In Search of Burning Spear David Sedlock [1] 1998 In January 1998 I found myself in Jamaica for one week, doing a little research into the roots of the legendary Reggae artist Burning Spear. My Roots My roots I never forget / I always remember the road I've travelled [2] Burning Spear was born Winston Rodney on the first of March, 1945 in St. Ann's Bay on the north coast of Jamaica. Although the broad outline of his career in the music business is a matter of public record, comparatively little is known about Burning Spear's childhood in St. Ann's Bay. Perhaps the words of an early song, Creation Rebel , cast a little light on the subject: One shoe on my feet / One pants to my waist / One shirt pon my back / What have I to do? / I don't know / That's why they call me creation rebel... / I made up my mind / Go along sing my song The lyrics indicate a youth raised in poverty but with a clear calling in life. To develop a clean and proper understanding of the man, I felt I should uncover the documents and start in the beginning. So I went to the registry of Births, Still births, and Deaths in St. Ann's Bay, looking for his birth certificate. Here I received a serious setback: this office (which shares space with the 'Fashion Shop') is only for current births; historical records are stored in Spanish Town. I hadn't reckoned on scouring the island in my preliminary investigation. My next stop was the Post Office. I knew that Burning Spear lived in New York now, but I thought he might still have a residence in St. Ann's Bay. The clerk I spoke with knew nothing, but the post mistress knew that the house was on Hill Street. She gave me directions and recommended that I ask the people on the street to find the exact address. St. Ann's Bay is built on a hill side, with main streets running down to the bay. Hill Street is a lateral side street running across the hill side. A neighbor pointed out number 18 to me, a small house behind a wall bordering the street. There was no bell. I banged on the gate a bit, but roused no one. I was about to content myself with a picture, and then head down to the statue of Marcus Garvey at the public library, when a neighbor came out and shouted loudly at the gate. Soon a young man with natty dreadlocks emerged, and thus began my acquaintance with Marcus Winston Rodney, the 24 year old son of Burning Spear. Hill Street Dub Yeah! Marcus invited me in and made me feel very welcome. He was excited that someone was there out of love for his father's music, since people didn't visit the house often. Marcus lives there with his girlfriend Madola and his sister Edna Makebe Rodney. There are also two grandchildren of Burning Spear living in the house, Chris, a boy of six years old, and Marissa, a girl of four. They are children of Edna. I would spend a considerable amount of time with these kind people during my week in Jamaica. We went out to a Dancehall sound system on Saturday night and to the beach at Priory on Sunday. They cooked my favorite Jamaican dishes (peas & rice, callaloo, salt fish and ackee) and Marcus introduced me to the current music scene (including the hissing sound on the tip of everyone's tongue, Sizzla, and the man who is sounding more and more like Bob Marley, Buju Banton). Marcus showed me family photographs and pictures of his father on tour. This was heady material for a Burning Spear fanatic! I was happy to be able to do something for him: although he knew his father's songs by heart, he had only one CD, Make We Dweet. I had my Discman along with the CDs of Social Living, Hail H.I.M., and Living Dub Volume One. I also had Jah Sees Jah Knows by the British Reggae group Misty in Roots, with which Marcus was unacquainted. We bought blank cassettes and recorded them all. Old Marcus Garvey No one remembers old Marcus Garvey... Maybe no one remembers Marcus Garvey, but not for lack of trying on the part of Burning Spear. Garvey's teachings of black pride and self-sufficiency have been his major themes from the beginning. In fact, many people do remember Garvey and some Americans and Europeans owe their knowledge of him to the music of Burning Spear. Marcus Garvey was born on 17 August 1887 in St. Ann's Bay and grew up there. He is a National Hero of Jamaica, though it is difficult to see how his promotion of a "racial empire whose only natural, spiritual and political limits shall be God and Africa" squares with Jamaica's national motto "Out of many, one people." A statue in Garvey's honor stands in front of the public library in the town. It is a pity that his writings are absent from the library itself. Garvey advised young people to "spend most of your time in your library", but the St. Ann library is in a sad state. I stopped there with Marcus (who does not spend time in the library) to see if he could get Michael Thelwell's novel The Harder They Come. He is a respected Jamaican author (respected at least in America), and one might expect... hope... No luck. I found the card catalog in disrepair - drawers stuck shut, a chaotic filing system. One wonders where the money from the cruise ships docking at Ocho Rios goes. Far Over As far as your eyes can see / You will see the children of the Most High / Twelve Tribes of Israel from creation Before my trip to Jamaica I had been working on a little project to make Burning Spear more accessible to some German friends. I selected some crucial cuts and translated the lyrics into German. I think there is a fundamental contradiction between Reggae and the German character, so the project was problematic in that aspect. Another problem was getting clear on the lyrics themselves. The later Burning Spear albums have lyrics in the liner notes, but