The Artist and the Tragic Muse

Don Drummond was a musical genius. A founding member of the Skatalites, Drummond was an accomplished composer/arranger and jazz trombonist. Unfortunately, his life became a tragic cliché--the solitary artist falling in love with an unavailable woman. In this case, the unavailable woman was an exotic dancer and singer named Anita "Margarita" Mahfood. Drummond suspected that she was cheating on him and he killed her. At his trial, he was declared mentally unfit and was interned at the Belle Vue Asylum where, as the story goes, he was not allowed to play his trombone and this led to his suicide. Such is the life of legends and many Jamaican writers have fallen for the lure of the Don Drummond's story.

One of the first poets to memorialize Don Drummond was Mervyn Morris and in his poem, "Valley Prince," the speaker in the poem laments about the relationship of the artist, his vocation and audience. The sound, music, and trombone become metaphors of the poet's craft and the woman becomes a symbol--a representative of a community that despite it's brutal history, prefers existence on a prosaic level. The betrayal is physical and spiritual. It propels the artist towards murder, mayhem, and mania.

Morris and Drummond know the betrayal of a community that refuses complexity. They know, "But straight is not the way; my world/ don' go so, that is lie," and as seekers they take the path of integrity and speak their truth: "Oonu giimme back me trombone, man: / is time to blow me mind."

Podcast of Geoffrey Philp reading "Valley Prince" by Mervyn Morris.

Valley Prince

(for Don D.)

Me one, way out in the crowd,

I blow the sounds, the pain,

but not a soul

would come inside my world

or tell me how it true.

I love a melancholy baby

sweet, with fire in her belly;

and like a spite

the woman turn a whore.

Cool and smooth around the beat

she wake the note inside me

and I blow me mind.

Inside here, me one

in the crowd again,

and plenty people

want we blow it straight.

But straight is not the way: my world

don' go so: that is lie.

Oonu gimme back me trombone, man:

is time to blow me mind.

From The Pond

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