Information famine on Patrick Powell, the suspected X6 killer
Patrick Powell remains a masked mystery figure...
See just as i thought! If Jamaican newspapers were serious they would have had the story all ready and waiting to roll out the moment the police charged Patrick Powell with murder. Everything you ever wanted to know about the mystery suspect; Who exactly is Patrick Powell? What makes him tick? They would tell us how he made his m/billions; how many cars he has; how many children; details of the crime his son is charged with; photos of his house, wife and workplace. Tell us why on earth this man is so powerful! And more!
Serious newspapers/media entities have obituaries on political leaders, business moguls, socialites, the glitterati–ready and waiting to trot out in case one of them suddenly kicks the bucket. They do that for major news stories such as that of the X6 killer too but not in Jamaica it seems–there is woefully little in the papers today about Patrick Powell and who he really is. I mean not even the Star has anything!
Apparently Powell, who has connections to the entertainment industry in Jamaica is also known as Nigga Charlie…
Perhaps we’ll find a Patrick Powell info feast in the Sunday papers? Let’s hope so. I’m certainly looking forward to my copy of the Herald…
Patrick Powell finally charged with murder and a battery of other charges…
The man charged with Khajeel Mais's murder, Patrick Powell, beside his precious X6
Finally! Patrick Powell, first mentioned by the Sunday Herald, as the man who owned the X6 involved in Khajeel Mais’s killing, has been charged by the police. Now could the mainstream media provide us with the full 100? This case will go down in history as the one that completely exposed the fecklessness of Jamaican media. Fine watchdogs they are! Too fraid to bark! and toothless on top of it!
The Herald may barely be hobbling along but it has all its teeth and doesn’t hesitate to use them, which is why it’s forced to hobble…
The Rebekah Brooks arrest shows up the ineffectualness of Jamaican media
Leon Neal/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images: Rebekah Brooks, the former Chief Executive of News International,on July 1, 2011, at Wimbledon
As if to underscore the point made in my last post–that it was disingenuous of Jamaican media to make excuses for their refusal to identify the names of prime suspects by blaming the police for not releasing their names (as if the police are the only means to get access to information about them!) –a classic example of what I mean has just unfurled in Britain with the arrest of former Murdoch media head Rebekah Brooks. The British police didn’t identify her either–but this hasn’t kept the media there from verifying and announcing the arrest (see story below).
What then keeps Jamaican media from doing the same? Why does the public here put up with this nonsense?
Incidentally @ravisomaiya, one of the authors of the NYT article below tweeted the following this morning:
Everyone I’ve spoken to since the news broke suggests #Brooks will use the arrest to avoid questions in Parliament. #NotW
British Police Arrest Rebekah Brooks in Phone Hacking
By ALAN COWELL and RAVI SOMAIYA Published: July 17, 2011
LONDON — The British police on Sunday arrested Rebekah Brooks, the former head of Rupert Murdoch’s media operations in Britain, according to a former associate at News International, the newspaper group at the heart of a phone-hacking scandal convulsing the Murdoch empire, the British political elite and the police.
A police statement did not identify her by name but said a 43-year-old woman had been detained for questioning by officers investigating both the phone-hacking scandal and payments made to corrupt police officers. A News International official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, confirmed that Ms. Brooks had been arrested.
Britain’s Press Association news agency said she was arrested by appointment at a London police station at approximately midday and remains in custody.
The terse Metropolitan Police statement went thus:
“The MPS [Metropolitan police service] has this afternoon, Sunday 17 July, arrested a female in connection with allegations of corruption and phone hacking.
“At approximately 12.00 a 43-year-old woman was arrested by appointment at a London police station by officers from Operation Weeting [phone hacking investigation] together with officers from Operation Elveden [bribing of police officers investigation]. She is currently in custody.
“She was arrested on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications, contrary to Section1(1) Criminal Law Act 1977 and on suspicion of corruption allegations contrary to Section 1 of the Prevention of Corruption Act 1906.
“The Operation Weeting team is conducting the new investigation into phone hacking.
“Operation Elveden is the investigation into allegations of inappropriate payments to police. This investigation is being supervised by the Independent Police Complaints Commission.
“It would be inappropriate to discuss any further details regarding these cases at this time.”
Jamaican police statements no doubt end with a similar caution. The problem is our media treats this as some kind of divine order rather than a suggestion. Nary another word issues from them on the matter. Some people think this may be because of our libel laws, slavishly copied (like the buggery law) from British libel law. But if the British media doesn’t find their libel law a shackle on their ability to publish information of public interest why does it have this gagging effect on media here? Have their laws been modified? If so can we modify ours to match posthaste? Mimicry has never been a problem before…
Seet deh? I rest my case. can we now agree that Jamaican media has been wantonly derelict in its duty to inform the public?
