Limits! What Limits?

In the midst of the free verse and dub poetry movement in Jamaica, I wrote a sonnet. And not just one sonnet. About twenty. And in Jamaican "nation language."Only ten survived my final editorial cut and I sprinkled them liberally throughout my first collection of poems, Florida Bound, which opens with “Dancehall”:

Dancehall

Man, mek me tell yu dat was a fete!
Riddim was wile, an de dawta dem a grine,
de idren dem a smoke de sweetes lamb's bret
straight from St. Ann, de bes colly we cud fine.
Security did tight, yu cudn even see a rachet,
fa de local top ranking stan up broad by de gate
till one fool-fool rumhead decide fe chuck a yute,
bwai, me neva see one man eat so much bullet.
We kotch de bwai pon a speaka, an call him girlfren’,
she search him till she fine de gole ring inna him ves’
an shub him dung a dutty, figet him like de res’.
Now das when de dance look like it was gwane en,
den we put on sum oldies, an leggo de bass,
fa yu cyaan cum a dance widdout a gun inna yu wais'.

Now despite what some of my friends had thought, I didn’t write the sonnets to prove my almost legendary stubbornness, but because I’d always marveled at the suppleness of line that Derek Walcott displayed in his first collection of poems, In a Green Night, when he wrote the sonnet sequence, “Tales of the Islands.” Walcott was the master and I was his student. So, I transformed the first line from “Chapter VI” “'Poopa, da' was a fête!” into “Man, mek me tell yu, dat was a fete!” However, unlike “Chapter VI,” which examines the hypocrisy of the “Oxbridge” educated versus the Creole class and the ironies of colonial life vis-a vis religious practices, “Dancehall” observes some of the disturbing trends of violence and disrespect of women in what was then an emerging phenomenon in Jamaican music.

Some of my contemporaries viewed these sonnets almost as an act of treason. For in a time when every European art form and value was suspect, the sonnet was seen at the epitome of “whiteness.” And in a time when “freedom” was the buzzword, I was often asked at my readings, “How could you write something in a form that was so white and limiting?”

I thought the opposite. I also knew that there are some things that unless you experience them for yourself (which is why I’ve become so mellow with my children), you’ll never know what you’re talking about. What I learned in writing sonnets—this limiting form—has become almost an aphorism: there is freedom in form.

For although the sonnet is comprised of fourteen lines with an octave and a sestet and uses varying rhyme schemes (Petrarchan, Occitan, and English), the limits that these impose, create a habit of precise thinking in language. The practice of poetry grows from this habit of thinking, which is a combination of the precise image, symbol, and word (alliteration, assonance, connotation, denotation, and metre) to express emotions and ideas.

But that was not the only issue. What about rhyme? Wasn’t rhyme also limiting freedom of expression? That didn’t scare me either. Bob Marley, the freest man in Jamaica who smoked weed and grew his dreadlocks, was using rhyme in some of the finest narrative poems from that period: “I Shot the Sherriff” and “No Woman, Nuh Cry.” As with everything else, it’s not the tool that matters, but how the tool is used. And Bob was showing that he could fuse the social, economic and the erotic—the “Reggae Aesthetic”—within the limits of four lines to speak about freedom and that Jah lives in the communion of bread. The words from "No Woman" still linger with me:

Then we would cook cornmeal porridge
Of which I’ll share with you,
My feet is my own carriage
So I’ve got to push on through.

If Bob could do use rhyme, so could I. I had his permission. The so-called limits of the sonnets led to a greater freedom. The issue is never the form, but the novelty that the poet brings to the form. Walcott showed that the sonnet could be used in a Caribbean setting to explore social and racial concerns; Marley demonstrated that rhyme could be combined with the revolutionary message of Rastafari, social justice and love, and Florida Bound confirmed that patwa or “nation language” could be incorporated into the vocabulary of the sonnet—the province of English verse.

Since writing “Dancehall,” I’ve experimented with a few other “limiting” forms including the ghazal, sestina, villanelle, and with a long poem using rhyming couplets, some of which will be included in my next collection of poems, Dub Wise. Helen Keller once said, “Obstacles and limits exist only in the mind.” It all depends on how we view them. And as the other well known philosophers of the human condition, En Vogue, also sang, “Free your mind, and the rest will follow.”

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This is part of a group write project @ Middle Zone Musings: What I Learned From...Limits"

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Garry Steckles @ Caribbean Beat: Censorship & Caribbean Music

In the July/August issue of Caribbean Beat, Garry Steckles, author of Bob Marley: A Life, writes about music censorship, dancehall, violence and “suggestive lyrics”:

Like many music fans, I’ve got little time for censorship, and many of the artists I’ve admired most over the years have used their gifts to stir things up socially and politically. Fela Kuti, David Rudder, Culture, the Clash, Alpha Blondy, Mutabaruka, Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Linton Kwesi Johnson and Bob Dylan, to name just a few, have never hesitated to confront injustice, and their lyrics have often encouraged their listeners to stand up against evil in whatever manifestation it crops up...or, as Marley so memorably put it, “spiritual wickedness in high and low places."

To read more of this article, please follow this link: Caribbean Beat: July/August 2009 (Issue 98)

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Photo Credit: Caribbean Beat: July/August 2009 (Issue 98)

Rastafari Inna the White House

I'll let the pictures do the talking!

***
Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Rastafari

Green for Human Rights in Iran

"Every man got a right to decide his own destiny
And in this judgment, there is no partiality"
"Zimbabwe" ~ Bob Marley

Give thanks to Rethabile,who has enjoined me in this cause.
One Heart

New Book: Sovereignty of the Imagination by George Lamming

The new book by the illustrious Caribbean novelist/thinker George Lamming has just been published here, said Jacqueline Sample, president of House of Nehesi Publishers (HNP).


Sovereignty of the Imagination, with its main essays “Sovereignty of the Imagination” and “Language and the Politics of Ethnicity,” is the third Conversations title by Lamming and the second in the series published by HNP.

The tight relationship between politics, knowledge, language, and the spaces of freedom in Lamming’s writings makes him one of the most important political novelists in Caribbean literature,” said Anthony Bogues, a political scientist at Brown University.

Writer Fabian Badejo said that the Barbadian author’s text is “rich, elegant and intellectually seductive as ever; the thrust always towards a new Caribbean ‘with the sovereign right to define its own reality and order its own priorities’.”

It is as if he were humming Bob Marley’s "Redemption Song" as a dirge, then intoning it as an anthem of ‘cultural sovereignty’ which [Lamming] describes as ‘the free definition and articulation of the collective self, whatever the rigor of external constraints’,” said Badejo.

For Lamming to publish a book of this quality in the Caribbean when he is much sought after by publishers abroad, is also an investment in his belief and work, in the people and region where his life’s commitment abides,” said Sample.


Sovereignty of the Imagination is available at Amazon, spdbooks.org, Novelty Trading Company and House of Nehesi Publishers. Ask at your favorite bookstore.

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Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Rastafari

Professor Darren Middleton, who has written extensively about Rastafari, is interviewed by Rev. John Paul Roach: The Phenomenon of Rastafarianism.

Here's the url: http://www.modavox.com/unityfm/vepisode.aspx?aid=38515

In this wide-ranging interview, Professor Middleton covers the following topics:

The links between Rastafari and Hinduism
Core beliefs of Rastafari: InI
Diversity in Rastafari
Role of Marcus "Mosiah" Garvey and Leonard Percival Howell
Nazirite vows in Rastafari
Queen of Sheba and King Solomon
Use of marijuana
Kebra Nagast
Twelve Tribes of Israel
Christology and Rastafari
Symbolism of red, green, and gold in Rastafari
Reggae and Rastafari

And if you listen all the way through the commercials to the end, he mentions the work of Kwame Dawes and my novel, Benjamin, my son.

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Five Questions With Garry Steckles

Garry Steckles is a widely traveled journalist whose career as an editor has taken him from his native England to Canada, the Caribbean, the United States and the Middle East and who has been writing about Caribbean culture since the early Seventies.

