CHAPTER
1
REGGAE DJELI
...The roles of the musician and the djeli* are closely
aligned in traditional West African cultures. The djeli has the responsibility
of being the narrator of his people’s history and preserving the
beliefs and ancient wisdom of the ancestors. Djelis are the sacred custodians
of the culture. Similarly, musicians play a central role in transferring
the ideas of African culture to the people, and djelis are more often
than not musicians of some sort as well. The djeli-musician provides entertaining,
labor-assisting, and transcendental vibrations and insights of the greatest
importance that weave communities together socially as well as philosophically.
Thus, music and song in African traditions are a central medium in the
transferring of information, the historical marking of events, the conveying
of traditions, as well as providing the ambience needed for sacred ceremonies
and healing rituals. Songs in African tradition have also been noted for
their use "to taunt enemies or rivals, and to chastise those whose
actions were deemed unacceptable."
Some thousands of miles across the Atlantic Ocean, music would also serve
as the medium through which Africans retained the spiritual part of our
beings. The cultural traditions in music were retained despite the harsh
and brutal circumstances of Africans being kidnapped, forced into exile,
and reduced to an enslaved status beginning in the 16th century on the
West and Central African coastline. Music has maintained a special value
in African culture and life prior to, during, and after the enslavement
of Africans in the Western Hemisphere. Although it is likely that every
culture’s music has function, the assertion seems clear that music
in the African world is connected to spirituality, ritual, history, tradition
and therefore with the details of daily life and living...
The development of the European enslavement system created
an altogether new context out of which the djeli and musician were forced
to operate. The role and insights of the African djeli were to be synthesized
within the artistry of the musician during the Western Hemisphere enslavement.
Yet, the cultural constrictions of the European enslavement system had
a definite effect on the nature of African cultural expression.
On the Caribbean island of Jamaica, the first enslaved Africans were brought
from West Africa by the Spanish as early as 1509. The consciousness of
enslaved African people was sure to be indelibly impacted by the atrocities
of European enslavement. Undeniably, the European enslavement of Africans
was a severely tragic period that lasted for nearly four hundred years
in the evolution of African people of the Western Hemisphere’s forced
African diaspora. The “accidental” finding of the Americas
by Europeans would have genocidal results for the indigenous Arawak populations
of the Caribbean. By 1655, when the British preempted the Spaniards’
conquest over Jamaica, the Arawak people had already been completely eradicated
by the Spaniards. As early as 1517, after viewing the brutal atrocities
against the Arawak people, Bartholomew de las Casas, the first Roman Catholic
priest to be ordained in the Western Hemisphere, suggested the enslavement
of Africans to save the indigenous populations. This suggestion would
mean irreversible damage for the hundreds of millions of Africans who
became victims of European governance during slavery, colonialism, and
the present era of neo-colonialism that continues to plague the Black
and indigenous populations in the West today...
Early in the enslavement of Africans, European enslavers
recognized the power and potential of African music in mobilizing the
spirit of Africans toward liberation. Thus, “colonial authorities
sometimes banned drums and drumming, but could never completely silence
them." Alleyne, a scholar on Jamaican culture, further notes:
[a] symbiotic interaction developed between culture and resistance. The
will to resist required the preservation of some functional distinctiveness
in culture, upon which the success of the resistance depended; and the
success of the resistance in turn contributed to the preservation of an
African-type base culture. The Maroon communities of Jamaica and other
parts of the New World are the most striking example [sic] of this symbiosis.
During slavery, the Jamaican Maroons used the drum for
sacred ritual as well as a tool for communication. Considering that in
West African Akan spirituality the liturgy was partly embodied in the
language of the drums, it is therefore not surprising that “most
of the Maroon leaders, especially those of Jamaica, were of the Akan-speaking
group."
