A tongue in cheek piece ‘connecting the dots’ between the arrival of the US Ambassador to Jamaica and a bizarre sequence of events.
Jamaica Observer: Jamaica's Ambassador to the United States, Her Excellency Audrey Marks (left) presents US Ambassador Designate to Jamaica, Pamela Bridgewater, with a book of Jamaican poems entitled 'Soul Dance' by Jamaican author Jean Lowrie-Chin, when she paid a courtesy call on Ambassador Marks at the Embassy of Jamaica on Tuesday, August 24
From time to time I like to undertake what i call ‘Dot connection exercises’. For instance I couldn’t help but notice the sequence of events that preceded and followed the sensational charges recently levied against JLP Deputy Leader James Robertson. Can we read a pattern here?
Someone spraypaints PNP graffiti all over the JLP stronghold of Tivoli Gardens.
Clovis, Jamaica Observer, November 10
According to a Gleaner article “Member of Parliament for West Kingston, Prime Minister Bruce Golding, is demanding answers from the police about who spray-painted pro-People’s National Party (PNP) graffiti on several premises in the communities of Denham Town and Tivoli Gardens Tuesday morning.”
In the days that followed speculation was rife as to who could have marked up the fortress of Tivoli in this manner; was it the residents themselves? was it the Police under whose watch the outrage had occurred?
“The one thing that I will dismiss is that the graffiti that was painted here was done by duppies from over the May Pen Cemetery,” Mr. Golding was reported by the Gleaner as saying.
Nov 14
The Sunday Herald publishes allegations that Deputy Leader of the JLP, Senator James Robertson, took out a contract on the life of Ian Johnson, a loyal activist for the Labour Party. Everyone immediately starts casting aspersions on Johnson’s mental health. Why? A crazy person can’t be targeted for murder? Remember the saying Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you. Just saying… For reasons unknown, Clovis the Observer cartoonist has not yet produced a cartoon depicting this situation.
Nov 16
Montego Bay Mayor Noel Donaldson writes to Prime Minister Golding saying he has recieved death threats from within the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP). He believes that Horace Chang interests are menacing him for supporting rival Christopher Tufton in the party’s leadership race.
Olint boss former foreign exchange trader David Smith was flown from a Turks and Caicos prison to to the US to face 24 charges against him. Pleads not guilty.
On the same day the JFJ (Jamaicans for Justice) calls on govt to correct 100 human rights abuses.
Nov. 19
It is announced that Jamaica has passed the next IMF test though a rocky road is predicted for the future. The last time Jamaica passed an IMF test was in May just before the Tivoli invasion and right after Bruce Golding announced his willingness to hand over Dudus to US federal authorities.
Las May, Sunday Gleaner, November 21, 2010
Also on November 19 there was an unexpected lightning visit by the President of Colombia. Newspapers report that:
President of the Republic of Colombia, Juan Manuel Santos Calderón, hopes the strategies his country used to fight the drug cartel in his country will be of benefit to Jamaica’s crime problem.
Prime Minister Bruce Golding (left) converses with President of Colombia Juan Manuel Santos Calderón shortly after the laying of a wreath at the statue of South American liberator Simón Bolívar at National Heroes Circle yesterday. - Rudolph Brown/Photographer
What next? And do you, like me, detect the hand of the Americans behind all this? Could this be our Manifest Destiny? Is the US just cleaning up its backyard?
Brief coverage of the funeral service for Gregory Isaacs, the Cool Ruler…
Photos: Annie Paul
This week was a brutal one. It started on Monday with the memorial service for Professor Barry Chevannes, whose sudden passing earlier this month took Jamaica by surprise. It ended today with the funeral service for the late Gregory Isaacs, the beloved Jamaican singer whose death a few weeks ago caused his name to trend on Twitter (worldwide) for an entire day. Considering how big Gregory was abroad it was surprising to see how small the crowd that came to send him off in Kingston was. The service was no less a treat for those who took the trouble to attend, myself included.
The star-packed programme ran smoothly and swiftly, with singer after singer performing to a rapturous audience in a rousing prelude to the actual service itself. The National Indoor Sports Centre was by no means filled to capacity but Gregory’s fans and friends sang and danced to his memory in a touching and heartfelt tribute to the cool ruler. It was a mature crowd, very few young folk around; I don’t recall seeing any of the big names in Dancehall there and no LA Lewis wasn’t in attendance…
Gospel singer, Barbara Jones
Ken Boothe, The Tamlins, Shaggy, Freddy McGregor, Judy Mowatt, George Nooks, A. J. Brown, Etana, Ernie Smith and the Nexus Choir were among those who performed while Tommy Cowan emceed the service. An enthusiastic bunch of women commandeered the video light by dancing and singing in the aisles when Nooks and Shaggy performed (see videos below).
