The very popular ‘Reggae Talks’ at the University of the West Indies, Mona continue on Thursday, April 11 at 7:00 p.m. in the Neville Hall lecture theatre (N1). First it was Jah9, then Protoje, then No-Maddz. This week’s speaker is the Swiss reggae artist Cali P who now lives in Jamaica.
In an exclusive interview with Gleaner writer Jordaine Delahaye, Cali P, whose legal name is Pierre Nanon, said, “I started writing lyrics and singing in Switzerland when I was 14. There were positives and negatives living there. Looking on it as a whole, I had a lot of moments where I really didn’t want to be there because I felt unwelcome. Not being white there makes people treat you like a foreigner at all times, and that can get really annoying”.
Born to a Swiss mother and a Guadeloupian father who is a Rastaman, Cali P knew where to turn to escape the alienation he felt in the land of his birth. He feels much more at home in his adopted country. The title of his talk, which will focus on his artistic development, is “musicCALI-sPeaKING”.
Those are the infamous words of Sir Alexander Bustamante, national hero and first prime minister of independent Jamaica. Bustamante’s turn of phrase comes straight out of the Wild West: “Wanted dead or alive.” Bustamante apparently conceived all Rastafarians as outlaws in a Hollywood western who had to be exterminated by any means necessary.
Issuing a death sentence, Bustamante literally turned all Rastafarians into villains. Guilty or innocent, they could no longer expect to enjoy the protection of the law. All Rastafarians were completely demonised and became victims of comprehensive state brutality. How did this come about?
Half a century ago, at about 4 a.m. on ‘Holy’ Thursday, six bearded men set fire to a gas station in Coral Gardens. They were armed with machetes, guns, bows and arrows. I suppose it was cowboys and Indians, Jamrock style. The leader was Rudolph ‘Franco’ Franklyn, who had a big grievance against the owner of the gas station, Ken Douglas.
Franklyn and several other bearded men had long been squatting on land in Coral Gardens. They lived in relative peace until the land was sold to Douglas. Naturally, the new owner asserted his right to the property and attempted to drive the squatters off the land. As is often the case, the squatters refused to budge.
During one of several attempts at eviction, Franklyn was shot by the police. He survived but was told by a medical doctor that he would die sooner rather than later from a bullet lodged in his body. Determined to take revenge on his assailants, Franklyn sought allies to launch his counter-attack.
DREADLOCKS AND COMBSOME
At the time, there were two groups of Rastafarians living in MoBay: the dreadlocks and the combsome. The dreadlocks lived on Railway Lane and the combsome squatted in Coral Gardens. Franklyn irrationally proposed that both groups of Rastas join forces to burn down Montego Bay. The dreadlocks rejected the scheme on the basis that Rastas defend ‘peace and love’.
Franklyn, who seemed to subscribe to the philosophy “I don’t give a damn, I done dead already”, pressed along with his plans. Instead of burning down all of MoBay, he settled for Douglas’ gas station, an obviously flammable target.
On the morning of the attack, there was only one attendant at the station, Mr George Plummer, who fled for his life to the nearby Edgewater Inn Motel. He, clearly, had no shares in the company. A Mr Marsh, who was at the motel, foolishly ventured out to investigate the matter. In a most unfortunate turn of affairs, he was murdered. By midday, seven others lost their lives, including Franklyn.
According to a Gleaner report published on April 13, 1963, “The Montego Bay Fire Brigade had responded to the fire alert at 4:53 a.m. from the house of Dr Carol Delisser. The blaze at the gas station was brought under control after 5 a.m. led by Supt Sydney Burke, who joined the police squad that rushed up from Montego Bay under Inspector Fisher. Five vehicles, including two civilians, started into the hills after the Rastafarian gang. Among those chasing the gang was Mr Causwell, who was on his way to Kingston but decided to give some help to the chase.
Rose Hall Great House
“They drove through two miles of rough terrain from the ruins of Rose Hall Great House. The search party ran into the gang or rather ran into an ambush. The bearded men attacked from an overhanging cliff above. In the fight which ensued, two of the gang were shot to death and Corporal Melbourne and Mr Causwell were cut down. By then, it was discovered later that Headman Fowler had been already cut down about a mile from his home on Tryall Farm.”
The day’s gruesome events became known as ‘the Coral Gardens Incident’. But this was much more than an isolated ‘incident’. Franklyn’s murderous rampage was a sign of the fundamental inequities of Jamaican society. Landlessness is a recurring a problem which has never been properly addressed by successive pre- and post-Independence governments.
WINSTON CHURCHILL’S CIGARS
The response of Bustamante’s government to the terrible actions of six bearded men was brutally excessive: “Bring in all Rastas, dead or alive!” Why should all Rastafarians be exterminated because of the actions of six men, especially since the ringleader had already been killed? Bustamante’s irrational call signified much more than a need to restore the peace. The Coral Gardens ‘Incident’ was a chilling episode in a long history of state violence against Rastafari.
