YOU will have noticed that recently this blog has been quiet: well, actually there's been nothing posted in more than a month. Instead am going to be concentrating on FIRST, which we relaunched earlier today.
FIRST was the little 7x7-inch magazine that published four issues each of 10,000 copies, beginning in 2004.
"As before, the magazine will reflect upon modern life in Jamaica, and like Jamaicans themselves, it will continually look outward – observing, absorbing and reinventing the world surrounding it."
IS this political cynicism from the People's National Party political, or maybe that Claro ad with those singing children really is that infectious?
A release from the PNP said that the following came from a party member whose children created two flyers protesting against Government's unpopular tax package.
Cdes,
I had no idea that my children (age 6 & 9) have been paying attention to the Tax issue. They saw the PNP flyer with the child and read the information on it, as well as paying attention to newscasts and obviously overhearing discussion in the house. Unsolicited, they created two flyers which are attached as a way of showing their solidarity. I dont know what they intended
Draw your own conclusions, but we are on the side of right on this issue and must preserve and protect Jamaica, so that our children will have a bright future that includes Jamaica.
PS: the kids asked me to give the flyers to Portia.
HE'S still young. Wrote off his BMW. Got criticised for taking sides in the Gaza-Gully war. And yes, he's not quite as media savvy as last year's winner of TIME magazine's Person of the Year, a one Barack Obama.
However, the magnitude of his success, spanning the Olympics and World Champs in 2008 and 2009: destroying his own world records and still with years ahead of him, have brought immeasurable pride to a small nation.
Like Obama winning the Nobel Prize they'd surely be similar criticisms had Bolt won the TIME award (for once he was only a runner-up). But considering...
It's been a rough 2009, in Jamaica and the rest of the world. But thinking about Bolt's spine-tingling sprints in Berlin and watching him onstage, delivering pure elation to his country, offers at least a speck of comfort.
APART from low Internet access, what really print drives sales is that most newspapers in Jamaica continue to be sold on the road. While Twitter shows the future, for most people however, roadside selling remains the most immediate way of getting your news – that and asking a taximan.
THAT historic moment when Bob Marley brought together the two warring political political leaders, and from yesterday morning, the footage of Kartel and Mavado's moment of unity onstage in Tivoli Gardens. Politicians and deejays...
TOP of British television ratings Sunday was this BBC adaptation of Andrea Levy's award-winning novel about Jamaican immigrants living in a depressed post-WW2 London:
3. And if all that sounds crazy, Prime Minister Bruce Golding is tomorrow taking time out from the recession, crime etc to meet with, you guessed it, those same two deejays...
IT'S no secret that we could treat our island and its environment a little better, not least in terms of energy consumption: in Japan electricity use peaks during production hours but in Jamaica it's after work i.e. leisure time.
This is timed to coincide with the Copenhagen Summit and the vexed attempt to build a consensus: rich polluting countries want everyone to cut emissions, but then they're already rich; whereas poor, not so polluting countries want to get richer, and that means polluting a little more.
"Kicking our carbon habit within a few short decades will require a feat of engineering and innovation to match anything in our history. But whereas putting a man on the moon or splitting the atom were born of conflict and competition, the coming carbon race must be driven by a collaborative effort to achieve collective salvation."
FROM Ego Trip's Big Book of Racism. In 1995: "Two Caucasian journalists visit a three-day Niyabinghi session in a remote section of Spanish Town, on the outskirts of Kingston, Jamaica. A Niyabinghi is a gathering of Rastafarian faithful who sit around an enourmous bonfire, smoke herb, and pound out a steady drumbeat while chanting down the wicked forces of Babylon. The word Niyabinghi means 'death to white opressors,' although some Rastas add 'Black and white oppressors.' On this particular night, the exact meaning isn't quite clear. 'That fire is for you,' one agitated young Rasta tells the white visitors, thoroughly freaking them out. Several hours later, the very same Rasta climbs up on top of the roaring fire and burns himself up."
KINGSTON doesn't have a beach. Instead we drive to Hellshire or take the boat out to Lime Cay, which was shut down temporarily since the 'infrastructure' – one restaurant and a broken down toilet – couldn't handle the litter problem patrons left behind. Still it's a beautiful place to be early weekend mornings, before the boats blaring bad dance music.
Stepping off one of the regular 'Con Air' flights from the United States, deportees come to this church in downtown Kingston to be processed. On this day they still hadn't arrived. You can see the immigration officials inside the church. The notice on the door was a bizarre welcome, all things considered.
Sadly Alex Twyman has passed away. Originally from the East End of London his was the name behind Alex Twyman's Old Tavern Blue Mountain coffee. The business remains very much open and you visit the premises, the Twyman family cottage, shrouded in mist, perched high up in the mountains overlooking the coffee bush-lined slopes. Make sure to call in advance. Water is from a stream, sweetener is from honey bees on the farm and the coffee is something else.
For those who don't understand art, some art criticism we can relate to. One of many murals that brighten the urban environment in Kingston and St Andrew. However, this portrait of Bob Marley, nearby Edna Manley arts college has sadly remained 'unfunish', as the critic daubed at the top left of the work. Makes me smile anyway.
JAMAICAN poet Claude McKay and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill would have been unlikely allies. However it was Mackay's If we must die that Churchill turned to during the Second World War to help inspire the British and persuade the Americans to enter the war.
Except that he never credited the Jamaican.
Given Churchill's pro-colonial stance his use of the poem is viewed as more than a little ironic. Written in 1919 it was McKay's response to racist violence across America and his words took on wider meaning to symbolise resistance elswhere in the world, including of course, against Nazi Germany.
Contemporary Jamaican poet, Lorna Goodison, has been campaigning to get McKay his credit. Click here to listen to an interview with Goodison about the issue, broadcast on the BBC today:
If we must die, let it not be like hogs Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot, While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs, Making their mock at our accursed lot. If we must die, O let us nobly die, So that our precious blood may not be shed In vain; then even the monsters we defy Shall be constrained to honor us though dead! O kinsmen we must meet the common foe! Though far outnumbered let us show us brave, And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow! What though before us lies the open grave? Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack, Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
A few weeks ago I was in Miami on a regular work trip: airport-hotel-meeting-mall-hotel-airport. The airport shuttle driver seemed a normal guy until he starting telling one story after another. The one we liked best was his claim that he trained with US special forces, together with Osama bin Laden. It got weirder...
Crazy cabbie
Even then he was very tall and skinny, even though he got a little hairier. But let me tell you that he was the type of person who wasn't afraid of anything. He even got arrested right there and sent to jail for insulting a leader but everybody kept quiet. He came forward and face-to-face told George H Bush, 'Remember this, we're going to war and I'm going to be back and I will kill you!'
And the guy (Bush) says, 'How dare you!' And he told him just like this, 'You don't have the guts and the balls to fight me right now! They will kill me but I will kill you before they kill me!'
Everybody was like, 'Is this guy crazy?' But of course none of us knew that he would be the guy that he is now. He was wealthy and we knew that his family was from Iraq and the other countries and that they had oil wells.
The day I saw him was the day of our graduation, I remember his face. He was raised here, and trained here but his family was so wealthy. He had another name at that time but some of us who were there. Steven Seagal was there too, the actor. Actually we saw Steven Seagal in Vietnam.
The next threat is in Florida and the airport.
He (bin Laden) could be walking around here in Miami or New York or anywhere. You know you can change your face, also your fingerprints with plastic surgery. They can get fingerprints, create tissue and then you have a double of you. This guy is a multi-multi-millionaire and his family is being protected by the United States… This going to be a never-ending story.
AN old joke, as received by BlackBerry messenger...
In a recent trial, a Falmouth small town prosecuting attorney called to the witness stand his first witness, a grand motherly, elderly woman named Miss Ivy.>>
The attorney approached her and asked, "Miss Ivy, do you know me?" She responded, "Why, yes of course me know you, Mr. Williams. Me know you since you was a likkle pissing tail pickney, and wata big disappointment you is to you family. You is a ole liard, you cheat pan yuh wife, yuh chat people bizniz, and yuh red-eye, grudgeful and licky-licky. You tink you is a big shot now but you no realize seh you will never amoun to nuttin more dan a two-bit paper pusher! Yes, me know yuh very well alright!!">>
The Lawyer was stunned! Not knowing what else to do, he pointed across the room and asked, "Miss Ivy, do you know the defense attorney?" She looked over at the defense attorney and replied, "Of course, me know Mr. Bradley since him was a likkle bwoy too. Him lazy, and good-fe-nothing, him boasy, and him always a gwaan like him white. Him caan build nuh normal relationship with any woman 'cause him a B****man unda covah. Fe him law practice a di worse eena Jamaica . Him chat nuff, him a ole teef, him dutty and nasty. A three different woman an four man me hear seh him a grind undah covah, an one a di woman dem a you missis (points at> juror member)!! Yes sah, me know him well." The defense attorney almost died of embarrassment.>>
The judge ordered both counselors to approach the bench, and in a very quiet voice, said, "If either of you rassclawt bastards ask her if she knows me, a gwine lock up oonu bumbo eena jail fe contempt!
REST of the pages from the Letter from Jamaica spread in Switzerland's Voice magazine (see previous post). I got lucky, not just with the images, but with how the Voice designers used the blog's stamp motif.