Jamaican media’s vow of silence is ruminated upon…and speculated about.
Front page of Murdoch-owned Times a couple of days ago
Kudos to James Harding, editor of The Times (UK) for his newspaper’s coverage of the Murdoch empire’s embarrassing collapse. Despite the fact that his paper is owned by the one and only Rupert Murdoch Harding has treated the story as if it were a regular news item and given it front page coverage as any self-respecting newspaper should.
What do you want to bet that this would never happen with our two leading papers were the news stories about the respective business empires that own and fund them? Hell these are media entities that refrain from naming names even when you’re the prime suspect in a murder case–unless of course you happen to live below Crossroads in which case they splash your name around with abandon. In fact in the instant case of the seismic events shaking up the Murdoch-owned media subsidiaries the story would probably go like this if they involved a local magnate:
Day of atonement as media chiefs quit
July 16 2011 12:01AM
The publisher of one of the island’s leading dailies, Mr. Nobody, issued a series of abject apologies and heralded sweeping changes to his newspaper business yesterday as he sought to repair the damage of the phone-hacking scandal. The media mogul and chief executive parted company with two longstanding allies in a clearout of senior executives. Hours after accepting the resignation of Editor-in-chief, Ms Anonymous, at Newspaper X, the leading businessman also bade farewell to #Itwasn’tme, the chief executive of ZZZ, publisher of The ABC. Whereas the resignation of Ms Anon as chief executive of Newspaper X appeared inevitable, the departure of #Itwasn’tme, who has served the media giant on both sides of the Caribbean for more than 50 years, was a surprise. Please stay tuned for further updates on these cataclysmic events…
A friend who shall–in keeping with the craze for anonymity–remain nameless, said he thought that the real news was to be gleaned from the social columns of the leading papers, which we also won’t name, in case they sue us. The fact is that there’s absolutely no danger of a News of the World type scandal happening here because far from hacking into people’s phones to get the full story our media routinely averts its gaze from the crucial stories affecting us plying us instead with a choice selection of press releases from the corporate world.
Fortis Pavilion at Khajeel Mais' Funeral: courtesy Edgar Lewis
Up to now we don’t have a comprehensive printed account of what is going on in the case of the X6 killer, though the alleged owner/driver of the car, Patrick Powell, has been arrested. We also heard on radio that Mr. Powell has refused, on the instructions of his attorney, Patrick Atkinson, to speak or explain anything. He has also apparently refused to turn over his firearm for examination. The Gleaner also issued a stern editorial advising the Police Commissioner to release details of the raid of the home of a senior police officer in connection with the same killing. One doesn’t get the impression that the police not naming the leading suspect or the policeman whose house was raided would have kept the British media from unearthing those names and publishing them along with more detail than you could possibly want.
On the contrary island journalism ensures that literally little or nothing is known about this senior cop and what his connection to the case might be nor is any real information available from the newspapers of record about the alleged killer of the young schoolboy. Powell is to face an ID parade next week approximately 3 weeks since the killing of Khajeel Mais, who was buried today. What are the chances that anyone will be able to remember well enough to accurately identify Powell as the shooter in question? Meanwhile news broke yesterday that the Supreme Court of Jamaica had overturned the amendment to the bail act of July 2, 2010, ruling that it was/is unconstitutional. Speculation is rife as to the effects this might have on the X6 case.
Meanwhile I drove on Barbican Road today and noticed that in the area of Grants Pen Ave the road has been completely resurfaced, a sure sign that elections are looming. As a Facebook friend (who shall remain faceless) announced the other day:
Notice: The General Elections are upon us, with it comes several job opportunities – “person to call talk shows”, “person to write letters to editors”, “persons to peacefully block roads” & several others. Interested persons can send CV to my Inbox with a $500 processing fee. Thanks.
Syria’s Hafez Assad was a brutal despot who ruled the country with an iron fist and a 65,000-strong secret police force for 20 years. When he died, his son Bashar took over and is today fighting a growing insurgency. A joke that did the rounds in Hafez Assad’s time seems pertinent. One of his aides informed him, “Mr President, you won the election with a 99.7 percent majority. That means only three-tenths of 1 per cent of the people did not vote for you. What more could you ask for?”
Assad’s reply: “Their names.”
You would think we lived in Syria, judging by the vow of silence that seems to prevail in the media here. SMH, it seems the ‘informer fi dead’ culture has strangled journalism in Jamaica for good. There is little or no freedom of information in this island.