earlier albums such as Marcus Garvey and Garvey's Children, a.k.a. Social Living, and Farover, don't. I was working by email with a Reggae enthusiast in Sweden on several songs. One was Far Over. There are a couple of troubling lines in there. For instance, at one point, Spear seems to sing "I sit so high so high, far over the mountainside." This apparent God-complex on Spear's part troubled me, so I wanted to hear it as "I see so high so high," which admittedly doesn't make much sense. And then there is the question of whether he says "We want the color of the Nazarene" or "We want the color of the Nazirite." I consulted some sources to see which might fit best in the song. Thus we have Judges 16:17: So he told her everything. "No razor has ever been used on my head," he said, "because I have been a Nazirite set apart to God since birth. If my head were shaved, my strength would leave me, and I would become as weak as any other man." This struck me as pretty Rasta. And then we have "Nazarene", which in one sense is "a member of the Church of the Nazarene that is a Protestant denomination deriving from the merging of three holiness groups, stressing sanctification, and following Methodist polity." This sounded a bit too organized and pious to be Rasta. However, it can have the weaker sense of "native or resident of Nazareth," as in Matthew 2:23: And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene. I'm happy to report that these issues in Burning Spear studies have been definitively settled, since one gem that Marcus showed me during my stay was a collection of nine loose sheets of ruled yellow paper with the handwritten, original lyrics of the songs from the album Farover. I had finally got to the documents! And the answers to the questions? The word is "Nazarene" and the line is "Hoist it so high so high, far over the mountainside". Man in the Hills And if we should live up in the hills... You often see the following explanation of how Burning Spear got into the music business: The way the whole thing came about is that I found myself moving along up in the hills of St. Ann's, and I ran into Bob at the same time. And Bob was going to his farm. The man was moving with a donkey and some buckets and a fork, and cutlass and plants. We just reason man-to-man and I-man say wherein I would like to get involved in the music business. And Bob say, all right, just check Studio One. [3] Bob, of course, is Bob Marley, who was also from the parish of St. Ann. (Marley grew up in Nine Miles, about 35 miles from St. Ann's Bay, the parish capital.) Now I didn't expect to find the exact place where this historic encounter took place, but I still wanted to "move along up in the hills of St. Ann's." I had some difficulty in getting the idea across to Marcus and Madola, no doubt in part due to certain cultural presuppositions. They thought I wanted to tour the 'Civil' plantation or, perhaps, drive up into the hills overlooking the bay to take a picture. Marcus and I got a taxi to Ewart Town. I took the obligatory picture on the way. Marcus finally overstood me when I suggested that we dismiss the taxi and walk back to St. Ann's Bay. There was initial confusion, but his eyes brightened as he recalled that there was an attractive trail from Lime Hall to St. Ann's Bay along a stream. So we walked to Lime Hall via Higgin Town. (Madola, who was very knowledgeable about Jamaican history, explained later that Ewart Town and Higgin Town were named after the original African-Jamaican families that 'captured' the land after emancipation.) We stopped in Lime Hall so that Marcus could pick up a cutlass from a friend. (No Jamaican feels comfortable in the bush without a cutlass.) Then we descended to St. Ann's Bay, stopping to drink coconut jelly (Marcus applied it to his hair) and to bath in a refreshing pool. Everywhere along the trail, one could easily imagine Bob Marley, "moving with a donkey and some buckets and a fork," meeting up with the young Winston Rodney. Marcus told me a story about his father. They were together in the countryside, perhaps taking a walk as we were now. Marcus heard a bird call and looked all over for the bird, only to find that the bird was his father. It is of course known that the bird calls in the song Man in the Hills are produced by Burning Spear. I told Marcus about Michael Thelwell's enchanting novelization of the film The Harder They Come. These hills undoubtedly supported many more people in the time that Thelwell describes, when Ivan was growing up. Entire self-sufficient communities lived there. This way of life seems to be finished. The old people are dead, the young people moved to the bigger towns or to Kingston, the settlements overgrown - exactly as portrayed in Thelwell's novel. Columbus Christopher Columbus was a damn blasted liar! The parish of St. Ann is famous for more than Marcus Garvey, Bob Marley and Burning Spear. It is also known for Christopher Columbus, who stumbled across Jamaica in 1494. Archaeologists are still trying to locate the wreck of one of Columbus' ships off the coast. Local legend has it that the ship is guarded by a huge, dangerous shark. There is a statue of Columbus in St. Ann's Bay, but, in contrast to the statue of Marcus Garvey, it is in a state of neglect, no doubt indicating the low opinion that Jamaicans have of the man. In fourteen hundred and ninety two Columbus sailed the ocean blue. American children are taught this rhyme as a way of remembering the year in which Columbus discovered America. Of course, we all know, and have known for a long time, that America was discovered and settled by people long before Columbus showed up. In particular, the Arawak Indians were