Identifying the principles of maroonage--the political, cultural, and
physical resistance of a people to the imprisonment of their soul-—is
essential to recognizing the inner core cultural history of Jamaica, as
well as the entirety of the African experience in the Caribbean and the
“Americas.” It was largely through the medium of music that
the spirit of maroonage and the resistance of the enslaved African were
expressed, despite the physical constrictions. Indeed, it could be argued
that, for the African, when music is used to articulate messages that
interpret and critique the social and political realities of the subjugated
and exploited African world, its import, value, and function become most
clear and vital. And it is this tradition of protest and resistance that
came to epitomize, for a time, the genre of music known as reggae.
Reggae, at the height of its cultural significance in the 1970s, was concerned
with expressing the spiritual insight and social-political perspective
and pathos of the displaced African masses suffering, struggling, and
yet surviving in a European-dominated world system. This system was chastised
by the artists for its racism, classism, moral and ethical wickedness,
and outright downpression of indigenous populations the world over...
Jamaica's 1978 One Love Peace Concert represents a definitive
example of the political vibrancy that characterized reggae music in its
1970s and early 1980s golden era. The concert and the popular reggae of
that time have a clearly different musical quality and cultural significance
than the reggae that predominates and, to a large degree, defines both
Western and Jamaican markets today. In fact, many new and young listeners
to reggae in this new millennium have no idea of the Black/Pan-African
cultural relevance that defined reggae when it made its genesis in the
1970s. The One Love was like no other in that it was organized by two
rival political gang leaders whose forces had been battling one another
in the poorest areas of West Kingston, Jamaica. The fighting was being
waged on behalf of the forces of the United States (US) supported, capitalist-oriented
Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) versus the democratic-socialist government
of the People's National Party (PNP). The two parties, led by Edward Seaga
(JLP) and Michael Manley (PNP), represented Jamaica's opposition and ruling
parties respectively.
The Saturday, April 22nd, 1978, concert was organized in connection with
the Twelve Tribes of Israel Rastafari group, and in commemoration of the
twelfth anniversary of Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie I's April 1966
visit to Jamaica. Selassie I's visit was important to both Jamaica's Rastafari
and its Pan-Africanists because Ethiopia had the honor and distinction
of being the only African nation to retain its sovereignty on the entire
continent. Defeating Italian colonizing forces at the Battle of Adowa
in 1896, Ethiopia maintained its liberty in the midst of an African continent
that had been ravaged by the Arab and European enslavement systems, and
the subsequent European colonizing of Africa that began at the 1884-85
Berlin Conference in Germany.
Although peace did not prevail for long after the One Love, the concert
is noteworthy because of the message in that night’s music. The
music was predominated by committed political positions taken by reggae's
top artists for ethical themes influenced heavily by the Rastafari cultural
movement and its Pan-African posture. The most climactic statements made
at the Peace Concert were by Peter Tosh and Bob Marley, who were billed
on a program that included such reggae greats as Jacob Miller, Culture,
The Meditations, The Mighty Diamonds, Dennis Brown, Big Youth, and Ras
Michael and the Sons of Negus among others. Notably absent from the show
was Bunny Wailer, a prominent founder of the original Wailers, who, like
many others in Jamaica, doubted the possibility of the show bringing peace
to the politically motivated violence raging on the island. Still, an
analysis of the concert effectively reveals the cultural-political height
that reggae achieved in the 1970s...
Interestingly, many reports of the One Love provide only
brief mention of Tosh's thirty-minute highly critical lecture on Jamaican
politics. These reports reduce Tosh's statements to chastisement of the
two party leaders for their waffling over the issue of ganja (marijuana)
legalization. Although the legalization of ganja was clearly an important
issue for Tosh, his statements at the Peace Concert also addressed other
issues that he felt were critical to a more just society. In the confrontational
style that characterized the personality of his music, Tosh set the stage
with his criticism on the hypocrisy of government, as well as the racist
nature of Jamaican history and society. Tosh's speech that evening represents
an important, yet often overlooked moment in the struggle against African
downpression in Jamaica. His comments deserve more attention because they
represent his keen perception and ability to expose the "double-standard"
that makes Jamaican, as well as Western history and culture a giant paradox
for the African.
