RUN COME RALLY: RASTAFARI TEXTS AND THE CREATION OF PUBLICS IN POST-COLONIAL JAMAICA

A Thesis Submitted to the Committee on Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the Faculty of Arts and Science

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© Copyright by Thomas John Jenkins 2011

English (Public Texts) M.A. Graduate Program

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1+1 Canada ABSTRACT

Run Come Rally: Rastafari Texts and the Creation of Publics in Post-Colonial Jamaica

Thomas John Jenkins

This thesis is an attempt to explore the role that musical texts and physical spaces played in the development of a Rastafari public in post-colonial Jamaica. By examining theories of public formation outlined in Jiirgen Habermas' The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere and Michael Warner's Publics and Counterpublics we may establish a number of criteria which legitimately describe the creation of publics. These criteria provide a theoretical foundation for the analysis of the Rastafari movement and its expansion immediately following Jamaican Independence. The study positions the Rasta text (through Nyahbinghi ceremonies and the act of 'reasoning') as a self-authenticating, oppositional discourse which functions as a critique of normative constructions of reason.

By tracing the musical text through Pinnacle, grounation ceremonies in Trenchtown yards, Soundsystems and Dancehalls, and recording studios, an understanding of the ways in which the Rasta text occupies both self-authenticating and oppositional positions simultaneously can be achieved. The study concludes by positioning Dub as manifested

Rasta ideology, unconsciously staging the same kind of embodied critique of Babylon's insistence on its own authenticity, in part due to its lack of teleology.

Keywords: Rastafari, Reggae, Nyahbinghi, Soundsystem, Dub, Publics, Counterpublics

u ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This study is, of course, indebted to several people, most of whom are, as is usually the case, those closest to me. First and foremost I'd like to acknowledge the assistance of Professor Hugh Hodges, whose inestimable wealth of musical and scholarly guidance has navigated this vessel through both the calmest and choppiest of waters. His ceaseless championing of this project provided me the confidence to continually push for a greater end result, and to him I wholeheartedly dedicate this work. I'd like to also thank

Professors Lewis Macleod and Margaret Steffler, whose patience and guidance during the span of this project was invaluable. During the developmental stage of this study Lewis provided perhaps the single most effective piece of advice: "I know you get anxious about these things. Don't."

Of my closest friends, with whom I have spent more hours than is perhaps healthy

"dubbed out" over the last few years, two deserve a special mention: Dan and Andrew.

Both have been essential sounding posts during all stages of my research for this project, encouraging and refining my strongest ideas while curtailing those that weren't. Their shared passion for all things one-dropped provided me the necessary community in which to foster my ideas and continually test the limits of my musical knowledge. Few people would have so willingly endured so much conversation about popular music.

And finally, I'd be remiss if I didn't thank my mother - my single biggest supporter, despite not having a clue what all this "nonsense" was about.

iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page

Abstract ii Acknowledgements iii Table of Contents iv

Introduction Version Dread: Confusion Dub 1 Developing Publics: Theoretical Approaches 6 Abstracting and Recontextualizing the Habermasian Model 8 Towards a Definition of Modern Publics and Counterpublics 13

Chapter One Origins of a Rastafari Counterpublic 17 Salt Lane and the Emergence of Consciousness 22 Reconciling Bourgeois Europe and Rastafari Jamaica 35

Chapter Two (Intro) 36 Downbeat and the Pressure Drop 38 Door Peeps Shall Not Enter 49

Chapter Three (Intro) 57 Originator Dub 58 Evolution Revolution Dub 60 Rasta Meets Deejay Uptown 65 Dub Ina Babylon 74

Conclusion

Outcomes: Reggae International 79

Bibliography 82

Discography 84

iv 1

INTRODUCTION

Version Dread: Confusion Dub

The origins of this study can be traced back to a precise moment in the summer of

2006. Fresh off a course on Caribbean literature, what had been a casual affection for reggae began to develop into a serious passion as a result of a single, serendipitous purchase. During the course of that previous semester we had studied a wide range of texts: apart from the standard codex fare you would expect in most literature courses, we had also looked at musical texts in a critical manner, an approach which was entirely novel to me at the time. Through analyzing both the instrumental and lyrical content of an entire album (Bob Marley's 1980 work, Uprising) the goal was to form a better understanding of the social conditions that fueled so much of the work we were studying.

What I took from this exercise was two-fold: it expanded my idea of what "literature" could include, but more importantly this form of text actually seemed, to me, more visceral and was better able to encapsulate the complexity of social conditions than the traditional codex form could. No matter what Michelle Cliff had tried to express about the crippling socio-political and economic divide in Jamaica in her novel No Telephone

To Heaven, nothing approximated this crucial schism as clearly to me as hearing The

Wailers perform "We and Dem", in which Marley defiantly declares,

"Someone will have to pay for the innocent blood that they shed every day... We no have no friends in-a high society. We no have no friends, mark my identity" 2

As this was performed, the slow, pounding reggae rhythms gave extra weight to Marley's words. It's at this point though that I should be clear that my intention with this developing anecdote is not to strike up a debate on whether or not a written form is better or worse than a musical one, but rather that there was something about hearing a text performed that intensified its messages.

During that ensuing summer I made a point of accumulating as many reggae records as I could possibly get my hands on. Through this journey I found myself increasingly coming across mentions of "dub", which I'd come to understand was an extension of reggae which was often cited as the birth of remix culture, where standard reggae tracks were manipulated and "spaced-out" with mind-bending delays, echoes, and sonic effects1. Eager to delve into this exciting new musical territory I picked up an album called Version Dread: 18 Dub Hits from Studio One. Ready to have my aural senses titillated, I dropped the needle on the record, anticipating the sonic revolution that was about to happen... However, much to my chagrin what emerged from my speakers sounded almost exactly the same as the reggae I'd been listening to previously. Dub this was not.

Remix culture, in the contemporary sense, seeks to re-dress a song, changing everything from the actual sounds of the instruments and the arrangements of them, to altering the

1 Effects ranged from panning techniques ("capturing" the trail of a repeated delay and manipulating it spatially within the mix in order to sound like it was spinning) to filters (flanges, tremolos, etc. which were used to effect the texture of the sounds) and synthetic, monotone beeps processed (augmented with echo and delay) in order to manipulate and alter the original track as much as possible. 3 rhythms and tempo of the track entirely. The goal is to reposition the song in order to adapt it to different social spaces and situations (the "club mix", the "down-tempo mix", etc.). What I was listening to on Version Dread wasn't this at all, or so I thought. It was the same reggae I'd come to love, only with holes. I have no other way of explaining my initial reaction other than it felt like something was missing: vocals were crudely coming in and out of the mix, often dropping out mid-verse, thus making the instrumental sections longer while making it harder to follow any narrative flow. As it turned out, what I was listening to were "versions", an entirely different sub-classification of reggae, and one that directly led to dub.

Though the sonic revolution I had so eagerly anticipated had not arrived yet, what I was left with was actually a more interesting cultural artifact than I had initially thought.

Version, as I had come to learn, represented an integral stage in a larger musical evolution I was only beginning to understand. My confusion at what I was hearing on

Version Dread led me down a path far more complex than I would have traveled had I just gotten my immediate fix of dub. No longer was this a simple A -> B scenario (reggae begat dub, c 'est tout), as I had originally thought. Rather, it was an increasingly complex series of musical evolutions, both social and technological, that culminated in dub remix culture. What was even more interesting than just the musical connection on its own was that no matter whether I was looking forward or backward chronologically I was hearing a consistency in lyrical content as well, which suggested that not only were these songs part of a complex musical lineage, but they were ideologically connected as well. 4

Sure, other forms of popular music have their own sets of common themes: rock n' roll, for example, had the market for sex, drugs, and the Devil cornered for years (after it stole them from blues and jazz), country and western had heartache and unapologetic patriotism, new-folk had peace, love, and understanding... but the point I'd like to make is that these are broad themes, diffused over both expansive geographical and ideological divides, and don't seem connected in any over-arching way. The heartache that Merle

Haggard feels in "I Threw Away The Rose" and Waylon Jennings in "You're Gonna

Wonder About Me" is similar, but not explicitly connected. Though both are stoic laments of men who have to move on because their respective women have turned their heads, there is no unifying ideology between them (unless we consider a general distrust of women an ideological position). On the contrary, what I was hearing lyrically throughout the lineage of reggae seemed grounded by a consistent and unified message that made it feel more like a community of like-minded individuals working towards a singular purpose: the advancement of the displaced African race under the unified ideology of the Rastafari. The fact that the music which accompanied this ideology was continually shifting form despite the consistency of the lyrical content - from early ceremonial chants known as Nyahbinghi, based almost solely on polyrhythmic drumming, through to full-band reggae, and on to the tricked-out studio landscapes of dub - suggested to me that spaces were equally important factors in circulating the text I was hearing. The questions quickly became: How did the ideology transition from one setting to another? What role did these spaces play in transmitting the text? And did these transitions alter the text's meaning? 5

What I soon came to realize was that I wasn't simply listening to a genre of popular music, but also the development of a public, a growing community of individuals who shared an ideology intimately tied to the social and historical conditions under which they were subjugated. This isn't to suggest that Rasta is reggae, or that all reggae (dub, or otherwise) is inherently Rasta2, but I would like to suggest that there's a homology between the two, and together they played an integral role in the development and expansion of the Rastafarian public by circulating its text through specific cultural spaces.

I began making connections between the developing Rastafari public and the work of

Jiirgen Habermas, whose study of emerging bourgeois publics in ^-century Europe seemed a fitting analogy. His study details the formation of publics through physical spaces that facilitated rational-critical thought. In combination with Michael Warner's work on modern publics and counterpublics, these works provide a theoretical background to this study - a lens through which to view the emerging Rastafari public.

The focus of my study is two-fold: to identify and analyze the public-forming role that

'reasoning' has within the Rastafari text, and how this text has migrated and evolved through specific cultural spaces.

1 conclude my study with the observation that dub is in fact the most ideal textual representation of the Rastafari message for several reasons: Firstly, there is a homology between the reverse engineering of dub from the original source tapes and what the

2 John Homiak has argued that, in some ways, Rastafari is inherently dub. See "Dub History: Soundings on Rastafari Livity and Language". 6

Rasta's lyaric is doing with language. What lyaric itself does with linguistic text is reject the rigidity of its form by stripping away colonial impositions: in essence it dubs language through reversed palimpsest. Dub is not an explicitly Rasta practice, but there is a cultural similarity between the two which needs to be accounted for. Framed in this way, dub is manifested Rasta ideology, unconsciously staging the same kind of embodied critique of Babylon's insistence on its own authenticity.

Secondly, Dub, by its lack of teleology, doesn't seek to resolve itself: the openness of its form embraces flux rather than stabilization. It inverts the paradigm that the ideal trajectory is towards singularity and definiteness, as this desire to build monuments is the logic of dominant hegemonic discourse. Conversely, in dub the less structured you are the better: by constantly being in flux it questions the definition of what it is to be authoritative. Just as Rasta reasoning is a critique on traditional forms of rational-critical thought, which embraces a multiplicity of truths, what we get with dub is a document that breaks free from oppressive logic through its fluidity and resistance to a singularity of form. It's comfortable with its temporal position, not seeking permanency as its trajectory.

Developing Publics: Theoretical Approaches

In The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Jiirgen Habermas details the evolution in public discourse within the western world during the late 17th and early 7

18th century, including the shift from a representative public sphere organized politically around symbolic representation and status to one consisting of public citizens exercising rational-critical discourse in relation to the state and its power. This fundamental shift,

Habermas argues, occurred as the result of a wide range of cultural and social conditions, such as the development of various forms of private print, or text, in combination with private forms of sociability in which argument and discussion could take place amongst the populace at unprecedented levels. It is directly as a result of this burgeoning social climate that a public was formed which became "the abstract counterpart of public authority" and came "into an awareness of itself as the latter's opponent, that is, as the public of the now emerging public sphere of civil society" (Habermas, 23).

The model of publics that Transformation proposes has been criticized3 for centering its analysis exclusively on the upper-class strata of society, ignoring the role of marginalized groups within the evolution it identifies. Taking my cue from Michael Warner's collection of essays Publics and Counterpublics, in which he sees Habermas stressing many different kinds of public discourse, not simply focusing on one false ideal of a unitary public, I am going to further adapt Habermas' theories on the structural transformation and development of public spheres by looking specifically at the evolution of Rastafari culture within Jamaica during the mid-20th century. It is during this socio- politically unstable period of time that the relationship between the counter-culture movement and dominant mainstream Jamaican culture emerges as a result of a similar combination of text distribution and social space as those which Habermas details in his

3 See Habermas and the Public Sphere. Ed. Craig Calhoun. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992. 8 study. With this insight in mind, I will analyze the role of Rastafari music (particularly

Nyahbinghi4 - chant based communal ceremonies incorporating Kumina5 rhythms) within Jamaican society during the colonial period. I hope to offer further insight into the role of (musical) texts and physical spaces, and the interactive relationship between the performed text and performance spaces in the creation of socio-political communities and movements, and in doing so attempt to expand the adaptability of the Public Sphere model.

Abstracting and Recontextualizing the Habermasian Model

As a preliminary demarcation of the components involved in the development of a public sphere, it is important to note what appears to be one of Habermas' central questions in his study; when, and under what conditions do the arguments of mixed companies6 become an authoritative basis for socio-political action? The specific shift in the creation of publics that he discusses in Transformation primarily consists of a bourgeois populace, and centers on communal gatherings where oft-contentious thoughts could be voiced in opposition to societal norms without fear of censorship. Habermas attributes the shift to a wide range of cultural and social conditions, including both

4 A traditional, drum-based Rastafarian musical style, and the gatherings or ceremonies associated with it. 5 An African-derived religion in eastern Jamaica and the neo-African music associated with it. Kumina-style drumming contributed to the development of Nyahbinghi drumming due to the prominence of Kumina musicians at early community festivities. 6 rational-critical debate about public issues conducted by private persons willing to let arguments and not social status determine decisions. 9 advancements in printing technology which gave rise to the development of newspapers, novels, and other forms of private print from which individual beliefs and ideas could be disseminated on an unprecedented scale, and the increased presence of spaces for private sociability and communication such as coffee houses and salons in which arguments and discussion of these texts could take place. As Habermas states, "the world of a critically debating reading public... was just evolving within the broader bourgeois strata. It was the world of men and letters but also that of salons in which 'mixed companies' engaged in critical discussions" (106). This combination of technical development, which spurred communicative action, as well as the emergence of institutional bases to house these discussions resulted in a group of people becoming conscious of themselves as an organized sub-section of the public, who were able to critically reflect upon their role in society, separate from the public as a whole.