Steckles' stories, features and columns have appeared in dozens of major newspapers and magazines on both sides of the Atlantic, including the Sunday Times of London, Billboard, LA Times, Toronto Star, Montreal Gazette, Vancouver Province, Caribbean Beat (the inflight magazine of Caribbean Airlines), The Beat (the LA-based reggae and world beat magazine), the official magazine of Reggae Sunsplash, Maco Caribbean Living, St. Kitts and Nevis Visitor, the in-house magazines of the Sandals and Marriott hotel chains, Chicago Sun-Times and Jamaica Sunday Gleaner. He was founding editor of Caribbean Week, a Barbados-based bi-weekly that covered and was circulated around the entire Caribbean. He has hosted Caribbean radio programs in Montreal and St. Kitts, and promoted many reggae concerts in Montreal.

Bob Marley: A Life, is his first book. It is published worldwide as part of the Caribbean Lives series by Macmillan Caribbean (ISBN: 9781405081436; website www.macmillan-caribbean.com) except in North America, where it is published under licence by Interlink Publishing (ISBN 9781566567336; website www.interlinkbooks.com)

1. Why another book about Bob Marley?

It's the question I've been asked most often since Bob Marley: A Life was published last year, and it's perfectly valid. There have indeed been a lot of books written about Bob since he left us, at least in the physical sense, all those years ago, and many of them have been excellent.

So I usually answer that question with another question: Why not?

If the world has been ready for hundreds of books on people like Stalin, Hitler, Bush (George W, who I sincerely believe belongs in this evil company) and other world figures who have been responsible for so much human misery and destruction, surely there's nothing wrong with "another" book about a man who did nothing but make people all over the world happy - and whose message of peace and love will endure for as long as there are people on the planet (which, the way we're heading, may not be all that long ... but I digress).

The other point I always make, which I think is just as important, is that Bob Marley: A Life is the flagship book of an ambitious series being launched by Macmillan, the giant UK publishers, on important Caribbean lives. The 20-odd names in the pipeline include the great Trinidadian cricketer and rights activist Sir Learie Constantine (already published, to critical acclaim), Marcus Garvey, Louise "Miss Lou" Bennett, Fidel Castro, Jimmy Cliff, the Mighty Sparrow, Sir Garry Sobers, Derek Walcott, Toussaint L'Ouverture, George William Gordon and Claude McKay. I can only imagine the uproar in the reggae world if Bob Marley, without a doubt THE most important, the most influential, the most famous person ever to emerge from the Caribbean, had not been included in the series.

So when James Ferguson, the Caribbean Lives series editor, called me at home in St. Kitts to tell me about the upcoming project and ask if I'd be interested in taking on the Marley book, it was an offer I simply couldn't refuse. And didn't. I certainly wasn't about to write a bio of Bob on my own initiative and hope some publisher, somewhere, would pick it up; but when one of the world's biggest publishers puts an opportunity like that the way of a journalist who's spent more than three decades writing about Caribbean music, there really isn't much you can say except "I'd love to. How many words do you want and when do you need the manuscript?"

2. Why did Macmillan choose you to tackle the Marley book?

The simple answer is that James Ferguson, among many other things, is also the literary editor of Caribbean Beat, the excellent in-flight magazine of Caribbean Airlines (formerly BWIA International). I've been writing about music and culture for the magazine since the mid-to-late Nineties, and, inevitably, Bob has featured regularly in my Riddem'n'Rhyme column .... sometimes to the point where the magazine's editors have had to beg me not to mention him for a few issues. James had read my column, liked it, and my commission from Macmillan stemmed from that.

And I'd like to think I was pretty well qualified to take on the project. I've been writing about Caribbean music since the early Seventies, mainly in big-city newspapers in North America and magazines in the Caribbean, and have also been heavily involved as a concert promoter (including shows by Peter Tosh, Toots and the Maytals, Ken Boothe, Leroy Sibbles, Carlene Davis and Ernie Smith). I've hosted Caribbean radio programs on mainstream radio in Montreal and St. Kitts, and, over the decades, I've seen just about every roots reggae great perform and met and/or interviewed almost all of them. I've played soccer with Burning Spear (at his Marcus Garvey Youth Club in St. Anne, where Spear and a bunch of teenagers ran me off my feet), burned one down at Jimmy Cliff's house in New Kingston, downed a few cold ones with the late Alton Ellis at a show in Montreal, where we happily chatted about rock steady and the delights of English pubs, accompanied Ras Michael and the late Jacob Miller to an incredible concert for the prisoners in Spanish Town Jail, hung out backstage with the late Joseph Hill, toured with and cooked for Peter Tosh, Sly, Robbie and the rest of the Word, Sound and Power band, drove Carlene Davis to the Ranny Williams Centre in Kingston the year she became the first female performer to get a solo spot on a Reggae Sunsplash lineup (that was 1980, the year of the 'missing' Sunsplash; I've read in several places it didn't happen, because of the pre-election violence gripping Kingston - trust me it did), hung out with Tommy Cowan and the guys at his Talent Corp yard around the corner from the Pegasus in Kingston in the days when IC Oxford Road was THE hangout of choice for the roots reggae young lions of the Seventies, hung out with Bob & Co at 56 Hope Road in the week leading up to the Peace Concert in 1978, fired back a few with Sparrow, Duke, Crazy and other calypso greats backstage at shows in Montreal, felt my heart moving in my chest in time with the bass pounding out of the gigantic speakers at sessions in the late Jack Ruby's yard in Ocho Rios, and spent way more time than I should have at innumerable JA shows in smoky community halls and church basements in Montreal and Toronto.

3. Did you have any initial doubts about writing a biography about Bob?

I felt quite comfortable tackling the Marley book. But I also knew it would be a huge challenge. How, I wondered, could I bring something new to the table? I wasn't about to discover a Marley tour no one had heard about. Or a "missing" album. Or, come to think of it, any event of massive significance that previous biographers might somehow have overlooked. So, perhaps inspired by Bob himself, I decided the best thing to do was keep it simple, and try to write a book that accurately covered the most important and significant events of Bob's short but remarkable life and also full of anecdotes that would appeal both to Marley vets and also to people who may have discovered his music comparatively recently and might be interested in knowing more about him.

Equally important, I wanted to use Bob as an example of how it's possible to become rich and famous without losing sight of your roots. One of the things - one of the many things - that I have always admired Bob for was the fact that he didn't change, and that one of the first things he did when he started to make serious money was to give it away - much of it to poor people from Kingston's ghetto areas, who used to line up at 56 Hope Road and tell Bob what they needed money for. And, almost inevitably, they'd get what they needed. There was no fancy mansion, no bling, none of the grotesque excesses that modern generations of so-called superstars have inflicted on their fans.

The other major decision I made was to keep myself out of the narrative. Much of what I write about happened when I was at the scene, and I have to confess it was tempting to start writing "I" this and "I" that. I even started the book with a chapter in which I crept into the story ... and then realized, with more than a little help from my wife Wendy, whose encouragement and support made the whole project doable, that readers really don't care a hoot about me - and why should they, they want to read about Bob Marley? Any lingering doubts I might have had about the wisdom of that decision disappeared when I checked out another book about Bob, one that was published while I was about half-way through writing my own.

For obvious reasons, I'd rather not be specific about the title of the book or its author; suffice it to say that the first paragraph (a long paragraph, admittedly) contained the word "I" 16 or 18 times. I discovered that the author had been born in Jamaica but moved to the US as a youngster and couldn't speak with a Jamaican accent. I was told how he was so well-connected he'd managed to land a rare interview with Bob's mother, Cedella. I learned that he'd actually been to Trench Town, and that he clearly considered himself a pretty cool sort of guy .... and I found out zilch about Nesta Robert Marley. I couldn't stomach too much more, but it was a valuable lesson, and I managed to write my bio without a single "I". I'm perhaps inordinately proud that I described perhaps Bob's most famous stage appearance, at the One Love Concert for Peace at Jamaica's National Stadium in April of 1978, without mentioning that not only had I been there, but that I'd seen the show from the first notes to the last from perhaps the best seats in the house, front row, centre, with the then Jamaican PM Michael Manley and his entourage sitting in the row behind me.