In 1954, under the premiership of Bustamante, a major Rastafarian encampment, Pinnacle, was burnt down. The camp was located in St Jago Hills, close to Sligoville. Pinnacle was a productive agricultural hub, yielding rich crops such as cassava, peas, corn and, of course, ganja. Maintaining African traditions of collective labour, Pinnacle flourished under the leadership of Leonard Howell.
French journalist Hélène Lee, author of The First Rasta: Leonard Howell and the Rise of Rastafarianism, published in 2004, proposes that Howell was the first Jamaican ‘don’ in the best possible sense of that word. He was a don in the British sense of a university professor. Howell was a Garveyite who valued scholarship.
He was also a charismatic community leader who gave hope to landless Rastafari who left Kingston’s concrete jungle for the hills of St Catherine. Pinnacle comprised approximately 5,000 acres, even though Howell owned only a conservative estimate of 150 acres and, possibly, up to 400.
Winston Churchll
According to anecdotal evidence, much of the ganja produced at Pinnacle found its way to the warfront during the Second European War. Ganja was seen as therapy for the troops. It was even rumoured that Winston Churchill’s famous cigars contained much more than tobacco. In 1953, Churchill visited Jamaica, staying at the Tower Isle hotel. Was there any connection between his visit and the destruction of Pinnacle? I leave the answer to conspiracy theorists.
The Department of Literatures in English, University of the West Indies, Mona continues our series of ‘Reggae Talks’ on Thursday, March 28 at 7:00 p.m. This week’s featured guest is Protoje. He will speak on the topic, “Music From My Heart”. The venue is the Neville Hall Lecture Theatre in the Faculty of Humanities and Education. Copies of his latest CD, “Eight Year Affair” will be on sale for $1,000. The public is invited to attend and admission is free.
The Crown Prince of Reggae has been royally dissed. D Brown’s duppy must be well vexed. I expect he’s somewhere over the rainbow composing a wicked tune, and even wickeder lyrics, about the disorganisers of the tribute concert in his name. The Jamaica Reggae Industry Association (JARIA), Leggo Records, Sounds and Pressure and the Dennis Brown Trust are all going to be haunted for quite a long time.
Since the inception of ‘Reggae Month’ in 2008, Dennis Brown’s name has been inextricably linked to the celebrations. His birthday on February 1 has been a convenient date to launch the month’s activities. And the Dennis Brown Tribute Concert is a high-profile event. This year, the concert has been postponed two times. First, it was lack of sponsorship; then security. This is a very bad sign. ‘Reggae Month’ seems to be in trouble.
The new date for the tribute concert is March 3, more than one month after Dennis Brown’s birthday. It’s like celebrating Christmas in January. There’s only one good thing about the postponement of the tribute. Well, it may turn out to be a cancellation after all but let’s be optimistic for now. In any case, the ‘cancelposting’ of the show proves that there’s nothing sacred about ‘Reggae Month’. It doesn’t even have to be February!
I suppose the rationale for dubbing February ‘Reggae Month’ was the fact that the King of Reggae and the Crown Prince were born on the 6th and 1st respectively. But instead of holding the whole month hostage to those two birthdays, I think we should free up February from all of the reggae-related events that have been compressed into the shortest month of the year.
I’m proposing that we celebrate the birthday of Dennis Brown and Bob Marley in February and that’s that. If we want a ‘Reggae Month’, let’s find a less hectic season. Cynics are already saying that ‘Reggae Month’ was intended to upstage ‘Black History Month’. You know how ambivalent we are about blackness in this country. Be that as it may, there are eleven other months from which to choose.
International Reggae Day
I think July is an excellent candidate for ‘Reggae Month’. There’s Sumfest, our international reggae festival, in the last week of the month. And we shouldn’t forget the heroic efforts of our own cultural activist Andrea Davis to establish July 1 as International Reggae Day (IRD). The brand was launched in 1994 – almost two decades ago – as a “marketing platform for Jamaica’s creative industries and global Reggae culture”.
In a billboardbiz article, published on July 1, 2011, music journalist Patricia Meschino underscores the worldwide reach of Andrea’s vision: “Enabled by the proliferation of internet usage in the mid-90s and the rise of social media in the late ’00s, IRD now encompasses a vast international network of online newspapers, magazines, radio stations and other web based platforms, each tailoring their content on July 1 towards examining the power and potential of the island’s signature rhythm while highlighting the finest in Jamaican and international reggae, made by veterans and upstart artists alike”.
In the early years of the media festival, Andrea’s company, Jamaica Arts Holdings, promoted high-level workshops and full-scale concerts. Celebration of IRD has become much more virtual over time largely because of lack of sponsorship for live events. It’s a familiar story. In the case of the Dennis Brown Tribute Concert, we may very well have to settle for a virtual, if not virtuous, staging this year.
‘Reggae Month’ Sound Clash
Whatever we decide about the scheduling of ‘Reggae Month’, we will still have to resolve the problem of clashing events. In theory, JARIA’s calendar is the definitive guide to what’s on. But it seems as if organisers of events don’t bother to consult JARIA. They just do their own thing.