A response to the statement by Senior Jamaican police officer Bailey about the role of homosexuals in crime here.
Clovis, Jamaica Observer, July 13, 2011
The news media in Jamaica continues to score high on the #fail scale. Yesterday several media entities reported that Senior Superintendent Fitz Bailey had announced that young gay men were behind most organised crime in Jamaica. If you watch the video below you will hear Bailey explaining that what he said was that 80-90% of the culprits arrested for the infamous lottery scam which has generated an alarming number of murders in recent years were homosexuals.
Bailey never said anything about organized crime. He was very specific, he was talking about the Lottery Scam and the high number of homosexuals implicated in it.
“I have empirical data to support that. We have the responsibility to investigate these cases (and) we’re not targeting any specific group or saying people should go and attack anyone. All I’m talking about is the profile of the individuals (involved in the lottery scam) just like we talk about the profile of persons who are involved in child sexual exploitation,” SSP Bailey stated Tuesday evening, July 12, on RJR’s daily current affairs discussion programme Beyond The Headlines.
What empirical data is he talking about? According to an interview Bailey gave on Newstalk 93FM this morning the criminals self-identify as homosexual when they are charged so that they can be protected from hostile, gay-hating inmates in prison. Bailey said there was even one ‘area leader’ or don who declared his sexuality openly when arrested. For some reason this puts me in mind of something Marlon James told me in an interview I did with him on The Silo six or so months ago–that he was fascinated by the idea of balletic young [Jamaican] men dancing, machine gun in hand as it were. Here’s a few outtakes from that interview:
–you need the person firing the short sharp shots–the jackhammer–but you also need the person who can survey coz jackhammers can’t heal–
–you need the nuanced take as well…the nuanced take is just as important as the polemic…
–my new novel is about killers, in fact its about the killers of killers…something i’ve always been fascinated by–the people who do the actual killing, not the ones who decide on a hit–
–its funny–you go to Passa Passa (the most hardcore event on the dancehall calendar), there was one guy–you know jamaican dancehall moves are very sort of graceful, almost effeminate, i know i’m going to get killed for this but its very ornate and very delicate…and somebody pointed him out to me and said y’know that’s one of the biggest gunmen out here–this whole idea of the super graceful killer, i find it fascinating, you know? almost like a ballet dancer who kills on the weekend…
So its not true that Bailey’s statement, abhorrent as it may seem, was based on observing such superficial tendencies as clothing, mannerisms and speech patterns on the part of the criminals the police had apprehended in the Lottery Scam or the credit/debit card scams–it was based on the high number of those arrested who told the police that they were gay! And as Bailey further explained this was not surprising because if gay prisoners are not kept separate from the straight prisoners it could result in tragedy as it did in 1997 when 16 homosexual prisoners were brutally killed in anti-gay prison riots.
This morning I recieved an email from an old friend. I quote it verbatim for what its worth:
Remember that 60s slogan “I’m Black and I’m Proud?”
Its back with a twist.re: Policeman’s statement that gays are open about their orientation and not hiding it. He said they are major players in lottery scam and Credit Crad/Debit card scam. Also said last kidnapped victim was tortured:
I do believe that the gays are “Gay and Proud” and not afraid to flaunt it.
They are not hiding anymore, at least not the younger, effeminate ones.
We had a couple in our community who would flaunt it in your face, sat on verandah in female panties and bra, ran down one another with machete, had female names for each other, had male only parties, cross dressed, made passes at the census taker and the male teens, prostitution.
Anyway they were sent on their way.
Sure others are still here, male and female but those behave without violence toward one another nor threats to the neighbours.
They moved nearby and started the whole thing all over again so the neighbours marched on their residence.
The situation has changed so Gomes/Jamaicans for Justice must keep up.
I think that before we can proceed all sides need to be heard. The gay rights position has been articulated loudly, clearly and frequently, bolstered by the muscle of international gay rights organizations. It’s time to listen to what some Jamaicans are saying about why they are often driven to hostile thoughts and actions. The fact is that the behaviour described in the email above would attract the same reaction were it heterosexuals who were causing such problems instead of homosexuals.
I end by quoting the kind of nuanced take Marlon James probably had in mind when he mentioned it in that interview. It’s by my dear friend Kei Miller, whose sharp new blog Under the Saltire Flag has considerably enriched the blogosphere in recent times:
Elephant Man’s 2001 hit ‘Log On’ has always seemed to me to contain contradictory instructions. On the one hand he encourages us to ‘log on’ – to actively participate in the new virtual world of the internet, and perhaps more broadly, to sign up to the future (quite literally, for the act of logging on often requires a name and a password). On the other hand he asks that we ‘step pon chi-chi man’ – that we continue in a posture of virulent homophobia, a regressive attitude which most will agree is incompatible with this other idea of progress.