4. Were there any personalities in particular that stood out in the writing of the book?

The book also gave me an opportunity to write about one of the most remarkable people I've ever met, the New York-based Liverpool-raised PR genius Charles Comer, whose huge contributions to Bob Marley's success story have seldom, if ever, been fully documented or appreciated. I first crossed paths with Charles when I was writing reggae stories for the Toronto Star in the mid-Seventies. I would often call Island Records in New York for background info, and I was always put through to Charles, who had been hired by Island to deal exclusively with Bob. Inevitably, we realized right away we were both from the north of England - Charles from the western port city of Liverpool, myself from the north-eastern ship-building and coal-mining town of Newcastle-upon-Tyne ... of carrying coals to Newcastle fame. We became friendly over the phone, and finally met in person in Jamaica, when Charles was working feverishly to convince journalists that the Peace Concert was really a Bob Marley spectacle, with a few other reggae performers thrown in to keep the crowd interested until star time. Bob, I suspect, would have been horrified. Within a few years, Charles was to become one of my dearest friends, and, over the years, I had virtually unlimited access to his clients - among them Bob, Peter Tosh, and also mainstream blues and rock musician like Stevie Ray Vaughan and the legendary Irish group The Chieftains.

5. What else can you tell me about Charles Comer?

He was, in just about every way, a unique character. On the surface, he was about as unlikely a publicist as you could imagine for Rasta musicians. He was wise enough not to make the slightest attempt to meet them on their turf - and he made it clear, from the moment he took them on as clients, that they'd do things his way or it was no deal. Even Peter Tosh, a proud man who took no nonsense from anyone, was intimidated by him.

I vividly recall one incident, backstage between two shows at a big nightspot in Boston, when a reporter approached Peter and asked if he could spare him a few minutes. "You'll have to speak to Charlie Comer first," replied Peter. "I don't talk to any press without his okay." A year or so later, I was on the road with Peter and the band in Canada, and Charles had organized an early-morning interview for Tosh with the CBC. I was given the job of driving the two of them to the CBC studios in Toronto, and we had to be there at the unearthly hour - for a musician - of 9:30 in the morning. We knocked on Peter's hotel room door around nine, and it was opened by a half-dressed, half-awake Tosh with the first (at least I think it was the first) spliff of the day in his hand and barely lit. Charles was furious. "Put that spliff out, Peter Tosh," he commanded. "And get yourself dressed. We have to be at the CBC in less than half an hour." I waited for Peter to explode. He didn't. "Yes Charlie, I'll be right with you," he said, putting out the spliff - after a couple of semi-defiant tokes - and jumping into his clothes in double time.

The thing with Charles of course, was that, like Bob before him, Peter knew that his career had taken off since Comer became his main PR man. And he knew it wasn't a coincidence. Charles, who had also worked with the Rolling Stones for many years, was instrumental in arranging Mick Jagger's surprise appearance with Peter on Saturday Night Live in December of 1978, where they sang, "You've Gotta Walk and Don't Look Back," the duet they'd recorded and which became the biggest single of Peter's career.

As for Peter himself, I have to say that despite his reputation for having a short fuse I always found him perfectly easy to get along with. This has been the case with just about every reggae performer I’ve encountered since I started to get closely involved with the music all those years ago. I feel privileged to have been welcomed into their world, and, through my efforts in writing about it, to have been able to contribute in a small way to spreading reggae's message.

***

Bob Marley: A Life by Garry Steckles

One of the twentieth century’s most revered cultural figures, Bob Marley was responsible for carrying reggae music far beyond the Caribbean and establishing it as an international force. He set attendance records that still stand in Europe and his 1977 Exodus album was hailed by Time magazine as the greatest of the 20th Century, but Marley was no mere pop star: His combination of politically and socially conscious lyrics, unforgettable melodies, uncompromising Rastafarian beliefs and fierce hostility to the injustices of "Babylon" made his music the voice of the poor and dispossessed all over the globe.

In this new biography, Garry Steckles tells Marley’s story from his birth in rural Jamaica to his tragically early death in 1981, by which time he’d overcome poverty and prejudice to become the Third World’s first superstar.

Steckles, who has been intimately involved with reggae for more than three decades as a writer, concert promoter, broadcaster and fan, transports you into the smoky Kingston studios where Marley made his first recordings, documents his often turbulent relationships with reggae legends like studio pioneer Clement "Coxson" Dodd, fellow Wailers Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer, and the wildly eccentric producer Lee "Scratch" Perry, introduces you to behind-the-scenes legends like Island Records founder Chris Blackwell and the volatile PR genius Charles Comer, and takes you on the Rasta roller-coaster that carried Marley to the cover of the Rolling Stone and global adulation.

Praise for Bob Marley: A Life

"If you have never heard or read about Bob Marley, this book is the best place to begin…. For someone like myself who knew Marley personally and has read nearly everything ever written about him, the book makes me feel like I’m reading about Bob Marley for the first time… If you want to place a Marley biography in your library, this is the one to buy."

~Barbara Makeda Blake Hannah
Eminent Rastafarian author, broadcaster and journalist.

"Bob Marley: A Life succeeds in telling the story of a man who has left an incredible library of work to be enjoyed by generations to come with warmth and style. It is a treasure of Marley lore, an inspired examination of the man, his music and his legacy. Quite simply -- to put it in musical terms -- it is a hit."
~Toronto Sun

"Bob Marley is worth the time for anyone interested in the post-Beatles era, reggae music, and Jamaican life, society and politics."
~Bob Berlinghof, Caribbean Compass

"Steckles focuses on the musical narrative of Marley’s life and, by so doing, crafts a biography that is rich in musical detail and lore ... Bob Marley: A Life is the initial instalment of Macmillan's Caribbean Lives series ... If they are all as informative and as well written as Garry Steckles’ splendid biography, it promises to make for a memorable series on the history of Caribbean politics and culture."
~Caribbean Review of Books

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Happy Birthday, Bob Marley (2009)

For Brother Bob

Again and again, I heard your voice,
Whispering through the noise, "Don't cry. Just sing."
In the dregs of a bottle thinking I didn't have a choice,
Again and again, I heard your voice.

When I felt even my bones were cursed,
and my body trembled from the troubles Babylon can bring,
Again and again, I heard your voice,
Whispering through the noise, "Don't cry. Just sing."

***

"For Brother Bob" is an excerpt from my latest manuscript, DUB WISE.

***
Villager: Rest in Peace: Bob Marley

Lecture: Bob Marley: The Creation of a Voice

What does it mean to have a "voice," to create a voice, to find one's voice? This evening we will look at Bob Marley's music and persona to explore the nature and importance of "voice"—a concept that includes what one is saying, how one expresses oneself, the context of the communication, and its impact.

Part-listening session, part-lecture, in this workshop we will look behind the icon to explore the man and musician and, of course, his message. We'll see afresh why his original, urgent voice was, and still is, so appealing and essential. With his music and biography as our guide, we will show how Bob Marley developed his voice and thereby became a voice for us all.

AN EVENING LECTURE

Friday, February 13, 7–9:30pm

09WSA27P

$15 (No Member Discount)

Garnette Cadogan is a Jamaican-American music critic and writer who is currently at work on a book about Bob Marley. He has written for Transition, Vibe, Caribbean Review of Books and other publications, and lectures widely at several universities.

http://www.opencenter.org/content/view/2260/5/

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"Easy Skanking" by Geoffrey Philp

I know Rethabile likes this one, so for Video Fridays and his birthday, here’s my version of “Easy Skanking.”

