Cate Blanchett on Broadway
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December 2016 December December 2016 Cate Blanchett Cate • Jamaica Jamaica • Los Cabos Los Cate Blanchett on Broadway “Theater should be dangerous.” ’Tis the Season Your holiday gift list, sorted Buen Provecho Mexico’s new culinary hot spot: Los Cabos We’re Jammin’ In Jamaica with the man who brought reggae to the world R1_RHAP1216_001_Cover_v3.indd 1 10/11/2016 11:47 Contents December 2016 56 Recipe for Success In the aftermath of a devastating hurricane, Los Cabos has been reborn as Mexico’s hottest fine-dining destination —ellencarpenter 66 Cate Blanchett blouse and coat A conversation with perhaps the finest screen actress of this generation on the eve of her Broadway debut Givenchy —ellencarpenter wears wears 74 First Person, Far Flung: GoldenEye, Jamaica A reggae-loving writer meets the legendary founder of Island Records —naomijackson 82 Plane Spoken A novelist shares how she finds inspiration at 35,000 feet Photography: Michele Aboud; Cate Blanche Photography: —merritttierce December 2016 RHAP1216_003_TOC.indd 3 08/11/2016 15:27 firstperson﹐farflung GoldenEye, Jamaica Bayside with Chris Blackwell, the ‘single person most responsible for turning the world on to reggae music’ Story Naomi Jackson Photography An Rong Xu ate in May, I went to GoldenEye, the luxe resort hotel overlook- ing Oracabessa Bay, on Jamaica’s northern coast, to seek out its owner, Chris Blackwell. The leg- ends are many: Since founding Island Records in 1959, he had created the first international ska hit, made Bob Marley and the Wailers an international phenomenon, helped Marley convalesce after the 1976 attempt on his life, cast Jimmy Cliff as the lead in The Harder They Come, and had become, according to his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, “the single person most responsible for turning the world on to reggae music.” Reviewing the first reggae album he produced—Funky Kingston by Toots and the Maytals—rock critic Lester Bangs came up with a line that now seems to speak to an entire career: “Perfection, the most exciting and diversified set of reg- gae tunes by a single artist yet released.” Years after that success, I’d come to find the lion in winter: He’d sold Island Records for $300 million in 1989 to focus on GoldenEye—once the villa of his tk Credit December 2016 RHAP1216_074_FPFF_Goldeneye_v2.indd 74 08/11/2016 11:55 Chris Blackwell in the Sha’Been bar at GoldenEye, with paintings by local artist Albert Artwell in the background Credit tk Credit December 2016 RHAP1216_074_FPFF_Goldeneye_v2.indd 75 08/11/2016 11:55 mother’s paramour, James Bond author Above us all, the recently departed into the high mountains of Portland, Ian Fleming—which he’d bought in 1976 Bob Marley was our patron saint, proof where her family had its homestead and with the aim of creating a resort that’s that distinctly Caribbean music could a shop. It was a place so small that eve- truly integrated with the island (unlike speak to listeners across the world. One ryone peered into the car as we made so many white-sand Caribbean resorts). of my earliest childhood memories is the slow, final climb, looking boldly at I went there looking to see whether he’d riding with my sister in the backseat of our faces to decipher where these foreign- infused the property with the same a warm car at night in Barbados, singing ers were from. But then, when we reached depth of feeling for Jamaican culture along to “Three Little Birds”; the lyrics the shop, we heard rockers emanating he’d brought to his records. And I went lulled me to sleep, the song a cover of from the jukebox, and I felt at home again. to hear the stories of a music that was so comfort I lingered beneath. As I grew close to my roots. into myself, Marley and the Wailers’ wenty-four years after that trip, I sat Growing up in a blended West Indian ballads were an ever-present soundtrack. Tdown for breakfast at the Bizot Bar at family in Brooklyn, I sustained myself on It was “Redemption Song” and “Buffalo GoldenEye. Talsie, GoldenEye’s longtime beef patties and curry goat from Jamaican Soldier” that I returned to time and again cook, had prepared the Jamaican national joints on Flatbush Avenue, along with as I grew increasingly politically aware dish of ackee (a tropical fruit) and saltfish; the gospel, soul, calypso, and reggae that of black history and culture. Marley was it was so good that it made me feel like I swirled throughout our household. I got ours, a bard with a thrilling range who was cheating on my Jamaican stepmom, my love of music from my family: One