there to greet him when he arrived in Jamaica. One can only wonder at the eurocentric attitude involved in teaching children that the real discover was this European adventurer. Marcus Say Jah No Dead They tried to fool the black population / By telling them that Jah Jah dead/ And they tried to fool the black population / By telling them that Jah Jah dead / I and I knows that Jah no dead The Rastafarians regard Marcus Garvey as a prophet because of his prediction that a black king would be crowned in Africa. In 1916, fourteen years before the coronation of Haile Selassie I, he said: "Look to Africa for the crowning of a Black King; he shall be the redeemer." Garvey exhorted his followers to Never forget your God. Remember we live, work and pray for the establishing of a great and abiding racial hierarchy, the founding of a racial empire whose only natural, spiritual and political limits shall be God and Africa, at home and abroad. His teaching of self-sufficiency for Africans is further expressed in his famous slogan "One God, One Aim, One Destiny." There is a wonderful scene in the film Rockers, where the Robinhood protagonist, 'Horsemouth' Wallace, has just had his new motorcycle stolen at Jack Ruby's sound system. [4] The motorcycle is the key to his plan for advancement in the music business. Desolate, he wanders into Burning Spear's yard in St. Ann's Bay. "Call the Spear for I!", he shouts. They go down to Key Largo Beach, and sit in the ruins of the colonial prison, where rebellious slaves were held during slavery days. Burning Spear magically produces two spliffs from his trouser cuffs. They light up and Spear launches into a haunting a capella version of Marcus Say Jah No Dead, accompanied by the soft sound of waves washing on the sand. Key Largo Beach is now named Marcus Garvey Beach. Social Living Live good, do right, no fight, uptight / Do you know that social living is the best? Jamaicans complain that an entire dimension of life is missing in America and Europe. They call it 'social living'. Here is a remark from an interview with a member of the Reggae band Misty in Roots: You see, I was not born in England. I was born in the Caribbean where people are used to a basic form of social living. At the risk of generalizing, I would say that my culture is thing oriented while Jamaican culture is people oriented. This is easy to see in our prowness in technology and our rampant consumerism. We tend to think of Jamaicans as careless and childlike, because they don't take care of their things with the same attention that we do. In our fascination with material things, we have at the same time become inward and private in our mental life. We are cut off from one another in a sort of Cartesian solipsism. In contrast, Jamaicans live life externally. Just walking down the street - greeting friends and family, shaking hands and slapping backs - is a social event. This is a far cry from the barely perceptible nod I get (and give) to people on my street in Germany. Life is lived out in the open in Jamaica, not in the privacy of your own thoughts. Our inwardness is, to some extent, a reaction against the shackles that bind the members of our society so tightly together. Europe has an old and strong culture. People mostly trod in the same footsteps that others have taken for hundreds of years. America is younger and more innovative, but in fact American culture is largely European. In the album Wish you were here, the masters of alienation, Pink Floyd, put it like this: Welcome my son, welcome to the machine / Where have you been? It's alright we know where you've been... / Welcome my son, welcome to the machine / What did you dream? / It's alright we told you what to dream We outwardly conform to the demands of society, but, because our external life is so tightly controlled and limited, we withdraw and look for freedom within. This Man This man he taught me a lot. This man he taught me a lot / Anyone could be Babylon. Any man could be Babylon / It's the system, the system, the system / Any nation without their roots is like the trees without their root / Any nation without their roots is like the trees without their root Nobody can say it like Burning Spear. I am grateful to This Man, whose music has helped me to get through some tough times. [1] Copyright 1998 by David Sedlock. The author can be reached at DavidSedlock@acm.org. Version 1.3 (3 Jan 1999). [2] All quotations are taken from songs by Burning Spear, unless otherwise indicated. [3] This is a neat story, but the reality may not be quite as tidy. The following account, from an interview with Larry Marshall (in Reggae The Rough Guide, Rough Guides Ltd, London, 1997) sheds more light on Burning Spear's entry into the music business at Studio One. Larry Marshall was an influential figure in early Reggae and also a native of St. Ann's Bay: "But I first met Burning Spear when I went to St Ann's Bay with Jackie Mittoo, for a show in Sommerville. I went around to the beach to find a smoke. Because I smoked then. And I see a lot of smoke, and Burning Spear came up to me, and say 'Mr Marshall, I would like to do some recording, but don't know how to go about it.' So, I said, 'Find your way to Studio One, and I'll set you up.' Then he goes to Jack Ruby, and there he rehearses and rehearses with this band. And he bring them to record with Coxsone - the Soul Defenders. I was the one to help him, show him how to sing and portray this African sound." [4] Jack Ruby was also a record producer and Spear's partner in the production of his first two albums after leaving Studio One, Marcus Garvery and Man in the Hills . The session drummer 'Horsemouth' Wallace also played on these albums.