Easy Skanking

all saturday evenings

should be like this, caressing

your thigh while reading neruda

with his odes to matilde's arms,

breasts, hair--everything about her

that made him

a part of this bountiful earth--

lilies, onions, avocados--that fed

his poetry the way

rain washes the dumb cane with desire

or banyans break through asphalt--

this is the nirvana that the buddha

with his bald monks and tiresome sutras

never knew or else he'd never have left

his palace and longing bride--

the supple feel of your leg in my hands

for which i'd spin the wheel of karma

a thousand lifetimes, more

***

Tomorrow I will be reading from Grandpa Sydney's Anancy Stories@ the Caribbean Book & Art Fair, Miramar City Hall, 2300 Civic Center Drive, Miramar, FL 33025 .

Saturday, June 21, 2008.

Here's the list of writers: CABA Authors

Have a great weekend!

Jason Castro Shot the Sheriff on American Idol

Normally, I get about 150 visitors per day on my blog, but yesterday I had huge spike in visitors, and they all came from Castrocopia because of my post on Bob Marley's "I Shot the Sheriff."

Jason Castro sang "I Shot the Sheriff" on American Idol and many of Castrocopia's readers who were looking for an interpretation of Bob's lyrics followed the link to my site. I had an increase of more than 500% of site visits.

All I can say is give thanks to Jason Castro for singing "I Shot the Sheriff"and to Castrocopia for linking to my blog.

Maybe if I'm lucky, more American Idol singers will choose some other songs from Bob's repertoire, and I'll have even more visitors to the site.

Now, if I can only find a way so that they'll come back when I publish Virtual Yardies.

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American Idol

Jason Castro

I Shot the Sheriff

"Bob Marley's Dead" by Rachel Manley

Rachel Manley was born in Cornwall, England in 1955, daughter of an English mother and Jamaican father, the future Prime Minister, Michael Manley (in 1972-1980, and from 1989 until his retirement due to ill-health). At the age of two she came back to Jamaica and was thereafter brought up by her grandparents, Norman Manley, PNP leader, Chief Minister of pre-independence self-governing Jamaica, and Edna Manley, outstanding Caribbean sculptor and patron of the arts and literature in Jamaica. Rachel Manley has written a most moving memoir of these years in her Drumblair: Memories of a Jamaican Childhood (1996), which won a gold medal in the Canadian Governor-General's Literary Awards.

Rachel Manley attended schools in Jamaica and took a BA at UWI, Mona. From this period on, writing poetry was her major preoccupation, first publishing Prisms in 1972, an artistically designed pamphlet printed in Jamaica, with illustrations and printed in green. This was followed by Poems 2, printed in Barbados in 1978. Her poems were also published in Focus and The Greenfield Review. She was the editor of Edna Manley: The Diaries (1989).

Her first full length collection of poems, A Light Left On was published by Peepal Tree in 1992, to considerable praise. At the heart of the collection are a series of poems which mourn the death of the grandmother who had raised her, who died in 1987, and to her grandfather, who had died in 1969.

Rachel Manley is the mother of two children. She has lived in Toronto for some years.

Bob Marley's Dead

(For Drum)

The moon is full

heavy yellow

Marley's dead

and there is prophecy



Hallelujah

Jah is singing on the moon

and all our pain

is like the shadow of a branch

across its face;

it's not the King who lives

long live the King

it is the Kingdom lives



My island is a mother

burying wombs

I rise, at my beginning

the squalor

the flower



The moon is dread

she bleeds

Marley's dead

and there is prophecy



The Kingdom lives

a heart of drums

a small town throbs,

we have begun

the phoenix

from a mulch of bones



I rise beyond

a fantasy

I wake

I break faith

with the white dream



The moon is black

my mother sings with me

Oh Marley's dead

and there is prophecy.

***

Courtesy of Peepal Tree Press

Zimbabwe, China and the Struggle Continues

Every man gotta right to decide his own destiny,
And in this judgement there is no partiality.
So arm in arms, with arms, we'll fight this little struggle,
'Cause that's the only way we can overcome our little trouble.

Brother, you're right, you're right,
You're right, you're right, you're so right!
We gon' fight (we gon' fight), we'll have to fight (we gon' fight),
We gonna fight (we gon' fight), fight for our rights!

Twenty-eight years after Bob performed "Zimbabwe," Robert Mugabe is still holding on desperately to power and it seems that he will use any tactic necessary to continue his dictatorship.

Now the Chinese are involved.

According to Avaaz.org:

Dockworkers in South Africa have blocked a Chinese arms boat from reaching Zimbabwe... but the crackdown continues. As the ship moves up the Southern African coast looking for a new port--and China weighs whether to recall the weapons--African unions, citizen groups, and church organisations are launching a campaign to stop arms from fuelling the Zimbabwe crisis.

I've already signed the petition.

Join InI and sign the petition: Rights, not Guns for Zimbabwe.

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Five Songs I Must Have for my iPod

I see an old warrior sitting by a hearth of smoldering coals. The air is thick with the scent of stews, aromatic herbs, and roasted flesh. Sentinels lurk beyond the brush and a stand of pines. His sheathed sword has been laid across his right leg that has been scarred in many campaigns. The thongs of his sandals are still tight and battle-ready. An owl's hoot ricochets through the camp and all the young warriors grab their swords. He smiles to himself and remains unmoved. But then, he looks up and through the smoke he sees "Her" serving the soldiers or perhaps not doing anything in particular. Maybe just washing the dishes. She is so beautiful. The old warrior feels something that he hasn't felt in a long time. It’s this mixture of compassion and longing. The last time he felt like this was—before the wars started. He can’t believe an old codger like himself could still be moved this way. He’s been with many women (some whose memory still hurt him), yet he's surprised that his heart can still muster these emotions. And even though he's a normally confident man, he is boyish, foolish, and shy around her, and yet strangely protective. That’s how I feel when I hear "Waiting in Vain" by Bob Marley--an old warrior surprised by love:

From the very first time I blessed my eyes on you, girl,
My heart says follow trough.
But I know, now, that Im way down on your line,
But the waitin feel is fine:

The Gipsy Kings version of “Bamboleo” is one of my favorite songs. There’s so much fire, and the speaker is unapologetic about life or love and is determined to live his life on his terms. No compromises: “Porque mi vida, yo la prefiero vivir asi!”

Este amor llega asi esta manera
No tiene la culpa
Caballo le ven sabana
Porque muy depreciado,
Por eso no te perdon de llorar
Este amor llega asi esta manera
No tiene la culpa,

Amor de comprementa
Amor del mes pasado
Bembele, bembele, bembele
Bem, bembele, bembele

Al Green’s pleas and promises in “Let’s Stay Together” and how his lover makes him feel, “Cause you make me feel, so brand new/ And I want to spend my life with you.” And then, his confusion:

Why somebody, why people break up
Oh, and turn around and make up
I just can't seeeeeeeee
You'd never do that to me
(Would you baby)
'Cause being around you is all I see
It's why I want us to

Let's, let's stay together
Loving you whether, whether
Times are good or bad, happy or sad

Al, I, too, can’t understand.

When I was in sixth form at Jamaica College, I remember having a heated discussion with Donovan Ashley on the steps of Simms House about whether Thom Bell or Bob Marley was the better songwriter. This was a time when even the most screwfaced, dreadlocked bad man was walking down King Street singing in falsetto “Bethcha by Golly Wow” by The Stylistics even while he clutched his knife or gun. Donovan said that Thom Bell was the better writer because he wrote only about love and love was the only thing that mattered. This was also the time when I believed that love was only for the bourgeois and that everything should be devoted to the revolution and to bringing down apartheid in South Africa and Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). I argued that the only music that mattered was music with "conscious" lyrics. I think in the eyes of my peers, I won the argument. But forty years later whenever I hear “Sadie” by The Spinners and remember my mother who made her transition a few years ago:

Early one Sunday morning
Breakfast was on the table
There was no time to eat
She said to me, Boy, hurry to Sunday school

Filled with her load of glory
We learned the Holy story
Shell always have her dreams
Despite the things this troubled world can bring

Oh, Sadie
Don’t you know we love you
Sweet Sadie
Place no one above you

You were right about love being the only thing that matters, Donovan. You were!