FRIENDS Phred and Afflicted got their hands on a guest editing assignment for an arty Swiss digital magazine called Voice. In an issue devoted to Kingston my simple task was to relate the city in five words: love, hate, pride, future and work.
Probably it was more to do with the photos, but Voice gave my words a generous spread across pages 22-37. You can read the whole issue online, since it's a digital magazine remember. It comes complete with video, music and that neat e-page turning thing they do.
Featured among others there's: Terry Lynn; Edward Seaga; Sean Paul; Missionaries of the Poor; Ernie Ranglin and Monty Alexander; Yendi Phillipps and more beautiful women. If you're too lazy to see all that, here at least is Kingston love and hate (click on images to enlarge):
PICKING up on the departures of both the central bank governor and police chief, The Economist has a gloomy article in their latest issue today, about Jamaica's future: the burden of debt and crime.
JUST over two years ago when Bruce Golding’s Labour Party came to power in Jamaica, ending 18 years in opposition, there were modest hopes that it might make progress in tackling the island’s endemic problems of economic stagnation and gang violence.
A Mallica 'Kapo' Reynolds exhibition opens at the National Gallery on Tuesday. One of Jamaica's most celebrated artists and a pioneer of self-taught, so-called intuitive Jamaican art, Kapo's work stretched from painting to sculpture.
The Gallery has been buying back the work from private collections, including The Angel, which had to be bought back from Killing me Softly singer Roberta Flack, valued at a tidy US$450,000.
"At the age of 12, I received the Spirit of Conversion. I was then reading in Fifth Standard. At the age of 16 I left school; I was not bad at reading. I did not love drawing." – Kapo
FACED with 1,600+ murders yearly, it's unsurprising that many Jamaicans support shoot-first policing to get gunmen off the streets. But what about prevention, about youths who view the gun as their only choice and a glamorous one at that? Somebody, something, somehow needs to get different messages into their heads.
We hear reports like the five-year-old boy who brought a gun to school, because his friend 'had lunch with his girl'. And then there was Shaun*, a 'retired gunmen' I interviewed a few years ago. He was a polite, bright 19-year-old who found God, long after first picking up a gun aged just 13.
"AR-15, glock wit extended clip, AK-47, telescope rifle, pump-action shotgun," said Shaun, listing weapons he'd handled. He told me that he hadn't killed anyone; didn't even know whether he'd actually even shot anyone. But then gunfights are hardly events where you'd choose to linger after.
Meeting him, I really wasn't on the look for a teenage serial killer. Rather I simply wanted to gain some understanding as to how the Shauns – as if he was a type – actually became gunmen. He started with his background:
My father was a gunman n' kill people n' ting. When mi deyah school it was a gun ting we d'pon beca even tho wi was inna di girl ting, wi did tek it to a next level beca wi did waa start run the school. Me's a yute, tru mi lef school wit no subject so it really become di gun ting. It kinda difficult to get work and yu find yuself commit some small crime n' start tief and dem tings dere.
He never reached the level of a 'top shotta', but he as explained it, being a gunman could be like any other career, with its own measures of achievement and moving up the corporate ladder. Or, it can be ended abruptly.
It start off like a casual job until yu get a promotion. Mi never tek it to the nex level cos it like a process: at first yu start par wit di man; second level dem start gi yu gun fi hide; third level dem send yu go do some tings; fourth level you start tief and di fifth is where yu kill a man.
He recounted a few stories, incidents like when a group of youths aligned to his crew stole two AK-47s – a decision that cost two of their lives. There were nights spent patrolling their turf, and on one occasion, an ambush at pointblank range where a dozen bullets flew passed his head. But being honest, this was something Shaun enjoyed. Normal people woulda see this ting and seh 'who dem, why dem fire pon one another?' But wi tek it as an enjoyment ting but in a sense dat, if mi see yu an yu a mi enemy, den mi a kill yu. It fun fi wi. It's such a nice feeling becah when u have a gun pon u it like no boy can gi u any talk but if 'im do, u gona kill 'im.
Then, Shaun's moral compass pointed in a very different direction to most people. "It just feel nice fi click it," he said, still feeling nostalgia for the trigger mechanism. Even finding employment could not keep him away from guns.
It get fi a point where I get a lickle security work but mi bleach a nighttime an mi nah get no form of sleep becah me waa kill two boy. Beca me waa mek mi two duppy too; becah even though yu par among di top shotta dem who kill like 8, 9, 10 people, fi u come into di ting too, yu hafi mek your stripes.
His escape came suddenly and fortuitously. A rival gang member tipped him off about the hit coming his way. It was one brave act between murderous youths which save his life. Now in the Church, Shaun says he has no plans to return to his past. He has a choice. *Name withheld to protect identity
EVERY now and again people cite Singapore as an example of where Jamaica should be going; or should have. But in the 1960s Singapore, and many other developing countries, had modeled themselves on Jamaica, then basking in the fresh glow of independence. However, Lee Kuan Yew, the iron-willed leader of that country from independence in 1965 until 1990, obviously found Jamaican society very different to his own, as described in his autobiography, From Third World to First. Might he assess the situation differently today?
"At Kingston, Jamaica, in April 1975, Prime Minister Michael Manley, a light-skinned West Indian, presided with panache and spoke with great eloquence. But I found his views quixotic. He advocated a "redistribution of the world's wealth." His country was a well-endowed island of 2,000 square miles, with several mountains in the centre, where coffee and other subtropical crops were grown. They had beautiful holiday resorts built by Americans as winter homes. Theirs was a relaxed culture. The people were full of song and dance, spoke eloquently, danced vigorously, and drank copiously. Hard work they had left behind with slavery."
The weekly Pondi Road travel column in the Observer, recently described Singapore as 'sterile' and lacking Jamaica's freedoms, but also had room for envy: "The contrast in the development of both countries is an indictment of what we are willing to accept as a society. The silver lining is that the Singaporean experience demonstrates that it is possible to fix it all in one great visionary's lifetime. Is he out there?"
YES, this is national hero Sir Alexander Bustamante. Not sure what he's doing: promoting the JLP, or Bermuda shirts? From the National Library of Jamaica, so probably not done in Photoshop. Class.
REMEMBER when Senior Superintendent Renato Adams walked free from the Kraal murder trial in 2006? There was the media hype, calls for his reinstatement and to top it, Adams simultaneously released this track, To Protect and Serve, voiced on the appropriately named Carbine riddim.
Now retired and farming, but interested in applying for the vacant job of Commissioner of Police, Adams says he plans a "massive operational assault to put criminals on the run". And reading the comments on the Observer message board yesterday under that story, public opinion seems in favour of 'the cop that badmen fear'. Click here to listen...
MY job has afforded me the privilege of meeting some fairly crazy people, like the madman who rang the news desk shrieking that a prominent politician was going to kill him. That same caller eventually started a ponzi scheme in which people reportedly lost millions of US dollars.
But for everyone like him there's countless more inhabiting the capital's rum bars with their own stories of disenfranchisement to tell. The least you can do is buy them a drink. Like the man below (from the Jamaica Observer).
A few weeks ago, when Usain Bolt was awarded the Order of Jamaica, there was a small interruption to the ceremony when a Rastafarian man was ejected from King's House. A few days later my friend met this gentlemen who proceeded to give him the full story:
Man: "A me man. Dem dishonour me still."
Friend: "Er, okay."
Man: "A mi man. Ever, Ever-ton. New name Dat, forever it mean, for all time. Everton. Forever, forever..."
Friend: This guy is kind of crazy... could be interesting.
Man: "What dem never know is dat mi a Nanny great-grandson and so everyting in Jamaica is bequeath to I and furthermore when I go Collie Smith High in Trench Town mi did buy all the rights for all dem ting dere like Vale Royal but me just leave black people fi have it. So, because I leave it with dem for so many years dem get to think seh it fi dem own so I come back to King's House now to talk to the Governor General about the situation and when I come back they never deal with mi like a prince, like royalty.
"Anyway, I walk go into King's House and some policeman seh, 'What are you doing here?' So I tell dem, but I never listen to dem, so I proceed to walk towards the Governor-General and they proceed to forcibly pull me out. Dem never beat mi up or anything but I never think that this is right.
"The whole world need to know that next time when I come they must treat mi with respect."
Gabe took everything a step further with the book, which is a stunning document of today's Jamaica: from when First was in print between 2004-5; fleetingly as a blog last year; and some new stuff produced by him and Tobias Huber – the co-owner of Seen, from Germany.
Among other things there's: the aftermath of five alleged gunmen being killed by the police-army in Tivoli Gardens; a fashion shoot; the plight of a Jamaican emigrant; community boxing and an encounter with some drunk, oversexed American tourists.
THE Jamaica Observer launched a stinging attack on the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) government in today's editorial, claiming hypocrisy in the departure of Police Commissioner Hardley Lewin.
Especially bruising perhaps is that the newspaper is perceived as favouring the JLP. The writer certainly pulled no punches, saying that the JLP is losing credibility on crime:
For the government, via its dithering with regard to the US extradition request for Mr Christopher Coke, who is wanted in that country to answer charges of arms and drug trafficking, is fast disqualifying itself as a credible source of information in terms of the Jamaican crime situation.