It is equally important to note that because the criteria involved in the development of publics necessarily includes the ability to comprehend printed text, there is an unavoidably elitist or upper-class demarcation placed on membership in these publics during the time period under discussion. This fact brings up several issues. As the editor of the collection Habermas and the Public Sphere, Craig Calhoun points out in his introduction, "The early bourgeois public spheres were composed of narrow segments of the European population, mainly educated, propertied men, and they conducted discourse not only exclusive of others but prejudicial to the interests of those excluded" (3). In other words, the asymmetrical nature of the culture in question made it easier for those with education, capital and power to distribute their views, and simultaneously harder for 10 marginalized voices to talk back. Despite the fact that the development of the public sphere was in direct contrast to state and economic controls - which offered no intrinsic openings to the identification of reason and will - the text-based nature of the public sphere that Habermas sets out makes membership in the public as exclusive to some as it was inclusive to others, reinforcing to some degree positions of power and domination.

Additionally, in relation to the liberal tradition which promotes a strong distinction between the public good and the private lives, Michael Warner breaks the dichotomy between public and private down to what he suggests is a societal shift in the definitions of both, stemming from the liberal redefinition of the role of the state. He points to a strange relationship between public and private, in which the private was originally conceived as the negation of public value. In other words, it had no value in its own right.

Under the liberalist reconstruction of state power as limited, and rights as vested in private persons, the emergence of the new relation between the two was instituted.

Though the previous definitions of public and private spaces were not clear as to insinuate that we could colour them on a map, Warner highlights a move from the physical separation of public and private to a more abstract definition involving relationships, rather than just physical spaces. He connects this movement with the rise of capitalism, which instilled the belief in "private vices, public benefits", as proclaimed by

Bernard Mandeville, who maintained that socio-economic life should be within the realm of private society and kept free from state and public interference (Warner, 40). In this construction, to be 'properly public' required that one set aside private interests: those aspects which particularized expressive nature came to be seen as inappropriate for public 11 discourse. This separation between the public and private, which promotes the removal of private voice from the public person, is what motivates Warner's critique of liberalism as he adopts a perspective which highlights the inequality implicit in such a constructed divide. In his analysis of Habermas he points out that "the bourgeois public sphere consists of private persons whose identity is formed in the privacy of the conjugal domestic family and who enter into rational-critical debate around matters common to all by bracketing their embodiment and status" (57). This idea of bracketing, or separating one's private beliefs from public benefits, proves to be central to any critique of the sphere from the perspective of all marginalized groups. The effort to bracket oneself off- particularly in terms of status - in an attempt to debate matters of common good, simultaneously eliminates the ability to address the status issues which are so relevant to those in subjugated positions. Furthermore, as Seyla Benhabib points out in her essay

"Models of Public Space",

The model of a public dialogue based on conversational restraint [bracketing] is not neutral, in that it presupposes a moral and political epistemology; this in turn justifies an implicit separation between the public and the private of such a kind as leads to the silencing of the concerns of certain excluded groups. (Benhabib 82)

As both Warner and Benhabib point out, under a liberal construction of public and private, the ability for groups to come together for rational-critical discourse within the context of the public sphere is inherently limited, and at worst is entirely oppressive to minority issues due to the pseudo-neutrality of bracketed discourse which only reinforces previously held norms. Consequently, one of the goals of social activists within marginalized communities is to give public relevance to the most private of matters, 12 matters which have been repressed under a liberal construction of public and private. The personal, they argue, is political. When the liberally constructed definitions of public and private allow for a distinction between public authority and private freedom, the protection of the private from public interference prevents discussions of precisely those oppressive structures that silenced the minorities in the first place. The result, as Eli

Zaretsky points out, is that, "The separation between public and private occluded the perpetuation of relations of domination... into modem society" (42). Much of this blockage that denies public voice will be addressed again later in this study through a discussion of the climate in Jamaica during the middle of the 20th century, in which the voice of the Rastafari movement was continually subjugated under the hegemonic domination of the ruling colonial public.

In light of this criticism of the public sphere, it is tempting to dismiss Habermas' model as entirely temporal and static, more of a genealogy of a precise moment in time than an adaptable template with which we can analyze the development of contemporary movements. However, Warner points out that Habermas was not describing a false ideal of a unitary public. Instead:

...from the beginning, his account stressed many different kinds of public discourse, from tavern conversations to art criticism. The ideal unity of the public sphere is best understood as an imaginary convergence point that is the backdrop of critical discourse in each of these contexts and publics - an implied but abstract point that is often referred to as 'the public' or 'public opinion' and by virtue of that fact endowed with legitimacy and the ability to dissolve power... In modem societies, a public is by definition an indefinite audience rather than a social constituency that could be numbered or named. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere can be read as a history of the construction of this virtual object 13

and its mode of address, where a key development is the fiction of 'public opinion' as the ideal background of all possible publics. (55-56)

By abstracting Habermas' model, Warner effectively opens it up to recontextualization, correlating the distilled elements of the original model to the development of modern publics and counterpublics and removing it from the realm of static historical documentation.

Towards a Definition of Modern Publics and Counterpublics

Generally speaking then, what constitutes a public within a modem society? What determines whether one belongs to a public or not? How do we critically analyze these publics in an effective manner that accounts simultaneously for their unique differences and cross-cultural similarities? The answers to these questions might not be as readily apparent as we might initially think. According to Warner, publics are "queer creatures": intangible yet pervasive, some direct, some indirect, understood to be different from a crowd, an audience, or any other group that requires co-presence (7, 71). However intangible some publics are, Warner suggests that, in part due to the media-saturated climate of our modern existence, a multiplicity of publics is virtually impossible to avoid, curiously enough making them seem almost like natural features of the social landscape.

He compares these publics to pavement, an apt analogy which suggests that both share an ontology innately foreign to us. However foreign these queer entities are, we are all transient participants in common publics, which he characterizes as cultural forms that 14 are "a kind of practical fiction [which] exist only by virtue of their imagining" (8). In other words, a public is as much notional as empirical. If the term 'publics' seems messy, it is deliberately so. By opening Habermas' model in a modern context, one has to come to terms with the compositional elements which define a public, namely the circular reflexivity of text and space - whether concrete or indefinite - which mark the boundaries of these publics.

Regarding the form and role of a public, Warner states that there are three ways of looking at what a public is: 1) the public as social totality (i.e. the public, as a people, implying that everyone in the field in question is included), 2) the public as a physical, concrete space (a concert, riot, Brechtian performance), and 3) a public that comes into being from the public as a whole, and the "bounded totality of [the] audience" of the second instance, only in relation to the circular reflexivity of 'text' (66). In the first instance, public can be defined in nation-like terms - Canadians, Jamaicans, World-

Citizens, etc. There is no reflexivity, nothing needs to be done on the part of the participant. Merely being appears to get one into this public. In the second sense, publics are defined solely by their shared physical boundedness. Should you and I both be in a particular place at a particular time, for example a rock concert or dance club, this could also be defined as participation in a sort of public. It is in the third definition of a public where Warner and Habermas' definitions somewhat overlap, as Warner points out that the distinction between text and physical space is not always sharp, allowing for a mixture of text and space in various combinations similar to those Habermas speaks of in his model. As Wamer suggests, just as surely as concrete physical space does, the 15 circulation of 'text' creates boundaries around and commonalities between participants in a public. In this sense, a public is self-organized: "It is autotelic.it exists by virtue of being addressed' (Warner, 67).

Once again, we are confronted with the messiness of Warner's arguments, as the circular logic of this crucial factor in the creation of a public destabilizes our definition of what a public actually is. Warner continues, "[a public's] reality lies in just this reflexivity by which an addressable object is conjured into being in order to enable the very discourse that gives it existence" (67). The self-organizing quality of a public allows for the creation of a potentially infinite number of publics, but of these Warner argues that,

A public can only produce a sense of belonging and activity if it is self-organized through discourse rather that through an external framework. This is why any distortion or blockage in access to a public can be so grave, leading people to feel powerless and frustrated. (70, emphasis added)

Through this theory we can begin to develop an understanding of why people in minority or marginalized positions develop feelings of isolation and alienation from a large multitude of over-arching publics. For example, if the traditional avenues of policy change and law-making structurally exclude these marginalized peoples, either through public address and discourse or private ideology, to what extent do they "belong" to the dominant hegemonic forms of publics? They may exist within the physical boundaries of a nation-state, but occlusion from socio-political power structures negates their physical presence within the nation by blocking the circulation of 'text' central to Warner's definition of a public. The reflexivity rule seems to insist upon discourse revolving 16 around the circulation of 'text', rather than a presentation or imposition of it

(asymmetrical reflexivity), but if the minority is excluded from this discourse, both in form and rhetorical address, how do they participate, if at all, in the continual evolution of what the public (as social totality) represents? Within the context of colonial Jamaica, the Rastafari occupied just such a marginalized position relative to Jamaican society as a whole. As Wamer states:

Some publics are defined by their tension with a larger public. Their participants are marked off from persons or citizens in general. Discussion within such a public is understood to contravene the rules obtaining in the world at large, being structured by alternative dispositions of protocols, making different assumptions about what can be said or what goes without saying. This public is, in effect, a counterpublic: it maintains at some level, conscious or not, an awareness of its subordinate status. (56)

It is important to note that counterpublics essentially operate under the same conditions as Warner's textually-defined publics, with the added condition of a shared recognition of subordination under the dominant public. They're still formed around the circulation of

'text', as well as a degree of boundedness, whether physically through concrete spaces or implicitly through the specific audience targeted by the text itself and, like the dominant publics they distinguish themselves from they are "ideological in that they provide a sense of active belonging that masks or compensates for the real powerlessness of human agents in capitalist society" (Wamer, 113, emphasis added). It is in this definition of counterpublic that we begin to find room to position the Rastafari within the context of developing publics. 17

CHAPTER ONE

Origins of a Rastafari Counterpublic

The emergence of Rastafari as a political and spiritual movement has its roots in a precise moment in time, the crowning of Ras Tafari as Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia on

November 2, 1930. For the multitudes of the African diaspora, the crowning of what was seen as the rightful heir to the throne of Africa's heartland was a moment of unimaginable significance. Though early supporters such as Marcus Garvey had been preaching Afrocentric ideologies for a considerable time previous to the coronation, with the belief that African descendants should repatriate to the homeland to right the wrongs of centuries of slavery and colonization, the coronation of Haile Selassie was a definitive step towards reclamation of the homeland. As Robin Cohen explains:

The Rastas take it from the Bible that they are the true Jews of the prophecy, buried alive in a hostile and godless white society that couldn't care less about the black man down at the bottom of the heap. They never wanted to come here and they don't want to stay. So they take no part. They have disenfranchised themselves... They have defected body and soul from Jamaican society into an outcast astral identity beyond the law. (38)

Of this displacement Barry Chevannes states:

[This] doctrine of repatriation is kindred to a lineage of ideas and forms of action four hundred years old. They arose first in response to European slavery and then, following emancipation, in response to the system of social, cultural, and economic oppression on which modem Jamaica was built. (1) 18

What's important to note is that this Afrocentric ideology was not something unique to the Rastafarian movement: there were many other belief systems which were rooted in repatriation to Africa. From this re-imagining of the centuries-old struggles with slave- based colonial rule and social conditions which perpetuated the Babylonian-like struggles of existence emerged many Afrocentric ideologies which sought the reclamation of

African roots and heritage. As Cohen states, "Just as 'Zion' and 'Israel' were often imagined entities, for many New World Africans 'Ethiopia' was mainly a concept of

'blackness' or 'Africanity', only loosely connected with the country of Ethiopia itself

(38). It was not the literal Africa that people wanted to return to, it was a metaphor for where they were - a language with a double register, a literal and a symbolic register.

What set the Rastafarian movement apart was that it was the only one that connected its aspirations to Haile Selassie, whom it celebrated as the living Christ. To put the crowning of Haile Selassie in context, this was in a world not yet a hundred years out of slavery, and where colonialism remained so culturally entrenched that the crowning of the rightful heir to the Ethiopian throne represented a lone oasis of independence in an Africa otherwise governed entirely from Europe.

However, the coronation of Haile Selassie was not a universally celebrated occasion within colonial Jamaica. As Dick Hebdige suggests in Cut n' Mix, the dichotic qualities of Jamaica are essential to developing an understanding of class and religious struggles within the island.7 Aspects of colonial Jamaica, as Hebdige points out, "give us a picture

7 The dichotic nature of colonial Jamaican society regarding class, race, and religion manifested itself in many ways, including dialect - Standard English being the official language, and Dread Talk or Creole Jamaican being the language of plebeians or 19 of an enchanted island, which, between its 'colourful' past and carefree present, has experienced few real problems" (21). On the other hand, there exists a completely different Jamaica, or as Hebdige describes it, "a twilight world of slums and shantytowns where the island's black population - the descendants of West African slaves - live out their lives in conditions which are a million miles away from the plush resorts" (21). The dichotomy illustrated here, though somewhat reductive, is of a strongly divided society with clear Eurocentric power structures.

Given that the rise of Rastafari, an explicitly Afrocentric belief system, occurred within the boundaries of nation still under colonial rule, the underlying power structures within the larger society would have intrinsically been positioned against the black population.

Whether racism and oppression were overtly displayed seems beside the point, the subjugation of the black population is inherent within the cultural fabric of a predominantly Christian colonial Jamaica due to the composition of the power structures which by their very existence condone and legitimize the system of social, cultural, and economic oppression on which modem Jamaica was built. Returning to Warner's commoners. An example of this divide is illustrated in Loma Goodison's "Ochos Rios": as with many of her poems the narrator alternates between 'standard' voice and mother tongue illustrating inner conflict caused by this dialectical divide.