I could listen to every song on Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life, but if I had to choose one, it would have to be “As”:

Did you know that true love asks for nothing
Her acceptance is the way we pay
Did you know that life has given love a guarantee
To last through forever and another day
Just as time knew to move on since the beginning
And the seasons know exactly when to change
Just as kindness knows no shame
Know through all your joy and pain
That I'll be loving you always
As today I know I'm living but tomorrow
Could make me the past but that I mustn't fear
For I'll know deep in my mind
The love of me I've left behind
Cause I'll be loving you always

"True love asks for nothing/ Her acceptance is the way we pay." It's a lesson I'm still learning. Sing on, Stevie!

Besides the fact that I’m fascinated by memes, I’m taking the lead from Rethabile’s post via Crafty Green Poet about 5 songs that “appeal to the poetic sensibilities."

And if I were to cheat just a little, I'd add Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes featuring Teddy Pendergrass with "Bad Luck" and "Wake up, Everybody"-- a herald to the dormant bodhisattvas--"Me and Mrs. Jones" by Billy Paul, and "Praise Ye Jah" by Sizzla Kalonji, for sheer effervescence.

As in the nature of memes (some are subject to change), I’ve modified this one and I'm tagging Georgia , Marlon, Madbull, Professor Zero, and The Prisoner's Wife (for your new iPod?) Name five songs that if you were stranded on a desert island and could only have 5 songs on your I-Pod what would they be? As with most memes, as you pass it along mention who tagged you, so some mad scientist (or blog historian, Nicholas?) can figure out the Ariadne thread.

If anyone else wants to join in, feel free to tag yourself!

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"If you have never heard or read about Bob Marley, this book is the best place to begin…. For someone like myself who knew Marley personally and has read nearly everything ever written about him, the book makes me feel like I’m reading about Bob Marley for the first time… If you want to place a Marley biography in your library, this is the one to buy."



Barbara Makeda Blake Hannah
Eminent Rastafarian author, broadcaster and journalist.

“So Jah Seh”: Telling I-Story Inna Babylon

One of Bob Marley’s greatest strengths as a songwriter was his abilty to transform the folk wisdom of Jamaica with his thorough knowledge of the Bible and Rastafari into memorable lyrics grounded in a circular bass line. Nowhere is this more evident than in “So Jah Seh,” which begins with Bob’s assertion, “Not one of my seed shall sit on the sidewalk, and beg your bread,” then, shifts to the question, “'Cause puss and dog they get together/What's wrong with loving one another? / Puss and dog they get together: /What's wrong with you my brother?” and ends with his statement of faith, “But InI a-hang on in there/And InI, I naw leggo. / But InI a-hang on in there/ And InI, I naw leggo/- So Jah seh.”

Between the first and second stanza, a mere eleven lines, Bob using a contemporary, urban setting draws on verses from Psalm 37:25 ; Isaiah 41:17 ; John 5:24 ; John 6:47; John 8:51; John 8:58; John 13:35; John 15:12 ; 1 John 3:11 and 1 John 4:12 (Biblical Quotes: Words of Wisdom) and converts them into an exhortation that is the essence of Rastafari theology: “I-nite oneself and love I-manity.”

By using the words “I-nite” and “I-manity” Bob cleverly lures the listener out of the ordinary, commonplace world into a deeper reflection about the meaning of Rastafari, which was predicated on the ideas of peace and love. The message of Rastafari, which in 1933 began under the leadership of Leonard Howell, had three main aims: restoring selfhood, awakening the populace to the divinity of Haile Selassie I, and freeing the hearts, minds, and bodies of the “lost Ethiopians.” Or as Bob stated in "Redemption Song" where he used the words of the first prophet of Rastafari, Marcus “Mosiah’ Garvey: “Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery/ none but ourselves can free our minds.”

By transforming a speech of Garvey, who had been reported to have said, “Look to Africa for your king,” into song, Bob was following a practice he had first started with "War” which used the address of His Imperial Majesty, Emperor Haile Selassie I whose coronation in 1930 began for Rastafari the apotheosis of Ras Tafari Mekonnen.

In the poetic imagination of Rastafari, which delights in wordplay and misreading signs, the very name of Haile Selassie I was changed into a symbol of infinity. So, what would have been read ordinarily as Haile Selassie the First, became Haile Selassie “I.” And if Haile Selassie’s full title was “His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I, Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, King of Kings of Ethiopia and Elect of God" and as Ethiopian tradition claimed, Selassie was a descendant of Makeda, the Queen of Sheba, and King Solomon of ancient Israel, then Selassie could only be the returned Christ who had returned to “judge the nations of the earth.”

By making Selassie I a localized point of universal consciousness (“I”) regarded as the only power in the universe (omnipotent), and by positing that this consciousness was equally present (omnipresent) in all creation (“I-ration”), then the elegant equation of InI was born: Man and God, God and Man became equals and shared in the divinity of “I.” With this act of renaming, Rastafari created its own vocabulary and by relying on Old Testament narratives, changed the way that many of its adherents viewed history-- I-story. Rastafari puts “I” at the center of all experience. Therefore, if “I” am experiencing an uncomfortable or challenging situation, my discomfort has nothing to do with anyone else. It is up to “I” to change or remove the obstacle because “I” and no one else has the power.

Also as the original man, Rastafari claims through the power of word-sound to restore every thing to its rightful place and rightful name. Even more importantly, the normal way of thinking clouded by Babylonian slavery and captivity had to be reversed. Thus, mankind (I-man) becomes the focus, the subject, and never the object. I-man is never subservient to anything, and whereas, the rest on the world understands, Rastafari over-stands.

“I” becomes the liberating force of Rastafari and against the power of Babylon mentioned in the Book of Revelation 17:5: “And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH,” or as Bob sings in “So Much Things to Say” in an echo of Ephesians 6:12, “Hey, but InI - InI nuh come to fight flesh and blood,/But spiritual wickedness in 'igh and low places. /So while, so while, so while they fight you down, /Stand firm and give Jah thanks and praises.”

And Bob as an adherent of Rastafari took the message of Isaiah 61: 1-2: “The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn,” or as Bob chanted in “Revelation”: "So, my friend, I wish that you could see, /Like a bird in the tree, the prisoners must be free, yeah! (free)”

But how would this freedom be gained? A cursory glance at the many titles of Marley’s discography reveals the answer: “Lively up yourself” “Wake Up and Live!” “Get up, Stand up,” and as he declared in "Trench Town," “We free the people with music (sweet music); / Can we free the people with music (sweet music)? /Can we free our people with music? - With music, /With music, oh music!”

The ultimate goal of this war against Babylon, “Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned/Everywhere is war, me say war”("War') is freedom, and this battle is ongoing and perhaps generational as Marley implies in “Chant Down Babylon” Come we go burn down Babylon one more time/ (Come we go burn down Babylon one more time); /Come we go chant down Babylon one more time/ (Come we go chant down Babylon); / For them soft! Yes, them soft! (ah-yoy!) /Them soft! Yes, them soft! (ah-yoy!).

And yet one should ask, how does this message of war reconcile with the stated goal of Rastafari, in the utopian message of “One Love, One heart, let’s together and feel all right.” The war as Marley said in an interview that seemed to suggest that Rastafari was the opposite of physical violence:

I wanna tell ya: if them want to win the revolution, them have to win it with Rasta.' Cause if you win another way, you have to go fight again. When you're Rasta and you win, there's no more war.

The war, to return to “Redemption Song” begins and ends in our minds: “Emancipate yourselves form mental slavery/ none but ourselves can free our minds.” If and when that day comes, then truly as one of Marley’s successor Buju Banton asserted in “Hills and Valley”:

Rasta free the people
Over hills and valleys too
Don't let them fool you
Don't believe one minute that they are with you
Jah free the people
Over hills and valleys too
Don't let them fool you
Don't believe for a minute that they are with you

Text from a lecture at Miami Dade College, North Campus on Wednesday, February 13, 2008.

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Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Rastafari

Happy Birthday, Brother Bob!