Unsurprisingly, the song drew the ire of international human rights activists. Yes yes – that again! If you’ve begun to roll your eyes, I can forgive you, because it truly is a tiresome issue. About this, I have always been conflicted. On the one hand I support the idea that basic human rights should be extended to each and every citizen, and wherever this is culturally ambiguous, the law should be made to underline these rights clearly.
On the other hand I feel that a lot of the international human rights campaigns have been compromised by a deep contempt for the societies on whose behalf they campaign.
Look – people are not idiots. There is what a man says, and then again, there is what he actually means. Most people are fully capable of hearing beyond the noise of the first, to the subtlety of the second. So when an activist, in London for instance, says, ‘Oh this is outrageous! Jamaica really ought to protect the rights of its most vulnerable citizens, especially members of the glbt community!’ … what Jamaicans actually hear (and they are usually right) is: ‘Oh Jamaica, how I pity you! You primitive, savage and barbaric people! Also, I would like you to know that I am better than you!’
You know, it really is contemptuous that a country that took a few hundred years to ‘progress’ in its own attitudes should feel that the rest of the world (very often her former colonies saddled with her discarded laws and her old ideas of morality) should be ‘up to de time’ as soon as she is. And it is a very hard thing for the people of a former colony to accept lessons in human rights from people who for centuries had denied them theirs.
Jamaican attitudes towards homosexuality are shifting. Those who militate on behalf of gay rights here and elsewhere need to respond to this, rather than to non-existent straw men.
Double standards in Jamaican media: an update on the X6 killer, Chinese restaurant in mandeville etc
Excuse us while we crow a bit!
Well, well, well–how interesting! An article in today’s Gleaner ‘Puzzle over lack of name in X6-killer probe’ follows up on several of the issues raised in my last post without even a nod in the direction of Active Voice. Here’s a quote from that article:
Police investigators probing the death of 17-year-old schoolboy Khajeel Mais have been accused of double standards for their decision not to release the identity of the alleged BMW X6 killer as a person of interest.
Julian Jones-Griffiths, the manager for dancehall star Mavado (real name David Brooks), who has twice been listed as a person of interest, said this move by the police is “unfathomable” given the evidence they have already collected and the haste with which other individuals are identified.
Does any of this ring a bell? Never mind, we won’t take offence, it just goes to show the influence of this blog, that the major newspaper in the island seems to follow in its footsteps. In fact I’ll treat it as a compliment. Thanks Old Lady of North Street!
Meanwhile the Observer carries an article today about a man fitting the description they published yesterday of the putative X6 killer to a T, a Chris Kerr, who wants to establish that he is NOT a suspect in the case. See? This is what happens when you refuse to name the person being investigated by the police; in protecting his identity you expose a wide range of people who superficially fit the description to speculation and innuendo. How does that make any sense?
Similarly in the case of the Chinese restaurant in Mandeville rather than naming the restaurant concerned, after it was established that 14 people fell ill after eating there, the public was warned to be wary of eating at any Chinese restaurant in the area!
The ‘restaurant of interest’ has attracted far more negative publicity by pulling strings to keep its name from the public than it would have if it had humbly apologized for the incident, reimbursed the patrons who fell ill and paid their hospital bills. At the moment it isn’t clear if those who suffered the consequences of eating contaminated fried rice have been compensated in any way for this. It has also exposed all the Chinese restaurants in the Mandeville area to the suspicion of patrons who are rightfully wary of eating at any of them.
The threat of being outed in the media is the only recourse hapless members of the public have when they become victims of wrongdoing–even if the damage was unintentional. In a similar case a group of friends who had food poisoning after eating at TGIF in Kingston some weeks ago had to resort to exposing the incident on local media (fortunately one of them is a journalist himself and could broadcast the information on his show without having to rely on the tender mercies of our news media) before they suddenly got calls from the head office in Trinidad and Tobago apologizing profusely and refunding their money including tips! Till then the local management of TGIF had arrogantly refused to refund the money spent!
On a considerably more depressing note the security guard mentioned in my previous post, who was accused of killing his wife and mother-in-law was set upon by a mob who hacked him to death, ‘limbed’ him and burnt the remains. This is the man whose identity the Observer blithely revealed while coyly concealing the name of the person of interest in the X6 killing.
Breaking news: Yesterday’s post on Active Voice is breaking all previous records for number of hits, with 3,030 page views since this morning. Today has been the busiest day on my blog with a total of 3,720 views, breaking the previous record held by Cake Soap and Creole of 1,167 hits.
