YeKengalé

In pre-independent Jamaica, government, for the most part, was instrument of exploitation; while church was, in the main, nurturer of society, catalyst of change and defender of the people… or so goes one narrative among others seeking to provide leadership in our emerging Caribbean civilization. That perspective that sees church and school ideally as chief incubators of an emerging regionalist mindset however has competitors.

It’s perhaps fitting on Bob Marley’s birthday to remind ourselves that notwithstanding the current celebration of this cultural icon as a pillar of Jamaican identity, his philosophy took dim view of both – i.e. Western Education and Western Christianity. ‘Could you be loved’ was a polemic against western education: It can only be classed as a love song if that genre includes songs about love of self, because that was the romance celebrated in that piece, and chief antagonist against self-love was the formal schooling that Bob saw as a force of self-alienation and self-hatred, as a tool of colonial brainwashing to be resisted or counteracted, not unequivocally embraced or wholeheartedly celebrated.

Of course, chief bedfellow to school was church for which Bob displayed similar antipathy, to the point of feeling like ‘bombing a church‘ now that he knew the preacher was lying. Strong words, often politely brushed aside as inconvenient aspects of the Messenger, which we would rather paint in hues that accomodate strictly commercial values.

Nevertheless, these sentiments are at the core, not periphery of the Rastafarian philosophy that energized Bob every time he began his musical performances boldly invoking the name of Jah Rastafari, ever living, ever faithful, ever sure. When a Rastaman lights fire against ‘Babylon’, there can be no mistaking that the edifice in focus, whose gateways of access are institutionalized in Church and School, was Western Capitalism and all elements of its culture that Rastafari ever liveth to challenge, to expose and ultimately to deconstruct / conquer.

In the eyes of Rastafari, all the institutions of the West: religious, political, educational, legal, philosphical and cultural were supplanters of a livity that preceded it and that produced a diametrically opposite vision of human life in community – opposite values, opposite axioms of life and being. Holy Mount Zion was and is all that Babylon is not and vice versa.

I’m not intending here to defend the validity of that proposition, simply to set the record straight so that Bob’s lifeforce is not coopted into a program for which he lived against, up to his dying day. Aspects of Rastafari livity might infiltrate church, school, marketplace, court-house and parliament, but it does not do so to conform or even necessarily to transform those spaces (although that might at times be the result). Rasta is confident in two things: that Babylon is wicked and that Babylon must fall. In the meantime, it is content to faithfully bear witness to both in word and in livity.

As I continue to ‘take the pulse’ of Caribbean realities, having now arrived in what should be the heartland of hope and promise for a thriving future Caribbean Civilization, (Guyana, now officially the fastest growing economy in the world) – looking at the videograph of GDP/annum for South & Central America and the Caribbean over the last 50 years, it tells an amazing story which began with Venezuela on top and Guyana at the very bottom but now a complete reversal has occurred and I’m shocked at the process of Latinization now taking place as Venezuelan refugees pour across the border looking for greener pastures in what was once considered the rubbish heap of the region with the toilet tissue currency. Who would have thought?

But for all of Guyana’s promise in the current oil and gas boom and recent resurgence of Bauxite and steady growth of other mineral assets, the mood of the people continues to be rather dour and cynical, having had such a strong overdose of past disappointment and distrust of leadership that not even this Good News from World Bank Financial Statistics seems sufficient to arouse some self-congratulation, some sense of achievement, some optimism of a brighter future for the country much less the self-confidence to perhaps take up the standard of Regional Centre endowed upon it by virtue of the crowning presence of the CARICOM Secretariat planted in her midst, and attempt with that mantle to lead that process of regional transformation and integration that Jamaica and Trinidad failed to champion, and for all the strenuous effort of little Barbados, she cannot manage on her own.

Neither church, school and certainly not government seem to be able to ignite that spark of possibility and promise that rouses a people to work and build together for a common bright future. But describing the present doldrums by no means indicates that I am capitulating to the vote of so many of the younger generation, who are voting with their feet not hands in swelling the number of our considerable diaspora seeking opportunity in foreign lands of considered greater promise.

As I continue to meet with the aboriginal peoples whose ancestral memories and folklore celebrates a time before the arrival of Western culture with its peculiar evolutionary dialectic, before the Babylon system, its assumptions about humanity, community, its axioms and aspirations were foisted upon the terrain of this hemisphere, and all contending peoples within it; it creates a space for the contemplation of what might be the role of their heritage in our emerging Caribbean Civilization?

The common notion that these cultures have nothing to contribute having been all but fossilized, except for remnant token expressions in advanced cultural decay on remote hinterlands, continues to strike me as extremely wrong-headed.

The notion continues to appear more plausible that the Arawakan and Cariban speaking indigenes: the Wapichan and Lokono (Arawak); the Makushi, Akawaio, the Wai Wai, the Arekuna, and the Patemuna (Cariban) – ancient enemies, yet sharing certain common values, might yet be recognized in most unlikely circumstance as significant contributors to an emerging Caribbean identity which might be thirsty for the taste of those very elements once scorned and demonized… as was the case with Bob Marley and the Rastafarians. Could it not be that a secret sauce in the forging of an authentic Caribbean consciousness might be hidden in the diet, the dance, the music or spirituality of these survivors who now have an opportunity to come in from the cold?

Lennox Honychurch, leading authority on the history of Dominica, wrote a book on the Kalinago (Caribs) compartmentalizing their history in three stages: Resistance, Refuge and Revival. Might this revival lead to a resurrection?

The past never returns and those who long for it will always be disappointed. But in the arsenal of human creativity is the ability to sometimes revisit past elements, adapt them to new contexts and create new paths and return to old ones in a single action. Hence the saying: There is nothing new under the sun. The past simply re-presents itself wearing new faces.

Perhaps what is required is not a resurrection but reincarnation and adaptation of some elements of diet, of habit, of philosophy, of community praxes, of approaches to family, community and character development – torchbearers of which, only those with most ancient connections to these lands and the Sea that cements them together might be qualified to illuminate.

As I continue to meet with these my indigenous brothers and sisters, I can only think like the Jamaican I am. I am in the process of meeting their Miss Lous, and their Dr. Olive Lewins, their Queenies and Kapos and those that, in the Jamaican space, paved the way for a young singer from Trench Town to be able to stand up in complete self-confidence and speak his unapologetic truth, compelling all to listen, Babylon be damned.

When but one escapes the snare of the false belief that survival requires surrender, that becoming an Afro or Indo-Saxon is *cultural resistance rather than cultural acquiescence … actually, cultural capitulation, [the irony is that whether it’s a Bob, a Fela Kuti or a Jah Fakoly, whenever we do stand in our truth, Babylon not only falls, but falls down, as in worship … how can I explain this? A picture paints a thousand words. A video paints a million] … when but one escapes, sometimes an entire generation is freed to follow this piper’s tune.

*Mastering the culture of the dominator, ‘Afro-saxonism’ has been (unfortunately and improperly, we maintain) cited by some as one strategy of resistance to claims of racial inferiority.

NB. The on-screen text in the video below is a poor translation. The French word ‘partagé’, rendered ‘shared’ is an unfortunate and egregious mistranslation. The word is more properly rendered ‘partitioned’ or ‘divided up’.