When I first read VS Naipaul’s Mimic Men, the statement by the protagonist, Ralph Singh, “Why, recognizing the enemy did you not kill him, swiftly?” stuck with me. For just as the phrase from Froude’s The Bow of Ulysses that was echoed in Naipaul’s The Middle Passage, “History is built around achievement and creation, and nothing was created in the West Indies,” became part of Derek Walcott’s creative impetus, so this sentence from Naipaul’s fiction haunted me for over thirty years. It became the spur to many of my poems, short stories, and novels. But this hindsight works like tracing backwards from the solution to an algebraic equation, and makes everything seem intentional and occurring with perfect timing. Yet nothing could have be further from the truth.

I was sixteen and I knew I wanted to write. But write about what? I knew I was angry with Naipaul, and could have built a career on being the opposite of the Ralph Singhs who lived then and now: in a state of perpetual abhorrence of the “native.” But good writing, like a good life, cannot be built solely on negation.

But the only voices that I heard coming out of the University of the West Indies and the intelligentsia of Jamaica were a thunderous cacophony of negation. No! to British colonialism. No! to American imperialism. No! to multinational corporations. No! No! No! But where was the Yes! to the joy of life?

Luckily, there were a few affirmative voices in Jamaica: Dennis Scott, Mervyn Morris, and Anthony McNeill. However, at the age of sixteen, the most insistent exhortations came from Bob Marley, the most visible icon of the Rastafari community.

It was through Marley’s work that I learned about the central tenet of the mystic revelation of Rastafari, InI, that proclaimed the one-ness of the individual, community, and the divine. This elegant concept of InI, which can be compared to Indra's net, developed by Mahayana Buddhist school in the 3rd century that emphasizes the interconnectedness of the universe and has been further developed by Thich Nhat Hanh as "Interbeing," was a natural solution to the many problems that Jamaica faced during the seventies: how to deny the sense of unworthiness that plagued the sufferahs and how build a community that had been torn asunder by history. In other words, how to love InI.

And just as InI stresses personal responsibility for one’s actions and with the community in manifesting creation, Bob Marley took the lead in shaping many of the ideas within Rastafari that had been espoused by Marcus Garvey into a coherent vision that affirmed moral values.

But how does one translate ideas into a piece of writing that is not merely a polemic, but which uses the two most persuasive tools in a poet’s arsenal: rhythm and metaphor? Bob showed me how.

In the song, “Is This Love?” Bob demonstrated what Kwame Dawes has dubbed the “reggae aesthetic”—a combination of the erotic, social, and divine into a remarkable triplet:

We'll be together with a roof right over our heads;
We'll share the shelter of my single bed;
We'll share the same room, yeah! - for Jah provide the bread.

For many young writers growing up in the seventies, this was groundbreaking for it opened up a new way of seeing our work. our community and our lives. Bob’s work became a model for poetic possibilities and method for evaluating our work.

Bob’s boldness—his claim that anything was possible, if only like the Buddhists claimed we would “Wake up and Live!” and his insistence that we “Put our dreams to reality” became a personal mantra. By embodying Rastafari, Bob proclaimed that InI through renaming an experience had the power to create (I-rate) anything that InI desired (I-sired). It was a powerful idea then. It’s a powerful idea now. And in a land plagued by ideas of lack, limitation, and scarcity, it was truly revolutionary.

Also, Bob’s fearlessness, his willingness to confront Babylon head on as a mature Nyahbinghi warrior, and to change the world without bloodshed, but if necessary, “Brothers you're right, you're right/ You're right, you're right, you're so right/ We'll have to fight, we gonna fight/ We'll have to fight, fighting for our rights” (Zimbabwe) became an inspiration for me and many other writers who came of age during the seventies. And if Bob was a “natural mystic,” maybe we could be “cautious mystics”: observing the trappings of Babylon while still seeking union with the divine.

But more than anything else, Bob’s ability to transform through word-power the consciousness of a generation and to show how life-affirming values could be transmitted in poetry through rhythm and metaphor opened up a path that many of us could follow.

And so for this on his Earthday, InI can only say, “Give thanks, Brother Bob. Give thanks!”

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One Love: Discovering Rastafari!

The curator of a groundbreaking exhibit at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History discusses Rastafarian culture on exhibit until November 2008.

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Related Posts:

Bob Marley

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The Top Ten Things Every Writer Should Know

The following article is part of a multimedia presentation to the Asian-American Journalists' Association J Camp at the University of Miami on July 27, 2007.

10. It’s All About You.

“You have to be someone.” ~ Bob Marley

Whether you have chosen the word or the word has chosen you, the vocation of writing is about creating a self, and this will mean cultivating a set of values that will guide your work. And I mean YOUR work and YOUR values.

I like to use the analogy of soccer when I talk about this. There were some days when I was on the soccer field and I could do no wrong. I could just stand there and the ball would bounce off me and end up in the opposing team’s goal. And then there were days when I had to scramble so I wouldn’t score on my own team. On those days, it was back to basics: move to the ball, control, pass, and move. But I had to know the basics. The basics will get you through when you imagination is floundering and you can’t write a decent sentence and you think everyone hates your writing. And the writing basics (See A Few Writing Resources) will also get you through those times when you think even the great Proust cannot match your imagination.

But whether there are good times or bad times, I want you to remember those words of Brother Bob whose “Get up, Stand Up,” has been one of the most influential songs that has guided my life. As young minority writers, you have come through and you are living in an environment that says you don’t exist or you have no right to exist. Make the time to read Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison.

Yet as Bob sang in “Get Up, Stand Up”: “Life is your right/ so you can’t give up the fight,” I think you need to realize that behind you are whole generations that have been silenced, are being silenced. YOU have to be the strong one because despite the odds, you’ve made it this far. You’re here on the grounds of the University of Miami—a place where many of your parents and grandparents would never have dreamed about being let in through the front gates, and yet, here you are! So, guard your self-esteem: “Don’t give up the fight!”

9. Stop Waiting for Stories to Happen

“Comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable.” ~ Finley Peter Dunne

The first stories that you write will probably be gifts that you can’t help but write. But after you’ve written these stories, what are you going to do? At this time you have to go out (or in) to find the stories that have to be written, and usually these stories come out of a conflict between YOUR values and what is happening around you.

Robert Frost once said that he had a “lover’s quarrel with the world,” and I guess that’s one way of looking at it, but I’ve always thought that Finley Peter Dunne's words, “Comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable” as a good way to begin.

And we have much to “afflict the comfortable.” Think about the abandonment by the mass media of the “broad range of human achievement” that Dana Gioia recently lamented at a commencement speech at Stanford. Instead of real news, we are being given day and night coverage of Lindsay Lohan and Brittany Spears while we have all kinds of contaminated food coming in from China without any real checks and balances. We don’t care. But I think we should care. Even for selfish reasons. Today is Friday, and later, I’m going out to a Chinese restaurant with my wife.

8. Listen!

“When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.” ~

Ernest Hemingway

In order to really listen, you have to listen with your whole being when anyone is talking to you. Look into her eyes. Look at his hands. Look at his shoes. Practice empathetic listening. Then ask yourself, why is s/he telling me this? Does s/he just need an ear? Does s/he think I am a voice? Can I be her voice?

John Keats talked about “negative capability” and that is an ability that writers need to cultivate—the sense of intentional open-mindedness so that you can really listen even if you find the message to be distasteful.

7. Find a Mentor

“Each sentence should make a clear statement. It should add to the statement that went before….Avoid the abstract. Always go for the concrete….Every day, for six months at least, practice writing in this way. Small words; short, clear, concrete sentences.”

~ V. S. Naipaul

See also George Orwell’s Advice & Kurt Vonnegut’s

I have been blessed many times in my career to have found really great teachers and to have spent time with them. Here at the University of Miami, I had the good fortune of taking classes and workshops with Isaac Bashevis Singer, Kamau Brathwaite, and George Lamming. At the Caribbean Writers Institute, I had classmates such as Robert Antoni, Zee Edgell, Michael Anthony, and Velma Pollard.