Also the Observer is announcing that the suspected X6 killer has been arrested on re-entry into the island. His name however is still being withheld!
Answers some questions about the owner of the BMW X6 whose driver killed a 17 yr old Jamaican and why his identity is being protected by the media, police, church and government.
November 6, 2011
UPDATE! For readers searching for information about the Sunday Herald you can tune in to my interview with the chairman of the board Rev Garnett Roper about what’s happening with the Sunday Herald at 9 am Jamaican time on Newstalk 93FM, it streams live on the internet at http://newstalk.com.jm/LiveStream.htm. Back to my July 10 post below….
…
I’ve been very irregular with updating this blog. Largely this is because in February this year I started doing two weekly radio programmes, Double Standards and The Silo, on Newstalk 93. Coupled with my full time job at the University of the West Indies this leaves me with very little spare time. Something had to give and alas, its been Active Voice…
Double Standards, which I co-host with Yvette Rowe, a BBC-trained radio and TV broadcaster attempts to give listeners a more in-depth, analytical sense of issues in the news, both locally and globally. We also look at media coverage in general, pinpointing where we think it’s biased or employing a double standard, or just plain inadequate, leaving the public ill-informed, in the dark or providing it with little more than a succession of press releases. In the last week or two there’ve been so many instances of this that we can barely keep up.
For instance the cover page headline in today’s Observer, one of the two main daily newpapers in Jamaica, blares ‘Who is the X6 Killer?’ The question relates to the leading article in the paper, illustrated by the image below, about a killing that has shocked the country.
About two weeks ago Khajeel Mais, a 17-year old schoolboy travelling in a taxi, was shot dead by the driver of a BMW X6 which the taxi had accidentally grazed. In an apparent act of road rage the BMW driver leapt out of his vehicle and proceeded to fire at the taxi, which turned and tried to flee. One of the bullets entered the head of the unfortunate 17-year old killing him immediately.
Since then it has emerged that the owner of the luxury car is a highly connected businessman with ties to top policemen as well as politicians. No doubt this is why its driver felt empowered enough to attack the taxi in the brazen way that he did. No doubt this is why the major media houses here are scared to name either owner or driver. We don’t even know if they were one and the same or different.
All week long rumours have been flying about the murderous X6 driver to the effect that the man had left the country within hours of the shooting and that a senior cop with connections to the driver had been caught concealing information pertinent to the case. Although the policeman’s name has been mentioned at least once in a television news broadcast I saw, the alleged shooter’s identity, as well as the name of the owner of the car, have carefully been kept from the public in much the same way that the name of a Chinese restaurant in Mandeville, whose fried rice sickened at least 14 patrons, sending some to hospital, has been punctiliously withheld from the public.
What’s the deal here?
According to the Observer:
While the name of the alleged shooter cannot be published because he has not been charged with a crime, there are some things the Sunday Observer can report about him, based on interviews with persons who have intimate knowledge of him.
Clearly the newspaper IS in a position to divulge the name of the suspect, or the ‘person of interest’ to use a technical term, judging by the wealth of detail it goes on to provide about him. He’s “of dark complexion”, is a Canadian citizen and “has deep ties with both major political parties, though he is said to have greater loyalty to the Opposition People’s National Party”.
The murder suspect — who is a real estate developer and who is said to have enormous wealth — is also linked to other major local figures from the criminal underworld, while maintaining “very deep” connections with senior members of the Jamaica Constabulary Force.
The suspect, who over the years has kept a low profile, is said to have real estate developments in several posh St Andrew communities, including Liguanea and Norbrook.
Additionally, he’s said to have developments along Red Hills Road and owns several other multi-million-dollar properties in the Constant Spring area of St Andrew, among others.
He’s also the owner of a private jet.
The claim that the paper can’t publish the name of the suspect because “he has not been charged with a crime” is a crock of shit; this has never kept them from trumpeting the names of other less influential ‘suspects’ who have yet to be charged with a crime. In the very same paper there is another story: Security guard sought in mother-daughter murder:
A security guard is being sought by the Savanna-la-Mar police following the killing of two women and the injury of their neighbour during a dispute in Farm District, Westmoreland yesterday.
The accused has been identified as 25-year-old Roche Tomlinson.