Before setting the date of my Global Reggae book launch, I checked with JARIA. The only other event on their calendar for the 17th was the Jamaica Music Museum’s ‘Grounation’, scheduled for 2:00 p.m. It was unlikely to clash with my 6:00 p.m. launch.
Then, out of the blue, the Dennis Brown Tribute Concert was rescheduled at exactly the same time. Not even JARIA appears to have consulted JARIA! Or, if they did, they must have decided that the launch of a book on the globalisation of reggae in ‘Reggae Month’ wasn’t all that important. Then again, they may have assumed quite wrongly that people who read books don’t go to reggae concerts.
Seriously, though, the clash wouldn’t have mattered all that much really. Patrons obviously do have the right to choose. Except that Ras Michael and the Sons of Negus, Jah9 and Protoje, who had all graciously agreed to make a cameo appearance at the launch, also needed to perform at the rescheduled Dennis Brown tribute, based on their earlier commitment. Fortunately, No-Maddz and Cali P, the other ‘brand-name’ performers for the book launch, were not on that ill-fated show.
When Ras Michael apologetically telephoned to let me know that he couldn’t make it back to PULS8 in time to do the invocation, I have to admit I called down judgement on the engineers of the clash. I hadn’t realised how potent my words were. Within an hour, Ras Michael called back to say that the show was cancelled.
Of course, I don’t actually take any responsibility for influencing the decisions made by the organisers of the tribute concert. It’s not my ‘judgement’ that mystically caused postponement. ‘Me woulda never diss di Crown Prince’. Hopefully, Dennis Brown will be honoured appropriately some time this year in a tribute concert that lives up to his name. Respect is most certainly due, whatever the month.
Shortly after Peter Tosh made his last concert appearance in December 1983, I did an interview with him that was published in Pulse magazine. One of his most powerful declarations was this: “. . . me don’t run joke wid words.” Tosh was objecting to the way in which the term ‘peace treaty’ was being used so loosely. And he gave a rather irreverent sermon on the subject:
“Claudie Mashup, or weh him want to name, him came to my house once and told me about this project that they had. And dem say that dem going to call it a peace treaty. I a look fe peace. Because to me, peace should have really meant people respecting people, people loving people.
“A man becoming his brother’s keeper. A man can lef him door open an go bout him business and a next man don’t come pop it off. Is so me call peace. A man don’t have gun over the next area an a tell you say him have a border cross ya-so and you can’t come across there.
“So I mek them know me don’t run joke with words. Every time I see the word ‘peace’ you know where I see it? In the cemetery: ‘Here lies the body of such and such. May he rest in peace.’ So how a guy waan come tell me say him a go have a peace treaty amongst the living, where all the dead rest in wha? Peace? Ah-oh.”
I don’t know if this wicked mashing up Massop’s name was a Tosh original. There are many such examples of witty word play in his lyrics. Poliomyelitis became reggaemylitis, a joyous infection that moves every muscle in the body. The words ‘system’ and ‘situation’ were cleverly transformed by the insertion of a well-placed ‘h’ and ‘t’. Tosh evoked the stench of the oppressive dunghills of social injustice and moral corruption that continue to rise up everywhere in Jamaica.
In his dread lecture delivered at the so-called “Peace Concert” in 1978, Tosh chanted down the excremental system: “Four hundred years an de same bucky maasa bizniz. An black inferiority, an brown superiority rule dis lickle black country here fe a long [t]imes. Well I an I come wid Earthquake, Lightnin an Tunda to break down dese barriers of oppression an drive away transgression and rule equality between humble black people.”
Garvey’s African Redemption
Peter Tosh was an unapologetic advocate of what Marcus Garvey called “African Redemption”. We hear this in his rousing anthem, ‘African’, from the 1977 Equal Rights album: “Don’t care where yu come from/ As long as you’re a black man/ You’re an African.” Not all Jamaicans would agree. Some of us don’t even want to admit that we’re black, let alone African.
In a letter to the Editor published in The Gleaner on September 25, Daive Facey asks a revealing question, “Who are ‘Blacks’, Ms Cooper?” He already knows the answer: “Many classified as ‘blacks’ based on external features and placed into the 90 per cent majority can easily trace their mixed lineages, and in terms of genealogy are no less Caucasian, Indian or Chinese”.
Mr. Facey is quite right. Many clearly black Jamaicans routinely claim ancestors of other races who have left no visible traces of themselves on the body of their supposed relatives. And even in cases where some racial mixing is evident, the African element in the mix is always the half that is never told. Mixed-race Jamaicans are half-Indian; half-Chinese; half-Syrian; half-white. But never half-African!
It is only people of African descent in Jamaica who do not define their racial identity in terms that point to ancestral homelands. Europeans, Chinese, Syrians and Indians are all raced and placed in their very naming. Africans are ‘so-so’ black. Going against the tide, Tosh deliberately chose ‘African’ as a marker of racial identity.