The great thing about having a living mentor—breathing the same air in the same room—is that sometimes a casual comment can have a lasting impact. I’ll never forget and I’m sure he won’t remember some advice that Mervyn Morris gave to the poets at the Caribbean Writers Institute about about choosing words with multiple connotative meanings. I used his advice in writing the collection, hurricane center, and the “Lent” section was heavily influenced by On Holy Week.

Of course, if you can’t find a living mentor, don’t despair. Find a writer whose work you admire and read everything s/he has written. For example, when I wanted to know how to write a Caribbean short story, I turned to VS Naipaul-- one of the greatest living prose stylists—yet he remains a writer I have no intention of ever meeting in the flesh.

6. Read!

I may have touched on this in the previous note, but ~William Faulkner says it best:

“Read, read, read. Read everything - trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it’s good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out of the window.”

This is why I have no problems with the Harry Potter books. I grew up reading Batman, Superman, and Fantastic Four comics and my mother forced me to read Oliver Twist and David Copperfield. Any kind of reading forces you to concentrate on the text and if you have parents and teachers who have high expectation, you’ll read demanding texts. The more one reads these demanding texts, the greater the appetite. But the original impetus, the original expectations have to be there in the parents and the culture. If it isn’t, the whole culture won’t be Smarter than a Fifth Grader .

Reading widely will also take you out of your comfort zone and you will meet characters that you wouldn't ordinary life, so that when you begin to create your own characters or if you are interviewing someone you can try to see the world from his/her perspective.

5. Whom Do You Serve?

This is the question that knights in search of the Holy Grail were asked once reached the last stage of their quest: Whom Do You Serve?

The vocation of writing has been compared to that quest, and along that journey, you will be asked that question many times. One journalist from Jamaica , John Maxwell, one of my heroes, has answered that question many times.

Maxwell is one of those ethical journalists who has always upheld the highest journalistic standards and he is firm defender of his vocation.

I won’t say much more because as with all good writers, his words speak for themselves:

“We are delegates of the people…We are …the sensory organs of the body politic….the body politic's immune system… heralding, detecting malignant intrusions...In the circulatory system of the body politic, we are the white corpuscles and the T-cells.”

“Ethical journalism is a human right: that people are entitled to the truth and that journalists are not entitled to tell lies or mislead.”

4. Use All Your Talents

As you grow in this vocation, you will find that you are involved in a process similar to alchemy—a burning away of the droll, useless parts of your personality in favor of a more refined, honed craftsmanship.

You will learn as William Sanders says:

“Talent is such a small part of it….Willingness to work hard to learn the skills. (Including the nuts and bolts like spelling and grammar.) Patience to do the necessary revising and if necessary rewriting to get it right. Persistence in the face of rejection. Judgment in deciding what advice to listen to and whom not to trust. Humility to know when you're exerting suction. Knowledge, all sorts of knowledge, knowledge of what's been written…knowledge of the world and its peoples, knowledge of at least one other language to give you perspective on your own. And most important …understanding of human beings and why they act the way they do and the way they interact with each other, which can take a lifetime to master but without it a writer is a failure."

And the key practice that you must nurture is writing. Write, write, write. There is no substitute for writing.

3. Synergize

“Synergy means the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The relationship which the parts have to each other is a part in and of itself - the most empowering, unifying and exciting part.” ~ Steven Covey

You will never be able to do all this on your own. Despite what Ayn Rand says, nothing is ever done by a singular human effort. Thich Nhat Hanh speaks about “Inter-being,” and Rastafari says, InI. Whatever the case, your writing, your life is part of a continuum and this is why synergizing effort—inter- and intra-generational conversations are important.

One of my mentors, Jimmy Carnegie, died recently. As a teacher and a historian, he had observed Caribbean and Jamaican culture, and had a whole set of internalized, Creole Jamaican values have been shared with only a minority that were fortunate enough to have known him. Whether through the diaspora or mortality, the Caribbean and many other minority communities are losing the soldiers who made it through the “war years,” and these soldiers and scholars are taking their wisdom with them to the grave without anyone or very few ever hearing that voice.

So build networks with other writers, begin oral history projects with your parents, grandparents and your family, strengthen all the bonds and relationships that will not only help you to become a better writers, but also a healthy human.

There has never been a great need for synergy within our communities.

2. Surrender

“Art is nothing but the expression of our dream; the more we surrender to it the closer we get to the inner truth of things, our dream-life, the true life that scorns questions and does not see them.” ~ Franz Marc

This may be an extension of the “negative capability” theme, but sooner or later you’ll realize that you will have to surrender some things. Right now, the surrender may be listening with to an editor or a veteran in the business and realizing that neither of you has the “right” answer.

This is where you apply the humility that Sanders talks about. You admit your mistakes, sometimes take the expedient route, and move on. This is not an all out surrender. Begin to choose your battles wisely.

And yet sometimes you will have to give up some core values for a greater vision of yourself—an embrace of new ideas that may put you at odds with the community that you’re supposed to be representing.

What are you going to do at that point? Give in to the crowd even when you know that they’re “wrong,” but you don’t have a “right” answer? Speak your “truth” even when you know you may be “wrong”?

How will you choose? What will you choose?

And the more you surrender to your dream and the vision of your potential to be an agent of change, the more you will grow and have more to offer.

1. It’s Not All About You

TS Eliot wrote in “East Coker”: “In my end is my beginning," and once you’ve embarked on the great journey of writing, you will see that the once selfish aims with which you began writing, soon fall away. In my case they were: getting a girl to go out with me, having the respect of X, seeing my name in print, and the hunt for fame and recognition by my peers. But once you realize as the Buddha teaches, we will never have enough, then things begin to change.

It falls to us then to find a larger meaning or value. Or as George Bernard Shaw

said:

“This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy… I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can….I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no "brief candle" for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations”

I thank you for this opportunity and wish you all the best!

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A Few Writing Resources

Getting Started as a Writer

Kurt Vonnegut @ Gonzalo Barr

The Writer as Spendthrift

Write in Pieces

Henry Miller on Writing

Life is Messy;Stories aren't

Family Guy

Stephen King's Tips to Becoming a Better Writer

How Not to Write Poetry: Rethabile Masilo

The Business of Writing: Tobias Buckell

Learning to Write: John Baker’s Blog

The Lie That Tells a Truth: A Guide to Writing Fiction by John Dufresne

The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers by John Gardner

The Writer's Journey, Second Edition: Mythic Structure for Writers by Christopher Vogler

Poemcrazy: Freeing Your Life with Words by Susan G. Wooldridge

Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott

Tell it Slant by by Brenda Miller & Suzanne Paola

Free Within Ourselves: Fiction Lessons for Black Authors by Jewell Parker Rhodes

Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting by Syd Field

One Writer's Beginnings (The William E. Massey Sr. Lectures in the History of American Civilization) by Eudora Welty

Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within by Natalie Goldberg (Author)

The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry by Kim Addonizio Dorianne Laux

WikiHow: How to Write a Short Story
(Via Mad Bull)

Poetics (Aristotle): Wikipedia

Dear Reader, please add any books about the craft of writing that you have found helpful:

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Retelling I-Story: "Redemption Song"

The history of Jamaica in the popular imagination does not begin with Christopher Columbus planting the standard of Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand in the wet sand of Discovery Bay while the indigenous Taino peer through thick, leathery leaves of sea grapes. Rather the story begins in overcrowded barracoons surrounded by human filth and waste, and this memory has always been an insult. The challenge for many Jamaican leaders such as Marcus Garvey whose movement began in Jamaica and eventually spread to Harlem, New York, has been to devise methods to overcome the trauma of slavery and colonialism. At the height of his popularity, Garvey’s admonitions, “Always think yourself a perfect being,” raised the consciousness of blacks in the Americas, but after his imprisonment on trumped up charges, the movement lost its impetus until Rastafari, spiritual heirs of Garvey, took up the mantle of black liberation.