While some have blamed Lewin for failing to combat crime, the reality is that during the two years of this government, Jamaica has seen the back of two commissioners and two security ministers. His job was not an easy one.
And his replacement will likely be just as hapless, since, as the Observer also pointed out, organised crime is ingrained in society. It's long past being just police and thieves.
I once sat waiting to conduct an interview outside a banker's office. Out walked the banker with a 'popular local businessman' AKA, a don. A month later at the birthday party for a prominent politician, that same man rolled up, in a convoy of SUVs.
Or do we face up to the reality that crime, as we know, is here to stay and get worse as long as politicians, civil society and communities continue to maintain that nefarious historical link with criminals that Mr Lewin spoke so cagily about a few weeks ago?
DON'T know whether it's an accurate measure of the recession but these days traffic lights are getting no less crowded with people selling, cleaning windows or begging.
1. Too much foam, not enough coffee. That's just racist.
2. A male shopping mall worker tried to rub some kind of lotion into my terrified colleague's hand.
3. Colleague had to find a polite but firm way of saying 'NO!' to the man, who was now chasing him, without shaming Jamaicans everywhere.
4. A beautiful woman holds open the door for us. Priceless.
5. Free internet
6. The hotel driver, who was perhaps of unsound mind, told us on the way back to MIA that he served in US special forces with Steven Seagal and Osama bin Laden.
7. It was five minutes away from MIA when our new friend told us us that Osama's next target was in fact the airport. Not yet as it turned out.
8. *Note to US law enforcement: 'bin Laden's probably still in Florida.'
9. The departure gate for the Kingston flight was a long walk from food and seating (see 1... except it was pointed out that we were at the wrong gate).
THIS was interesting, from today's Observer, about efforts to redevelop Kingston's rundown downtown district.
Just last week Digicel announced that it was relocating its headquarters downtown, partly thanks to a generous tax break from the Jamaica Labour Party government. The JLP's 2007 election manifesto promised to revive the area, including an offshore financial centre:
Establish Kingston as a choice location for offshore financial services to exploit the benefits currently being enjoyed by countries such as the Cayman Islands and Bermuda. This will be sited in downtown Kingston as a fulcrum for the much needed redevelopment of that part of the city.
The current reality is that downtown is a crumbling but lively merchant area populated by some of the city's poorest while headquarters. Some of the island's largest company do remain, besides those of government entities. The same vitality once saw the area become a nightlife hotspot still remains, albeit depressed.
You're just a short walk from the harbour front; places of historic interest, including the National Gallery; the cheapest shopping in town; Coronation market; the Passa Passa street dance in Tivoli Gardens and countless other attractions.
Australian artist Melinda Brown cites this cultural pulse as the inspiration for setting up her studio there, having on her first visit to Jamaica walked downtown from where she was staying uptown in Liguanea, a place she said was by comparison, like a mortuary.
Okay, downtown may not be for the fainthearted and yes, Melinda Brown isn't you're average tourist – as the set designer for Mad Max she was well-equipped to feel at home. And yes it's a world away from European café society. but then it's a lot safer than you'd imagine and in the long run surely offers more than Montego Bay's culturally sanitised Hip Strip.
Click here to view the work of downtown artist Sand (see photo), via Seen.
THANKS to good, good German friend Disko T from Seen for this. A real Connoisseur, T apparently has nothing better to be doing than to be scouring the Playboy archives on a Bavarian Friday. Understandable.
And so he chanced upon this six-page feature, about a United States anti-porn crusader 'caught with his pants down'.
Warning: you'll need to download Microsoft Silverlight to watch it. Click the link above to reach Playboy and do just that. Also, is best you don't show your children.
DAVID RODIGAN might seem a little age-inappropriate: 58-year-old Brit going dubplate-for-dubplate against 20/30-something Jamaican selectors. But then Rodigan has been doing this for years and years; and then some more years.
A huge fan of the music, he became famous for spinning reggae on London radio – including this interview with Bob Marley, returning from performing at Zimbabwe's Independence celebrations in 1980. Ram Jam still broadcasts on Kiss 100 FM, 11pm – 1am on Friday nights, when others his age have long switched off the TV and gone to bed.
I've been fortunate enough to see him play twice in Jamaica – at Sabina Park and outside Cuddyz. He's a one-off combination of music professor meets grandad whose had more than a bit to drink at the party (just watch the video eh).
IT can be too easy to distrust the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF). Not least with the corruption row between the rank-and-file represented by the Police Federation and Assistant Commissioner of Police Les Green, a former Scotland Yard officer.
Green had said that a number of murdered police personnel had themselves been involved in criminal activity. This riled Raymond Wilson, president of the federation, who demanded that his senior officer show evidence, or resign.
Unfortunately for Wilson, the Observer newspaper reported yesterday that a constable found shot dead in his car last week, allegedly had ganja in his possession, apparently to sell, and a bail bond 'that he should not have had'.
"Be careful," the judge cautioned Richardson on the way out.
In that case Richardson had refused to pay a bribe. But for many it's too easy a choice; pay a few thousand dollars fine or a give a few hundred to the policeman. Probably most people take the last option. And police will expect that.
But while we can blame police, society could also consider whether, 'we get the constabulary we deserve'. After all the law itself says there are two guilty parties: the corrupted and the corrupter.
MALCOLM GLADWELL has an ability to examine simple trends and spin them together into compelling, explanatory narratives; like in his third book Outliers, which explains how talent and circumstances combine more or less exactly to produce successes.
Sure Gladwell has his critics, including other journalists. But then there's likely a lot more hacks willing to admit a fair amount of respect, mixed with envy and a publishing industry constantly on the look for the next 'Gladwellian' author.
I had my brief fan moment last year, walking past a restaurant in NYC where the writer sat watching the pavement traffic, maybe pondering his next article, but it didn't seem right to interrupt. A few months later I tried to get an interview and with one angle to pitch: that his mother was born in Jamaica and so... but I did get a nice reply from his assistant.
"I'm interested in slightly dumb, obvious questions, right," Gladwell told the Guardian newspaper this week. "I'm not interested in really deeply weird, obscure things. My tastes are not idiosyncratic. What I'm interested in turns out by happy circumstance to be what lots of people are interested in."
His fourth book, What the Dog Saw, a collection of 13 years' writing for the New Yorker magazine has just been published. Gladwell.com
SANI SHOWBIZZ knows everything about all things farin: MJ, Biggie and sneakers; twanging itself and why Jamaican Subway tastes better than farin's Subway. For an explanation read here and here. For the MP3s: click here
A man buys a motorbike and the very next day man he gets knocked off it, seriously injuring him. The driver does the right thing and pays the medical bills but is too short of cash to fix the bike. However being the decent kind he promises to lend his car until he can pay. Things are looking up and once again the bike man can afford to smile. But before everything can happen, the driver gets shot dead. This bike man is seriously salt.
WHAT follows is a foolproof – well, as good as it gets – strategy to avoid losing your shirt investing with unregulated financial organisations (UFOs), such as Olint and Cash Plus.
A streetwise person, 'A' claims he knew exactly what he was getting into when he invested in the Olint and Cash Plus investment schemes (both are alleged to be Ponzi schemes and their principals facing fraud charges). As he tells it they were simply selling that same commodity of hope.
In this case it was the promise of money, specifically double-digit returns on investment. It was no questions asked and few answers:
(i) Firstly you must know when to get in. Early is good. Late is bad. More importantly make sure it's a 'good' rather than 'bad' scheme. 'A' got out of Cash Plus with a tidy profit and from Olint recovered his investment but not his interest.
I always believed it was a pyramid scheme from before I started. When you research pyramids there are always people who make good. People who go in early and come out are always better off. I'd heard from people that I actually respected that they'd been making money and that persuaded me.
Maybe today if somebody tells me about how much they are getting paid from it each month, this is what the principal drives and how much money do I have disposed at this time. Then I will say alright, I'm going to shut my eyes for five months but if I lose that money then I have gambled and lost. It's as simple as that.
(ii) Once you put your money in, watch it very carefully. In fact it's best if you're an idler like my friend. It's not just your money that needs to do the work but also you.
I used to go down there (Olint and Cash Plus offices) and have my lunch and see if there was any furniture being moved out. It was my job that was paying me $150,000 a month! You know what I mean? I'd go down there, talk to the security guard and buy him a drink and say, "Wha gwan, everythin' cool?" I'd just watch what was going on and whether there was gonna be a rush or not.
(iii) Most of all, you need to time your exit. You want to be in long enough to earn some decent interest but obviously not too long:
I got out when Cash Plus started to sponsor those high profile events for more money than established companies could have afforded, like Premier League (football) when Wray & Nephew pulled out and they went in and offered more.
At that point it was the week of Hurricane Dean immediately after I went to withdraw my money. I got very suspicious but there was no shakiness then, nobody was talking about it being shaky but I found it strange that this organisation – if Wray & Nephew, a 100-and-odd-year-old company didn't deem it feasible to sponsor Premier League – then who the f*** are these guys?
And the same with Olint, I made the same decision when they sponsored the jazz festival, just not quick enough to get all my money back.
NOW a bestselling book, Stuff White People Like has identified a new anthropological phenomena: the 'Bob Marley Phase', between the sixth grade and the end of college. According to author Christian Lander this has a lot to do with smoking marijuana; less so Marley's lyrics.