‘Inna di race ting’
In a witty newspaper article entitled ‘Perkins and Black History,’ the now late Eric ‘Macko’ McNish, former editor of the Jamaica Beat newspaper, related an anecdote that illustrates the complexity of racial politics in Jamaica: “When Chinese Jamaicans and East Indian Jamaicans used to organise annual cricket matches between an All-Indian XI and All-Chinese XI at the Chinese Cricket Club (now owned by Melbourne), all Jamaicans applauded it.
“However, when two Black Jamaicans (which included this writer) asked the captain of the East Indian XI, who was a former Boys’ Town player, if an All-African XI of Black Jamaicans could play the winner of his match against the Chinese XI, his answer was ‘Bwoy wi doan waan get inna di race ting.’”
Tosh was more than willing to “get inna di race ting”. He establishes ‘African’ as a racial category and then goes on to assert, “No mind yu nationality/ You have got the identity/ Of an African.”
Furthermore, Tosh’s conception of African identity is quite inclusive:
No mind yu complexion
There is no rejection
You’re an African
Cause if yu plexion high, high, high
If yu plexion low, low, low
If yu plexion in between
You’re an African
Though Tosh seems to assert a hierarchy of high, low and in-between complexions, it is the very notion of hierarchy that is being contested. Whatever the physical manifestation of ‘africanness’ in terms of skin colour, there is a rooted cultural identity that transcends the physical. ‘There is no rejection’ of mixed-race people from the category ‘African’.
Peter Tosh was one of reggae music’s greatest philosophers. In honour of his life and legacy, the University of the West Indies, Mona hosteed a symposium on Friday, October 19: “Peter Tosh – Reggae Revolutionary and Equal Rights Advocate”. Tosh’s children, Niambe and Dave, as well as Herbie Miller, Clinton Hutton and I were the main spekaers. Michael Barnett chaired the event. None of us ‘dida run joke wid words’.Ma
The morning after Emancipation Day, August 1st, I took out my prized Independence commemorative plate from the hand-carved mahogany cabinet in which it’s kept. It was a gift from the mother of a long-ago boyfriend who, incomprehensibly, complained constantly that she loved me more than him. Needless to say, he didn’t last. Gender politics in Jamaica can be quite complicated.
The plate does have a little chip, but it really doesn’t matter. It’s the spirit of the thing that counts: a little bit of tactile history. The decorated plate features the Jamaican coat of arms. On February 3, 1661, Jamaica became the first British colony to receive its own arms. The Latin motto grandly declaimed: ‘Indus uterque serviet uni’ (Both Indies will serve one). From East to mythic West, colonial relations of domination were inscribed in heraldry.
1661 Coat of arms
The coat of arms memorializes the Amerindian people of Jamaica. There is a woman bearing a basket of pineapples and a man holding a bow. At school we were taught that they were Arawak. These days, they are Taino. But the subtle distinction is purely academic. The native people of Xaymaca, as the island was once called, are extinct. In their culture, the pineapple symbolized hospitality. Genocide was their reward for the naïve welcome they gave Christopher Columbus. They survive only in the coat of arms and in the modest museum that is dedicated to their history.
Perched above the Taino man and woman is a crocodile. This reptile has fared much better than the indigenous people. Its descendants are still alive. A popular tourist attraction is the Black River safari which allows foolhardy explorers to get up close and personal with crocodiles. An ad for the safari promises: “A smiling crocodile right alongside the boat. You can touch him if you are brave”.
At Independence in 1962, the national motto, enshrined in the coat of arms, was changed to “Out of many, one people”. Though this might at first appear to be a vast improvement on the servile Indies, both East and West, the new motto does encode problematic contradictions. It marginalizes the nation’s black majority by asserting compulsively that the idealized face of the Jamaican nation is multiracial. In actuality, approximately 90% of the population is of African origin; 7% is mixed-race; 3% is European, Chinese and East Indian combined.
It was my high school English teacher, Miss Julie Thorne, who, for me, first interrogated the racial politics of the supposedly unifying motto. She had come from the United Kingdom to teach on an international development program much like the Peace Corps. As an outsider, she could immediately detect the fraudulence of the homogenizing racial myth. She asked us students a rather cynical question. “Out of many, one people? Which one?”
The classic Jamaican film, The Harder They Come, released in 1972, documents the mood of the earlier decade. Optimistic rural youth migrated to Kingston and the smaller towns, looking for fulfillment of the promise of Independence.
On my commemorative plate, there’s a map of Jamaica which highlights Kingston, Spanish Town, Mandeville, Montego Bay and Port Antonio. These were the centres of commerce to which ambitious youth gravitated. Jimmy Cliff, the star of The Harder They Come, sang their hopes:
‘You can get it if you really want,
But you must try, try and try, try and try
You’ll succeed at last’.
Cliff’s lyrics echo a famous 19th century exhortation that has been much spoofed: “‘Tis a lesson you should heed, try, try again. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again”. Schoolchildren in Jamaica memorized that gem. It motivated us to excel. But ‘it’ often proved elusive, especially for the underclass who had no sustained access to formal education even after Independence.