The central tenet of Rastafari is the inviolability of the personal, indwelling God—the true “I” which is connected to the “I” of the universe or I-niverse. This mystic connection is expressed in the Rastafari concept of InI. (I have to do a little Rasta Speak here.) For Rastafari, the individual, “I” is at the center of all experiences. Therefore, if everything flows out of the individual I-consciousness, then “I” should not fear any experience, nor should “I” think of “I” as a victim because the individual, “I” working with the universal “I” consciously, unconsciously or by acceptance of the default agreement of whatever name we have given ourselves or others, I-rated “I” I-niverse.

In other words, one way or another we are creating our stories and we can either tell it as victims or victors. With this act of renaming, Rastafari created its own vocabulary and by relying on Old Testament narratives, changed the way that many of its adherents viewed history, I-story, and Bob Marley, one of the primary proselytizers of Rastafari, illustrates the complex mythology in “Redemption Song”:

Old pirates, yes they rob I
sold I to the merchant ships
Minutes after they took I
from the bottomless pit.

From the first lines of the song, Bob not only recounts the memory of slavery, but he also inserts his story into the historical narrative. The double entendre of “old pirates,” refers not only to the slavers, but also to the recording merchants who “pirated” Bob’s songs throughout his career and drove him from Jamaica to abandon his musical career and work in a Chrysler plant in Wilmington, Delaware (Catch a Fire: The Life of Bob Marley). The bottomless pit also describes the despair of living in Trench Town’s “Concrete Jungle”: “No sun will shine in my day today; / the high yellow moon won't come out to play:/I said darkness has covered my light, / and has changed my day into night.” In the early days of his career, Bob was facing downpression everywhere, as he explains in “Duppy Conqueror,” which describes a brief time spent in jail:

The bars could not hold me;
Force could not control me now.
They try to keep me down, yeah!
But Jah put I around. Yeah!

Yes, I've been accused many a times
and wrongly abused, now.
Oh, but through the powers of the Most-I,
They've got to turn me loose.

Nothing could hold him back. The "I" and the “Most I” had I-rated the situation, so one way or another, it could be overcome. But the “I” must be strong as he proclaims in “Jammin'":

Ain’t no rules, ain’t no vow,
we can do it anyhow:
InI will see you through…
No bullet can stop us now,
we neither beg nor we won’t bow…
We jammin’ till the jam is through.

In the next few lines, Bob locates the source of his strength, “But my hand was made strong/ by the hand of the Almighty/ We forward in this generation triumphantly.” The ability to overcome the bottomless pit is credited to the hand of the Almighty and Bob’s identification with Haile Selassie, Ras-Tafari, almost childlike at times, “My father is the richest man on the earth,” (Talking Blues), yielded powerful results.

Also as a member of the Twelve Tribes of Israel and belonging to the tribe of Joseph, Bob felt a strong affinity with this Biblical character, who was also placed in a bottomless pit by his jealous brothers.

In the next stanza, Bob repeats Marcus Garvey’s words, “Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery/ none but ourselves can free our minds,” and he links his calling to the larger message of black liberation. In the philosophy of Garvey, which Marley adopted, the key to freedom lies in our minds, individually and collectively.

But fear keeps us from achieving freedom. Bob admonishes, “Have no fear for atomic energy.” Not even the bleakest fear of atomic annihilation should be contemplated, “for not one of them can stop the time.” This is not a fatalistic view about the end-of-times, but is in accordance with the tone of Ecclesiastes, “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.” But then Bob displays one of the hallmarks of his songwriting career: he balances received beliefs against his own experience, so we have the very human cry, “How long shall they kill our prophets/ while we stand aside and look.”

Nearly every biography of Marley describes his daily habit of reading the Bible, but another habit becomes clear. Unlike many literalists who would accept a fatalistic point of view based on received beliefs, Bob never accepts anything on blind faith. It is these literalists who use the Bible to endorse nihilism, ethnic and deistic tribalism, and acceptance of the status quo, that he derides in the next line, “Some say it’s just a part of it/ we’ve got to fulfill the book.” Bob’s use of the word “some," is the equivalent to “they”--another of his favorite words when he chooses to distance himself from beliefs derived from “folk wisdom.”

Throughout his career of bringing “new wine,” Bob was often at odds with the commonly held beliefs of Jamaicans--“they,” who were chained to the beliefs of the plantation, “Today they say that we are free,/ Only to be chained in poverty” (“Slave Driver”). Although his songs are punctuated with folk sayings, “Every day the bucket a go a well/ One day the bottom a go drop out” (“I Shot the Sheriff”), Bob explores the tension between what we think to be real and what really is.

For if there is an inevitability to certain actions, then it is fruitless to complain. Change the situation. Like many Rastafari who are engaged in discovering the difference between the eternal and the ephemeral, Bob questioned the validity of commonly accepted beliefs, which are dependent on changing perceptions, against “knowledge” which is unchangeable.

Many of Bob’s songs wrestle with folk beliefs and the interpretation of collective memory. And as Bob demonstrated in the first stanza by his own life story, even the most debilitating memory and experience can be overcome. He repeats this idea in the line, “So won’t you help to sing/ these songs of freedom/ cause all I ever had redemption songs”

At the heart of the liberation theology of Rastafari is the knowledge that the individual, I-man, shapes and controls his destiny. By integrating his story and the Biblical narratives that have become part of the personal and collective story of Jamaicans, Bob demonstrated that the temptation to accept failure can be overcome by emancipating ourselves from the mental slavery of fear and fatalism.

Bob’s life, like the life of all heroes who convince us to live for purposes larger than our individual lives, showed that change is possible, but we have to change how we view these experiences. Rastafari teaches that we are equal to any experience, and no matter how horrific it may seem to be—it must be overcome. Only by giving up negative beliefs, will we be able to “forward in this generation, triumphantly.” It is an invitation to freedom.

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Links: Rastafari
American Masters: Bob Marley
What does "Redemption Song" mean?

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Tags: Caribbean Reggae Bob Marley Jamaica

Happy Birthday, Brother Bob!

Sestina for Bob

It started with a silly quarrel when my lover
changed the music from Sean Paul--she wanted to listen to Bob.
I wish all our choices were that simple--not the struggle
everyday between the open sea and the comfortable yard--
the blind hunger that disguises itself as freedom
and becomes what we most dread.

It's like when I'm listening to Natty Dread,
"Bend Down Low" when Marley's talking to a coy lover.
You know he wants her, but he still wants his freedom.
And you can imagine her outside Island House as her head bobs
up and down--she knows she'll become one of the women in the yard,
but she wants the man behind the music, so why struggle?

Yet for Marley that was all that mattered--the struggle
to change our hearts, so when InI, the Twelve Tribes in that dread
day, disgusted with the shistem, will leave yard,
and Africa will welcome us with open arms like a neglected lover.
We'll find the dreamland we’ve always wanted, the place that Bob
glimpsed in the streets of Trench Town, searching for freedom.

But is Africa the only place that we'll find our freedom?
In England, in America, in France, is it only the struggle
that will give us peace, that will help us find the place that Bob
told us about in "So Jah Seh"? Urging the faint-hearted dreads
in the heart of Babylon, who hated him like a spurned lover,
to never give up their hope and promised a better yard.

For he never forgot that Babylon tried to murder him in his own yard,
jumping over so many fences in Trench Town to find the freedom
he never found in the sweet kisses of his contented lovers,
as he trod through I-ration, and couldn't sleep because of the struggle
while the ancestors tormented him, tugged at his dreads
flowing over the stones. He could never rest as they whispered, “Bob

we are here in the dark, hungry, and waiting. Bob, Bob
the politicians, the traitors are betraying the youth a yard,
and there's no more turning back, there's no more retreat, dread.
This time, the fatherless children must fight for their freedom,
their lives will never be their own unless you continue the struggle,
only then will their eyes soften towards each other like old lovers."

It hurt too much, so I left the room when Bob began Songs of Freedom,
his voice with the smell of yard spilling over the lyrics--his struggle
to convince us he would always be here, like a constant lover.

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Bob Marley Reggae poetry poem Caribbean Jamaica Jamaican