For a detailed look at dialectical divides in the Caribbean see Kamau Brathwaite's "History of the Voice." His particular concern here is with the relationship between language and culture which for him are largely synonymous. In the wake of European imperialism and the arrival of slave labour from Africa Brathwaite argues the Caribbean became a multilingual society in which the African languages that the slaves brought with them were suppressed by the European masters in favour of the "imposed" languages of the colonial master: English, Spanish, French, Dutch, etc. He stresses that the English used in the Caribbean is in fact "creole English, which is a mixture of English and an adaptation that English took in the new environment of the Caribbean when it became mixed with the other imported languages" (260). 20 statement that "some publics are defined by their tension with a larger public [and] their participants are marked off from persons or citizens in general," it becomes increasingly possible to view the marginalized Rasta population as a counterpublic in relation to the dominant, hegemonic general public.8 Within that hegemony, under the liberally constructed distinctions between public and private matters, including religious beliefs, we are able to develop an understanding of the oppression and occlusion Rastas faced in a socio-political climate which reinforced existing positions of power at the expense of minority opposition. What's at stake here'is the silencing of a marginalized section of the social stratum. The problem wasn't simply that the Rastas didn't have a social voice, it was that under this liberal bracketing there wasn't even an arena for new voices to be heard.

Though the groundwork for the Rastafari movement had existed in the preaching of

Marcus Garvey and many other Afrocentric community leaders, and was birthed by name as a result of the coronation of Haile Selassie, the movement remained relatively minor for several decades, relegated to the Blue Mountains on the fringes of Jamaican society.

As Lloyd Bradley recounts, "Rastafari was the underclass' underclass, positioned so far down Jamaica's rigidly structured pecking order that for many people they simply didn't count" (64). That said, though Bradley is correct in stating that the Rastas were at the bottom of the social 'pecking order', it's important to acknowledge that the marginalization of Rastafarians wasn't strictly a matter of their small numbers or

My intention here is not to suggest that all black Jamaicans are part of a counterpublic in opposition to the Eurocentric hegemonic public, but rather a narrow social stratum that was in opposition. 21 geographic isolation; Rastas were seen as pariahs by 'respectable' society, and continually harassed by police.9

Despite these obstacles, by the 1950's the movement had surged in popularity amongst the working class black Jamaican population and become a hugely influential spiritual, socio-political and cultural force. Indicative of the strength this cultural force had can be seen in the tense early weeks of June 1960. Following the shooting of two British soldiers at the hands of identified Rastas, then Prime Minister Norman Manley launched a public appeal stating,

This wicked and mischievous activity must come to an end. These people - and I am glad that it is only a small number of them - are wicked enemies of our country. ... I ask you all to report any unusual or suspicious movements you may see pertaining to the Rastafarians. Make this your duty. (Lee 260)

This McCarthy-esque approach had created further marginalization of the counterpublic

Rastas and increased the instances of police brutality, and it wasn't until a university report on the movement conducted by M.G. Smith, Rex Nettleford, and Roy Augier cautioned against further persecution of the Rastas that the overt suppression of the movement slowed down. The report, based on interviews with Trench Town Rastas, concluded by warning the government to stop persecuting the Rastas because "the movement is large, and in a state of great unrest" (Lee, 261). The explosion in popularity of the movement during the late 1950's and early 1960's provides particularly fertile

9 See Lee's The First Rasta for in-depth accounts of numerous instances of police brutality towards the Rastas throughout the 1950's and early 60's. 22 ground for an analysis of the cultural elements of the time that caused the sudden surge in support for the Rasta counterpublic.

Salt Lane and the Emergence of Consciousness

Just as the formation of publics in Habermas' model intrinsically requires the circulation of printed text to form the basis for an enlightened populace that is conscious of itself as a distinct public, the proliferation of Rastafari movement within colonial

Jamaica during the late 1950's seems to rest in text, in this case a musical text. Musical forms, beginning with the rhythms of Nyahbinghi, and evolving into what is popularly known as reggae played a vital role in the construction of a coherent Rasta public. Just as spaces such as salons and coffee houses in which argument and discussion could take place were crucial to the development of late 18* century publics, spaces where Rastas could meet and reason were cmcial in the development of a Rastafarian counterpublic in

Jamaica. Those spaces were of three kinds: the yard (or Trenchtown), the dancehalls

(blues-dance) where soundsystems operated, and the recording studio. For the purposes of this chapter I will be focusing on the first space - the yard, the slums in the heart of

Trenchtown.

The spread of Rastafari has its roots in religious ceremonies known as Nyahbinghis or grounations, religious discussion sessions in which a singer leads the other brethren in prayer by toasting over the drums, and thought to lead to spiritual knowledge rather than 23 simple belief. Previously, within the predominantly Christian colonial Jamaica "Revival" music was most common, and within the Rastafari movement's early settlement at

Pinnacle, a small community in the mountainous fringes of the Sligoville hills near St.

Catherine Parish, the music of these gatherings very much resembled the European compositional structure of Revival music10. At Pinnacle, Bible in hand, the leader of the worship ceremony would read out the text, tracking one line at a time, while the others repeated the lines in a complex, polyphonic chorus. This kind of call-and-response singing, clearly traceable to the tradition of lining out psalms that first became established in 17th century rural Britain, was also fully compatible with the antiphonal style of music brought by enslaved Africans to Jamaica. These choruses were performed with minimal rhythmic accompaniment. These Kumina rhythms generally consisted of three drummers who would be seated on their instruments, which were turned on their sides. Two of the drummers would play the steady rhythm, keeping to a single, unvarying heartbeat pattern.

On top of this, the lead drummer would create excited, offbeat improvisations to compliment the unrelenting rhythm (Manuel, 150). However, the use of music within the ceremonies at Pinnacle would have played a very limited role, used in conjunction with print-based preaching much like a Western Judeo-Christian religious ceremony, as a means for conveying and reinforcing the word of the Bible through metaphorical hymns.

The use of rhythm and melody was for recital purposes, to bring voice to the static and

10 Revival or Pukkumina - indigenous religions forged out of the 19th century encounter between the religious concepts brought to Jamaica by enslaved Africans and the teachings of European missionaries. Like their religious practices, the music of these groups blended African and European influences. Revival music was rooted in Afro- Protestantism, a combination of rhythms from the African Kumina religion, and sankeys, or hymns based on proverbs, which relied on biblical metaphor to achieve their rhetorical effect (Hodges, 85). 24 unalterable printed text. The adaptation of Revival music at Pinnacle was still rooted in a liturgical style that resembled Afro-Protestantism, a movement Rastafari opposed. For this reason alone it was absolutely cmcial that Rasta find a music of its own, as the mode of expressing the text was still rooted in Babylonian structure.

As Hebdige points out, the origins of what eventually became Nyahbinghi actually was as a result of the influence of Burru men, whose African rhythms had survived the cultural oppression of colonization because "their drumming had been the only kind of music officially tolerated on the plantations because it had been used to set the pace at which the slaves worked" (56). The Rastas adopted the rhythmic sensibilities of the Kumina drummers (much like had been heard at Pinnacle) but modified them by adding their own ideas and themes, and utilized a version of the three drum ensemble used in secular Burru drumming, thereby creating a combination of adopted musical styles of mixed derivation which began to resemble an entirely unique musical language - Nyahbinghi.11 What took place in the yards of West Kingston was a newly invented neo-African music, recognizable neither as pure Kumina nor Burru. On top of this hybrid of mixed derivations were added the songs and melodies of Revival music, heard by the Rastas at

Pinnacle.

11 Manuel explains this transition in further detail by stating,

Although they are held in the same position as the buru drums, the rhythms are not those of buru; nor are they quite the same as those of rural Kumina drummers, although the rhythmic foundation of this urban kumina music - the repeating double pulse played on one of the drams - is essentially the standard "heartbeat" pattern of the traditional Kumina bandu, or bass dram, shifted to the offbeat, or the "afterbeat", while the "rolling" and "cutting" of the lead drum clearly resembles that of the Kumina lead drum, called the, playing kyas. (162) 25

By the late 1940's, "the Nyahbinghi dance was extended until it became a kind of convention where Rastas from all over the island could meet for several days... They would debate Scriptures, smoke ganja, play the drums, chant and dance" (Hebdige, 57).

Though the music was still very much underground and "to most Jamaican ears... continued to sound sinister and anti-social", the birth of a musical text which is expressly

Rasta in voice is clear (Hebdige, 57).12 What is most important about this musical development, however, is the use of reasoning and discussion that became inherent within the Nyahbinghi ceremony itself. In other words, these gatherings were not simply musical, but to some degree philosophical as well. These grounations were an essential part of a ritual community defined by its voices, and in this sense its discourse was

'many-layered'. As John Homiak states,

The Rastafari are men-of-words who address themselves passionately not only to concerns of identity and ideology, but to concerns of communal morality and responsibility. They come together to fashion continuous streams of 'reasoning' in which "Jah is praised", inspiration is received, and ideology is reproduced; they are also a collective of individuals who speak to each other, about each other, and about themselves and their experiences. (130)

This type of reasoning can be heard on "Four Hundred Years" which was eventually recorded by Count Ossie. The song is a hymn-like meditation on colonialism and slavery half spoken, half sung over a slow, heartbeat-like rhythm and polyrhythmic percussive

An early example of this is "By The Rivers of Babylon", which adopts Psalm 137:1 and places it over the Nyahbinghi rhythm. See The Melodians' version as well as Prince Student's. 26 accompaniment. Stracturally the song breaks away from the verse-chorus tradition of

Revival songs, as well as reliance on Biblical verse. The lyrics are as follows:

Four hundred years of colonial reign has brought the people misery has brought them such pain. The talk is now of independence, you see. Seems it wasn't meant for you or for me. As strangers we came, slave trade was the game, and ever since we don't even know our name. Our heritage we must remember, and all that they did to mother and father. So people, people, for what it's worth demand your freedom here upon Earth. Stop asking when, where, and how. Make up your mind, the time is now. (Grounation, 1973)

As is evidenced here, the singer leads the other brethren in meditation by toasting over the drams, in an attempt to think critically about their socio-historical subjugation -

'Overstanding'13 rather than simply understanding.

The point here is that the Rasta message was not seeking a universal notion of logic.

Their reasoning was actually a critique of normative constructions of reason: it operated under its own structure that valued a different schema and a different kind of logic, one that didn't seek validation from the dominant structure. In this sense the Rasta message was a self-authenticating, oppositional discourse. It wasn't simply that the Rasta didn't have a voice within the public at large under its liberal construction due to their small population, it was that their logic and reasoning was unintelligible to the dominant structure.

13 This Rastafarian penchant for neologisms will be discussed in greater detail in Chapter Three 27

The Nyahbinghi ceremonies were very much cultural happenings relegated to the very fringes of society - or the "underclass' underclass" - and they remained so until Count

Ossie, credited as one of the originators of Nyahbinghi, was able to break down rigid cultural barriers and spread the Rastafari message on an unprecedented scale, acting as a sort of bridge between the text and the larger black population of Jamaica. The two key factors in this crossover were the musical text that Ossie used, and the importance of the physical space where the text was disseminated, Salt Lane, the yard Ossie often visited in

Trenchtown.

In Habermasian terms, the yard acted as a sort of salon or coffee house, the locale where the discussions once relegated to the mountains could take place on a far more democratic and accessible scale. The idea of a democratic leveling and unity through shared ideas which emerged from the yards of Trenchtown is an essential key in understanding the subsequent expansion of the Rasta counterpublic due to its new sense of circular reflexivity. Homiak refers to this reflexivity as a "continuous cycle of self- referential testimony [that] confirms their sense of shared identity and constitutes an important part of the collective history of the movement" (130). In contrast, the Rastafari movement that took root at Pinnacle had been under the explicit leadership of Leonard

Howell, who himself was a descendant of several generations of Christians. Helene Lee's research uncovers that both his father and grandfather were attendants of the Anglican

Church in Red Lands, and the exposure to Revivalist culture would have been significant in Howell's early understanding of the relationship between community and leadership

(Lee, 11-13). The influence of this lineage provides insight into what can be seen as a 28 marked difference between the community formed at Pinnacle under the leadership of

Howell, and that of Ossie and the yard a decade or so later. I say under Howell for very precise reasons, as the relationship between Howell and his followers had much more in common with Christian Revivalism in Jamaica than anything resembling the leveling and unity seen in the yards of Trenchtown. After time spent as a youth in America, Europe, and Asia, Howell himself stated that, "I became attracted to the Ras Tafarites and afterwards returned home to Jamaica to preach its tenets" (19). The idea of preaching provides a key to the positioning Howell wished to take in relation to the community he had created at Pinnacle. Through the act of preaching the message of Rastafari Howell was able to set up a hierarchical structure that placed him as the figurehead of the movement - the conduit or mediator between divinity and mankind. This tiered structure that Howell instituted mirrored that of the Christian Church and Revivalist ceremonies in which a clear leader reigned over the congregation, and arguably positioned the Rastafari as much more of a religious movement than the cultural movement it would eventually become, due to its monologic, linear dialogue. As a result of his position within the congregation, what Howell presented was a 'readerly' interpretation of the biblical text, one that was inalterably guided to a finite end. Reasoning, in the case of Pinnacle, was used to the extent to which it proved, and subsequently reinforced Howell's alpha positioning amongst his followers. Within this logic, the interpretive quality of the text needed to cease at some point, advantageous to Howell, rendering the meaning of the text static, incontestably positioning him as the mediator between God and Man. For reasoning to be open and infinite would be to allow the possibility of reinterpretations that could potentially undermine Howell's reign over his followers. Returning to Warner's criteria in the construction of a public, in which he details the necessity of circular reflexivity, Howell's 29 approach arguably stifled the development of Rasta as a cultural movement due to the static nature of its text. Though Pinnacle offered escape and reprieve from the oppression of day to day existence in Jamaica - "No more land taxes. No land tenure. No police. No crooked politicians. No hateful neighbors to su-su pon you" - there was still very much an understanding that this was Howell's kingdom (Lee, 128). As John Carradine, a reporter for the Gleaner, reported upon visiting the community in 1940,

There was too obviously one voice at Pinnacle, and that voice was Howell's. All the people, big and little, old and young, called the leader "Gong". He [Howell] confided to me that he did not like to be addressed as "Sir" or "Mr.," so he dispensed with such formalities among his flock. But there the leveling process seemed to end; no one was allowed to forget who was the boss there. (Lee 131)

After years of prosperity in the hills, Pinnacle eventually dissolved in the wake of a series of police raids and land disputes, which subsequently shifted the Rasta movement to the slums of West Kingston. It was here in the ghettos, or Shanties, that a new approach developed, which shifted it from a system which essentially mimicked the vertical structure of traditional, monotheistic religion to a more inclusive and egalitarian one concerned with its own specific cultural practices and procedures. In contrast to the singular, defined boundaries of Pinnacle, which played into Howell's singularly-led vision of the movement, the ghettos provided a decentralized environment which facilitated a new dynamic in the gathering of the Rasta.