The Jamaican sociologist Orlando Patterson wrote an empathetic novel The Children of Sisyphus, published in 1965, which skillfully recounts the uphill battle of those who tried to make it in Kingston, or ‘Killsome’, as Peter Tosh wittily dubbed the city. The crushing boulders of oppression kept rolling back down. Trapped in a cycle of repetitive failure, pauperised people struggled, nevertheless, to make meaning out of despair.
Reclaiming ancestral traditions of resistance, the urban poor fashioned new languages of survival. Reggae music became the heartbeat of a people who refused extinction. In the words of Bob Marley’s “One Drop”:
“Feel it in the one drop
And we still find time to rap
We making a one stop
The generation gap
So feel this drumbeat as it beats within
Playing a rhythm resisting against the system”.
Reggae music filled the gap between reality and expectations. It articulated the philosophy and opinions of pan-Africanist Marcus Garvey. The reggae drumbeat evoked Rastafari philosophy and livity, a coinage that is the decided antithesis of levity. With biblical authority, Rastafari claimed the coronation of Emperor Haile Selassie in 1930 as fulfillment of the prophecy recorded in Psalm 68:31: “Princes shall come out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God”.
Marley’s conception of reggae as a rhythm of resistance brilliantly traces the lineage of ‘word, sound and power’ that connects African Jamaicans across several generations and to the continent. The deployment of music as a therapeutic weapon of resistance is a long- established tradition in African Jamaican culture.
The abeng, a wind instrument of West African origin made from cow horn, is preserved in Jamaica by the legendary Maroons who emancipated themselves from enslavement. In highly tactical wars of resistance, they defeated the British, asserting their right to self-government. The abeng sounded the alarm, protecting the Maroon strongholds from sudden attack.
The relationship of the Maroons to the wider community of African-Jamaicans is complex. They signed a treaty with the British which demanded that they return belated runaways to plantation slavery. Betrayal of other blacks was the price of their own freedom. It is a familiar tale – divide and rule.
But even on the plantations, maroon traditions of resistance took root. Forced to survive in the very belly of the beast, enslaved
Africans perfected weapons of war from within. Silent poisoning of their supposed masters was a deadly tool. And music, the drumbeat of resistance, was a potent language of communication through which those who were forced to simulate accommodation to servitude were empowered to exercise agency.
The word ‘abeng’ is of Twi origin. This language provided much of the African-derived lexicon of the Jamaican Creole language that is now the mother tongue of most Jamaicans. Devalued by the elite, the language of the majority speaks to the marginality of African culture in the construction of the nation state.
Conversely, cultural icon Louise Bennett, affectionately known as Miss Lou, has used her heart language to affirm Jamaican identity. In her humorous poem “Independance”, [sic], which satirizes the song and dance of the elitist project of constitutional decolonization, Bennett creates a vociferous working-class persona, Miss Mattie, who has a rather grand vision of Jamaica’s geopolitical location:
Jamaican
She hope dem caution worl-map
Fi stop draw Jamaica small.
For de lickle speck cyaan show
We independantness at all!
Moresomever we must tell map dat
We don’t like we position –
Please kindly tek we out a sea
An draw we in de ocean
English
She hopes they’ve warned the mapmakers
To stop drawing Jamaica so small
Because that little speck
Can’t show our greatness at all!
Moreover we must tell the mapmakers
That we don’t like our position –
Would they be kind enough to take us out of the sea
And relocate us in the ocean
Jamaicans are island people with a continental consciousness. We remember our origins across oceans of history. For us, Independence is not just about constitutional rearrangements. It’s in our blood. From Miss Mattie’s perspective:
Jamaican
Independence is we nature
Born an bred in all we do
And she glad fi see dat Government
Tun independent to
English
We are independent by nature
That’s how we’ve been born and bred
And she’s happy to see
That the government has now become independent
Elitist and popular conceptions of the Jamaican character finally converge. Independent is who Jamaica is.
It’s Buju Banton’s 39th birthday today and it ‘hurt mi to mi heart’ that he’s behind bars. Buju should be walking like a champion down Redemption Street. Instead, he’s trapped in Uncle Sam’s conspiracy to derail his career. It’s not an easy road he’s been forced to travel.
The Jamaican poet Lorna Goodison certainly understands the difficult path of the Rastaman as he ‘trods’ through creation. In her poem, “The Road of the Dread”, she declares:
Lorna Goodison
That dey road no pave
like any other black-face road
it no have no definite color
and it fence two side
with live barbwire
And no look fi no milepost
fi measure you walking
and no tek no stone as
dead or familiar
for sometime you pass a ting
you know as . . . call it stone again
and is a snake ready fi squeeze yu
kill yu
or is a dead man tek him
possessions tease yu.
That poem, published in 1980 in Goodison’s first collection, Tamarind Season, uncannily predicts the way in which a snake-in-the-grass squeezed Mark Myrie, teasing him with the possessions of a dead man. That trip to the warehouse to inspect a boat turned out to be a one-way street to catastrophe.