The guard who is on the run, is yet to be charged with the murder, yet the paper boldly tells us his name! (omg! news has just broken that the security guard was killed and dismembered, then set ablaze by vigilantes, wonder if this has anything to do with his name being called?) Similarly some months ago Jamaican media, including the Observer had no qualms about bandying about the names of Vybz Kartel and Mavado when the two were taken in by the police for questioning as ‘persons of interest’ in crimes we are yet to be informed about. Mavado even complained of the resulting damage to his reputation but its not clear what compensation if any he has recieved. The same goes for Kartel who was kept in the lockup for two weeks prompting him to appear on stage at last year’s Reggae Sumfest in handcuffs and prison uniform.
Photo of Kartel: Marcia Forbes
spraggabenz
And only a couple of months ago we heard all over the media that DJ Spragga Benz was wanted for questioning by the police in connection with a triple murder. Apparently nothing came of it because he’s out and about. Has he been compensated for damage to his reputation? The answer is a resounding NO. Talk about double standards!
Well, guess what? The Sunday Herald names the owner of the car, calmly and without any fanfare, in a short news item titled “Police awaiting forensic tests on BMW X6”. It’s Patrick Powell. Of course we don’t know whether this was in fact the car that was involved in the accident, nor do we know, even if it was the car, that the owner was driving it at the time of the shooting.
But why is it only the Herald that had the balls to come out and name the owner of the car which is being investigated by the police? That’s what i want to know. More power to them! Again from Twitter: RT @JustSherman: Jamaica Observer and Gleaner couldn’t cross it, but the Jamaica Herald can swim #onlyrealjamaicannewpaper
Bestselling Indian writer Chetan Bhagat offends with a sophomoric Father’s Day tweet, leading to a broader discussion on propriety, respect, public expression and the like.
@chetan_bhagat Who cares if activist A has 20 mistresses or activist B is a gangster? The govt is corrupt and we need good laws.That’s it.
@PritishNandy I agree entirely. However, next time, dont call me activist A. My name will do fine.
@chetan_bhagat but all ur mistresses names won’t fit in a tweet. Pritish’s angels?
@PritishNandy Sounds good. Though few of them are angels, trust me.
At his best Chetan Bhagat (“the biggest selling English language novelist in India’s history” acc to the NYT), is a nimble, adroit tweeter, amusing to follow, with punchy exchanges aplenty, like the one above between himself and senior Man of Letters, Pritish Nandy.
Today he annoyed quite a few with a sophomoric tweet: Mothers give birth, but the coke belongs to the guy who puts the coin in the vending machine.Happy Fathers’ Day! “Don’t you feel ashamed of yourself?” demanded an irate @Taslimanasreen, the outspoken Bangladeshi author.
“I shudder to think how @chetan_bhagat wishes his mom on Mother’s Day,” remarked @rimeswithcya while @sidin quipped: I don’t know about vending machines. I have plenty of ‘self service’ jokes.
“At some point in time, the engg college hostel jokes should stop #notestoself” tweeted a chastened Bhagat after being berated left, right and centre.This was followed by a slightly bitter observation on his part: Amazing how a silly locker room joke causes outrage, but songs with expletives air on radio and painting gods naked is art expression.
Which last point I plan to expand on in my next post…it deserves a debate, the matter of MF Husain and his portrayal of Hindu deities…I don’t think we–secularists–can realistically argue for absolute freedom of expression to demolish people’s sacred cows in the name of an increasingly arcane concept termed ‘ART’. As @chetan_bhagat himself tweeted a few days ago: Does being secular mean not listening to the Hindu point of view, at all? Its a point worth considering–are secularists so intolerant that they’re violating their own liberal principles with their knee-jerk rejection of Hindu objections?
More on all this in my next post as I said. Meanwhile we in Jamaica had our own brand of irrational Father’s Day exuberance when popular singjay @MrVegasMusic saluted the day with: Big up to all a the fathers dem inna prison weh kill a man fi dem yute. I would too.
A drought of festivals in Jamaica, as one after the other the best ones dry up…Calabash, Kingston on the Edge…
Seen en route to Treasure Beach...
It’s been over four weeks since I updated this blog. This has never happened before; its not that I’ve lost interest, I just didn’t feel an overwhelming urge to say anything in this space. Part of it is that with two weekly radio programmes to produce in addition to all the things i normally do (The Silo and Double Standards on Newstalk 93FM, Jamaica) I have less spare time than i (n)ever had before.
Also, the time of year when you start the slide into summer came earlier this year. It used to start with going to Calabash Literary Festival in Treasure Beach towards the end of May, followed by the Caribbean Studies Association Conference, wherever it happened to be–this year in Curacao–and then various other conferences, symposia and events at UWI in June, capped by my fave “urban fringe festival” Kingston on the Edge (KOTE), and before you knew it it was July.
Lyric, lovely Lyric...