Tosh's words expressed the Rastafari’s epistemological overstanding
of the dynamics involved in truly establishing peace in Jamaica. Delivered
extemporaneously in his traditional Rasta-Jamaican language, by way of
introduction Tosh begins:
This concert here, well them say it's a peace concert…And I wonder
if many people realize what the word peace mean, eh?…Peace is the
diploma you get in the cemetery, seen? On top of your grave that is marked
“here lies the body of John Strokes, rest in peace,” seen?
Tosh displayed insight on how the deceptive use of terms
like “peace and love,” representative values intrinsic in
Rastafari ideals, were also subject to the access of politrickal usage.
Hence, calling to “peace and love” are often the downpressors’
strategy to deceptively keep the minds of the downpressed off of the innate
human objective of freedom and justice. Addressing this dilemma, Tosh’s
1977 song “Equal Rights” is an apparent precursor to US Black
political activist Al Sharpton’s popular slogan, “No justice,
no peace!” In a manner reminiscent of the most potent voice of 1960s
Black protest, Malcolm X, Tosh’s teaching at the One Love was to
both the politrickal elite and the masses as he attempted to transform
the Peace Concert into an Equal Rights Concert.
And learn this man… Me glad all the prime minister is here and the
minister of opposition and members of parliament. We can’t make
the little pirate them come here and rob up the resources of the country
you know. Seen? Because that is what them been doing long, long, blood-bath
time and have poor people in ya a blood clat box shit out of hog mouth.
Yu no see it? Dem deh ting ha fe done!
Tosh’s brazen speech did not avoid his favorite pastime. Boldly
lighting a spliff on stage, Tosh was inspired to lecture the Prime Minister,
officials from both political parties, and the police on the benefits
of more socially rational agronomy policies for the Jamaican people. Tosh
states:
Jamaica is one of the richest West Indies country in the world. Learn
that. Jamaica can feed the world with food. I see thousands of acres of
land lying down out there. We could a plant herb and make shipments of
herb a go whey go make cure glaucoma. Go seen. So we don’t want
dem deh business dere, we want equal rights, and what?
Tosh’s blazing monolog also addressed the colonial
legacy of Columbus and other European pirate-imperialists, police brutality,
poverty, hunger, malnutrition and the criminal's injustice “shitstem’s”
biases against the poor. Not only can his pessimism concerning the prospects
for peace be seen, but also when his comments are considered at length,
the quality of his historical perspective and spiritual orientation can
be observed within the audacious nature of his oration.
This colonial shitstem ya a rule the underprivileged. I am one of dem
who happen to be in the underprivileged sector. You no seen? Hassled by
police brutality. Times and times again ha fe run up and down fe what?
Fe just have a lickle spliff inna me pocket, or have a round a herb, or
a go buy a draw… Yeah we talk the truth. 'Cause dem ting deh is
whey we go through a blood bath already… Seen?! And dem ting deh;
learn this man, those things is just things where Columbus and those guys
who was the lawmakers in those times set up to keep the underprivileged,
underprivileged, seen?…
Me want lickle oil fe cook all me food, me cyan get dem ting dere. I and
I have to set up this country here and eliminate all those shitstem that
Black poor people don't live in confusion. Cause hungry people are angry
people. I am not a politician but I suffer the consequences, seen?…
So right now if the government just come together and say right now if
we want build this country and build the people dem, because right now
you can't build the country and don't build the people. People suffering
from malnutrition and all them things there…And it’s just
a shitstem that lay down to belickle the poor. You no seen? It's only
the poor go to jail. Every time me go inna jail it's pure poor people
I see in there. Ta ras clat [Jamaican expletive]. Go to courthouse, it's
full of poor people. You no seen?