Spreading propaganda
Brought down by a paid informer, Mark Myrie seems to have carelessly forgotten what Buju Banton knows about the ways in which the political systems of the West work to spread propaganda against the innocent. In his prophetic pan-Africanist chant, ‘Til I’m Laid to Rest, on the ‘Til Shiloh album, he details his sense of alienation in the Diaspora and his longing for repatriation.
‘Til I’m laid to rest, yes
Always be depress
There’s no life in di West
I know di East is di best
All di propaganda dem spread
Tongues will ha fi confess
Oh I’m in bondage living is a mess
And I’ve got to rise up alleviate the stress
No longer will I expose my weakness
He who seek knowledge begins with humbleness
Work 7 to 7 yet mi still penniless
Fa di food upon mi table Massa God bless
Holler fi di needy an shelterless
Ethiopia await all prince and princess
A decade ago, when ‘Til Shiloh was released, Buju’s bondage was metaphorical. Today, it’s all too literal. Having foolishly exposed his weakness – running up his mouth with a stranger – Mark Myrie is paying a terrible penalty. He’s facing the prospect of incarceration for fifteen years.
Myrie could have been given a mere three-year sentence if he had yielded to the temptation of a plea bargain. But he has resolutely refused to concede guilt. Some may say he’s foolish to hold out for justice. But those of us who believe in his innocence completely understand why Mark wants his name cleared.
Stamina Daddy and Mr. Mention
‘Til Shiloh was a decisive turning point in the artist’s stellar career. It marked his transition from dancehall DJ to roots reggae Rastafari icon. Buju’s first two albums, Stamina Dadda and Mr. Mention, bothreleased in 1992, are classic dancehall. Most of the tracks focus on sexual love. Buju pays respect to the shape and flexibility of the well-endowed woman in tunes like Mampy Size, Bxtty Rider and Love How the Gal Dem Flex. But it’s not only the woman’s body that Buju admires. It’s also her intelligence and her capacity to make her way in the world: ”Unu move up inna life no doubt about that”.
The early albums also include the exceptional ‘bad-man’ tunes Gun Unnu Want and Man Fe Dead. Assuming the persona of the Hollywood gangster, Buju Banton discharges dangerous lyrics with unbelievable bravado: “Di amount a gun wi have wi can’t run outa stock”; and “Gun shot fi bus up inna informer head”.
But there was also the occasional politically charged song that anticipated Buju’s later preoccupation with social justice. In How the World A Run from the Mr. Mention album, Buju takes up the mantle of the Warner man:
Where food is concerned there is a problem
Uman can’t find food fi gi di children
While di rich man have di chicken back a feed di dog dem
But woe be unto dem
He who rides against poor people shall perish inna di end
Voice of Jamaica, released in 2002, featured even more tunes focusing on social issues: Deportees (Things Change), Operation Ardent and Wicked Act featuring Busta Rhymes.
On tour in France in the 1990s, Buju had a Damascus Road conversion. At the launch of his Rasta Got Soul album at the University of the West Indies, Mona, Buju told a compelling story of the impact of Burning Spear’s performance: “Di man deliver such a set dat if dem never call mi right weh, mi just run come back a Jamaica. So mi inna di dressing room now an mi start tink inna mi self, it start come to me, ‘Mark, you’re not ready for this. No, you’re not. Yu lickle Bxtty Rider an yu lickle Love Mi Browning weak. Dis bigger dan you, man.’”
The very next day, Buju turned to Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry for a spliff and advice: “Lee, mi waan music, Iyah! Weh mi see di I dem a do, an mi see dem a play, mi cyaan, mi mi waan music, man.” This is how ‘Scratch’ responded: “Heh heh heh heh heh! Yu have to go out and make the music that the people can feel wid a humanistic approach.” The result was the masterful Til Shiloh.
Marcus Garvey
‘Til I’m Laid to Rest documents Buju’s trod across Africa and his ‘overstanding’ of Marcus Garvey’s vision of African Redemption:
What coulda bad so bout di East?
Everybody want a piece
Africa fi Africans, Marcus Mosiah speak
Unification outnumber defeat
What a day when we walkin down Redemption Street
Banner pon head, Bible inna hand
One an all mek wi trod di promised land
Buju go down a Congo stop inna Shashamane Land
Di city of Harare is where Selassie come from
In Addis Ababa then Botswana
Left Kenya an end up inna Ghana
Oh, what a beauty my eyesight behold
Only Ethiopia protect me from the cold
Keep the faith, Buju! You’ll soon be walking down Redemption Street again.
Two Sundays ago, when I visited the Shaare Shalom synagogue for the Kingston on the Edge (KOTE) concert, ‘Music Is Sacred’, I got a grand tour of the Museum of Jamaican Jewish history that is located next door. My distinguished guide was Mr Ainsley Henriques, leader of the Jewish community in Jamaica.
The exhibits tell a captivating story of triumphant survival in exile. The display of sacred objects and cultural artefacts was supplemented by Ainsley’s informative commentary. He’s a historian and genealogist with a passion for heritage preservation. In fact, he’s the current chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Jamaica National Heritage Trust.
