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Uneasy
riders
Finding heavy traffic, an island community beset
by globalization, and the brilliant Beres Hammond in Jamaica.
By Jeff
Chang
SO THERE
WE were above the Port Kaiser soccer field – Roger
and me, the dreadlocked Germans, and the doe-eyed Brooklynites.
Eddie Monsoon was asleep in the back. Ajamu, the other bus driver,
and the two Englishmen (one white and graying, the other black and
young) were laughing at the foibles of island characters we didn't
know. The flies were beginning to buzz and the mercury pushed 90
as the sun rose over the lush southern Jamaican coast.
You couldn't
really call it a traffic jam. That would assume cars were moving
toward a destination. A long line of cars pointed to the exit, but
it wasn't going to move anytime soon. Somehow some authority in
St. Elizabeth Parish had forgotten to worry about parking for the
"Rebel Salute" roots festival. So a couple of folks had
left their cars in the middle of the narrow, rocky two-lane road
down to the soccer field at the bottom of the remote valley and
disappeared. No one knew where they were. Tens of thousands of us
were just waiting for them to find their way back.
Anyone who had
come here via the impossibly long walk was already halfway up the
valley and on his or her way home. The rest of us modern, motorized
folks were feeling the day begin, searching for shade or drink or
a smoke. Last year, everyone was saying, Jesse Jendau had caused
a riot when he screamed, "Free di herb!" and threw several
wisdom trees into the audience. But back then, at least everyone
had a place to park. This year Jendau simply showed up in flowing
white robes, wildly waving a sharp, gleaming cutlass. The musicians
gave him a wide berth. He raged against the Rothschilds and Rockefellers
and sang a few tunes, but he kept the weed to himself. So the sleepy
combat-helmeted constabularies wandered the grounds aimlessly in
the hazy heat. Someone was saying Jamaicans didn't believe in either
traffic control or towing. We laughed and waited.
So there we
were on the bus, and Roger Steffens – publisher of the Beat
magazine and keeper of the world's largest Bob Marley archive,
the morning's closest thing to a celebrity – was holding court.
Steffens had already made a week of it. One of the newspapers reported
he was in town for "Rebel Salute," and he was quoted saying
he wanted to support roots music against all of the negativity in
the world. The night before, master of ceremonies Mutabaraka (who
knows he's a comedian) told the crowd, "If you wan' hear Bob
Marley flush toilet, dis man 'ave it!" I thought I saw Steffens
wince.
Steffens was
showing me and the Germans a book of a recent exhibition of Marley
artifacts he had put together from his personal collection, and
he was regaling us with Marley tales. The Germans reciprocated by
giving us CDs of astonishingly good new roots artists from Hamburg
with credible patois. Ajamu and the Brits were outside smoking cigarettes
and laughing. The Brooklynites were trying to close their doe eyes.
Monsoon, who had earned his rep as the photographer for Massive
Attack, was already out. Some island nights can be the best thing
on earth. Many island days start just like this, with a diet of
waiting.
Rebel swells
That weekend
Tony Rebel's 10th annual "Rebel Salute" festival was the
only thing happening on the island. Thousands had made the long
descent from Mandeville for the event. Begun at a time when roots
artists felt overwhelmed by guns and slackness and attending any
outdoor festival meant risking bottle-throwing bouts and stampedes,
"Rebel Salute" was intended to be the conscious alternative.
Rebel was at the apex of his career, and his good friend, Mandeville
native Garnett Silk, was on his way. Artists like Buju Banton and
Capleton were maturing from ruffnecks into Rasta rebels, an amazing
historical transformation that swept through the dance hall and
still has no equivalent in today's rap world. "Rebel Salute"
sealed the shift back to consciousness by reimagining a positive
roots community; its posters still proudly state, "No drugs,
no meat, no alcohol." For some, it was about honoring their
countryside origins; for others, it was about aging out of the trife
street life with grace.
While other
festivals, especially the contentious "Sashi" and "Sumfest"
events, have enjoyed greater notoriety, "Rebel Salute"
captures the vibes so many of us foreigners always imagined the
music to be about. For the equivalent of $14 U.S., the family-friendly
crowd of 25,000 could enjoy more than two dozen roots singers under
the starry country sky. And there was a political aspect to it too.
Many of the singers, even dancehall artists like Spragga Benz, delivered
impassioned messages against gun violence, capital punishment, the
lack of a minimum wage, and violent partisan politricks. Filmmaker
Stephanie Black was in attendance for the biggest screening yet
of her poignant film, Life and Debt. The antiglobalization
feature was shown in its entirety to open the evening.
The bill made
room for the likes of ska pioneer Bob Andy and recent slackness-to-consciousness
convert Chuck Fenda. And it was topped off by a veritable galaxy
of roots stars past, present, and future: Capleton, Sizzla, Luciano,
Buju Banton, Beres Hammond, George Nooks, Abijah, Mykal Roze, and
Culture. As roman candles screeched overhead, kids waved their red,
gold, and green flags alongside Hilfiger knockoff-sporting parents
and grannies and barefoot teenagers throwing flames with lighters
and aerosol cans.
There was an
excess of good vibes and great performances. Headliners Capleton
and Sizzla, perhaps unburdened of having either to impress New York
City's jaded seen-it-alls or fulfill the fantasies of Santa Cruz's
hippies, ripped sets that featured almost no dancehall riddims.
Several of Luciano's children, dressed in black and camouflage Garveyite
military uniforms, cartwheeled onstage to dance to their dad's music,
inspiring him to try a Jackie Wilson-esque back handspring. The
normally show-stealing Beenie Man watched respectfully from the
wings, wildly cheering and singing along to "Lord Give Me Strength."