"Note: if you are talking to a white person who is really into Bob Marley, has dreadlocks, and professes to be a Rastafarian, you should end the conversation immediately. These people are of no value unless you need directions to a WTO protest or have questions about how bad a human can smell," advises Lander.
And, he further cautions: "Under no circumstances should you ever bring a white person to a dancehall reggae concert, it will frighten them." And it's true. Groups of young men in skinny pants dancing like this, is quite frightening.
P.S. You can buy the book locally at Bookophilia, 92 Hope Road, KGN 6
HALF-WAY-TREE, St Andrew – It's known as one of the busiest spots in the capital city. Thousands of people going about their business amid traffic flying by, or just stuck in rush hour.
Also a sometime home to political rallies and other boisterous events, it's hardly the place to relax. The Afflicted Yard took a few hours one day two years ago to do just that.
Sat down nearby the HWT clock tower his lens captured everything and everyone unawares – what we might see were we not rushing through: the sheer liveliness and expressiveness of Kingston.
If you haven't seen the set, you should. If you have, look again: click here
YEAH, yeah. I know this is late. It's just that lunchtime is too many hours away, I'm hungry, and this is a song about food.
Toddla T has been getting big at home in England with the release of his first album Skanky Skanky last year and now a residency on BBC Radio 1.
“I’ve never even been to Jamaica, but I have grown up with Jamaican next door neighbours and Jamaican friends at school. It’s quite close to home — I know the music and I can’t help but get into it. It’s to do with the people I have around me here. What I do is a Sheffield thing through and through," Toddla told the Telegraph newspaper.
Having since taken his first trip here the 24-year-old – real name Tom Bell – has worked with several Jamaican artists including Natalie Storm, who we featured last week.
'BETWEEN a rock and a hard place' summed up for many the situation Buju Banton found himself in this week, following his unprecedented meeting with gay activists.
On the Observer website yesterday there were close to 200 comments under the headline 'Buju breaks under pressure?'. A few criticised the meeting even taking place. Most sympathised with Banton, aka Mark Myrie, and hit back at the gay lobby. Hard.
At the photo-op Myrie looked far from comfortable. He knew that their list of demands, had he agreed, would be unpalatable in Jamaica – as those readers comments suggested.
The meeting was a response to his US-tour severely disrupted as it has been by the kind of protests that have continued to dog his commercial viability.
All because of Boom Bye Bye, a recording he made as a teenager. That one song, despite classics such as the Til Shiloh album, has prevented him from becoming the crossover star his talent demanded.
'Cultural imperialism' suggested one Observer reader. One big headache for the Gargamel.
IT maybe common in the States but this kind of political dissent is rarer in the Caribbean. Feminist Gab Hosein from Trinidad just started her videoblog, "If I were Prime Minister for a day..."
JLP and PNP: is Jamaica ready for something like this?
FROM Trinidad: sky cone vs doubles vs coconut vs Chinese. Winner of the 2009 Anime Caribe prize:
Meantime a genuine brewing trade war was featured in today's Observer, about local coffee shops squaring off against two soon to open franchises from Rituals – T&T's answer to Starbucks.
Jamaica has a few small chains – Café Blue, Coffee Mills and Cannonball – but is dwarfed by Rituals which has more than 90 outlets across the Caribbean.
However, despite the reputation of Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee, 'Starbucks culture' is relatively new to Jamaica. The Observer counted 15 cafés in Kingston, most of which it said were opened in the past five years.
So don't expect the nice coffee shop owners and their new friends from Trinidad to take to the streets with cutlasses. Thanks to Annie Paul for the heads up on the video by Trinitoons.
1. White people who live in the ghetto are apparently either: (i) NGO workers (ii) crazy (iii) 'wutless' or (iv) German roots reggae singers.
2. The photograph? My friends said if I didn't pose like this they'd lie to other people on the beach that I called them the n-word. That rasta headband is not mine. Honestly.
3. Occasionally I get mistaken as a member of one of Jamaica's big name families. But, like everybody else, I just work for them.
4. People twang at me only in an American accent. What about British or maybe a German?
5. The organisers of community boxing event, Thursday Night at the Fights, wanted me to be their ring announcer/referee: tux, thick-rimmed glasses and Michael Caine accent.
6. It's an unusual white who walks in Jamaica. I used to ride the #74 and #76 JUTC buses to work. But that meant I also had to walk a few hundred metres to the bus stop in Barbican Square.
7. A few and only a few white Jamaicans have told me some borderline racist stuff. Maybe they'd say more except I seem suspicious – after all they don't do buses. Read The Dead Yard for more on that.
8. Frequent question: are my family against interracial dating? Honestly, my family are just happy to have me a transatlantic flight far away. Being as close as Western Union, however, remains for them an unfortunate reminder.
9. Social guilt: a friend from downtown quipped that the gully network is a sad metaphor for Kingston society – whereby uptown's waste flows downtown.
10. Was warming up before a football match (without the ball). Overhead the other side making concerned comparisons with Steven Gerrard. One touch into the game: "Cho is alright... a Peter Crouch that!"
CAPTURED in a magazine spread this was a sample who's who from back in the day. At bottom left you can make out a fresh-faced Babara Gloudon. The resolution makes it hard to make out the key but you can click the image to expand. From the National Library of Jamaica.
IN Kingston we can complain about high rents or bad landlords. But in Havana, Cuba you'd actually have to find a place, given their housing shortage.
Leslie Salgado works as a journalist with Cuban TV station, Canal Habana. She was caught looking pensive by her photographer boyfriend Reno Massola, just after they moved into their first home – that and some photo-manipulation.
"In Havana city, the majority of homes are really old and its constructive situation is not good, or is very bad. In addition, because of the economic situation and the blockade by the United States, the construction industry is not building enough homes," explained Leslie.
"Young professionals are usually living with parents or relatives. In fact, you can find two or more generations and large families on one home."
WENT on a short working visit to Cuba but spent most of my time stuck in a lecture room listening to presentations via translators.
Three nights in Havana didn't give me that much time to learn about what is a remarkable country. However I did learn that nothing goes with fine cigars like cheap rum bought on the street.
Also that watching Cuba women can make you walk into lampposts, and that's when you're sober.
The photograph is of 'el Malecón', the Havana waterfront, where I took a couple of early morning jogs: down one long avenue, turning right past the United States 'Interests Section' building, which had a long queue outside.
The high walls of the Malecón face off against the sea but the breaking waves splashing the pavement demand firm footing. I caught my breath there for a minute and watched some of the locals fishing.
A lone fisherman is standing there in the photograph. At that moment the fisherman seemed to represent the idealised image of Cuba: proud, isolated and staring into the face of something much bigger.
FOLLOWING the last post... sometimes the only thing people can do is to joke about it. How else do they cope?
It's amazing just how dark people's humour can get on crime scenes, even when they occur uptown. Coming to the rescue of police late one night a few years ago, some private security guards shot dead two gunmen.
"King Alarm a di real uptown police!" people taunted from behind the police tape. The policemen hung their heads.
Hijacker Stephen Fray was sentenced last week. The following clip, Can't Hijack Air Jamaica!, is actually by American comedian Mike Yard. It's also a year old but watching it for the first time Saturday night everyone laughed until it hurt.
A friend calls me this morning. She's driving to work along Red Hills Road when she hears some gunshots. She tells me a big belly man, shirtless, was shot dead.
So, what's you're first reaction when you get a call like that: (i) shrug or (ii) maybe a joke?
Me, I realise I even forgot to ask if she was okay. That numb. She says she was a little shocked, for about five minutes, but is now eating breakfast.
BEFORE and after the presidential election, local journalists frequently reported on what Barack Obama might, or might not do for Jamaica. However, many were a little doubtful, given the lengthy to-do list left him by George W Bush, not to mention the island's sliding geopolitical importance.
But for the hungry-belly among us, Obama finally came through at a cocktail reception thrown by the United States embassy for journalists. While under the Republicans it was mini-patties, his administration packs everyone home with an 8oz bag of Old Tavern, Jamaica's finest Blue Mountain coffee. Sorry Hugo.
Incidentally, Lynn comes from Waterhouse, where she used to hang around Jammy's studio, which also happens to be the home of the Sleng Teng riddim – credited as Jamaica's first electronic riddim. Now she's helping bring the music full circle.
Lynn's new video Jamaican Girls debuts tomorrow on mtvU. Meantime what follows is the pretty excellent video for the Daft Punk-sampling and lyrically bleak Kingston Logic 2.0, her album's title track...
WHILE Jamaican musicians can rely on live performances here and abroad to earn a living, their record sales – culturally prone to piracy – are virtually dead. Vybez Kartel, one of the island's most popular deejays, reportedly sold just eight albums stateside in the first week of his newly released 'Pon di Gaza'.
Dylan Powe of Prodigal Entertainment is far from anti-dancehall, after all it's his family soundsystem, Swatch International, which runs the weekly Passa Passa dance in Tivoli Gardens. However, his background hasn't stopped Powe from appreciating the grim reality of the local recording industry, typified by Kartel's sales figures.
Far from it.
Natalie Storm (left) and Dylan Powe
"Chris Blackwell saw it with Island records and I've seen it but everyone here's still trying to mine the same dry well," said Powe, standing outside his studio on Constant Spring Road. "Look at Kartel and his album. People here don't have credit cards but Nats has a web presence, and fans who DO!"