Of these shanties Lee states Salt Lane was "one of the most infamous ghetto zones in all of Jamaica" (243). The level of poverty that was present in these ghettos positioned the habitants as those perhaps most oppressed and ostracized by the dominant power 30 structures in Jamaica. This area was the epicenter for the development of Rastafari in

Trenchtown, and as Lee documents, Count Ossie often visited Salt Lane to 'reason' with a group of Rasta brethren about Marcus Garvey, Rastafari, and black awareness (244).

Ossie himself recounts the cultural climate of the time and the environment surrounding

Salt Lane, stating,

Yah know, man was anxious, all o' them time, to know the answers to puzzles about himself and his race. Is during this time, down there at Salt Lane, under a tree where we generally met to reason, that the idea of the music came to me and I work at it, until we have what people call today Rasta music. (Lee 244)

Once again we are confronted with evidence that for the budding Rasta counterpublic music and reasoning were the same, a symbiosis of rational-critical thought and discourse which was used to combat the social and political oppression faced by the black population. Accounts of Salt Lane describe the camp as vibrant and alive, one of

Jamaica's best known yards of the 50's and 60's, where Rasta life was taught to anyone around willing to listen and reason (Lee, 244). It was here that Ossie forged his unique blend of Burru dramming and Rasta rhetoric which would become the essential text of the movement. It cannot be overstated how significant this collective environment was for the creation of the text in question. Of this influence Lee points out,

Count Ossie was introducing a new concept into Burra dramming. His music was still rooted in the old style but it had a new objective - to strengthen the acuteness of the Rastafari 'reasoning', the philosophical discussions that often followed the drams. Count Ossie and the group at Salt Lane... discovered that after long periods of serious drumming, their reasoning became more intense; insights and the paths to answers became clear. (246) 31

During a Nyahbinghi ceremony, as the song leader reads out the text or message, others can be heard repeating after them in complex polyphonic choruses. The improvised melodic parts slip over and under one another, creating harmony and dissonance - sometimes at the same time.14 This musical style is fully compatible with the antiphonal style of music-making brought by enslaved Africans to Jamaica, reinforcing its distinct

African heritage.

Cracial to these emerging ceremonies was the participatory aspect, the inclusivity that encouraged all to join in the dramming circles through rhythm and voice, and the ensuing rational-critical discussions that took place. In this sense, we can return to Warner's suggestion that it is the circulation of the text that provides boundary and creates the commonality amongst participants in the creation of a public. Just as he stresses that a public is self organized, through Ossie's accounts of Salt Lane it becomes increasingly evident that this was exactly what was occurring in Trenchtown at the time - the public exists by virtue of being addressed. The fact that these ceremonies occurred in the poorest regions of Kingston ghettos meant an increased population of disenfranchised citizens who were in no way directly addressed socio-politically and economically by the dominant public, and thus eager to receive and participate in the message of the Rastafari, which provided the necessary feeling of belonging which Wamer discusses. In a

A good example of this communal performance can be heard on Ras Michael's recording of "Rastaman Chant", where Michael leads the performers in a chorus of, "I hear the words of the Rastaman say Babylon your thrown gone down, gone down. Babylong your thrown gone down". At points the chorus of singers reach traditional Western harmonies, while at others they sound off-key. This is precisely the point, as its repudiation of traditional harmonic form encourages a heightened level of participation (skilled or otherwise). 32

Habermasian sense, this combination of musical text developments through the creation of Nyahbinghi, which spurred communicative action, as well as the emergence of institutional basis to house these discussions resulted in a group of people becoming conscious of themselves as an organized sub-section of the public, who were able to critically reflect upon their role in society, separate from the public as a whole.

Accounts of the cultural impact these grounation ceremonies had on ghetto youth of that time are striking. As Lee points out, most of the youth in the eastern part of the city were not country folk, but the sons and daughters of workers and servants, "rebelling against the petit-bourgeois ideals and customs of their parents", and to them "these rhythms became the backdrop for the entire Rasta movement" (246, 249). The grounation ceremonies at Salt Lane provided a text addressed specifically to the silenced and oppressed generation increasingly concerned with black awareness, and it was "among these ghetto slums that Rastafari exploded into the cultural and social force it has been ever since" (Bradley, 87). Among the youth who participated in the movement at Salt

Lane were Prince Buster, as well as Tommy McCook, Don Drammond, and Rico

Rodriguez, who subsequently formed the Skatalites - often considered the originators of ska.15 Their presence at the grounation ceremonies, and Ossie's subsequent influence on their musical and spiritual development manifested itself in ways that furthered the development of the Rasta public in ensuing years, as a result of their session work on countless Jamaican recordings throughout the 1960s and 70s.

15 The importance of The Skatalites is worth noting. While working as the house band at Studio One the group developed ska - a new style of music considered to be the first truly Jamaican sound. The evolution from ska to rocksteady and through to reggae is directly linked to the Skatalites and their musical inventiveness. 33

Though the Nyahbinghi ceremonies at Salt Lane were based on polyphonic, communal

dialogue where the relation to text was always circulatory and open to interpretation or

'reasoning', limitations of an expanding counterpublic can be seen in the physical

boundedness of the events. Because the live music and rational-critical discussion was

entirely temporally bounded and synchronic, the necessity for participants to be physically present was paramount. Returning to Warner's discussion on what constitutes

a modem public, he points out that the circulation of text has the ability to negate

physical boundaries by connecting fragments of the population through means other than

those defined by concrete spaces. For the musical text of the Rasta to expand beyond its

physical limitations it needed to evolve from the spatial limitations of the grounation

ceremony into a text that was transportable and transmittable.

The ability to eclipse these limitations seems to have occurred at a very culturally precise

moment: when Prince Buster recorded the Folkes Brother's track "Oh Carolina" and

subsequently played it at his blues-dance to the delight of the crowd. The 1961 session

which the track originated from features Ossie on drams performing with several Jazz

musicians, and is described by Lee as containing "the seeds of everything that Jamaica

would witness musically in the following decades... an explosion of ideas, the missing

link between Burra dramming and R&B, jazz, and reggae" (257). The song itself was

upbeat and revolved around a catchy refrain16 and light-hearted vocals performance, but

most significantly featured the first instance of Nyahbinghi rhythms on a commercial

16 In a traditional Pop(ular) music sense: the refrain is repeated throughout the song, functioning as the chorus or 'hook'. 34 recording, as Ossie's heartical17 beats and polyrhythmic accents were prominently featured. The record became an instant sensation at the blues-dance, exposing the listening public to the musical portion of the Rasta text for the first time, exponentially expanded the reach of the text far beyond the physical boundaries of the Nyahbinghi ceremonies in the yards of Trenchtown. Of the recording, Bradley states, "as a piece of cultural legislation it was enormous. For the first time in the nation's history one of the few surviving African-based artforms - a true articulation of black Jamaicanness - had become involved with a commercially viable mainstream expression" (61). Though the track wasn't Rasta in lyrical content, it was the vital first step in exposing a larger public external to the finite Rasta community to aspects of the Rasta's text and signified the potential for future circulation.

Reconciling Bourgeois Europe and Rastafari Jamaica

Considering that Jamaica's African roots position it as a predominantly oral-based culture, there is a necessary connection to be made to the fact that the Rasta text was

17 'Heartical' and 'churchicaP are descriptive terms for the various rhythms featured in Nyahbinghi, the former being songs which carry a social commentary and faster, lighter rhythms, and the latter being religious songs with slow and ponderous rhythms. An example of churchical rhythms can be heard on the previously mentioned "Rastaman Chant" by Ras Michael. 35 disseminated to the public through music and dance, rather than the Western form of printed text. In the same way that Habermas discusses the spread of information through printed text as one of the cornerstones in the development of a public in Europe, Rasta developed its own unique musical language and utilized cultural spaces to spread the text.

Reinforcing Warner's statement that a public "exists by virtue of being addressed", the use of African-based rhythms that addressed the population as complement to the act of rational-critical discussion of spiritual and socio-political issues was absolutely cracial in the development of a counterpublic which exists, in Habermasian terms, as "the abstract counterpart of public authority". Salons and coffee houses, the product of a burgeoning capitalist society, were to the bourgeois as the yards were to the poor, ghettoized back population in Trenchtown. Once the boundaries of social strata and its relation to textual literacy can be reconciled in this manner, Habermas' model opens up to applications far outside any temporal boundedness his study may imply. With the recording and subsequent airing of "Oh Carolina" the potential for an increasingly mobile and circulatable Rasta text had been realized and was ready to explode in the highly competitive soundsystem culture of Kingston.

CHAPTER TWO

In this section I will take a look at another central space in the proliferation of the

Rastafari movement: the blues-dance, more commonly known as the soundsystem. In the 36 previous chapter I looked at the movement of the Rasta from the mountainous outskirts of

Pinnacle and traced it down to the inner city ghettos of the yards in Kingston, and more specifically suggested ways in which the musical text shifted and adapted to the change in physical space, subsequently contributing to the expanding public of the Rasta. I'd like to continue this approach by following the musical text out of the Kingston yards and onto physical records, a process that facilitated the further expansion of the Rasta public as a result of the text's incorporation into the blues-dance.

As discussed in Chapter One, Count Ossie's yard became a swelling point of critical, discursive reasoning facilitated by the grounation. This reasoning was not simply brought to fruition through the musical text, the musical text itself was the act of reasoning. This distinction provides a possible key to the successful shift and adaptation of the Rasta text from the yards of Kingston to the populist blues-dances. From heartical and churchical rhythms to the lengthy duration of these sessions it's cracial to understand the connection between rationality and musicality for the Rasta. Reasoning, for the Rasta, is implicitly as much musical as it is spatial and cerebral. For the grounation ceremony, unlike that of

Pinnacle, the 'song' component was no longer simply an element of the ceremony, it was the ceremony itself.

With regards to physical space, the contained, bounded structure of the yard fostered a sense of belonging through its intimate confines. The necessity of physical presence and the immediacy of the event was cracial to the grounation's ability to form a cohesive, distinct public. It was through this corporeal connectivity that the musicality of the 37 ceremony could be facilitated. Community was formed through the participatory act of the grounation, and it was through this active participation that the 'leveling' between brethren could take place. Much like Habermasian coffee houses, socially constructed strata would not impede argument and reasoning. However, though the process of reasoning was directly intertwined with one's ability to participate in the temporal moment, it was also a tangible limitation that prevented the text from further circulation outside the immediate Rasta community. Though these ceremonies happened in open yards, we can look at the yard as we would an open-invite house party: though anyone could in theory attend, it's very unlikely that someone outside the immediate social circle would.

In a formal construction of Wamer we can position the grounation ceremony as an example of his second form of a public: defined (and limited to) physical, concrete space.

At Salt Lane there was a pre-existing social organization formed around the Rasta rhetoric, and for Wamer one of the defining characteristics of public formation is that there is no pre-existing social group. That isn't to say there isn't something going on at

Salt Lane that didn't happen at Pinnacle. Unlike the monological imposition of text at

Pinnacle, the text in the yard was produced and responded to in perpetuity, in a sense being built by its audience. However, as a condition of this genesis the circulation of the text was limited to those generative participants. How we read Salt Lane as a public hinges on how open we read its openness. In order for unrestricted circulation to occur it takes a moveable text to expand its boundaries - the development and evolution of 38 soundsystem culture and the eventual recording of Count Ossie provide the necessary conditions for the formation of a Rasta public in Warner's third sense.

One of those in attendance at the early grounation ceremonies in Ossie's Yard was Cecil

Bustamente Campbell, later known as Prince Buster. Undoubtedly, the impact of the ceremonies on the young aspiring DJ proved extremely significant, and resulted years later in a connection between the two which would change dancehall culture entirely. As

Lloyd Bradley recounts in Bass Culture, Buster, having been immersed in the DJ circuit of Kingston since his youth, had grown increasingly dissatisfied with the lack of homegrown Jamaican culture present in the recordings played at dancehalls, and was

"looking to increase the cultural element of his recordings, [and] dreamed up a scheme to bring the Rasta master drummer Count Ossie and his troupe into the recording studio"

(59). To understand the significance of Buster's efforts to get Ossie into the studio, some back history of the soundsystem itself is necessary.

Downbeat and the Pressure Drop

Though recording facilities capable of cutting an acetate disc had existed in Jamaica since the mid-1940s, the technology was by all accounts extremely primitive. Popular 39 recordings of the time centered around calypso and mento musical styles, a result perhaps of the target audience these recordings were for. As Bradley points out,

The tourist trade was growing, and calypso or mento platters had become an almost regulation souvenir of a holiday spent on the island... but at this point any record business... was little more than a cottage industry, because in every case the numbers of copies of each record needed were tiny. There was never more than a couple hundred per issue, because there simply weren't enough phonographs on the island to warrant any kind of mass production. (23)

Due to the limited access to phonographic players amongst the Jamaican population, as well as the fact that these records were generally being produced exclusively for the souvenir trade, the only public these musical texts were forming at this point was foreign.

Furthermore, because records were pressed in such small quantities there would have never been a need to manufacture an official master copy of any of the recorded material.19 Due to the relative primitiveness of the recording capabilities present in

Jamaica at the time, particularly owing to the lack of mastering facilities, the record business was more geared towards selling larger quantities of American records than homegrown talent. The masters of these American recordings would be sent to Jamaican record factories and pressed for the consumer trade.

As Bradley suggests, the relationships between the studio owners and soundsystem

A secular style of Jamaican folk music that predates, and has greatly influenced ska and reggae. The term itself embraces a fair amount of variation, from ensembles consisting of harmonica and slight percussion, guitar or banjo, to large orchestras. Stylistically, mento is reminiscent of other Caribbean styles, such as calypso. 19 The physical master itself was essentially the inverse of the commercially sold platter, a solid metal stamp in which to press subsequent copies. 40

operators at the time were relatively minimal, and as a result concern or input from the

blues-dance-attending public regarding what sort of music was to be recorded and played

at these events would have been extremely limited in its effectiveness. Those running the

studios, uptown businessmen, would have been first and foremost concerned with the profitability of the records they produced, and they were thus less inclined to experiment

with new forms of music for fear of hurting their bottom line. Bradley quite bluntly

observes, "men like them were never going to be part of the shifting cultural development

of an indigenous black Jamaican music" (25). As a result, even local talent was scouted

directly for its profit making potential. The entire process became circular, as those

talented enough to be recorded by a studio catered to the perceived desires of the public

in order to ensure future recording opportunities, and the result was a seemingly never-

ending stream of throw away 'hits', which did not in any way represent an indigenous

culture. 20

So what was it that was stunting the growth of indigenous music within soundsystem

culture? Certainly there were restrictions within the technologies of the Jamaican

recording industry, particularly the lack of mastering facilities, but this wasn't preventing

local citizens from entering the studios to cut tracks in the first place. For the right price

91

virtually anyone could get a 45rpm cut. Nor was it entirely the reluctance of first

generation deejays to play records outside of the popular vernacular, though I think this

in some way was a factor. Perhaps this disjunction between indigenous music and

20 As an aside, this seems to be a reoccurring criticism of all pop media. 21 Considering Jamaica's general lack of economic wealth, not many people would have had "the right price". See Ivan in The Harder They Come. Dir. Perry Henzell. Jamaica: International Films, Inc., 1972. 41 soundsystem culture at the time can be better understood through Pierre Bourdieu's The

Field of Cultural Production, which we can use to both explain why the cultural field in

Jamaica looked the way it did, and how Rasta music was able to take a position on that field and achieve a certain, rather unique trajectory within it.

