain, suivi d’un éclair si proche que je l’ai cru atterrir dans le bac à patates. Comme un échange intense de flux énergetique entre legumes et ciel”

(Under the sheltered porch, I washed the sweet potatoes in a tub. Sudden thunder, followed by a flash of lightning so close I thought it landed in the potato tub. Like an intense exchange of energy flow between vegetables and sky)

The book is also an encounter with the lands of the author’s ancestors. His father had travelled from Egypt to Uruguay to London, and his mother from Poland to Holland to London. Both parents attended their son’s performance at Solothurner Literaturtage (Literature Festival 15-17 Mai 2025) and his father said proudly: “We have created him”. Jonathan grew up in Switzerland. He mentions that it is a place that allows him to face the past, not as a burden, but as chance, that allows him to use words (prose, poems, spoken word and Rap) to resist, to forget and to nourish hope – “Comme toi, j’ai peur de la mort, laisser ceux que j’aime et partir je ne sais où. Mais j’ai confiance en la vie. Beaucoup de confiance. Like you, I’m afraid of death, of leaving those I love and going who knows where. But I have faith in life. A lot of faith.“

His journey of writing Le vrai visage de la pluie started in 2005. In collaboration with the editor, Florence Robins, the book grew from initial fragments of notes, of poems, of memories. The book was a process of bringing words to the paper, to fix them and prevent them from being erased.

Erased by rain? Erased by the restless movements of insects/of nature, of dying and of living? 

The cover of Le vrai visage de la pluie is the red shape of Latin America, reversed—to reverse the relations of power, and in this way fix it?—and a bright sun. In the author’s talk, Jonathan Dumani mentioned that while his rap is dark, even in dark places, there is light. It seems to me that in the reversed map of Latin America, the light is shining, so brightly, through his meditations.