Nats is Powe's artist, Natalie Storm, who he has been working as her manager and producer since late 2006. By his estimation an eventual Storm album would sell significantly more than eight copies in her first week, having developed an international following with performances in the United States and a growing network of hipster producers from other genres like club, grime and dubstep in Europe.
"I'll still do hardcore dancehall out of straight love and fun but my mental investment is just no longer in that world," said Powe who entered the business as an an A&R at Atlantic Records in the mid-1990's where he signed the likes of Dawn Penn and Garnet Silk.
As he said, Storm has built up a strong web presence outside of Jamaica. Collaborations have introduced her to fans of those other genres and producers including: Toddla-T, Skream, Graham Sinden and Heatwave from the United Kingdom; Austin Leeds, Max Glazer, Stretch Armstrong, Dre Skull and 77klash from the United States; Wildlife from Switzerland; Tim Turbo from Germany and Denmark's platinum-selling Enur.
"Even though we haven't had a real hit yet we're cool with those markets because we've done hardcore dancehall and we've now got an underground following out there. Here in Jamaica we're the only people messing with global bass culture and the root of all that stuff is Jamaica anyway."
And as he suggests, the relationship works both ways, with international producers wanting to borrow the Jamaican flavour, specifically Storm's vocals. And as she explains, the decision to go this route is driven not just by commercial considerations but simply, creativity:
"I love it. You get to be so much freer, much more expressive with stuff like this because the markets you are doing this for you can say what you want but not here in Jamaica – people are too stuck up."
Storm was born in rural Jamaica (in Usain Bolt's parish of Trelawny). Like most Jamaicans she grew up on a diet of international pop and hardcore reggae. Her love of 80's dance music and especially female icons Madonna, Grace Jones, Cyndi Lauper has clearly influenced her sound and the way she and Powe craft their sound.
"What we are trying to do is to make global music, nuff nuff reggae influences but the Prodigal sound is really hardcore international bashment," explains Powe. "However we doan' care about what its called as long as it makes people feel and move to to it."
Specifically they're aiming for the European market where Powe believes the market is more receptive to his experimentation with Storm.
One of the tunes to be released is Storm's cover of 'Should I Stay or Should I Go', produced by Wildlife. Fittingly it was originally a hit for 1970s London punk band The Clash – themselves influenced by Jamaica. Natalie Storm on MySpace
HEROES' CIRCLE, Kingston – Yes, the story that follows is unremarkable. But then also unremarkable are those police blotters which start with the phrase, 'he opened fire on police', and end with, 'they found him in bushes suffering from gunshot wounds.'
Unless really, really U.P.T., you've probably had at least one run-in with the police: late at night and with them sometimes acting like the gunmen they are supposed to be catching, it can be an unnerving experience. But it is 'normal' and for some police, plainly as normal their daytime police duties.
Photograph: unrelated crime scene
Recently a friend was returning from work downtown just past midnight on a Friday, when he was stopped by police. He drives a fairly beat up car – beat up enough to make him a target for three corrupt cops:
I was on my way home and turning onto Heroes' Circle when a policeman was nice enough to let me by at the intersection. I toot my horn thanking him and went on my way. However when I got to the top of Marescaux Road I looked in my rearview mirror and the policeman was still behind me. Anyway, he turns off his lights and I'm saying to myself, "Hmm that's strange he's turned off his lights." And then he turns on his siren. So I pull over and at this location it's fairly dark because there are no streetlights.
Before I get out of the vehicle I hear police shouting "Get out of the car with your hands up!" and I find this a little strange, this aggression. So I get out of the car with my hands up and there are three policemen all pointing guns at me and they ask if I have any weapons. I reply "No" and then they search me.
Satisfied that I have no weapons they tell me, "Well sir, we stopped you because we noticed you have no rear lights on your car." And I look around the rear and there are no lights, so I reply, "You guys can write me a ticket and I'll get new bulbs." They asked me to go for my papers.
My insurance – funny story – I had a cover note that was expired but I am covered so I called my insurance agent and asked her "Could you please speak to these policeman so that they now I am insured," and she did. Now they begin telling me that they're going to have to lock me up despite my protesting that this is not an arrestable offence, "You can't lock me up." And of course they didn't like the fact that I knew enough about the law to tell them that.
"Well then, you're going to have to do something for yourself. People disappear all the time," replied one of the three.
So at this point I'm concerned and so asked them "What do you mean? I'm a respectable citizen!" But then one replies "No, no, no. We can." By now I realise for definite that this is a threat so I try reasoning that if I 'disappear' then I couldn't be prosecuted and nor would they be getting any money from me.
Anyway, two of them go into a corner to confer with each other while a third still has his gun pointed at me. Now this third one was easily the most aggressive of the three and he begins explaining to me if I could find them some money to buy some drinks but I explained to him that I had no money and I really didn't, I'd already spent off all my money on bills!
So he joins the other two in discussion, obviously quite disappointed and they come back and persist with the line that they would have to lock me up. And I reply, "You cyan lock me up because I'm insured. I'm going to call my lawyer because it's Friday night and I cyan budda with this, 'cos I don't want to be in jail over the weekend."
So I pick up my phone and dial my lawyer. It's at this point they say, "Don't worry mi yout, is okay. We'll check you back tomorrow." They immediately jump into their vehicles and drive off leaving me at this point on a very dark corner alone. Having survived the police I could still easily become a victim of crime because this is not a nice neighbourhood.
I think I got off because they realised where I work and the job I do – maybe, what if I didn't, would I have disappeared?
MOST weekends work, or finishing the work I might have finished, keeps me stuck in Kingston. I know I'd be better off going to Treasure Beach.
Unless you've got family there it's unfortunately that kind kind of place you go only with visitors to take them somewhere different, unlike regular weekends in Ochi or Mo Bay. Horizontally laid back, Treasure Beach in St Elizabeth is a world away from Kingston. But then, it is a fishing village.
A friend invited me down this weekend. However I can't go, just as I couldn't when that same friend invited me to a nine night elsewhere in St Bess, for a farming relative who was gored to death by a mad cow.
They're still looking for the cow after he fled the scene of the crime. My friend's mother reckons the animal feels guilty.
The photo is from Jake's resort in Treasure Beach, taken in one of the cottages, this one built on the rocks; taken just after getting an alarm call from the sea lapping against the foundations.
THINKING about the Jamaican economy, foreigners are more likely to consider the stereotypical 'raw' products like agriculture, and now, athletes.
It's perhaps telling that with the international media spotlight shining on the physical abilities of athletes like Usain Bolt, ignored are the intellectual abilities of say, a Glenn Mills, the man who happened to coach Bolt into being the world's fastest man.
Jamaica faces a long list of economic impediments including: debt, hurricanes, high crime, high interest rates and the national image. The island's self-confidence takes a repeated beating.
All that said, the most unlikely success story would be a local software company producing products, which among other things, help combat terrorism and anti-money laundering. But Half-Way-Tree-based SymSure have done just that, even expanding during the recession.
Onboard with SymSure is a former VP from software multinational, Oracle, and they've recently entered into partnerships with other companies from the United States and Canada. Yet just a year or so ago they effectively had to market themselves in those markets as, 'not from Jamaica'.
To read the story in today's Observer about SymSure: click here
NATIONAL GALLERY, Downtown Kingston — On a recent visit to exercise the less butu side of my brain, I noticed these old 'Adventures of Johnny Newcome' cartoons hanging on the walls.
Drawn by a British army officer called William Elmes in the early-1800's, the cartoons took their name from the nickname given to European men who had just arrived in the West Indies. Elmes was apparently appalled by their behaviour.
Really though, they look kind of racist. As the gallery's executive director, Veerle Poupaye explained:
"These cartoons have often been represented/understood as abolitionist but ... they are also very racist in their representation of the black and mixed race population. They represent what could be described as a 'third perspective' that satirised and critiqued the plantocracy, the free coloureds and the black slave population alike."
JAMAICA was one of eight countries who signed a United Nations agreement yesterday, intended to protect children from being recruited by armed forces or 'armed groups'. But what about children at home?
The Armdale Inquiry showed in tragic detail just how traumatised the island's youth have been by the culture of violence. Children don't just hide guns for gunmen, increasingly they are the gunmen.
It's all around them. Even Prime Minister Bruce Golding was using 'shotta' metaphors on the weekend as he gave a motivational talk to Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) activists.
"Mr General Secretary, deputy leaders, if we don't arm our soldiers with the information they need, then we can't quarrel if they are not firing any guns out there. We haven't given them the ammunition that they must go out there to fight the propaganda with," Golding was quoted by The Gleaner as saying.
Something I will never forget is standing next to a child in the Jones Town community about four years ago when some gunshots started. Immediately he identified the semi-automatic weapon. He had no right to know that much.
Meantime, just around the corner is the police station where some years ago a group of gunmen cooly walked past, carried out their business, and then walked back down the road.
It's that same station pictured above by Andre Phang Grade, then a 12-year-old attending Jones Town Primary School, in a poster competition, 'How Violence Impacts My Daily Life.'
That is what the likes of young Andre are forced to witness and that is what he and his contemporaries are at risk of being involved in.