Schroeter Watercolour of Richmond Estate, 1800
I was somewhat surprised to see that the museum didn’t tell the whole story of Jewish history in Jamaica. The role of Jews in plantation slavery is not documented at all. This silence is troubling especially since so many students visit the museum each year. They end up getting a rather distorted account of Jamaican, not just Jewish, history.
In his prophetic song, “Columbus”, reggae philosopher Burning Spear warns that
“A whole heap a mix up, mix up
A whole heap a bend up, bend up
Go ha fi straighten out”.
Burning Spear was, primarily, contesting the falsehood that Christopher Columbus ‘discovered’ Jamaica:
“I an I all I know
I an I all I say
I an I reconsider
I an I an see upfully that
Christopher Columbus is a damn blasted liar”.
The reconsidering and upfull revisioning that Burning Spear advocates can be applied as well to the many other partial histories we’ve inherited. Especially this year, as we celebrate 50 years of Independence, we must acknowledge Burning Spear’s challenge to set the record straight.
Songs of lamentation
Rembrandt painting of Jeremiah lamenting the destruction of Jerusalem
As it turns out, Jewish people played an undeniable role in plantation slavery in Jamaica. Ironically, Jewish exiles in the strange lands of the so-called ‘New’ World were complicit in the process of enslaving Africans. Forced to sing King Alpha’s song, Africans in the Diaspora found consolation in the sacred book of the Jews. They created their own dub version of Jewish songs of lamentation.
On that score, I got a rather stern response on Facebook to last week’s column, “Rastafari Reclaim Jewish Roots”, from Barbara Blake Hannah: “‘Reclaim’ or ‘share’ Carolyn? ‘Reclaim’ would mean Rastafari originated from Judaism, not Christianity as I&I proclaim. And where were the Rastafari participating in the ‘Nyabinghi’? Seems more like a Red Bones concert in the Synagogue with reggae Rasta artists! You mean to tell me that ‘Selassie is God’ was being chanted by those gathered? If so, sorry I missed the ‘binghi’”.
Of course, ‘reclaim’ does not imply a singular origin. The roots of Rastafari are rhizomatic, like ginger. And I was using binghi metaphorically. But, as I’ve learnt after almost three years of writing this column, some readers are quite suspicious of metaphors, preferring to take everything literally. Barbara insists on a ‘correction’. So, to make her happy, I hereby renounce my use of the metaphor of the binghi. It was, literally, only a concert. And the roots of Rastafari really have nothing in common with ginger.
Movement of Jah people
How Jewish people came to be engaged in plantation slavery in the Caribbean is a rather long and complicated story. The Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition, more popularly known as the Spanish Inquisition, launched a holy war against non-Catholics in 1480. Jews and Muslims were the targets of attack. The tribunal was not abolished until 1834, the very same year that slavery was outlawed in the British Caribbean.
Muslims from North African, who were called Moors, had invaded the Iberian Peninsula in 711 and occupied it for almost 600 years.
The Spanish Inquisition was a belated attempt to purify the land of ‘foreign’ religions. Many Jews supposedly converted to Christianity but practiced Judaism in secret. The Alhambra decree, issued in January 1492, put an end to the pretence. It demanded the expulsion of Jews.
Human trafficking routes
Columbus’ ‘discovery’ opened doors of opportunity for Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal. Many Sephardic Jews went to Brazil where they made fortunes in plantation slavery. According to Ralph Bennett in an essay, “History of Jews in Brazil”, “It is believed that the first sugar cane was brought by a Jewish farmer from Madeira to Brazil in 1532. Sugar cane became the foundation of the Caribbean economy for several centuries”.
First synagogue in the Americas, Recife (1636)
At the end of the fifteenth century, the Pope had imperiously divided the ‘New’ World between the Spanish and the Portuguese. The grasp of the Inquisition reached Jews in Brazil. Many were again forced to convert to Catholicism. But in 1630, the Dutch West India Company captured the city of Recife in the north of Brazil and the religious freedoms enjoyed in Holland were extended to the colony. Jews could now openly practice their religion.
But freedom was short-lived. In 1645 the Portuguese launched war against the Dutch and reclaimed Recife in 1654, round about the same time that Jamaica became a British colony. Jews expelled from Brazil made their way to the Caribbean, first to Barbados and then Jamaica, taking with them the capital and technology of sugar production.
Historian Karl Watson notes that, “Barbados presented opportunities for trade. By the mid-seventeenth century it was quite apparent that the English experiment in creating colonies in the West Indies for the export of tropical crops was working exceptionally well in Barbados. These newcomers were well placed to exploit this burgeoning sugar economy as part of their extensive Sephardic trading network extending from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean”.
The Jewish exile in the Caribbean enabled the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans and the migration of waves of indentured labourers from Europe and Asia. This is the other half of the Jamaican Jewish story that must be told. ‘Jack Mandora mi no choose none’.