Tosh was to pay an awful price for the frankness of his
speech, which he made on behalf of Jamaica’s poor and suffering
African masses who applauded his statements from their seats. Weeks after
the concert, he suffered a severe, life-threatening beating by police
apparently as punishment for his remarks made at the concert...
For Bob Marley, the One Love Peace Concert marked his
return to Jamaica after a two-year self-imposed exile in London. The JLP's
reputation had been significantly tarnished two years earlier when it
became implicated as responsible for a failed 1976 assassination attempt
on Marley two days before he was to headline the Smile Jamaica Concert
sponsored by then Prime Minister Michael Manley and his party, the PNP.
Marley played the Smile Jamaica show prior to his exile and displayed
more personal courage in returning home and performing before 30,000 at
Jamaica's 1978 Peace Concert.
Although less confrontational than Tosh's, Marley's performance that night
was just as politically charged and historically meaningful. The drama
of the evening climaxed when he summoned the two leaders of the rival
political parties to publicly embrace hands with his own--a gesture that
many had hoped would put an end to the politically motivated violence
that resulted in over 700 people being killed during the 1976 election
campaigns, and were adding to the despair that political rivalries, severe
poverty, unemployment, and inflation had left with the African masses
on the overwhelmingly African island. Marley set the stage for the political
peace gesture while performing "War"; the song, based on Haile
Selassie's 1963 United Nations speech, speaks of the resolve of Africans
to fight against racism and downpression. Marley stood before his fellow
Jamaicans in Kingston's national stadium and sang a special request for
"all to come here, to send a message of prayer."
From "War," Marley and his band, the Wailers featuring the back-up
I-three singers, took the evening to its zenith with the popular song,
"Jamming." Demonstrating some of the shortcomings of reggae
research, one Marley biographer even missed the facts of the show and
originally suggested mistakenly, "[t]he climax of the show was ‘One
Love,’ when Bob asked Michael Manley and Edward Seaga to join him
on stage and clasp hands." This political gesture did mark the show's
climax, however it was the song "Jamming" that Marley was singing
at this moment. Thus, the biographer not only misses an opportunity to
accurately record this very significant moment in the history of Jamaica,
but to also recognize the meaning of Marley's lyrics in "Jamming,"
which he dismissed as "inconsequential, the Wailers going slightly
disco." It is this type of mis-interpretation that is central to
reggae’s present-day misappropriation as a party music instead of
a conscience raising art form as intended when the music reached its artistic
heights during its 1970s golden era. Furthermore, it is this type of mis-interpretation
of Marley’s song that has led to the use of "Jamming"
in Budweiser beer commercials, where the song is interpreted as a verb
meaning "to party" rather than one meaning to engage in struggle
for righteousness.
"Jamming" seemed most appropriate and of immediate import and
consequence for the climax of the One Love Peace Concert because in "Jamming"
Marley called for an uncompromising and unrelenting progress for justice
in Jamaica that has seemingly been missed by some music critics. Marley
sings: “No bullets can stop us now/We need no beg, no we won’t
bow/Neither can be bought nor sold/You ought defend the right/Jah Jah
children must unite/True life is worth much more than gold/We’re
jammin’.” Marley used the song's musical refrain to summon
to the stage Jamaica's two political leaders. Since Marley would often
cite the popular adage that "Rasta don't deal with politics,"
it was only natural for him to transform what was essentially a political
moment into his own spiritual context. Clasping the hands of Manley (PNP)
and Seaga (JLP) above his own, he ended the symbolic peace statement with
the prayer, "Peace, prosperity be with us all, Jah Rastafari, Selassie
I."
Marley’s art director, Neville Garrick, provided a candid and insightful
Biblical analogy to interpret the clearly historic moment. Garrick comments:
So when Bob really take Michael Manley and Seaga hand and join dem together,
there's a dread in the middle now which a come in like Christ ‘pon
the cross between the two thieves. And [Bob] say One Love, it's for really
show the people a Jamaica and the world that okay, you a fight say you
defend Manley and you a fight say you defend Seaga, alright the two of
them here now. One Love, see the two of them, and [he] hold them hand
there together now so one [must] not kill one another over them two men…That
is what Bob was doing.