I don't know about abortion, but being a Jamaican man, I believe I have the right to breed as much woman as I can and not have to take care of the kids.
More than that, I believe it is my duty to sleep with as many women as possible, and to make as many of them pregnant as I can. And if there is a man who doesn't want to to that, it must be because him is a gay, and you know what we Jamaican men think should happen to those. Gwaan Buju B!
Plus, every Jamaican man knows that you cannot abort the pickney before him born, but you can don't bother to mind him after him born, and once him pass being a juvenile, you can bus gunshot pon him if him step pon yu toe at a dance. A jus do Jamaica run. Because we respek life until bwoy fi dead!
THE Miami Herald carried two stories on Sunday about how Jamaica is trying to cope with hard times, both by experienced Caribbean correspondent Jacqueline Charles.
The first is based upon Charles' interview with Prime Minister Bruce Golding who explains his plans to cut costs to mitigate the impact of the recession. This after finance minister Audley Shaw infamously declared that the recession wouldn't impact Jamaica. And all we know how that went.
Meantime, Charles also travelled to St Mary where the banana industry previously took a hit not just from hurricanes but the World Trade Organisation, whose ruling ended preferential trading in the fruit with the European Union.
Central to that story is the St Mary Banana Chips brand, which the Jamaica Producers Group is gradually building into an export business – part of what Government hopes is a shift from exporting raw materials into agro-processing and finished products on foreign supermarket shelves.
GRANTED it's a little late since Kanye West invaded the stage at the VMAs, but still, it only just reminded me of this classic footage of the late Peter Tosh.
While Kanye saved the VMAs from being again just about Russell Brand and his alarmingly tight pants, by no means everybody was convinced, or appreciative.
Kanye and his outbursts have entertained the world before, but as the doubters suggested, that this latest one might have been stage managed. As disrespectful as this suggestion this connection might be to "one of the best outbursts of all time!", his stunt sure boosted record sales.
Watching this video of Tosh cussing off Michael Jackson and Prince, it's best not to imagine what words Taylor Swift might have heard, were the 'Stepping Razor' standing in Kanye's shoes that night. However, whatever he might say, you'd have to take his word for it...
ANNIE PAUL blogs on what's behind the 'Gully vs Gaza' phenomenon. Apparently it's all to do with homophobia, writes Paul.
She reminds that deejays popularly used to refer to communities as 'borderline', until Vybez Kartel decided he had to switch that for Gaza. This after the term was adopted by Jamaica's most famous and most camp roots play actor, Keith 'Shebada Ramsey'.
And all that explains why zinc fences all over island are spray-painted with Gully or Gaza? More confused?
DOLLAR VAN DEMOS is a dollar van like no other. You just hop on and make a music video. You don't even have to be very good. Imagine doing this on a coaster bus going through Half-Way-Tree...
FOR the past however many years everyone has headed down to the same raggedy field Saturday and Sunday.
It's not all about the winning (and there was a time when our side ALWAYS used to have shirts), but it's that one thing in the week free of all life's burdens: work, wife and kids — whichever ails you.
With age and those creeping distractions — and maybe they're more an excuse for being unfit — there's less and less time for what really matters. I know that describes me because: a) I'm nostalgic enough to be writing this and b) I'm ashamed that twice a weekend is now twice a month.
Tripping over 30, you really know it when your body tells you have to start warming up for the first time since you high school coach ordered you to. And as for that tackle you comfortably made five years ago, what remains of your competitive pride has become, "Well, I have work Monday."
And it's not only about the football but also the lyme after: the idle talk, jokes and of course, those long gone high school glory years.
The winning still matters, except at this age losing doesn't motivate revenge, just maybe golf or dominoes instead; or spending more time with the kids - at any fitness level you should score past your three-year-old.
IF you haven't already been there, Twitter has some more photos of Zimboo & friends. And scroll down this page for the related interview...
Meantime, Zimboo bugged us to post the to the 'Heh!' button via PscyhoFreud.com, where you can listen to some his choice phrases. Perfect to annoy your co-workers, or simply make your boss rate you as insane:
"Wah gwan my style contagious like a yawn, women run lef' their clothes they have on. Heh!"
Oh, and that's Miss T&T in the photograph with him, together with Switch and Diplo (left to right) from Major Lazer.
CHOOSING a high school, Asani Morris could have gone to the same as his brothers, just like every other normal person in Jamaica. In fact Asani had an especially normal choice, given that the school, Calabar, was around the corner. Instead he decides to enroll at Jamaica College on the other side of town.
"Because my brothers went to Calabar and it was too close to the house," shrugged the entertainer.
Life for Asani has never been about convenient, or normal, which can worry those around him. For the past five or so years he's been working with deejay Prince Zimboo Abakunamabooba, from 'Dbush in Africa', whose career has blown up this year with a single, 'Heh!', being released next month on M.I.A. producer Diplo's Mad Decent label, with an album to follow.
"The Zimboo thing won't work in Jamaica. Give it Up!" everybody had told Asani after the act was just two years old. But his stubbornness paid off when his artist appeared on a Black Chiney mixtape and dubplate requests soon started rolling in (Zimboo is reuniting with that soundsystem to play a show in Belize this Halloween night). At one point it got really weird when this article in Slate magazine led to Zimboo being featured on the MSN.com homepage for the better part of a week.
With dancehall being as conformist as it is, Asani was always destined to be a misfit. Even playing piano at Christopher's jazz bar in New Kingston didn't suit him. They paid handsomely in free drinks but then Asani doesn't drink or smoke, except to "put a little rum in some fruit juice".
However it was at that same venue this year, upstairs in the Quad nightclub, that Zimboo ran away with the launch party for Diplo and Switch's Major Lazer album, on which he also appears. Zimboo and his wooden alligator stole the night with their forwards:
"Practice safe sex dont exceed the sex limit, Zimboo don't drink water cause fish have sex in it... You wonder why the sea so salty, the Octopus is getting naughty."
Anyway, so last weekend I'm standing in Asani's family yard with his lastest associate, fellow producer SaniShowbizz – who like Zimboo is of course not the same person as Asani, just that he looks a lot like him. Showbizz sometimes works from the recording studio that Asani's brother Junior (aka deejay Benzley Hype) built around the back.
In between rapid-paced rants Showbizz is chain smoking Matterhorn cigarettes at a sickening rate, lighting each new one with the half-smoked last. He's wearing a black suit, fedora, shades and on his feet a pair of orange flip-flops, just like the ones Asani was wearing minutes before.
Showbizz is a familiar character to anyone who's encountered one of the many slightly inebriated and profane elder hangers-on found at studios across Kingston, telling elaborate stories of being robbed of their ideas and music; and generally claiming the credit for the success of other artists, no matter how tenuous.
"Yow, mi tell you someting. Mi... [starts thumping his chest, hard] Mi teach Pele how fi play football, mi! An' when mi watch Pele play football, a dem time mi see Bob Marley a come an' Bob Marley wah play football an' mi tell Bob Marley, 'Right ya now mi a di wickedes' ting inna football an' yu know dat, yu know dat! Mi can tell yu anyting you wah learn an' a matter of fact you can make some music yah so because mi cyan see the talent in yu from the way yu control di ball. Mi know yu gwaan be di greatest musician to ever come outta Jamaica because right now yu a di real man an' yu know dat too Bob.' Him did see dat. Zeen. An' yu know dat."
Back in the real world the local music industry is yet to be kind to Asani. Talented, and weirdly so, Asani's had occasional half-chances, like the time he played his first tune to the owner of a radio station. Immediately he had Asani re-record it and within 30 minutes 'Lose Your Number' was on rotation.
However from then on things didn't go entirely to plan. Dawn Dodd, wife of the late great Clement 'Coxzone' Dodd was tipped off by Gambling House Studio about his next tune, 'Mr Fixit', and was interested in releasing it on the Studio One label. But then the studio's computer crashed and his tune was lost.
Meantime he's finding more and more characters to work with. He plans to release a compilation album in 2010, led by Zimboo but also featuring himself; Ned Chigins, 'a black redneck from Texas'; Alfredo 'a chef from Italy' and Vlad! from Russia.
He's also going to continue eating tomato ketchup out of a cup.
VISITED an HIV/AIDS ward just once. Covered murder scenes and some awful accidents but never felt death like in that ward. The patients were all in advanced stages of the disease, gaunt and silent; the row of beds like a line of coffins ready to be buried.
Beyond fear, the reality is that 25,000 people in Jamaica are living with HIV - persons who must face death but also the last few years of their lives. They were the motivation for poet Kwame Dawes's project, 'Hope: Living and Loving with HIV in Jamaica.' project, which won an Emmy Award in New York City last night.
Part of the Pulitzer Centre-sponsored project is its multimedia website, www.livelovehope.com (winner of a 2009 Webby Award), which features extensive photography, videos, audio and of course, Dawes' poetry:
A friend argued that a post last week was a little unfair to taxi men. It's true that taxi men get a bad rep for their supposed anti-social behaviour.
But that was until Imogene Blake, who operates the route from Mandeville in Manchester to Spaulding, Clarendon. His annual expenses were including in a submission for a fare increase made by taxi drivers to the Ministry of Transport earlier this year.