Last Sunday evening, a binghi was convened on the sandy ground of the Shaare Shalom synagogue, located downtown at the intersection of Duke and Charles Street. This crossroads, named for British royalty, was transformed into a gateway to the roots of Rastafari. Majestic Nyahbinghi singers and players of instruments celebrated the survival of both Jewish and African people who learned to chant songs of freedom in a strange land.
Grounded in the Bible, much of Rastafari symbolism is rooted in Judaism. Though Rastafari themselves reject ‘ism and schism’, their philosophy and livity owe much to the ‘ism’ of the Jews. Captive Africans in the Americas identified with Jews enslaved in Babylon. Zion became a code word for Africa; and Babylon was the Diaspora.
It was the Melodians who composed and first recorded the Rastafari chant, “By the Rivers of Babylon”, which was adapted from Psalm 137: 1-4.
“By the rivers of Babylon
Where we sat down
And there we wept
When we remember Zion
For the wicked carry us away captivity
Require from us a song
How can we sing King Alpha’s song
In a strange land?”
The holy book of the Jews provided vivid imagery for many other reggae songs, as in Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song”.
“Old pirates, yes, they rob I
Sold I to the merchant ships
Minutes after they took I
From the bottomless pit
But my hand was made strong
By the hand of the Almighty
We forward in this generation
Triumphantly.”
Marley’s lyrics echo Genesis 49:24: “But his bow abode in strength, and the arms of his hands were made strong by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob”.
Shashamane
King Alpha, Emperor Haile Selassie I, empowered Rastafari to refrain from weeping in exile. He facilitated the process of repatriation to the continent of Africa. In 1948, the Emperor set aside 500 acres of his own land for Rastafarians in Jamaica and members of the Ethiopian World Federation Incorporated (EWF), based in the United States, to establish a settlement in Shashamane. The EWF took its mission from Psalm 34:14 – “Depart from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it”.
Kingston on the Edge
The cross-cultural groundation in the synagogue was part of Kingston on the Edge (KOTE), the exhilarating urban arts festival that ended yesterday. First staged in 2007, KOTE continues to cross borders and level barriers. This year’s theme was “Identity The Opened I”. The sacred concert in the synagogue was certainly an eye-opener.
The photograph taken by Stuart Reeves documents the grandeur of the occasion. The sand on the floor is a reminder of the wandering of the children of Israel in the desert for 40 years after they escaped Egypt. It is also a symbol of the divine promise recorded in Genesis 22:17: “That in blessing I will bless you, and in multiplying I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the seashore; and your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies”.
The Spanish Inquisition
During the Inquisition, many Jews were forced to convert to Christianity to escape death. But they continued to practice Judaism in secret – in much the same way that many Christians in Jamaica practice obeah, I suppose. According to legend, the undercover Jews used sand on the floor to muffle the sounds of their prayers.
Behind the magnificent mahogany doors in the synagogue is the sacred space in which the Torah is housed. These doors also provided a towering backdrop for the musicians. Earl ‘Chinna’ Smith, popularly known as ‘Melchizedek, the High Priest of reggae guitar’, was the chief celebrant. The Hebrew word Melchizedek means ‘my king is righteousness’.
Enola Williams photo
All of the ‘Inna de Yard’ musicians who performed with Chinna Smith lived up to their righteous, royal calling: Kiddus I, Cedric Myton, Jesse Royal, to name just a few. Della Manley and Suzanne Couch also performed. After the concert, Ras Sangie confided that it was he who had written “Wake Up and Live”, a song he gave to Bob Marley.
L A Lewis Almost Famous
Other events for this year’s KOTE festival included an Open House with the Rose Town Potters; a short film festival at Red Bones curated by David Morrison; a public forum on “Copyright Laws and the Creative Arts” at the National Gallery. The Kapo Gallery was re-opened last Sunday. One of my favourite Kapo paintings is titled ‘You Are My Plumbubi’. It shows a man and woman tightly locked in an erotic embrace – a divine encounter.
Last Friday evening, the infamous L A Lewis, whose purported signature defaces many public spaces, made his debut as a ‘real-real’ artist at Redbones. Described as a ‘conceptual’ artist, L A created an installation that included, according to the KOTE brochure, “some items that he has ‘actually touched’”.
More conventional artists like David Muir, Maxine Gibson, O’Neal Lawrence, Carol Crichton, Mortimer McPherson, Gisele Gardner, Garfield Morgan, Olivia McGilchrist, Mark Harrison, Ingrid Coke and Inasi also exhibited during the festival.
Thanks to the founders of KOTE – Enola Williams, Beatriz Pozueta, Carolyn Lazarus, Joaquin Portocarero and Omar Francis – we’ve been reminded yet again that, despite all the crime and violence, Kingston is a capital city.
The very popular ‘Reggae Talks’ at the University of the West Indies, Mona continue on Thursday, April 11 at 7:00 p.m. in the Neville Hall lecture theatre (N1). First it was Jah9, then Protoje, then No-Maddz. This week’s speaker is the Swiss reggae artist Cali P who now lives in Jamaica.