Bourdieu suggests that any social formation is structured by way of a hierarchically organized series of fields (economic, educational, political, cultural, etc), and though each field is autonomous it is stracturally homologous with the others. In order to analyze a field in a way that merges the divide between objectivist and subjective critiques, one must consider not only the material production but also the symbolic production of the work, i.e. the production of the value of the work, and thus the work becomes an expression of the field as a whole. Within cultural fields such as literature, visual art, and music and performance, Bourdieu suggests there is a distinction between what he calls the sub-fields of restricted and large-scale cultural production (39). Though within the cultural field as a whole he argues that authority is gained to some extent through prestige, recognition, and consecration the distinction between restricted and large scale cultural production involves their hierarchization of economic, political and cultural power (40-41). Under the umbrella of the cultural field, the sub-field of large scale production is modeled around a large and complex cultural industry whose dominant principal of hierarchization involves privileging economic capital over symbolic forms of capital.22

Most forms of Pop(ular) music fall into this sub-field. Lil' Wayne, for example, isn't concerned with artistic prestige so long as his albums are making "mad bank". 42

Bourdieu's study is, of course, concerned only with the movement of individuals through the field of cultural production, but publics seem to operate within fields in much the same way. In the case of the early recording industry in Jamaica, those running the studios, uptown businessmen, would have been first and foremost concerned with the profitability, or the economic capital of the records they produced, rather than any symbolic capital through prestige or consecration. The goal was to produce as many records, with variable degrees of quality, to be sold to as many people (mostly tourists) as possible. The concern for the record producers was not what kind of music was being played in the dancehalls, as plays in a dancehall would not translate into economic capital in the same way "tourist" records would. Because there were so few record players on the island, having a hit in the dancehall was not an immediate ticket to economic success. As

Bourdieu suggests in his model, prioritizing economic capital above all else has the effect of making the cultural production less susceptible to experimentation, which is a useful insight as to why the record producers in Jamaica would be hesitant towards any challenge to the status quo of records being made at the time.

In conjunction with the hesitancy of the record industry at the time to adopt new forms of music, so too was there resistance amongst the first generation of soundsystem entrepreneurs to incorporate indigenous music into their record boxes. In order to get people to come to your dances you needed to play what was popular, and, what was popular music at the time were the records coming out of America, such as Jazz and

R&B, which were being produced in larger numbers on the island than domestic mento or calypso due to their master plates being available. What seemed to be taking place at 43 the time was a cultural cul-de-sac where the music that was deemed popular was so because of its abundant availability, and its abundant availability was what in turn actually made it popular, due to the lack of any alternatives. For want of an audience for their dances, deejays would 'play it safe' and play what was seen as most popular.

Economically speaking, both the music industry and the dancehall deejays were comfortably happy in this cycle, and there would certainly be no impetus for change within this model.

At this point the dancehalls did not represent in any way an independent cultural field; the logic that ruled dancehalls was the logic of the economic field, so the public that formed within it (and was shaped by its texts) was the kind of mass public shaped by the kind of mass media that Adomo and Horkheimer abhorred.23 Lord Flea is a good example of this, and perhaps the most popular mento performer of his time. His hits included "Shake Senora" (later re-titled "Jump in the Line" By Harry Belefonte) and

"Naughty Little Flea", a novelty song about, of all things, a "naughty little flea" that crawls across a mangy dog only to get lost whilst taking bites. High art this was not - but it was economically successful, and Lord Flea, along with his band, traveled throughout

Jamaica and abroad performing their hits.

By the time a second generation of soundsystem entrepreneurs came along subtle shifts in the ideology of the event itself became apparent: these shifts broke the recording industry

See "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception." Adomo and Horkheimer discuss the alienating effects of mass-culture, which they argue satisfies capitalist motivations rather than creative ones of high art. 44 in Jamaica out of its cyclicality and cultural void. This shift occurred as a result of this second wave of emerging emcees growing up with the concept of the dancehall already established, as it would follow that from their perspective these social events were already an essential part of Kingston's social fabric. This second generation of soundsystem entrepreneurs could focus on stylistic problems, rather than ontological ones. As Bradley points out,

...[this] meant that unlike their predecessors, who would have had to work to establish the concept among the public, or even work out how to use it to their best advantage, they could concentrate their efforts on refining and maximizing the considerable potential of the sound system as both a social and commercial event. (27, emphasis added)

Of this new generation, the three often credited as putting dancehall on the cultural map were Clement 'Coxsone' Dodd, Duke 'Trojan' Reid, and Prince Buster. The competitive nature of the emerging young generation of emcees in establishing the highest degree of accumulated cultural capital proved vital for the advancement of dancehall culture. Along with the emerging desire to exhibit the best tonal range and sheer decibel output, perhaps most importantly there was an increased desire to mark one's prowess (cultural competence) through the exclusivity of music played at the events as a means of differentiating oneself from the competition. Anything that gave an emcee the drop on his rivals would be seized upon. This meant alongside the expected R&B and jump-jive boundaries, emcees, particularly Coxsone Dodd, began stretching the boundaries of the musical repertoire to include imported bebop jazz and deep blues cuts, pushing his soundsystems further from the expected norm. Of this new generation of emcees, Bradley states, "it's vital to remember that only as an absolute last resort would any soundman - 45 however small his set - buy records from a regular retailer. Because the entire town could do exactly the same, it was as good as wearing a hat with 'Loser' written on it" (26).24

Though Bourdieu argues that within the cultural field as a whole authority is gained in part through recognition, prestige, and consecration, he suggests that this quest for symbolic cultural capital is especially true within the cultural sub-field of restricted production. In the case of record production this restricted availability provides the necessary exclusivity with which to stake a claim to symbolic and cultural capital.

Having the rarest records in one's box works because it is a demonstration of cultural competence - a demonstration that you know your stuff. Or to use the term that emerges from the soundsystem: you are a Scientist. When you drop science, you're converting your competence into capital. This new desire for accumulated cultural capital, and its subsequent competition by way of record exclusivity, results in a shift from a cultural field predicated on a large scale production model of primarily economic intent (via popular records) to one which inverted this fundamental principle. With this key shift away from the primacy of economics towards an equally weighted concern for cultural capital (via exclusive records), the door was open for the exact type of experimentalism which was stunted and shunned under the economically dominated model. What we see here is a shift from a public consuming mass culture to a public involved in the production of popular culture.

Bradley's statement should be clarified: Though the search for exclusive records was paramount for this generation of emcees, and could be attained through alternative record retailers, certainly most could not afford to do this. The issue was much more the sort of music that could be bought from a regular retailer - music marketed to a middle class with petit bourgeois Eurocentric aspirations - music for the mass market. 46

That being said, though these initial steps outside of the boundaries had signaled a progression in the culture of the soundsystem, it's important to note that what was still being presented to the audience was imported music from America, not of indigenous culture, and thus it can be argued that there was still an inherent disconnect between the audience and the music itself, or at the very least a latent alienation towards the messages within the music.

Regarding the emphasis on exclusivity, because soundsystem supremacy was first and foremost about the records, the supply of bottom-heavy American R&B favoured by

Jamaican audiences was inevitably going to be exhausted, unable to keep up with the increasing demands of competing emcees. Bradley states that because of this increasing shortage of new material to mine, " the stakes had been raised to the point at which a particular sound's killer tune and its continued exclusivity was now a matter of paranoiac proportions" (37). One particular instance proves especially interesting within the context of the alienation and perhaps problematizes the disconnect audience might have felt towards the American music played at soundsystems. In an effort to maintain the exclusivity of a particularly hot track at Coxsone's soundsystem, an instrumental called

"Later for Gator" by Willis 'Gatortail' Jackson, Dodd scratched out the title and artist details from the label and renamed it "Coxsone Hop". Because the origins of the track were now untraceable, and thus exclusively part of Coxsone's record box, it became a sort of signature tune. Followers of Coxsone's soundsystem, knowing this tune to be 47 theirs alone, would respond in an "appropriately boisterous manner" whenever the track was played (Bradley, 37).

What's particularly interesting about this instance is that, though the music was still not indigenous, its absolute exclusivity, and the audience's overwhelming reaction to this exclusivity, suggests the audience had a latent desire to identify with a particular type of music on a differentiated and personal level beyond the passivity of casual reception. The exclusivity of the sound is a guarantee that the dancer's response is privileged and becomes a part of that circulated text in a meaningful way that wouldn't be present if the song was free to float through other soundsystems. The audience's desire to be able to

'call it their own' suggests a degree of participation in the meaning of the production. The exclusivity of the recording makes the audience's contribution to the meaning of the song much more significant than it would be in on a mass cultural scale. For Coxsone's audience, the ability to use this musical text as a means of identifying their otherness in relation to soundsystem culture as a whole also signals the emerging public-forming potential for emcees and soundsystems in general.

This 'otherness' and exclusivity can be seen as one of the main forces which led Prince

Buster to seek out the Rastas at Salt Lane to record "Oh Carolina". The introduction of

Nyahbinghi into the dances made a lot of sense; Ossie had become a central figure to the

Rastafari movement, which was gaining in popularity within the ghetto, and on a purely practical level the sound of his drumming was completely different from what other soundsytems were doing. Though Bradley suggests that there would have been tension 48 amongst Buster's established group of friends and musicians regarding the foray into

Nyahbinghi (why mess with a successful formula?), what Buster was able to tap into, as an extension of what Coxsone was exploiting, was tension within any cultural field between those with cultural capital and those who were transient passer-bys. In other words, with the rise of soundsystem culture and its increasing popularity there would have been an increasing difficulty in maintaining the subcultuxal identity of the dances.

As more and more passive attendees interloped or vacationed in the culture, it would have been much more difficult for those who defined themselves by their participation in the culture to separate themselves from the interlopers. The very nature of capital within a counterpublic is through its distancing from the public as a whole, and thus the presence of passers-by threatened its counterpublic positioning.

Having said this, I think at this point an important distinction should be made regarding the intentions or trajectory of a counterpublic: those who seek normativity those who embrace a divergence from normativity.25 There is often a tension even within counterpublics regarding this divide. While some counterpublics seek to make their texts universally understandable, others seek texts which cannot be understood by the public as a whole. The exclusivity which seems so essential to the soundsystem culture is there because it's something which cannot be understood by the public as a whole. When

Coxsone plays the "Later for Gator" / "Coxsone Hop" the audience reacts so enthusiastically because to recognize the track is the price of admission into the

Wamer discusses this distinction within queer publics, and in particular drag culture. 49 subculture of his soundsystem. The track acts as an encoded signal for those "in the know".

Door Peep Shall Not Enter

From this trajectory of exclusivity arises another tension, which I think proves central to my argument regarding why Rastafari in particular was so cracial to soundsystem culture. It's important to keep in mind that unlike the Nyahbinghi ceremonies at Salt Lane, soundsystems were businesses, and therefore economics were the driving force behind them. Coxsone, Reid, and Prince Buster were all businessmen with profits directly driving the sustainability of their soundsystems. As is the condition of all business which derives its profit from subcultures, tension exists between simultaneously maintaining the wow-universality of the text or product while also drawing in as many people as possible to maximize profitability. In this sense the tension rests between the cultural and economic capital. Bourdieu seems to present the two forms of capital as virtually binary in their opposition to each other; either you carry a certain degree of cultural capital (in part due to the restrictedness or non-universality of your product) which is privileged in certain cultural fields, or you operate within a field which privileges economic capital at the expense of cultural capital. Cultural and economic capital appear to be a zero-sum game, where gains in one form of capital reduce the amount of capital in the other. Finding the middle ground between the two seeming disparate forms of capital is precisely the precarious field which soundsystems sought to 50 operate within. For a soundsystem to succeed it necessarily needs to be rich in both forms of capital. The separation between cultural and economic capital is too rigid in

Bourdieu's model, as the balance between the two fields hinges on competence; the real distinction isn't between economic capital and cultural capital26, but between competence and incompetence (between those "in the know" and those who are tourists). If the tourists enjoy it, it's not real.

Essentially the question is how big can the "in crowd" get before it's not "in" anymore.

Generally speaking either the text (in this case the soundsystem) remains in perpetual obscurity, gaining cultural capital through its niche market, or it expands beyond its capacity to be considered "in" and ends up cliche, thus exhausting its cultural capital, and potentially its economic capital as well. This seems to be the game the soundsystem operators are playing, as they are constantly testing the limits of how big the "in" crowd can get before the stock is devalued. In other words, how far can a counterpublic's trajectory take it from its chosen position (counterculture, non-universal) before its leaves that position vacant?

It's through this question that I'd like to position the counterpublic Rastafari message as conveniently used by the soundsystem's proprietors as a signifier to maintain its precarious counterculture position while simultaneously expanding its economic capital.

The unique cultural properties of the Rastafari message were ideal in navigating the fine line between two seemingly disparate forms of capital. On one hand, in the cultural

There are plenty of examples of artists who are able to succeed in both fields simultaneously. David Bowie immediately comes to mind. 51 climate leading up to independence there was a desire amongst the Jamaican public to be part of something that was definitively black and indigenous in formation, and as Bradley states, " Rasta was black Jamaica's strongest remaining bond to its African roots" (59).