He claimed to have spent $125,000 on washing and cleaning his 1998 Honda Partner during the financial year March 2008 - April 2009. That's just under $2,500 a week, and in a country where the minimum wage is $3,700 a week, that's pretty clean.
A further expense for 'uniform' of $3,600 for the purchase of three shirts shows Mr Blake is not just clean but also a dapper player in the transport business.
Maybe there is something special about the Jamaican taxi man, weaving his underpowered Toyota Corolla station wagon through rush hour traffic. When everything else in life is holding you up, here is a man who cares that you get somewhere fast, and well before the line of traffic queuing in front of you.
FINALLY gotten around to registering Twitter and Facebook accounts.
Why sign up? You'll get extra content/updates not necessarily published on this blog. You can find Twitter and Facebook widgets in the right-hand column. Just scroll down...
PEOPLE were left head-in-hands when news broke the other week that British diplomat John Terry had been found murdered in St James. And as those who knew him knew, Terry was also gay, and so his was a murder ready for scrutiny unlike any of the 1,611 the island suffered last year.
Crime and homophobia exist in Jamaica, and in extremes. However not every murder of a gay person is a hate crime – as this murder was reported by the British press.
"I don't think it is a homophobic attack, although it's been run in the UK press. It isn't consistent with the information that we have. It is unlikely," Head of Serious and Organised Crime, Assistant Commissioner Les Green. Green is a former senior British police officer.
So-called 'crimes of passion' have stalked Jamaica's gay community, often occurring when older uptown men enter into relationships with ghetto youths – as theorised in the Terry case and the bleach-faced suspect (pictured above).
"If it is proven to have been motivated by hatred of homosexuals, it will be one of the most high-profile and horrific examples yet of what campaigners say is a growing trend for extreme violence against gay people in Jamaica," reported The Independent, adding the word 'If' only in the eighth paragraph.
What is not a 'growing trend' is a willingness of British reporters to look beyond the stereotype. Driving two reporters from the airport through the ghetto two years ago, it wasn't hard for them to notice the poverty and that the residents are of African descent.
It was 'just like Lagos', they remarked. The report was predictable.
WATCHING cable television in Jamaica used to be this fun. All the channels for a fraction of the real price; and that's not even taking into account those who got their cable hooked up for free.
This weekend I'm grateful to still have my legit sports package from my cable company, Flow, but no HBO (Entourage, Check Your Enthusiasm etc). Not after HBO recently cracked down on piracy of their signal.
A friend managed to get through to customer services. Apparently HBO should get back the signal in '30 days' and customers will be compensated for days gone without. However the sting is that Flow can't say how much extra we'll have to pay until negotiations are complete.
Meantime HBO are working to develop content for the region to replace the South American feed they had been insisting upon, and the Caribbean refusing.
BARBICAN, St Andrew – This taxi man was snapped by Observer photographer Marlon 'Biggy Bigz' Reid, driving the wrong side of a traffic island so he could overtake 100 yards of early morning rush hour traffic.
You won't be able to see her in the photograph but the look on the face of the woman driving the SUV on the right said it all...
Totally shameless, half of him hanging out of the window and with no worries about another dent, taxi men and coaster bus drivers are the kings of the road. And no matter what they do, and whatever the consequences, it's going to be your fault.
Pedestrians are tough too, often crossing the road without taking even the slightest glance at oncoming traffic. Again, that'll be your fault.
Meantime the police can be reliably found at another intersection, pulling over cars and making more traffic snarl up. Around the corner coaster buses are rushing to pick up more fares and doing pretty much what they like.
THERE'S two small problems with attempting online ventures in Jamaica: (i) few people are online and (ii) investors know that. However, despite this, despite the recession, the clouds are clearing.
More and more people are launching websites, while Facebook is of course everywhere, and a growing number of persons are browsing the web with their BlackBerries and other smart phones. That said, what could be the tipping point is Digicel's launch of their WiMAX wireless broadband Internet service mid-2010, which promises to cover 60 per cent of the population.
This was the company that transformed the mobile market in Jamaica and now has more subscribers than adults among the population. Given the strength of their brand it's not unreasonable to expect that if anyone can, Digicel can market online to the masses – currently locals account for about 25 per cent of visitors to the island' news websites, a figure that shows local Internet access/usage has a long way to go.
Meantime there are a few independent sites shaping up to take advantage should WiMAX live up to what Digicel CEO Mark Linehan himself termed, "broadband for the masses".
TrackAlerts.com launched this June but already claims more than 100,000 monthly pageviews. Being the most regularly updated track athletics website in this, the world's No.1 track country, makes good commercial sense believes founder and 'journalist trying to be successful businessman', 'Vijay'.
"The fact that TrackAlerts.com is new and still into its promotional stages, advertisers have not yet buy into the idea. However, we are not worried in away as our job is to keep on promoting and continue to provide the world with quality and breaking (track) news, which is our No.1 aim... then before long advertisers will realise what we are doing is serious," he said.
He too is optimistic about the possible impact of Digicel – not forgetting existing Internet providers LIME, Flow and Claro – but still reckons that the site is far from being financially self-sufficient.
"I suspect within another two to three years, because by then advertisers will have a better understanding that more people are going online for news. Gone are the days when there was one radio station and one newspaper. Now you can do everything online. So, if you are aware that people have access to the Internet, why don't advertisers believe these people will read news online instead of buying the papers?"
He won't be the only one praying Digicel don't false start.
AS obvious at it really is, the British press still manage to underrate the influence of the Jamaican sound, from ska to dubstep. Another reminder came on Tuesday night when Speech Debelle, a sweet-toned 26-year-old female rapper from a Jamaican family in South London, won that country's prestigious Mercury Music Prize.
Trying to describe her music is hard, just that driving around Kingston in the car it sounds really, well... makes this writer miss London. Meantime the Jamaican references are plenty on Debelle's autobiographical debut album, 'Speech Therapy', and the jazz bounce of the production complements her voice.
Debelle, born Corynne Elliot, had an eventful upbringing spending four years of it in homeless hostels before eventually winding up with the Big Dada label. Big Dada has a creditable record of releasing experimental hip hop and much if it Jamaican-tinged from artistes such as Roots Manuva and Wayne Lotek – who as producer brings some of his signature strings and clarinet sound to 'Speech Therapy'.
"We, meanwhile, jumped on the tables, spilt drinks and partied with little thought for the feelings of the great and the grey of the UK music industry gathered around us," said a post on the Big Dada website about the Mercury Prize ceremony. Some of the audience looked confused.
As for a friend who's band rehearsed with Debelle but 'chose' not to work with her...
ARMOUR HEIGHTS, St Andrew – Nobody in Jamaica needs to be told about our landlords. Most times you have to fill out a long, invasive application form and if you're not a lawyer/doctor attending the same church as the landlord... better try someplace else.
And when you do finally get a place, they'll likely do things like limit the amount of tokens you can get for the communal washing machine – that is, if and when the landlord can be found after days gone missing and you have no clean clothes.
And it's because of a landlord that I got a joke from today's edition of the Chat! newspaper. The Range Rover belonging to 'controversial' (when are they not?) deejay Mavado was reportedly shot up outside his uptown home.
More than a year ago a friend was being pestered by his landlord. That friend was a relatively good tenant and in fact he'd even made some home improvements. Still the landlord carried on, so said friend decided to move but not before he helped find an appropriate tenant to replace him. That tenant? David Brooks A.K.A. Mavado.
P.S. Respect to my current landlord. He's one of the good ones.
FRENCH magazine Clark has an interesting interview with photographer Peter Dean Rickards, creator/proprietor of the Afflicted Yard website.
He and his website have become known equally for the stunning photographer but also for some, er, controversies. But above all it's about the work and what is a unique portrayal of Jamaica – its beauty, troubles and idiosyncrasies.
"The fact that it became known as ‘controversial’ was probably a result of the language and subject matter that I often used. I enjoyed pushing buttons and laughing at certain things in the society, but I never actually set out to be more conscious than anyone else, or to set any sort of example. It was just a way to share my words and images in a way that was new and exciting. The Afflicted Yard was really just a blog before there were blogs," said Rickards.
Quoted above, one particularly notable thing about The Afflicted Yard is that it's one of the first Jamaican content creators to make a living from the web. Hopefully it's a trend that will grow thanks to a significant development in the Jamaican Internet industry expected mid-2010 (more on that from this blog later this week).
You can read the translated version of the article via the Afflicted Yard blog and while you're there, take a trip around the site.
GOING to the movies in Jamaica is wrapped up in a lot of tradition, namely standing for the playing of the national anthem, the national anthem and of course people talking throughout.
But as a pirate nation people are more likely to watch a dodgy DVD bought on the street for J$100 rather than spend say J$400 to watch the same movie at the historic Carib, or another theatre from the same Palace Amusements chain.
DVD rental stores have already become extinct and Jamaican moviemaking itself isn't doing that much better. Piracy or not we're a long way off getting our equivalent of Brazil's 'City of God', no matter how rich in potential the society is for a screenplay of that quality.
Twenty-seven years on the Jimmy Cliff-starring 'The Harder They Come' is still streets ahead. That was the first time Jamaicans saw themselves portrayed on the big screen and remains the definitive portrayal of the rural-urban poor struggling to make it in the city before submitting to frustration i.e. crime and dying in a shootout with police – a situation that persists in real life today.