But even Marley had reservations about the prospects
of the concert bringing peace to Jamaica's political predicament. His
focus was more cultural and social as reflected in a statement he made
before the show:
I neither go right nor left. I go straight ahead, seen? I can't unite
the JLP or the PNP because these are two organizations set up to fight
against each other. That is called politics and I'm not into those things.
We are talking about Rasta. We black people have a root. We are uniting
regardless of what you are defending. We are talking about our real heritage.
We are talking about the real self...
Although many reggae artists over the years have attempted
to define reggae's meaning in song, few have been as clear as Bunny Wailer
who effectively describes reggae music in "Roots, Radics, Rockers,
Reggae" where he sings: “Reggae music is the music that spreads
the message/Tells of history, the truth, and the right/Leading the cause
of the innocent ones/To comfort the afflicted and to keep them from wrong.”
As reggae emerged in the 1970s, history and culture became of primary
thematic importance to the meaning of the music at the same moment that
the influence of Rastafari worldview made its most powerful imprint on
the music.
The Rastafari worldview centers around the glorification of former Ethiopian
Emperor Haile Selassie I as the Bible's Messiah who has ushered in the
beginnings of a new spiritual world order that will redeem the African
consciousness towards the fulfillment of the vision prophesied by Marcus
Garvey of a worldwide African spiritual and cultural redemption. This
perspective stems from a group of Garvey supporters in Jamaica who observed
the 1930 Ethiopian coronation of Ras Tafari Makonnen and recognized it
as a prophetic fulfillment of the Bible and Garvey's vision.
History and culture are two themes applied interchangeably and termed
"roots," "roots and culture," and "rockers"
within reggae language. Other themes in Roots-Reggae include perspectives
on race, politics, economics and cultural values grounded in an African-centered
Judao-Christian theology and spiritual orientation that reinforce African
history and culture as valid and sensible frames of reference for interpreting
reality in Jamaica, despite the island's experience as a former British
colony. In its 1970s’ heights, roots-reggae provided a vital medium
for the disenfranchised to engage in crucial reasonings with the African
world as well as the European power structure, termed Babylon in Rastafari
language. Roots-reggae's lyrical intent challenged the power structure
on issues concerning the historical, political, economic, social, and
cultural life of Africans in Jamaica and the rest of the world...
However, the 1980s and early 1990s would bring significant changes to
reggae in ways very similar to the dismantling of Black America’s
rhythm and blues/soul tradition in the 1970s. Reggae would devolve into
a greatly compromised music with only glimpses of its classical roots
form best characterized by its social and politically incisive lyrics.
By 1985, reggae's new popular form would be re-defined--with some notable
exceptions--as a commercialized genre unconcerned with the historical,
cultural, and political messages that once defined its meaning. A music
genre that was once defined by its commitment to articulating the realities
of the world from the perspective of the exploited African masses degenerated
into a music promoting internecine violence, materialism, vanity, and
sexism. This latter type of content, labeled slackness in the language
of reggae culture, is ironically the accepted commercial standard for
reggae today with popular artists like Beenie Man, Shaggy, Lady Saw and
Sean Paul all apparent in leading the current reggae massive to hedonism.
Was it a natural progression for a music tradition to grow from such a
cultural and politically relevant origin to its present state where socially
irresponsible music and artists define the genre in the commercial market
today? The analysis in this book suggests that reggae, like other powerful
expressions of Black culture, has been subjected to a subtle cultural-political
war waged by those authorities that attempt to maintain the status quo
in the European dominated capitalist world. Reggae as a politically galvanizing
tool suffered a transfiguring demise engineered by converging Western
political and cultural forces that began its attempt to manipulate the
genre almost from its inception...
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