The message of the Rastafari was gaining momentum amongst the people in the ghettoes, and this surge in popularity had potential to translate into increased attendance at the soundsystems, as evidenced by Buster's use of "Oh Carolina" and its subsequent reception. This made sound economic sense. That being said, in comparison to previous movements or fashions which traveled through the soundsystems, the Rasta rhetoric was unique in that it was simultaneously digestible and accessible with its messages of peace, love, and unity, allowing for its broad appeal, but also inversely indigestible and inaccessible to a larger public through its positions on race war, repatriation, and the translation of Nyahbinghi itself.27 The message was both politically oppositional

("Nyahbinghi") and formally self-authenticating (harmony, "one love") simultaneously, making it difficult to digest through any traditional forms of logic. Previous movements such as ska and rocksteady were apolitical, and thus ran no risk of limited participation.

Though I don't intend to directly challenge Prince Buster's motivations for bringing

Count Ossie into his studio to record "Oh Carolina", it's either through luck or brilliance that he was able to capitalize on a musical text which navigated the choppy waters between accessibility and inaccessibility so seamlessly that it negates the zero-sum relationship between cultural and economic capital.

Hebdige translates this to mean "death to white oppressors and their black allies" (57). 52

This schism between the apolitical movements in previous soundsystems and the proposition of a new Rasta-infused rhythm and message was not lost on Ossie. As

Bradley points out in his account of Buster's negotiations with the Nyahbinghi troupe,

Ossie himself was very reluctant to partake in a recording session, as he refused to believe that anything as outright Babylonian as the soundsystem subculture could honestly be interested in what he, and the Rastafari message, could offer. Nonetheless,

Buster stated of these sessions,

I know I've got something special, something that hasn't been done before. As soon as I take the dub of 'Oh Carolina' to Machuki him know it, him tell me Coxsone, Reid and Edwards will be buried now. The reaction to it even surprise me. I was playing at Cho Co Mo Lawn, and Duke had an open dance just down the street which was filled up with people because it was free. Machuki was playing my set when I got there. I tell him play 'Oh Carolina' and don't stop playing it. When he put it on and that dram pu-do-do-dum went up in the air for the first time ever it was the sound of Rasta searching for some kind of identity. This was the sound of the poor black Jamaicans, Duke Reid's dance went flat in about fifteen minutes because people were running to those drums. (Bradley 60)

Buster's comments point to the previous discussion regarding the role openness plays in the formation of publics. As he points out, it was the accessibility of the space the soundsystem dance provided in conjunction with the mobility of the recording that allowed the 'sound of the poor black Jamaicans' to reach an audience which wasn't bound by proximity to Nyahbinghi ceremonies. The very fact that people passing by began to migrate from Reid's soundsystem to Buster's suggests a circularity of the text on a level which Ossie could not have accounted for at Salt Lane. 53

The uniquely contentious aspects of the Rastafari movement are important to understanding its difference from other publics which traveled through the soundsystem.

In the lineage of soundsystem culture, from R&B to Ska, Rocksteady, and Rude Boy28 culture none of these movements were able to sustain cultural relevance for much longer than their fleeting fashionability would allow. Why was it that Rude Boy culture, for example, didn't have the same staying power as the Rasta did within the soundsystem culture? Or rather, why was it not as extensible as Rasta? Within these preceding movements the cultural capital associated with participation was easily devalued once it achieved mass popularity. As cultural capital decreased, eventually so too would the economic potential of the movement. Much like the Mods in the U.K., the finite nature of these cultural movements was due to the ease for 'outsiders' to copy the style. It was easy to 'buy into' the Rude Boy scene - a second hand suit, sunglasses, and a menacing attitude was sufficient enough - and this accessibility initially facilitated its quick rise in popularity. However, once the movement had reached critical mass in popularity it became increasingly hard to tell the originators for the imitators, and with authenticity destabilized cultural capital was exhausted and the movement rendered cliched.

Conversely, the Rastafari movement proved difficult to immediately imitate as stylistically the most overtly visual marker were dreadlocks. As Chevannes points out,

"The most outstanding characteristic of [The Rasta] is, of course, his hair, a sacred and inalienable part of his identity. It defines his status. The longer his locks the greater his standing as a professor of the faith" (147). Unlike previous trends within soundsystem

Term used for juvenile delinquents and criminals in Jamaica. Associated with ska and rocksteady movements in dancehall culture, and known for their highly stylized dress and attitudes inspired by American gangster movies. 54 culture, the Rasta's mane was a marker of commitment and dedication to a particular style and set of beliefs. One could not immediately gain the social markings of the Rasta public.

Ideologically, the Rastafari movement offered much more complexity and weight than other movements which had previously passed through the soundsystem. It preached peace, love, and African pride, but was riddled with contentious beliefs and practices which prevented it from ever attaining mainstream popularity. Homiak positions the complexity of the Rastafari as a 'dub' religion due to its system of shared difference, stating, "the Rastafari have traditionally drawn upon multiple sources of authority in the social construction of their livity29. These sources include continuities with African-

Jamaican folk traditions, the Bible, and the ideology of the 'natural man'" (139). In this sense, the Rasta philosophy is seen as multifaceted and open-ended.30 As Chevannes states, the early preachers of the movement concentrated on the question of the identity of

God, and suggests, "this thrust accomplished at least one objective: it undermined the racial values of the status quo... God was none other than the little black man ruling over

Ethiopia. What was more, God had always been black" (146). The messages of Rastafari musical texts attest to this belief too, and for the average youth raised with Revivalism in

Glossed as "life ways", encapsulating an underlying philosophy or blueprint for a total way of life. 30 An example of varying philosophy manifests itself in manners of dress. For certain Rastas it was preferred to be dressed in "Higes Knots" (i.e. rejecting English dress) as a form of resistance to the dominant culture, while at the same time the self-abnegation associated with this phase was regarded as a necessary condition for spiritual development. On the other hand, there were groups of Rastafari who saw the sackcloth tradition as unbefitting the dignity of the Rastaman. Such contradictory imagery has been apparent in Rastafari from its inception (Homiak, 152-153). 55 a Christian colonial Jamaica, these ideas were quite controversial, and perhaps more importantly they were polarizing, as the movement sought the denunciation of traditional belief systems. Instances of this message are numerous in Rasta music. A good example of this is "(Earth's) Rightful Ruler" by Peter Tosh & U Roy. Lyrics include:

Kings of Kings, Lords of Lords / Conquering lion of the tribe of Judah / Elect of God, Mighty God / Everliving God, Earth's Rightful Ruler / Blessed be the man that walk'eth not / In counsel of the ungodly / Nor stand'eth in the ways of sinners / Nor sitt'eth in the seat of the scornful / For I delight in the law of the Lord God, Selassie I {Black Dignity, 2005)

Calling for defection from the corrupt Jamaican society while declaring Selassie the

Christ incarnate were contentious and oppositional in stance. The conferral of the name

"Babylon" first on society and then derivatively on its protectors is the cause of the virtually absolute polarization of the Rastafari and the dominant public. Again, this was the rationale behind Ossie's resistance towards Buster's recording of his troupe, as he refused to believe the message would be digestible and agreeable to the soundsystem participants, the ones who themselves represented Babylon in all its debauchery and hedonism.

Of course on the surface "Oh Carolina" was a silly love song from a recording session which produced much more political and spiritual material than the hit in question, but I think Buster's account and consequently Bradley's reconstruction of the history are right in presenting it as some sort of simmering cauldron of rebellious music. What Buster had done was give an expanded voice to the Rasta people and it's at this point where the 56 limitless possibilities of that voice were realized through the cultural shifts taking place within the dancehalls of Kingston.31

31 Examples of popular soundsystem tracks that incorporated Nyahbinghi rhythms are The Melodians "By The Rivers of Babylon", as well as Burning Spear "Door Peeps Shall Not Enter". Spear's track begins with an a capella declairation, "I and I, Sons of The Most High Jah Rastafari. Our hearts shall correspond and beat in the one harmony" before the pounding of Nyahbinghi rhythms enter. The song uses "Door" in the biblical sense as a metaphorical entrance. Here is it used as a condemnation of those unwilling to enter wholeheartedly into God's Kingdom. 57

CHAPTER THREE

The message that started with communal experience based on the tangible qualities of the live musical performance, facilitated by a heightened interaction amongst a defined and limited population of participants, had migrated into the dancehalls of inner

Kingston. This was an essential step in expanding the limited boundaries of the

Nyahbinghi ceremonies by eclipsing the necessity of the live performances and utilizing the mobility of recorded performances in organized spaces that were publicly open. That being said, though the increased sense of openness in the soundsystem expanded the limited accessibility and circulation of the Rasta text, there was still a spatial boundedness based on the condition of actually attending the dancehalls.

What I'd like to explore in the final chapter of the study is two-fold; both the expanding role of recording and record production in relation to the distribution of the Rasta message through the ride of deejay culture, as well as some specific observations about the form that studio explorations took, specifically dub, and how it came to be the ideal representation and distributor of the Rasta message in both form and content. My intension in shifting the discussion from soundsystems to deejays and dub recordings is not to imply a strictly linear, chronological shift, as was the case in relations between chapters 1 and 2, but rather as something happening in conjunction with the evolution of the soundsystem, as in many ways the two work symbiotically with one another. 58

Originator Dub

As previously stated, within the shifting Jamaican soundsystem culture there was a growing emphasis on the exclusivity of music, the reasons for which appear to be both proprietary and cultural. The same is very much true for the evolution of dub, developed by Jamaican producers and soundsystem proprietors seeking novel and exclusive music.

As is often the case with oral histories, there are many competing voices claiming primacy and authorship of dub, so wide ranging that any attempt to authoritatively reconstruct the genesis of this pivotal technique and sound would be contentious at best.32

According to Hebdige's account King Tubby, working as an engineer in conjunction with

Coxsone Dodd, stumbled upon dub while mixing several ska records for Coxsone's

Downbeat soundsystem (83). Others, such as Bradley, point to Duke Reid and Rudolph

"Ruddy" Redwood accidentally being sent dub plates of The Paragons' "On The Beach" from disc cutter Byron Smith. Those dub plates had been inadvertently pressed without the vocal track, and thus led to the revolutionary 'mistake' (312). In a slight variation of that account, Bunny Lee claims that is was King Tubby and himself who were the principal architects of dub, having been with Redwood to hear the mistake on Smith's pressing - somewhat verifying Bradley's account- and subsequently capitalizing on the idea the very next Saturday, and thus claiming primacy (Katz, 166). Alternatively, Harry

Wise claims that is was not Tubby, Coxsone, Reid, Redwood, or Lee who created the first mixes, but rather Clancy Eccles and King Stitt who worked the missing techniques

32 Homiak refers to the social construction of oral testimony amongst the Rasta as a 'dub' history, which "indicate[s] the fact that particular oral narratives are constantly subject to revision-ing and are rendered in many versions as they circulate among members of a speech community" (129). 59 for the first time. The fact that dub has multiple origin stories is actually quite appropriate, as the palimpsestuous nature of the remix genre itself obscures and subverts the importance of any text's primary authorship.

Regardless of the many claims over who invented dub, the technique was only possible with the advancement of recording technology in Jamaican studios. In order to manipulate the sound recordings in any way it required two-track recording33, which

Coxsone Dodd had acquired "around 1965"34. What the recording of two separate tracks allowed was a degree of post-session manipulation and adjustment (mixing) of a recording which wouldn't have been possible on monaural recordings where all sounds were reduced to one recorded channel. Recording practices of the new era consisted of the vocals being recorded on one track, with all of the instruments on the second. Wilson points out that this practice of separating vocals entirely from the instruments was something quite common at the time, even in studios such as Abbey Road, as it was felt that you could edit and mix a song more effectively since the vocals were never locked to the instruments. With this new advancement in technology, the first post-production alterations to recordings were possible, as was the case when Byron Smith 'accidentally' cut out John Holt's vocals on a pressing of "On The Beach" by The Paragons, essentially rendering the track entirely instrumental.35 This instrumental cut of "On The Beach"

Rather than monophonic sound recording, two-track recording allowed for two separate audio channels. 34 This in itself is a bit contentious, as Heartbeat's compilation, though very well documented, consists exclusively of Studio One cuts, and therefore rather conveniently infers that Coxsone had the first two-track recording equipment in Jamaica. Though the story of Redwood and Smith is cited by Bradley, it is corroborated in both Christopher Partridge and Chris Wilson's research materials as well. 60 provides a great starting point for a discussion of dub, in terms of both the evolution of the genre, as well as its socio-cultural impact.

Evolution Revolution Dub

The progression of dub can be broken down into three distinct phases, each of which was a significant advancement in sound manipulation which further propelled dub away from traditional structures and sonic textures, into the avant-garde, cutting edge of Jamaican culture. The first of these phases was the instramental, simply the excising of vocals.

Though this experimentation was only made possible by studio advancements, the danger in presenting the genesis of the instramental as intrinsically tied to these advancements is that it's too technologically deterministic. If we are to consider Bradley's account of the first instramental cut, though it was stumbled upon through a series of happy accidents, the 'discovery' of post-production manipulation would not have been nearly as significant, nor as prolific, had it not had the immediate socio-cultural impact that the documentation seems to suggest. The track, in its 'proper' form had already been a hit for

The Paragons, however, when the instramental cut of "On The Beach" first aired at

Redwood's SRS Sound System back-to-back with the original the response from the dancehall crowd was emphatically positive. As Bradley details, "By the time the second record was a few bars in the entire lawn was singing along, and, according to those who were there, it was a totally spine-tingling moment" (312). 61

From Bradley's account, the act of excising the original vocals shattered the monological limitations of recorded music and opened it up to include the participation of those in attendance. The significance of this new development is immense, as no longer were the records of a soundsystem played at the audience, but rather with the audience's participation. Just as tracks like "Coxsone's Hop" had facilitated a sense of community due to their exclusivity, by playing the instrumental cut of a popular track the deejay was able to achieve an unprecedented level of inclusivity within the soundsystem environment due to this new opportunity for audience participation. Those in attendance were now able to share the responsibility of carrying the words and melody of a given song.

However, though the initial forays into instramental cuts allowed for a degree of inclusivity, the participatory aspect was still largely contained and bound by the rigid structure of the recorded song itself. Because the instramental cut directly correlated to the original one which contained vocals (and therefore the same length, arrangement, and composition), the possibilities for audience participation were necessarily limited and generally took the form of recital, leaving very little room for improvisation. Though the soundsystem at this point was still cracial to the wider circulation and distribution of musical text, it still very much lacked the dialogical and improvisational qualities that were essential to fostering the community at Salt Lane.