Still, here are four other local movies – 'Smile Orange', 1976; 'Babylon', 1980; 'Countryman', 1982 and 'Third World Cop', 1999 – uploaded to YouTube by Ian Vassell:
TIVOLI GARDENS, Kingston – A comment posted by a reader to jamaicaobserver.com, in response to news coverage about the United States move to extradite local don Christopher 'Dudus' Coke:
"Suddenly surround Tivoli and all garrisons with the military and proclaim that these communities will be leveled within 24 hours and residents should leave immediately to camps set up for refugees at the national stadium, arena and other locations throughout the country. Total destruction is the only solution."
For or against theres's no doubt that Tivoli is an extraordinary place: on one hand the community is home to probably Jamaica's most secure street party in 'Passa Passa'; and on the other hand there is its fearsome reputation as the 'Mother of all Garrisons'.
Photograph: Biggy Bigz
Tivoli long ago become uncomfortably powerful for the politicians who, working hand-in-hand with the gangs, socially engineered Jamaica's garrison communities: votes and power for the Members of Parliament; guns, patronage and immunity for the dons.
And what that angry reader hoped for has happened before: security forces confronting gunmen inside the community, putting not just each other at risk of death but also ordinary residents.
Men.
Women.
Children.
Dudus will not go easily, not least because the US tried to extradite his father, Lester 'Jim Brown' Coke. Not after his father burnt to death in a Kingston prison cell under mysterious circumstances.
Several politicians rumoured to be of interest to the US will not be sleeping easy either. Another faces the dilemma of signing the extradition documents.
But absent from the media picture are the residents themselves. As in every garrison community it is those individuals whose obedience gives the don his power and the MP his votes.
WAITING for their first glimpse of Ian Thomson's 'The Dead Yard', Jamaicans were anxious about what promised to be the latest media hatchet job. Booksellers have since declined to stock the book, even more anxious about potential lawsuits from society figures shamed within its pages.
The tone of the book is a little miserable and its content is not news: Jamaica suffers from poverty, crime and the British colonial hangover of race and class. In fact the focus of the book is the state of Jamaica's relationship with Britain.
Thomson, himself white and British, finds in Jamaica a mainly black poor and a complacent white or lighter-skinned establishment. Again, not news. However what does raise eyebrows are the juicy quotes he includes from the great and the good who hosted him in their homes and hotels.
Likely, because of his being white and British, his 'victims' felt comfortable opening up. "Oh, I could've whipped her. I sacked her," said one host about his staff.
Unsurprisingly perhaps, Thomson reserves most affection for Perry Henzell, a white but rootsy Jamaican and the creator of the 1972 movie 'The Harder They Come'. 37 years later, Henzell's movie remains the definitive portrayal of the sufferer trying to make it.
The protagonist, Ivan - modelled on real life outlaw Rhygin – comes to Kingston from the country, trying to make something of his life. Things go awry and his life ends in a hail of police bullets. It's a storyline played out daily in real life Jamaica, where the badman life seems as probable for young men at one end of society as a law degree is for the other.
"You visitors are always getting it wrong? Either it's golden beaches, or it's guns, guns, guns. Is there nothing in between?" one elderly woman asked Thomson.
For all it's ills Jamaica remains an alluring country — were it not then would journalists still be coming here to write about how awful it is, while not just enjoying the beaches but also the culture and a society more complex and sophisticated than one-off media portrayals give credit.
As the Afflicted Yard explains: "Our country is known for its extremes. A place packed with originality and creative energy that continues to flourish despite the current socio-political state that has removed the personal pride of many. An island filled with beauty unsurpassed and ugliness that would make a rat puke."
So life goes on. Jamaica is far from dead. Still, for an introduction to the 'real' Jamaica, 'The Dead Yard' is not half bad. Better yet, visit.
P.S. This book was released quite a long time ago...but then they didn't send it to local journalists either.
PERHAPS you always wondered why racehorses have such fancy names. Simply it's to tell them apart from the competition. Something similar goes for Jamaica's badmen and their choice of aliases.
In the police blotters Monday a man was shot dead by police after allegedly engaging them in a shootout. An all too frequent occurrence. The release read: "Dead is 29-year-old Michael Palmer otherwise called 'Muffin' of Cockburn Pen, Kingston 11. The identity of the other man is being withheld pending further investigations."
As different as 'Muffin' might be from plain old 'Michael Palmer', it's hardly fearsome (short for ragamuffin or not). Better known was 'Cheese Trix' — named after the snack, and yes, also shot dead by police. And who could forget 'Pum Pum Mouth'.
But for subtlety, nothing beats Mark 'Wrong Move' Dixon (pictured above), a convicted murderer and escapee whose alias is a ready made excuse in court.
So before you make your final bow, having 'opened fire on police' and been found 'suffering from gunshot wounds in bushes', make sure to find that perfect name to preserve your badman legacy. Make that police blotter your own.
PANTS' legs slightly rolled up and Clarks Deserts Boots on the feet. That style has lived on for decades in Jamaica as synonymous with the boot as the WW2 British soldiers returning from North Africa in their 'clodhoppers' — the original inspiration for shoemaker Nathan Clark.
Almost as long ago, when the Empire Windrush disembarked the first generation of Jamaican immigrants in Britain, centuries of cultural domination by the colonial power began flowing back the other way. It's ever present today on the streets of London: in language, style, music and thankfully, the food.
But one thing the Brits gave back, was of course, Clark's cheese-bottomed casual classic. Perhaps then it's all the more surprising that the company doesn't have a presence here — almost the opposite of Puma which profitably appropriated 'Brand Jamaica', Clarks are a brand which Jamaicans have made very much their own.
You can find them — Boots, Treks, Wallabies, Natalies and Luggers — or fake 'Bank Robbers', sold right across Jamaica. MK Mart in downtown Montego Bay has possibly the widest choice of genuine Clarks.
In Kingston you can try Emperor Shoes at Consumer Plaza on Constant Spring Road and Fashion Express in Liguanea Post Office Mall. Clarks are also cheaper in Jamaica, beginning at J$6,000.
A friend here in the city has an uncle in the United States who sends down a shipping barrel of Clarks every few months. And recession or not, it only takes a couple of days before he's all sold out, young and old feet alike.
SOLD overseas as the "world's coolest beer", Red Stripe has found itself struggling at home.
Owned by booze multi-national Diageo, J$ millions have been poured into party sponsorship and ad campaigns but still young drinkers shy away — yes Red Stripe is achingly hip in NYC, Tokyo or London but in Jamaica its image is arthritically old.
But now, slowly finding its way into Kingston fridges, the new Red Stripe Bold is intended to win over younger drinkers better used to a Q of Appleton rum, Pepsi and a bucketful of ice. At 6% it's stronger than the old brew, darker, richer and yes, more expensive in a smaller bottle.
But go easy in the hot weather. A few traditional Red Strips will leave you a little mellow and maybe bloated with the volume. A few of these will make you want to drive very fast.
TIVOLI GARDENS, Kingston — The news today is that the United States wants to extradite Christopher 'Dudus' Coke, reputed don of this, Jamaica's best known garrison community.
Tivoli is a special case. It's the heart of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) constituency of West Kingston and its current Member of Parliament happens to be Prime Minister Bruce Golding and before him, Edward Seaga, who socially engineered the community during his 40 years in political office.
The extradition request — Brown is wanted on drug trafficking and conspiracy charges — is eerily similar to that of his father Lester, better known as 'Jim Brown'. 'Jim Brown' was accused of running the notorious 'Shower Posse' gang, which dominated the crack cocaine trade in many US cities during 1980s and he too faced extradition.
Mysteriously 'Jim Brown' burnt to death in a Kingston prison cell back in 1992. Many believe that he knew simply knew too much, as one of the readers commenting on the Jamaica Observer website noted today. Another complains about the illegal flow of US-manufactured weapons into the island.
WATERHOUSE, St Andrew — Terry Lynn is a bittersweet combination, a charming personality toughened by her roots in this community she references in her music as 'slaughterhouse'.
However it's overseas and not Jamaica where Lynn's best known, thanks to 'Kingston Logic'. That, the title track of her debut album, matches a staccato flow and stark lyrics with the 'Technologic' riddim by French producers Daft Punk.
Dues also to Russell Hergert, her Swiss-based Canadian producer and label boss, who spent years developing her as an artiste — Jamaican artists rarely get that chance — and local photographer Peter Dean Rickards who took the shots.
I have something to say I'm gonna say it once I'm waiting for my day That day to take my chance So when I work give me my pay My overtime my advance I'm tired of being a victim of the circumstance - Terry Lynn, 'Streetlife'
INNER CITY, Kingston & St Andrew — J$50.00, that can be the cost of a life — the cost of a bus fare. He was a well-liked in his community, easy going and hard working: he'd just saved enough to buy a pick-up truck for his father out in the country.
Gone, he will be missed by many. But his killers, they chose to shoot him eight times in all, each bullet valued about the same as the bus fare they had demanded, and he had refused.
They had followed him home. That it happened in the same community where they all lived, sadly made it all the more typical. These were all men aged in their early twenties, apples from the same tree: one good, the rest worse.
Who he was connected to might not have fully crossed their minds. Yet to be buried and the retribution has already started.
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