Shaggy
Gregory was born in Fletcher’s Land, Kingston.His father was a Garveyite. His aunt, Mrs. Myrtle Shepherd, talked of how Gregory’s mother would dress him in sailor suits as a toddler. Numerous anecdotes were told of Gregory’s wit and good humour. Fond stories were related such as “Gregory used to say Neva bruk a man foot coz u might have to pass him on yr way back so just sprain ‘im ankle…” On another occasion when his room was invaded by enthusiastic fans in an African country where he had performed, he took refuge in someone else’s room after hiding the large sum of money he had earned under the ice machine at the hotel. According to him it was better that it got slightly wet than stolen.
Mikie Bennett once told me that Gregory was a very unassuming man, not given to delusions of grandeur despite his celebrity. When he performed at shows in Jamaica he would arrive early and ask to be allowed to perform soon so that people wouldn’t have to stay till the wee hours of the morning just to hear him. This is why i missed hearing him, when i arrived fashionably late at a Heineken Startime where he was performing, thus blowing my one chance of seeing Gregory Isaacs perform live.
Red roses, flags and Trilby hats were some of the memorabilia on sale outside the venue. On my way out i stopped to buy a Trilby and ended up taking the photo below of a fellow customer who couldn’t decide if he should take a white one or not. The picture convinced him to part with his money much to the vendor’s delight.
I leave you with some YouTube videos of the footage i took of the utterly heartwarming dancing and singing at the Cool Ruler’s funeral today. Have a look. Already in less than two days one of them has been viewed 634 times and the other one 723. We underestimate the interest of the Jamaican diaspora in what is happening back home. The following comments were left on the videos:
missmarjelGive thanks for posting this. It’s really important for those of us that could not be there in person. blessed.
and
MegaSoundkillaDo u have the clip when he Beried under the ground
Unfortunately i don’t have any footage of the burial not having gone to Dovecot for the interment. Incidentally quite a few people are angry that Gregory Isaacs was not given a hero’s funeral at Heroes’ Park and are circulating a petition to remedy this. On the matter of the low attendance at the service a music producer friend thought it might have been due to its being the third event in his honour in the space of a week. Last Thursday there was a huge free concert in his honour which was extremely well attended. I’m glad i went to the funeral service though. There’s nothing to beat the spirits and vibes at a Jamaican funeral anyway, but when its someone popular like Gregory or Bogle, it’s always extraordinary.
I apologize in advance for the abrupt way the videos end. was worried about batteries. Till soon.
Aung Suu Kyi’s release, the Gaza situation, and Jamaican dancehall
Free at last! As i write this the world is celebrating the release of Aung San Suu Kyi, held captive for 15 years by the ruthless military government of Myanmar/Burma. What a moment! There aren’t too many women–or men– like Suu Kyi, willing to sacrifice their freedom of movement in the name of moral principle, something completely lacking in politics today. Suu Kyi is an alumnus of my Alma Mater in Delhi, the venerable Lady Sri Ram College, whose initials, LSR, were said to be synonymous with Love, Sex and Romance for male students at Delhi University. Clearly besides being a source of girlfriend material, LSR has also produced stellar leaders with the moral fibre of the redoubtable Aung San Suu Kyi. I think of her as the Orchid of Steel.
Closer to home and the mundane, my daily trod was enlivened yesterday by a Skype interview with an Israeli journalist, Nirit Ben-Ari, who contacted me last week with the following request:
I will be honored and thankful if you interview with me for the article I am writing for Haaretz newspaper on dancehall culture in Jamaica. I am mainly interested in your interpretation of the term “Gaza” and its possible implication of awareness of global politics. Do you think that the choice of the name “Gaza” represents a political awareness and identification with the underdog? I am also interested in your view on the global “gaze” on dancehall culture and the dangers of misinterpreting and misunderstanding dancehall culture outside of Jamaica. What do you think about the dissemination of dancehall images globally?
In response i sent her the paper i had given at the Reggae Studies Conference earlier this year: Eyeless in Gaza (and Gully): ‘Mi deh pon di borderline’; essentially i was trying to document and comment on the effects of the feud between two of Jamaica’s top DJs, Vybz Kartel (Gaza) and Mavado (Gully) that resulted in the words ‘Gaza’ and ‘Gully’ being spraypainted or otherwise inscribed on surfaces all over Kingston, but also in places like Trinidad, Barbados as well as Brooklyn, London and the generalized Jamaican diaspora. I excerpt a relevant bit from my paper below:
Etymology of ‘Gaza’ in the Jamaican context
It is commonplace in Jamaica for impoverished urban areas to be informally named after locations known globally as war zones. Thus there are locales named ‘Angola’, ‘Tel Aviv’, ‘Vietnam’ and of course ‘Gaza’. In a widely publicized interview between Cliff Hughes, a prominent local journalist, and Vybz Kartel on TV Jamaica’s Impact which aired on November 12, 2009, Hughes asked Kartel why he had chosen the name Gaza for his area, and what the frequently uttered phrase ‘Gaza mi seh’ meant. Kartel who often refers to himself in the third person responded:
“’Gaza mi seh’ means ‘Fight for what you believe in against all odds, against all adversity.’ When I left the Alliance Vybz Kartel came under so much pressure, I said to Black Rhino and others we need to form a group. But we need a perfect name. The first war was just happening in Gaza, Israel was bombarding them but the people were fighting back regardless, and Vybz Kartel said to Laing (Isaiah Laing, prominent promoter associated with the annual Sting show), we’re going to use that name coz it means to me–dem people deh serious and dem nah back down.”