Despite these significant limitations, and apart from the socio-cultural benefits this new development had, it was great for proprietary reasons. Not only were the instramentals great for hyping up audiences, they were also very cheap to produce. Unlike a traditional 62 b-side, which would require the production of an entirely new track, which included the cost of session musicians, the instramental was essentially free for the studio to produce, save for a bit of additional mixing. The cost-benefit of the instramental cut would have had a large part in the subsequent proliferation of recycled tracks that would eventually evolve into dub.

Though this first foray into post-production studio manipulation was simply the complete excising of the vocal track, due to its "practicality for studio owners, as well as its popularity amongst the soundsystem publics, it wasn't long before further possibilities of two-track mixing were explored. The ability to negotiate alternative balances between vocal and instrumental sections facilitated the next significant phase in the development of dub, the version. Unlike the instramental, which was simply the negation of vocal and melody entirely, the version began to play with alternating sections exclusively instramental and exclusively vocal, requiring greater mastery of the studio controls. The principal manipulation of the record revolved around the polarized mixing of the vocal and instrumental tracks, as the engineer would play the two track master recording and re-record it to a second machine while simply alternating between cutting the instramental track and allowing the vocals to continue alone, and alternatively cutting the vocal track while allowing the instramental track to continue.

An example of this studio technique can be heard in "Fire Version", the b-side to Clifton

Gibbs & The Selected Few's single "Brimstone & Fire", produced by Coxsone Dodd.

The cut consists entirely of the same recording as the a-side, only manipulated in such a 63 way that it alternates between exclusively vocal and instramental sections. The precise moment the vocal track kicks in is the exact moment the instramental track cuts out: no blending or merging of the two tracks ever occurs, as if to be checkered.36

Because the version derived from the original recording, in order to make a version that was different from the a-side, inevitably sections of vocals needed to be excised during the studio manipulation (there would be no point in cutting the vocals during moments where no vocals were present). The excising of particular vocal passages allowed for a new level of control for the engineer to mold and sculpt an interpretation of the frack via the absence of chosen lyrical passages. Using "Fire Version" again as an example, the original frack consists of three quasi-verses, or sections {a, b, c), sung with the same melody, as well as one final sentiment. The lyrics are as follows:

a) Babylon you chant down, be gone and you will soon g'on down Thy walls are now shaking by lightening, earthquake, and thunder

b) The lord ain't coming again with water, but brimstone and fire

This checkering was not an exact science though, and because the vocal and instramental tracks of the record would have been done simultaneously in the studio, inevitably there is some 'bleeding' or cross-contamination between the two tracks. In other words, though the vocals would have been recorded exclusively on one of the two tracks and the instruments on the other, because the music was performed simultaneously the vocal microphones subtly pick up the instruments sound as well, making complete separation of the vocal and instrumental tracks impossible. This bleed-through can be heard throughout the edits, particularly during the vocal sections. The is particularly noticeable on early versions because of the sparse, primitive nature of both the recordings, and the lack of additional embellishments in subsequent studio dubs which served to mask or distract from any transference of sound between the tracks. 64

c) Judgment is coming again for everyone, every man and his son It shall be lightening, earthquake and thunder It shall be lightening, earthquake and thunder

d) It shall devour you

The original is sung in this order: (instramental) /a/b/c/d/ (instramental) / b / c

The b-side version is as follows: (instrumental) /a/b/e/d/ (instramental) / b / e*

*partial excision on the first half of the verse

Due to the editing the version has a significantly different feel to it for several reasons. In the original, because the relatively upbeat musical accompaniment continues through the lyrical passages, one can easily be passive towards their meaning, in favour of focusing primarily on the rhythms and musical melodies. In the version, when the vocals in section a hit the music drops out entirely, adding significantly more emphasis on Gibb's lyrics, as there is no other stimulus to distract attention. Additionally, the version cuts the first occurrence of both b and c, causing the instramental mid-section to be considerably elongated, which again entirely alters the feel and flow of the song. In fact, when the vocals return Dodd only mixes in b, again cutting c by crudely resuming the vocals mid- verse. Lyrical sections d and the first part of c never appear in the version. Because of the multiple excisions, the balance of the song shifts from a lyrically based song with occasional instramental sections to a primarily instrumental track with occasional, sparse lyrical flourishes, which significantly alters the effect of the song.

37 In a sense, this editing technique works like a balance scale. If the original mix of the song functions like an equally weighted, and thus balanced scale, when weight is removed from one side, an emphasis is created on the other due to the subtraction. 65

Christopher Partridge suggests reggae versions "aren't necessarily an improvement on the original, nor do they intend to be... [Rather,] they are understood as interpretations — texts that have been translated into a different musical language" (63, emphasis added).

Partridge's observation is pivotal to understanding and positioning dub (and all studio manipulations) within the theoretical framework of Warner's circularity of texts insofar as the primary, or original state of the text ceases to be its definitive state. Though the version is in many ways a subtle alteration of the text, it nonetheless renders the original text malleable and frees it from stasis. Whereas the early instramental cuts inherently allowed for no discretionary decisions on the part of the engineer due to the totality of the vocal excisions, the version allowed, for the first time, discretionary manipulation of the primary text, in essence bringing it to life.. The fact that these edits rendered the text malleable was a pivotal step which led to even greater manipulation, as the absented sections allowed for other texts to palimpsest overtop of them by live vocalist, or

"toasters".

Rasta Meets Deejay Uptown

Early versions functioned as interpretations due to their negation or subtraction of either vocal or instramental elements which could alter the meaning of the text. At the same time as these versions were emerging in soundsystems, the rise in prominence of the deejay, or "toaster", pushed the limits of these reinterpretations further by utilizing 66 the vacated space to augment the original text's meanings by way of addition. The deejay would extemporize over the newly expanded musical sections, but he was only able to do so as a result of the spaces versions provided. An example of this is Big Joe's Rasta- inspired musings on "Version of Rights". The track utilizes the version of The

Abyssinians' "Declaration of Rights", a song which encourages Rastas to unite against oppression, and compounds it with Joe's own thoughts on the issue overdubbed in the vacated spaces left by the versioning. Much like a palimpsest, within that vacated space of the original text, the dejay adds his own interpretation of the material. At first, these interpretations were mostly phatic, a commentary of screeches, yelps, and muttered catchphrases - popular deejays at the time, like Dennis Alcapone, Count Machuki,

DiUinger, and Prince Jazzbo were all known for their unique vocal ticks which functioned as their personal stamp on a track — but these overdubs quickly evolved into more complex and nuanced ruminations.

As a result of the versioned cuts offering so much vacated vocal space to extemporize, the deejay was not bound to the necessity of traditional verses and choruses, and thus was free to directly take on current socio-political issues pertinent to the surrounding community. As Christopher Partridge notes, "the deejay was explicitly understood to comment on contemporary issues and also act as spokesperson for the ghetto communities... [he] is the voice of resistance" (68). From Partridge's observation we're able to gain a sense of the increasing circulation of text that the soundsystem and versions were facilitating. Hebdige furthers this by stating, 67

This process of feed-back - of three-way flow between artists, record producers and the audience - is what helps make reggae different from other types of pop music. The distance between the performer and the fans is never allowed to grow too great. It is at the sound system that the barrier [between them] is least noticeable. (88)

The loop that Hebdige points to is vital to understanding the ways in which the text was changing. Because the deejay would extemporize over tracks, thereby disregarding traditional song structure (verses and choruses) there was an openness to the performance that wouldn't have been present previously. Whereas the first airing of instrumental tracks allowed for audience participation, it was bound by the content of the original text.

The audience's role was limited to recitation. Due to the openness of the form, however, when a deejay toasted over a track he was not only free to improvise, but also able to respond directly to the audience's reaction. Though the deejay held the mic, and was thus in a position of control, because of the small feedback loop between audience and performer, the audience had some degree of agency in determining the outcome of performance as well.

Bracketing the idea of exclusively Rastafarian texts momentarily, in a broader sense we can see the potential for both the version and the dancehall to be conduits for text circulation realized through the rise of deejay culture. An acute example of this rapidly circulating text can be seen through the production cycles of two prominent deejays.

When Big Youth produced a record called "Green Bay Killing" about a murder that had occurred in the Southside ghetto just a few days previous, Jah Lloyd countered with 68

"Green Bay Incident" less than a week later, effectively putting the cuts and the deejays into an active dialogue.38

Because many early deejay tracks were recorded live, not overdubbed in the studio, a distinction between a record and a recording can be made. A record exists as a documentary form, an account of a performance as it existed, and is therefore synchronic.

In contrast, a recording can be seen as a generative studio art form. The distinction is not only between a live performance (record) and pseudo-performance created by overdubs in a studio (recording), but also in the immediacy of the two forms. Unlike a studio cut which functions as the definitive, laboured realization of an artistic creation, the deejay cuts were immediate and ephemeral, functioning as a documentary form - the news of the people.

Deejays such as Prince Francis and Prince Jazzbo began taking popular roots-reggae tracks and extemporized their own Rasta-inflected social texts overtop of the cuts, such as

Jazzbo's "Creation Skank", which recycles the instramental track from Burning Spear's

"Creation" - itself a powerful ode to the exile from Africa - and builds on it with his own slant on racial oppression. To an audience already aware of the power behind the original track, the addition of lines such as "Romans come to call I devil but you a rebel, seh you a rebel, you no devil. In captivity Black was placed. In captivity Black was base. But you a rebel, seh you a rebel, you no devil" would have compounded the profound nature of

TO This carries on a tradition in calypso and mento from the 30's, 40s and 50s. For example - Lord Melody's "Cowboy Sparrow" (1957-8) and Sparrow's "Reply to Melody" (1959); The Lion, "I Am Going to Buy a Bungalow" (1938) and Atilla the Hun, "I Don't Want No Bungalow" (1938). 69 the original track, augmenting and building on its message. Others such as Charlie Ace took popular fracks like "Throw Me Com" and turned them into odes to the Rasta way of life. Ace's version of "Throw Me Com", now dubbed "Father and Dread Locks", humourously tells the story of a loving Christian family who send their son off to college only to have him return for the holidays not the well-adjusted, suit wearing professional they had hoped, but rather as a full-fledged Rasta, complete with a beard, dungarees, and sandals. When the son removes his tam, natty dreadlocks flow down to the ground. In disbelief, the father, who has worked morning, day, and night to pay for his son's education demands to know what happened to their Christian son. The son replies,

"Daddy, you would not understand like I do, but Jah has call up and I, I upsight the promise land. Daddy, I know the way you feel, but one day you will understand". When asked what his plan for the future is, the son retorts, "Daddy, I plan to serve Jah forever and ever and ever. I plan to use my education to defend human rights, equality, and justice throughout the universe". Ace's approach is somewhat unique insofar as its third- person omniscient account remains neutral throughout, presenting the social and theological schisms between older / younger, colonial / post-colonial generations without taking sides. Are we to laugh at the naive youth's lofty idealism, or the father's inability to recognize the revolution that is taking place around him?

As an interesting side note, "Father and Dread Locks", itself a palimpsest of "Throw Me

Com", was subsequently versioned by Coxsone Dodd as "Version Dread", excising the

39 This could be in reference to Louise Bennett's "No Lickle Twang", in which the gap between generational perspectives is also depicted. In the poem a son repatriates to Jamaica after six months in America without a trace of Westernization much to the dismay of his parents, who perceive it as something to aspire to. 70

majority of Ace's tale. What remains is only, "Daddy, I plan to serve Jah forever and ever

and ever / I plan to use my education to defend human rights, equality, and justice

throughout the universe" and "Jah is movin' on ya", which unbalances the neutrality of

the original and makes it a one-sided account which privileges the Rasta. Coxsone's

reinterpretation of Ace's cut creates an additional palimpsest which further affects the

original meaning of the text. Is the song now a sliced version of Ace's track, or a return to

its genesis as "Throw Me Com" with a smattering of added Rasta rhetoric?

In regards to the role of the palimpsest, perhaps the most interesting of the figures in

deejay culture is Ewart Beckford, otherwise known as U Roy. Considered "The

Originator" and the first deejay to achieve mass popularity, U Roy was able to make full

use of the vacated space offered to him by a version through his idiosyncratic phrasings

which touched on a wide range of subject matter. As Partridge points out, "although

much of U Roy's toasting consisted of screams, shouts, rambling sentences and various

catchphrases, it was also a medium for religious, political and social discourse" (67). A

good example of this is U Roy's Dread In A Babylon (1975), featuring cuts such as

"Dreadlocks Dread", "Natty Don't Fear", "African Message", and "The Great Psalms",

which consist of Rasta interpretations of biblical psalms such as "the wicked shall not

stand in judgment, no / Say that I and I will give thanks and praise to the king, I tell you

why", a variation of psalm 1:5, which states "Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous" {King James Bible). 71

U Roy's variation on biblical verse in "The Great Psalms" is exemplary of the Rasta's reasoning with the holy scriptures and other religious texts such as hymns, which attempts to scrape away the layers of distortion which years of slavery and racism have wrought on the text, in order to reveal the original underneath. In other words, if you can erase what's been written over to discover what's underneath you will have reached the genesis of truth. In this sense U Roy's version of the psalm is not a palimpsest in itself, but conversely a removal, or reversal of the undesirable palimpsest which was already imposed. However, this was not an innovation of U Roy's but an established Rasta practice. This cleansing of the Bible is intimately connected to Rasta's cleansing of language, its belief in word sound power. Just as Rasta reasoning functions as a critique of normative constructions of reason, operating under its own structure that values a different kind of logic outside the traditional form, lyaric, or Rasta vocabulary, works with the English language in a similar way.

The modified dialect of the Rasta seeks to remedy the erasure of African languages which occurred as a result of slavery and the imposition of English by reclaiming it, stripping it of its Babylonian negativity, and pressing forward with positive variations in an attempt to confront the corruption. Of this linguistic alteration Homiak states,

whatever phonological and sociolinguistic continuities can be drawn between this speech and instances of Jamaican dialect, it must be emphasized that the pragmatics of communication associated with this code served to reshape its semantic implications. (163) 72

As an example, the Rasta takes "understand" and replaces it with "overstand", for to comprehend is to rise above something, not to be oppressed under it. Similarly,

"oppression" is replaced by "dbwrcpression" because oppression holds man down, not up.

Sound logic reveals the lies in colonial language - not just positive vibrations, but also making the logic of the words consistent with their sounds, making them say what they actually mean40. Regarding sound logic, Homiak states, "speech is a central form and agency behind this effort at self-definition which is to be found in the Rasta conviction that Man is, ontologically, 'living sound', the Word incarnate" (175).