The lean, tall, transfixing Banton stole the show. When he performed
"Murderer" – a tune that perhaps signifies the move
from dancehall to new roots more than any other – he was received
as if he were the return of Marley himself.
But it was the
47-year-old Hammond who summed up the vibe of the entire event,
indeed, of the roots community, which these days appears to be caught
in a state of stasis and longing. Hammond leaned heavily on the
2001 classic Music Is Life – a nostalgic paean to the
dusty roads of a simpler life, the musical vibes of a beatific day
gone by. His music is about a joyfulness in living that melts away
all divisions, but it's also about a desire for security in a world
that each day seems to slip inexorably toward violence and uncertainty.
Since Hammond
began his singing career, the Jamaican dollar has lost 5,000 percent
of its value, and many of the country's industries have been destroyed
by globalization. His music is a small balm for these wounds, a
retreat from the onrushing march into the future. "Remember
the songs that used to make you rock away. Those were the days when
love used to reign," he crooned on "Rock Away." "We
danced all night to the songs that they played." His sweet
singing took little edge off the angry punch line: "Right now
we need a brand new start. People everywhere need more music from
the heart."
At crossroads
We had driven
out of Kingston at sunset the day before in a chartered Jamaica
Tourist Board minibus, past the Bob Marley museum, at his old residence
on Hope Road, where the past is sold in collectible pieces. Tony
Rebel and Junior Gong were blasting from our sound system. We were
tailed by the ashes from the trash fires of Spanish Town, and our
driver gingerly steered around poor ghetto boys higgling, or peddling,
at busy crossroads.
In the back
I was telling the elder Britisher, John Masouri, that for me, hearing
Sizzla in 1997 was like hearing Public Enemy in 1988, that Sizzla's
recasting of old Studio One and Treasure Isle riddims was as powerful
to me as Public Enemy's reworking of James Brown and Prince. He
smiled, with the patience of time, and then confessed he was tired
of hearing the same old versions over and over. He was rooting for
the music of his twentysomething-aged children's ears: Roots Manuva
and the Streets and dancehall. "It's this music they're rebelling
against," he said, pointing to the car stereo. "This has
gone through so many revivals, from Channel One to Joe Gibbs to
Junjo, and I'm not even talking about the '70s!"
We shared a
laugh, mine more bittersweet than his, then our talk turned to bright
days for some of our friends in dancehall.
Sean Paul wasn't
on the island the weekend of "Rebel Salute," or else our
girl Jacquie, the scenemaker, would have rounded us up to throw
a party for him. We, along with millions of Jamaicans, had mustered
all of the underdog love we could, and for once, it worked. His
album has now gone gold, the first real dancehall record to do so
in years. With his anticipated release No Holding Back, Wayne
Wonder could be the next beneficiary of the powerful combination
of VP Records' new deal with Atlantic and the foreign-friendly vibes
of much-imitated superproducer Lenky Marsden. But not long ago,
Sean and Wayne were toiling in relative obscurity, putting out polished,
streetwise tunes that have been called too Jamaican for the United
States and too uptown for dancehall. Now the balance is shifting
in their direction. Born into a typically Jamaican middle-class,
mixed-race family – he is black, Portuguese, and Chinese –
Sean is handsome, friendly, hard-working, and wicked on the mic.
Whether or not he realizes it, he now seems like the perfect ambassador
to embody the 21st-century dreams of islanders in this not-so-great
global future.
Still waiting
It's a different
world than that of Marley's roots generation. These days the Jamaica
of first-world imagining has to do less with hippie dreams of ganja-filled
Rasta communes than with HDTV images of Puck's wedding amid MTV
gender wars and the Jamaican Tourist Board's college-targeted pitches
for spring-break hedonism. It's clearly no longer even the world
of the new roots generation of a decade ago, which promised spiritual
awakening and godly judgment to counter Jamaica's unceasing fall,
one the United States has had no small part in causing. Few artists
have had the temerity to lay specific blame. Maybe now they will,
as the symptoms of the fall seem to cascade: the horribly exploitative
"free-trade zones" Stephanie Black documents, the escalating
drug wars our southern hemisphere policies foster, the crushing
debts, and the austerity budgets that keep the city looking
like a concrete jungle and fertile fields lying fallow. After a
year of election-related violence in 2001 that surpassed the bloodiest
on record, Jamaicans went back to the polls last year in utter exhaustion
to reelect the same political party. Sometimes the best name for
nostalgia is survival.
At about 9 a.m.,
two hours after Capleton blazed his last song, the valley rang with
a thousand starting engines. Steffens closed his book and bade farewell.
The Brits stamped out their cigarettes and came into the bus. Soon
we had joined the crawl. The irrepressible Ajamu reached out the
window to haggle with a fruit vendor for our breakfast. We pulled
up the valley, the bus shifting gears for the climb to Mandeville.
In the distance only a few plumes rose above the alumina-processing
plant, itself a white stain against the languid green. Some of the
many tiny onion patches bore signs proudly stating, "Mined-out
lands restored to farming."
As we slowly
turned the corner on a steep cliff, I looked over the guardrail
and my eyes fixed on a jackknifed tour bus below, its wrecked rusting
rear rising out of the trees halfway down the hill. Apparently the
parish authorities could not lift it out or decided that it should
be left there. I wondered if it was a warning or a very good joke.
And if it was the latter, who was the joke on?
Buju Banton
performs April 11, 9 p.m., Avalon Ballroom, 1268 Sutter, S.F. $25.
(415) 847-4043.
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