Indeed. Just like Aung San Suu Kyi. She nah back down needa. Interestingly, Kartel steered clear of the reason he felt obliged to look for a suitable name for the Portmore community associated with him, in the first place. The backstory is an interesting one umbilically connected to the complicated discourse around masculinity and sexuality in Jamaica. Yet the details of why the community of Borderline in Portmore came to be rechristened ‘Gaza’ is one the media had never considered noteworthy enough to mention let alone dwell on.
But back to yesterday, I can’t tell you how cool it was to be sitting in my living room in Kingston talking directly to Nirit in Tel Aviv, complete with images of ourselves and the rooms we were in. Viva Skype!
Nirit explained that she had wanted to read Carolyn Cooper and Donna Hope’s books on dancehall culture but they weren’t available in Tel Aviv and she had ordered them on Amazon but hadn’t recieved them yet. In the meantime someone referred her to my blog which is why she asked me to help her with the background on the use of the word ‘Gaza’ in dancehall culture. Interestingly Nirit works for an NGO named Gisha “an Israeli not-for-profit organization, founded in 2005, whose goal is to protect the freedom of movement of Palestinians, especially Gaza residents.”
How do you get from Gaza to Ramallah? Play "Safe Passage"
Like Aung San Suu Kyi the Palestinians have had their freedom of movement severely curtailed by the state of Israel. As the Gisha website explains:
Since the 1967 occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Israel’s military has developed a complex system of rules and sanctions to control the movement of the 3.4 million Palestinians who live there. The restrictions violate the fundamental right of Palestinians to freedom of movement. As a result, additional basic rights are violated, including the right to life, the right to access medical care, the right to education, the right to livelihood, the right to family unity and the right to freedom of religion.
Gisha, whose name means both “access” and “approach,” uses legal assistance and public advocacy to protect the rights of Palestinian residents. Because freedom of movement is a precondition for exercising other basic rights, Gisha’s work has a multiplier effect in helping residents of the occupied territories access education, jobs, family members and medical care.
Funnily Nirit told me that a Palestinian friend of hers got a chance to spend two months in Jamaica and was exulting at the thought of getting away from it all to a tropical island far from the rigours of life in Gaza, only to arrive in Kingston and find the word ‘Gaza’ graffiti-ed all over the city. You can read the first person account of Lisa Hanania’s visit to Kingston here.
Vybz Kartel was certainly aware of and sympathetic to the Palestinian cause but sympathetic is actually too weak a word to describe the admiration he expressed for the people of Gaza in that interview with Cliff Hughes: “…dem people deh serious and dem nah back down” and “’Gaza mi seh’ means ‘Fight for what you believe in against all odds, against all adversity.’” On the other hand i’m not sure how widespread Kartel’s view of the Palestinians is. Could one say that most of Dancehall’s ‘core constituents’ (to use Ragashanti’s apt term) are sympathetic to those ‘trapped in Gaza’? I don’t know.
What i do know is that Jamaican dancehall’s focus on Gaza has had an interesting ripple effect. When i tweeted a few days ago about being contacted by an Israeli journalist about the name Gaza in the Jamaican context one of my tweeple, Sweden-based @johannakey said “I’ve done a story on the same subject. There’s a Swedish song about it here.” The song Real Gaza mi seh! is so addictive i can’t get it out of my head. It’s a beautiful song, in which connections are made between Gaza, the curtailment of Palestinian civil liberties and universal oppression, using the vehicle of dancehall and the refrain “If you kill one of us, you kill all of us…the whole world is Gaza mi seh”. Listen to it below:
Eyes of the world pon the Gaza mi seh…
Well dem say Gully, dem say Gaza dem say Congo and Kinshasa Everywhere i turn i see pure passa passa I remember Kid Frost used to talk about La Raza It’s all tribal war people can’t take it no longer
Hopefully one day the residents of Gaza will–like Aung San Suu Kyi–regain their freedom. Till then Gaza mi seh!
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