An extended, and quite dramatic example of this occurs in The Holy Piby. While not strictly Rastafarian, the Piby is a foundational text for the Rasta community, and outlines the work of the Ethiopians as the chosen people of God. As Ras Miguel Lome states in his introduction to a 2000 edition of the text, the function of the Piby is not only to promote loyalty to Ethiopia and the African Race, but also to erase the "so-called wicked and evil curse imposed on the Ethiopian Race in Genesis Chapter 9" (9). Written by

Shepherd Robert Athlyi Rogers, The Holy Piby erased such words as "church", which

Rogers saw as "being too close to the white man's house of worship", and admonished its followers to look toward Ethiopia for God (9-10). What Rogers was attempting with the

Piby was a scraping away of the symbolic violence, or downpression of the colonial

Babylonian rhetoric within the Bible and to release the positive vibrations buried underneath.

Chevannes is among those who argue that Rasta speech is historically continuous with the folk penchant for punning and experimentation with language. 73

Returning to U Roy, by scraping away the problematic "nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous", which, from the Rasta's perspective preaches and promotes exclusive privileges for the oppressors, or dominant hegemonic White colonizers, and replacing it with the positivity and inclusivity of "Say that I and I will give thanks and praise to the king", he is able to effectively dismantle the pervasive Babylonian oppression of the colonial text.

Another example of this cleansing can be heard in Pete Tosh's "Downpressor Man", a variation of the Christian spiritual "Sinner Man". The song combines the cleansing of language (the lyaric downpressor instead of oppressor) and reasoning on text (not the ambiguous "sinner man"). As an oppositional text, the movement of the song is quite interesting. Tosh starts out with a fairly faithful interpretation of the traditional lyrics:41

Simone: Sinnerman, where you gonna ran to? (x3) All on that day. {Pastel Blues, 1965) Tosh: Downpressor man, where you gonna run to? (x3) All along that day. {Equal Rights, 1977)

Here Tosh reverses the Lord's condemnation traditionally directed towards the "sinner" and rums it towards his Babylonian oppressors (or downpressors). Tosh's next verse is again fairly consistent with the traditional ones, only we now see a different perspective, as in the standard version the singer adopts the sinner's voice, whereas Tosh doesn't adopt this switch:

41 For the purposes of this comparison I will be using Nina Simone's version , "Sinnerman" 74

S: I run to the sea, it was boiling (x3) All on that day. T: You gonna ran to the sea, the sea will be boiling (x3) All along that day.

This choice to remain in third-person is pivotal, as it sets up the trajectory for the rest of the song. It's at this point that the song increasingly diverges, as Tosh begins to palimpsest apocalyptic imagery over the standard lyrics:

S: I run to the rock, please hide me (x3) All on that day. T: You gonna run to the rocks, the rocks will be melting (x3) All along that day.

From here the song evolves into lyrics entirely different from the traditional version as

Tosh proclaims, " You can drink your big champagne and laugh [x3] all along that day, but I wouldn't like to be a flea under your collar, man" before stating that the downpressors cannot gain Jah's salvation with bribes. The movement of "Downpressor

Man" evolves in a way that dismantles Babylon, first by co-opting an oppressive text, then reversing its trajectory, utilizing word sound power and reasoning from a Rasta perspective.

Dub Ina Babylon

Returning to the musical progression of soundsystem culture, the difference between version and dub was that in comparison to the latter, a version was always 75 scraping back, existing only as the discretionary removal (and subsequent replacement) of pre-existing compositional elements. Though the text was manipulated, stracturally it remained quite static. Dub, on the other hand, can be understood as taking this discretionary reinterpretation of the text to its logical next step by not only subtracting elements, but adding entirely new compositional elements to the original text as well. In addition to the version techniques of cutting vocals and shifting the focus towards the rhythm tracks, dub pioneers like King Tubby began to manipulate the actual sounds heard on the records in ways that were widely considered avante-garde. Through creative altering of studio equipment Tubby was able to piece together a four-track tape machine which allowed him to continually re-pass tapes through it at altered speeds and staggered clips, allowing for greater possibilities of manipulating the source materials. Compare, for example, Wayne Jarrett's frack "Satta Dread" to King Tubby's "No Partial Dub." The former is a straightforward 'version'; the latter not only splices the tracks in the manner of a version, but also manipulates them sonically by adding reverb, stereo delay to both vocals and instruments. King Tubby even occasionally adds his own tones on top. Unlike the version, then, which operated within the limited boundaries of an already mixed take and simply played with the balancing of the two-channel recording, dub was re-mixing the source material by stretching it spatially through echoes, delays, and loops. Of this breakthrough in text manipulation, Chris Partridge suggests:

The mixing desk and even the recording studio itself came to be understood as a musical instrument in that, in a similar way to a jazz musician's improvisation on a standard tune, the engineer is involved in the reconceptualization of a piece of music. (60, emphasis added) 76

In this sense, dub functions as the scraping away of rigidity in form that had previously limited the reinterpretive possibilities of the text. The shattering of the structural boundedness of recordings frees the music from its static position, opening it up to even greater potential for manipulation.

My intention is not to suggest that everyone in dub is doing this, nor does all dub eclipse its structural boundaries, but I do want to suggest there is a homology between the reverse engineering of dub from the original source tapes and what the Rasta's lyaric is doing with language. What Rasta itself does with religion is reject the rigidity of its form: in essence it dubs religion. Dub is not an explicitly Rasta practice, but there is a cultural similarity between the two which needs to be accounted for. Framed in this way, dub is manifested Rasta ideology, unconsciously staging the same kind of embodied critique of

Babylon's insistence on its own authenticity. In the same way that English assumes it is authentically what it is, and lyaric denies this claim by casting it as an imposition on a language that in actuality has positive vibrations if the oppressing palimpsests are scraped away, dub says the claims of any recording to be original, authentic, or definite can be subverted by scraping away the imposition of any compositional structure. Once those impositions are scraped away, the song releases an infinite number of possibilities.

That being said, ontologically speaking there is a difference. Rasta ideology has a predominant tendency to think in terms of origin, i.e. "Back to Africa". Whereas the reverse palimpsest of language seeks an origin or singularity, dub acts in quite the opposite way, recognizing the communicative limitations of language and seeking an 77 explosion of multiplicity beyond those confines. Dub, by its lack of teleology, doesn't seek to resolve itself: the openness of its form embraces flux rather than stabilization. It inverts the paradigm that the ideal trajectory is towards singularity and definiteness, as this desire to build monuments is the logic of dominant hegemonic discourse.

Conversely, in dub the less structured you are the better: by constantly being in flux the definition of what it is to be authoritative is questioned (what is finished?). In this sense we can view dub, and by extension aspects of Rasta text, as self-authenticating oppositional discourses that do not seek confirmation or validation from dominant structures. Just as Rasta reasoning is a critique on traditional forms of reasoning that doesn't seek normativity, what we get with dub is a document that breaks free from oppressive logic through its fluidity and resistance to form. It's comfortable with its temporal position, not seeking permanency as its trajectory.

In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you {King James Bible, John 14:2)

The emergence of dub is what I'd like to argue saves the Rasta text. Unlike other religious texts which operate under a traditional form of logic that seeks a trajectory towards an singular, definitive version, the integral role that reasoning has within 78

Rastafarian ideology makes seeking an authoritative, static text entirely antithetical.

Though Rasta is in many ways seeking a return to Zion, there is no singular approach.

Dub isn't just a conduit for the Rastafarian text, it embodies its ideology in a way that other musical forms cannot. Roots reggae became very popular in Jamaica during the mid-to-late sixties as many musicians around Kingston began picking up on the Rasta ideology and incorporating it into their material. In many ways this was instrumental in furthering the reach of the Rasta text and increasing its popularity. However, roots reggae's potency was very short lived, and its decline happened quite quickly. That is, through the seventies it became increasingly predictable: its message orthodox in a way that Rasta itself isn't, its form uniform in a way that Rasta isn't. Dub, meanwhile, carried the beacon because it's never predictable, its form always in flux. The key difference is a divergence between music that simply repeats the Rasta text as something set and music that enacts the message of Rasta. 79

CONCLUSION

Outcomes: Reggae International

In many ways this divergence between music that adheres to a formula and music that exists without form is an interesting place to conclude this study. On one hand the

formulaic quality of roots reggae was essential to expanding the Rasta text beyond

Jamaica's borders, but it also represented the death of the movement's counterculture position. Returning to a point I made earlier, the Rasta text's ability to be digestible and indigestible simultaneously (and thus occupy a unique position within the cultural field) was what allowed it to continually expand without collapsing into cliche. By reducing the text to a certain orthodoxy and formulaic repetition, roots reggae was able to achieve a certain palatability and predictability that was vital to the message crossing over into mainstream culture.

Though Bob Marley was not within the scope of my study, he needs to be addressed here, as his shadow looms largest over all that is commonly referred to as reggae. No figure is more singularly responsible for the spread of the Rasta message globally than Marley, and a large reason for this is the universality of his message and the accessibility of his form. The directness of his music, which in most ways is much closer to pop music than to the Nyahbinghi it strategically references, was precisely what made it so accessible and successful on a global scale. Though it was sonically different from other popular music, it still operated within an identifiable structure (verse-chorus-verse-chorus, etc.). 80

Certainly one can point to instances which suggest otherwise ("War", in particular comes to mind); however, stracturally there is very little that differentiates a Marley frack from either a modern Christian hymn or a secular pop song. Although Adorno's critique of popular music overstates the case, there is something to be said for his observation that popularity goes hand in hand with structural standardization and "pseudo- individualization" (Adomo, "On Popular Music"). That said, my intention here is not to seem pejorative towards Marley, or his global success. Rather, I'd like to suggest that part of the reason Marley's music caught on internationally was that it simultaneously carried the counterculture markings of the Rastafari (which made it "cool" for every pot- smoking kid in Britain and America) while also being in line with other dominant forms of popular music due to the consistency and singularity of its form. This raises some interesting questions. How large can a public become while still maintaining the rational- critical reasoning essential to its formation? Is it possible for a text to circulate on a massive scale without either simplifying the message or adapting normative forms?

Marley, and the subsequent spread of reggae, allowed the mass culture to loosely appropriate aspects of the movement (such as the Rasta colours, dreadlocks, etc.) as things that are authentically their own - even as they may be oblivious, or hostile towards, the deeper philosophical outlooks symbolized by such cultural forms - suggesting how easily outward sociocultural signifiers are severed from their underlying philosophical ideologies as they are appropriated within the domain of popular culture. Conversely, counterculture movements such as U.K. punk found inspiration in those same philosophical ideologies which the dominant public would be hostile towards, but in 81 doing so reduced the Rasta message to a singular oppositional discourse. Though this is a vital aspect of the text, in treating it as teleological they negated the logic system of self- authenticating reasoning. In both cases the Rasta message is reduced to a form which fails to encompass the complexity, multiplicity, and open-endedness that is central to the ideology. With the spread of roots reggae and the influence of Rasta ideology across international borders the question becomes whether or not it is possible to transpose the text outside of its original socio-economic and geographical context in order to increase the boundaries of its circulation without compromising its complexity. Is the text translatable and adaptable to publics external to its immediate context? If not, is the scale of a Rasta public inherently limited due to the fluidity of its textual form? 82

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DISCOGRAPHY

Abyssinians. "Declaration of Rights" Studio One SO 0057, 1976. Single.

Ace, Charlie & Scorcher. "Father and Dread Locks." Studio One CN-3490, 1975. Single.

Belafonte, Harry. "Jump In The Line." Jump Up Calypso. RCA Victor LSP-2388, 1961. LP.

Big Joe. "Version of Rights." Winro, 1976. Single.

Big Youth. "Green Bay Killing." Nichola Delita DSR6222A, 1978. Single.

Brentford Road All Stars. "Throw Me Com." Studio One Story. Soul Jazz SJR LP 068, 2002. LP.

Burning Spear. "Creation." Burning Spear. Studio One SOL 0150, 1973. LP.

Burning Spear. "Door Peep Shall Not Enter." Burning Spear. Studio One SOL 0150, 1973. LP.

Folkes Brothers, The., Count Ossie Afro-Combo. "Oh Carolina b/w I Met A Man." Blue Beat BB 30. 1959. Single.

Gibbs, Clifton & The Selected Few, The New Establishment. "Fire and Brimstone b/w Fire Version." Bongo Man B.M. 00032, 1972. Single.

Haggard, Merle. "I Threw Away The Rose." Branded Man. Capitol Records T 2789, 1967. LP.

Jackson, Willis. "Later for Gator." Appolo 806, 1951. Single.

Jah Lloyd. "Green Bay Incident." TEEM 5761, 1978, Single.

Jarrett, Wayne. "Satta Dread." Micron Music Limited BB 01, 1975. Single.

Jennings, Waylon. "You're Gonna Wonder About Me." Heartaches by the Number and other Country Favourites. Pickwick CAS-2556, 1972. LP.

King Tubby. "No Partial Dub." Rastafari Dub (1974-1979). Clocktower CTLP-185, 2004. LP.

Lord Flea & His Calypsonians. "Naughty Little Flea." Swingin' Calypsos. Capitol Records T842, 1957. LP 85

Marley, Bob & The Wailers. "We and Dem." Uprising. Tuff Gong / Island ILPS 9596, 1980. LP.

Melodians, The. "Rivers of Babylon." Summit / Trojan SUM-6508, 1970. Single.

Michael, Ras & The Sons of Negus. "Rastaman Chant." Nyahbinghi. Starapple STAR LP 002, 1974. LP.

Ossie, Count & The Mystic Revelation of Rastafari. "Four Hundred Years." Grounation. Ashanti LP NTI301, 1973. LP.

Paragons, The. "On The Beach." Treasure Isle TILP 100, 1967. Single.

Prince Jazzbo. "Creation Skank." Bongo Man B.M. 00043, 1973. Single.

Prince Student. "Rivers of Babylon." Pressure Beat, 1970. Single.

Simone, Nina. "Sinnerman." Pastel Blues. Phillips PHM 200-187, 1965. LP.

Tosh, Peter. "Downpressor Man." Equal Rights. Intel Diplo PC 34670, 1977. LP.

Tosh, Peter, U Roy. "(Earth's) Rightful Ruler." Black Dignity (Early Works of the Stepping Razor). Trojan TJACD 241, 2005. CD.

U Roy. Dread In A Babylon. TR International TR 73457, 1975. LP

Various Artists. Version Dread: 18 Dub Hits From Studio One. Heartbeat Records 11661-7719-1,2006. LP.