Instead this year it all started with Bocas Lit Fest in Trinidad which was the stuff of my last two posts and then the first May in ten years without Calabash. Although several pretenders jumped with indecent haste into the void left by the sudden absence of this rollickingly good literary festival none could hold even a tenth of a candle to it. Having made our bookings a year in advance my friend Faith Smith and I spent Calabash week ensconced at Lyric, the cottage i always stay at year after year, and took a proper vacation–nothing like being served breakfast by the seaside–and then doing nothing but read, write and talk. Great break.
Breakfast at Lyric, Faith in background...Batter fried bacon!
My problem with the replacement festivals was their lack of ambition, which was the very thing about Calabash that was so remarkable. Calabash aimed to bring together a group of GREAT writers, local and foreign, or newsworthy writers at the very least, in a setting that was at once international and local in scope. It was an exemplar of good timing and organization especially after the teething pains of the early years. Oh yes, there were things you could disagree with them on, but Calabash was a case study in successful festival staging year after year, elements permitting.
Its been a blow that on the heels of the retirement of Calabash from the annual calendar another great little festival–KOTE–has also suspended activity for the year. Held in the third week of June for the last 3-4 years KOTE was an exciting addition to Kingston’s cultural life. Organized by a few enterprising thirty-somethings, of whom Enola Williams and Omar Francis stand out, KOTE was for me an innovative intervention by the younger generation into the aging, creaky almost bureaucratic cultural landscape in place these last few decades.
I had always been struck by the mutually exclusive, colour-coded enclaves of aesthetic expression in Kingston where the literary crowd rarely went to art events, artists were rarely seen at literary affairs, musicians remained in their own circle, as did dancers, actors and all the other cultural actors as if there were walls preventing them from moving back and forth. KOTE tore down those walls, mixing dance with art, theatre with music, poetry with song, film with food and bringing the young out in droves. Their Theatre on the Edge evening with its 8 x 10, 8 ten minute plays was something to queue up for, as was their Dance on the Edge where i first came across the incredibly talented Neila Ebanks (having heard about her for years).
This was made entirely from cardboard. EMSVA grad show.from Edna Manley Graduation Show
KOTE creatively wove the End of the Year graduation show at Edna Manley College each year into the programme, and shows at several of Kingston’s sleepy art galleries. The graduation show this year has a couple of must-sees by the way–I was particularly impressed by the student who produced a really sharp shoe coffin, and a series of ‘death bins’. Deighton Abbott I think his name was. His studies for the project were outstanding as well.
Shoe Coffin
KOTE is a local festival in the best sense of the word…I look forward to its return as and when it decides to reappear. Trying to replace Calabash with the rash of pseudo-festivals that clamoured for our attention was like trying to replace the Havana Biennale with the Liguanea Art Festival, or Reggae Sumfest with the August Town Independence Day Bash…Don’t assume that because i’ll go out of my way to go to Calabash or Bocas or KOTE that i’ll happily accept anything that proclaims itself a literary festival but seems to include everything but exceptional writers.
Finally you may be interested in going to see the documentary “Bad Friday” which chronicles the traumatic Coral Gardens ‘Incident’ of 1963 during and after which Rastas were persecuted in the most violent manner by the State. The premiere is June 23, Thursday at the Bob Marley Museum. See you there!
A little more about Trinidad’s Bocas Lit Fest via Earl Lovelace’s reading from his new novel Is Just a Movie, Peter Sellers, Gunga Din and Peter Abrahams.
Peter Abrahams, May 14, 2011
“I never go to literary festivals,” declared the 93-year old South African writer, Peter Abrahams, when i told him that i had recently attended the inaugural Bocas Lit Fest in Port-of-Spain. I had just finished interviewing Abrahams for Chimurenga, a first class magazine that comes out of Capetown. Abrahams who moved to Jamaica more than 55 years ago had been a much celebrated writer long before he came here.
“Abrahams is an African writer, a writer of the world, who opened up in his natal country, South Africa, a path of exploration for us, the writers who have followed the trail he bravely blazed.” The words of Nadine Gordimer, Nobel Prize winning writer also from South Africa form the epigraph to Abrahams’s memoir The Coyaba Chronicles: Reflections on the Black Experience in the 20th Century.
The View From CoyabaPeter and Daphne Abrahams at their home, Coyaba
I had despaired of ever meeting Abrahams, he had become impatient of interviews in recent years I was told, yet here I was at Coyaba, his hilltop Irie and refuge, after spending three hours with Peter and his wife Daphne. It was a very special experience, being able to ask this man in his ninth decade all sorts of questions, to have his ear, to witness the affectionate back and forth between husband and wife, and to feel the fierce independence of spirit still emanating from this remarkable writer.