could speak to family, love, history, war. who’d made the same meal for our family of my uncles was a radio DJ in Antigua, Despite my affinity for the country’s countless times. while my dad had formed a band called music, I hadn’t been to Jamaica Across the table from me the Soul Servers in the ’70s. And each since I was 12, when my dad was Chris Blackwell. At 79, he Saturday morning, as my sister and I did sent me there to bond with looked worldly yet jovial, emi- Above: Chris Blackwell chores around our apartment, my Jamai- my Jamaican stepmom. I (far right) with the nently relaxed in a white shirt can stepmom kept up a soundtrack of found it hot and muggy, and Wailers’ Junior Marvin, with three buttons undone. “rockers”—’70s reggae with syncopated had to rely on her to trans- Bob Marley, and Talsie called him Mr. B., a nick- bass drums—that made it clear that while late the Jamaican patois Inner Circle front man name that sounded more fitting Jacob Miller, en route we lived in America, our ears were still that grew thicker and more to Brazil in 1980 for an uncle with a well-worn trained on the Caribbean. unintelligible as we traveled Right: the Fleming Villa place at the rum shop than a (musicians) Archive Trading Delon/Island Nathalie December 2016 RHAP1216_074_FPFF_Goldeneye_v2.indd 76 08/11/2016 11:56 RHAP1216_074_FPFF_Goldeneye_v2.indd 77 08/11/2016 11:56 “Marley was ours, a bard with a thrilling range who could speak to family, love, history, war.” GoldenEye’s Bizot Bar, named for French music journalist and tastemaker Jean-François Bizot; opposite page: the bar’s collage of reggae royalty tk Credit November 2016 RHAP1216_074_FPFF_Goldeneye_v2.indd 78 08/11/2016 11:56 December 2016 RHAP1216_074_FPFF_Goldeneye_v2.indd 79 08/11/2016 11:57 “I smiled at the serendipity of Blackwell and my family having met before, at the welcome table of music.” renowned music mogul and real estate Aitken’s “Little Sheila” and teenaged $6,000 check to record their next album. entrepreneur. In an English accent mel- Millie Small’s cover of “My Boy Lollipop,” “I felt it was a risk worth taking. Every- lowed by island living, he told me how one of the first songs recorded in the ska one told me I was crazy. It was the best he first got his start in the business, in style. “Millie’s record opened up every- decision I’ve ever made.” the ’50s, when he managed 63 jukeboxes thing for me,” said Blackwell. “Because This spring, Blackwell is helping to around the island. “Sometimes the jukebox once you have a big hit in anything you’re bring that story to the stage at the Bir- was the entire entertainment in a com- doing, you go from one of millions to one mingham Repertory Theatre in England munity,” he said. “When I went to a place of hundreds. It happened at the same time with One Love: The Bob Marley Musical, called Rocky Point—a fishing village in the as the Beatles, the Stones, the Who, the which he’s coproducing with longtime south of Jamaica—I don’t think they’d Kinks. And I was right there.” Island Records executive Suzette New- seen anybody of my complexion. I was For Blackwell, Bob Marley and the man. Directed by Kwame Kwei-Armah, like a ghost walking in there. Wailers were his Beatles. the story traces the Rastafarian icon’s When I took out a record and “When I met Bob and Peter two-year self-imposed exile in England put in a record, you’d get an Clockwise from top left: Tosh and Bunny Wailer in after he was shot in a 1976 assassination instant reaction and everybody pictures and books at the 1972, they were known to be attempt. (Marley spent the immediate would either say ‘Tune, tune’ or Gazebo at GoldenEye; a bad guys—which meant they aftermath of the shooting convalescing ‘Take it out, take it out.’” signed copy of the Police’s wanted to get paid what they at Strawberry Hill, Blackwell’s villa in hit single “Every Breath The answer, more often You Take,” which Sting should be paid,” he recalled. Jamaica’s Blue Mountains.) than not, was “tune, tune.” By wrote at the resort; a hut The musicians had been going “He was devastated by that,” Blackwell the early ’60s, Blackwell was between the trees on through a rough period, and said. “He never expected to be the target producing some of the first the resort’s grounds; Blackwell decided that the of a shooting in Jamaica. Depressed, he records of Jamaicans singing GoldenEye’s Beach best way to establish a good went to London and found out that he Lagoon Villas; opposite pop music: Cuban-Jamaican page: a resort guest dives relationship with them was to was really popular in England—all the godfather of ska Laurel into the lagoon trust them.