Back to Bocas now…I hadn’t finished saying all i wanted in my last blogpost. It was a multifaceted festival, culminating in the award of the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. There were 60 entries and three were shortlisted in each category: poetry, fiction and literary non-fiction. Derek Walcott took the prize for his White Egrets. I felt divided about younger, writers having to compete with the likes of Walcott and Naipaul, both of whom were contenders along with Kamau Brathwaite, Kei Miller, Edwidge Danticat, Tiphanie Yanique, Myriam Chancy, Karen Lord, Rabindranath Maharaj and Andre Alexis. I would have liked to see someone like Kei Miller win the award for his sublime A Light Song of Light or at least win AN award for it because it truly deserves one.
I missed a lot of the readings but one I didn’t miss was Earl Lovelace reading from his new novel Is Just a Movie. The part he read was about Kangkala, a Calypsonian who wins a bit part in a ‘foreign movie’ being shot in Trinidad.
“The role they give me, the same one they give the locals is a role to die. Local talent. Our role is to die. The rest of the people, they bring from America. They is the stars, the ones that have lines to speak, lives to live…”
Kangkala’s role is heralded in the local papers as if he had top billing, and people ask him for his autograph.
“So I get this job to die. Is a kind of jungle picture, with a river in it and a trail and a rope bridge and a love story and natives with headdresses of coloured feathers, their splendid bodies bare except for grass skirts, carrying bwana packs over the mountains.”
Needless to say Kangkala balks at the insignificance of the role he is given. “Even in a movie, I don’t want to die on a rope bridge with bwana pack on my back. But this is the script. They shoot you, you have to die. That is what they paying me to do. To die.”
Kangkala explains why this is so difficult for him to do.
“Even when I was a kid playing stick-em-up and i get shot, i composed my dying like a poem. There was poetry in my dying. When I get shot and i start to die, i hear the theme music of the movie, i turn to the bite of the bullets, my knees buckle, my hands reach out and i hold on for the last, a little piece of the world–the sky, the air, my eyes open and i fill them with the wonder of trees, singing birds in the verandahs of their branches, the roar of women in the market place, the noise of children at the playground, people quarrelling, lovers undressing each other, I move into a dance, feeling the blood of life leaving my head, I breathe in, the fragrance of ripe guavas turning to the smell of crushed corraili leaves, hearing the last drum roll, cymbals crashing, seeing the lights growing dim, waves beating onto the shore, fish leaping silver. That was when I was a little boy playing. Dying was a performance. I was at the centre of my own dying.”
Inspired by “the exquisite choreography of Sonnyboy’s dying”, Kangkala attempts to die extravagantly, magnificently–but “Cut!” says the director. The scene ends with Sonnyboy and Kangkala stripping themselves of feathered headdresses and grass skirts and walking off the sets after numerous attempts by them to die ‘in style’ are systematically squelched by the foreign director.
Earl had us laughing at the poignancy of a scene most of us who come from the darker nations, the periphery, the so-called third world could easily empathize with. The irony was that Lovelace had nearly been upstaged by moderator Gordon Rohlehr, who like Kangkala, tried to turn what should have been a brief introduction into a Midnight Robber’s speech which threatened to turn the acclaimed author into a supporting act.
Kangkala’s plight reminded me of a film by Trinidad-born Richard Fung called Islands inspired by his uncle, Clive, who was hired to act the part of an extra in a Hollywood film shot in Tobago in the fifties.
“Fung deconstructs the 1956 John Huston film Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison, a story of the unrequited love of a shipwrecked American marine (Robert Mitchum) for an Irish nun (Deborah Kerr), to comment on the Caribbean’s relationship to the cinematic image. Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison is set in 1944 in the Pacific but was shot in 1956 in Tobago using Trinidadian Chinese extras to portray Japanese soldiers. The artist’s Uncle Clive was one such extra, and Fung searches the film for traces of his presence.”
When I told Trinidadian artist Christopher Cozier, from whom i had first heard of Fung’s film, about Earl’s new novel he pointed out another, even more hilarious and direct reference. The opening scenes of the Peter Sellers movie The Party depict a Hollywood team in India filming Gunga Din, the story of a ‘native water bearer’ and three British soldiers fighting thugs. Sellers plays the part of a soldier with a trumpet who is supposed to fall and die on being shot; instead he refuses to die, continuing to stagger about blowing the trumpet much to the frustration of the film director and his crew who finally order him to leave the sets banning him from acting in another film again…
The footage is side-splittingly funny, watch the video below and enjoy;
Active Voice 