... random riddim, Powa to the people ...

... walked into a Big Smoke burger joint the other day, having seen their sign nestled along the King Street stroll ... there's just something about the association of grilling and smoke that sells a Wimpy ... while ordering my avocado-gorgonzola topped burger, a lunching cabbie asked me to suggest one track for a random playlist in his ride (I must have that kind of face) ... so, "that's a cool idea" said I, before proffering the hottest hoodoo on youtube these days ... "Nobody Canna Cross It" , via DJ Powa ...

... DJ Powa's resourceful use of free time, turning an earnest news-report on rural flooding into a hot-pop media-byte, promptly rewarded with its own dance, is some clever-ass trickery ... but beyond that, he's created a flashpoint piece of cultural art possibly inspired by a hip-hop model which, when Jamaicanized, becomes its own stylee, strong enough to bend two branches of digi-driven modern music into a fusion ... explaining this to a stranger might seem a little ( ... that word again) random, but sheer randomness is a big part of this cross-over ...

... a self-identified Christian, Powa slays all secular competition with a dexterity that is driven by the riddim-of-life rather than any particular agenda ... the inherent musicality of Jamaican voice and expression is finely nuanced, tonal interpretations are numerous and his Fruity Loops mix of atmospheric beats complement this perfectly, serving up a piece of audio-candy ...

... the other star in this scenario is Clifton Brown ... a Jamaican everyman in the Chauncey Gardner sense, who unknowingly adds philosophical high-ground to the actual high ground he touts in the video ... being interviewed on television is enough to trigger a default twang in his natural delivery, setting up the humorous inspiration for the video, while his overwrought sincerity (try to say that Cliff) attests to the reality of the circumstance ... the truth of the matter is, this community needs a municipal solution to the very real problem of being swept away into St. Thomas Pond ... in a fascinating turn of events "Cliff-Twong" Brown is now a televisual personality and an oft-quoted spokesperson ...

... you might even say Jamaicans have a new cause celebre ... a kind of patriotic filip for a national identity drawn by distractions yet still in touch with the common strands of human need and nature as they exist for everyone, even in this cyber-age ... some get embarassed by honesty of spirit when it is exposed unselfconsciously and giggle hyperactively in its presence, as evidenced by some subsequent mainstream media attention, but the rest of us giggle 'cos we get it ... and it continues to go viral ...

... this sort of phenomenon not only heralds a potential shift in the sound-of-the-day but also adds to the ultra-dynamic street lexicon ... woe betide he or she who "canna cross it" ... jackpot too for Powa on other levels, as he gets to cross it, be it with the Cross of Jesus or Bounty Killer's sampled trademark yelp, "Cross!" ... don't tell me it's just a video 'cos, all over the world we jus' a siddung 'pon di replay button ... smiling ...

... my new cabbie friend works the Metro Toronto area, he took to the idea immediately and is presumably crossin' it right now, spreading Yallahs river lore all over the 416 ... while I head for Lake Muskoka ("... we lock away in the wilderness!") to show the younger ones how a kayak can "monidge the waughter" ...

... Canucks go burnin' and lootin' ...

... as the joke goes, there was this lighthearted chit-chat on the historic Arsenio Hall show some decades past ... the unforgettable Jamaican DJ Shabba Ranks responds to the host's hockey lead-in by stating, "in Jamaica we don't play hockey, we (h)eat hockey" ... pronunciation being everything, ackee becomes "hockey" and the punchline is complete ...

... well, there was a high-stakes hockey clash last Wednesday and although I was in downtown Toronto for this fateful final game of the NHL season, there were clear sightlines all the way across the prairies, over the snowy mountains and on to the sea ... the coveted Stanley Cup, Holy Grail of the sport, was to be awarded in Vancouver ... perhaps even to Vancouver ...

... having lived in B.C. for many years, the recently concluded playoffs and Stanley Cup run were too "close to home" for me to be unaffected by the hype, in spite of the fact that a hard, slippery puck (oh, for want of a single letter) is essentially foreign to my soul ... as a sporting spectacle, the contest between the American based team from Boston and the Vancouver Canucks was a gripping, bi-coastal, international affair warranting the spotlight it commanded ... both teams had more than the requisite need to triumph, having seen others win for forty years, but one franchise was always going to have to wait for another day ...

... gravitating instinctively to the roundness of a football (soccer) for my sporting kicks, the emotional stakes were less than if I had grown up on skates, but enough to get me to pause face-to-face with a sporty mannequin in the Eaton Centre shortly before the first-period face-off ... he told me all of Canada had co-opted Vancouver's team as flag bearers for this moment in time ... as I mused with the steely-faced "fannequin" in the rolled up sleeves behind the incognito eyewear, I felt myself willing Vancouver to win ... for the sake of a city which has been to this juncture before, with precedent setting consequences ...

... while I wasn't there, images I've seen of riotous fan behaviour, following the decisive Boston victory, can be considered anachronistic, despite the 1994 destruction following a similar last-hurdle disappointment ... this because Van-sterdam has too many positive aspects and accolades to be occluded by comparatively isolated mischief ... repeatedly hailed as one of the world's premier cities and flush with recent Olympic exposure, Van-city can lay claim to having transformed into metropolitan Van-opolis, if not quite the realm of any team-sport elite ...

... increasingly, it seems to be accepted that civic greatness is a function not only of glittering achievements, but also how a city transitions through adversity and challenge ... post-mortems will reveal more about the social complexities of contemporary Canada and value systems bred into future generations, than they will reveal about the contest itself ... my 100% Canuck bredrin-by-the-wall-in-da-mall looks serious, but the marauding feature-creatures on Georgia Street, laughing and dancing, petulantly taunting and camera whoring, were enacting modern rituals ... martyrdom for the uncaring cause of anarchy ...

... it's unclear how some of these guys 'n' gals benefit ... y'see, even if you can successfully jack some Louis Vuitton swag from a shattered storefront, move it all online at irresistable prices for beer-money or next-year season-tickets, who y'gonna tell it to? ... moreso, how y'gonna deny that's you on youtube and facebook with that souvenir tuxedo ecstatically embraced in your grasp? ...

... this Red Bull fed flare-up was no sneak-up ... on the bright side, the authorities gain the sort of experience that should make the next imbroglio less destructive, punishment awaits those who will be identified and those who have oafishly self-identified via digital media ... and then there is the redemptive outpouring of public consciousness regarding anti-social foolishness ...

... "the 'couve" now stands to gain, having added a blemish against which to measure its own greatness ... in big-city terms this is called maturity, which ironically could prove to be the missing intangible when the Canucks do win at a future destiny ...

... (my own) Private Canada ...

... a funny thing happened to Canada during my time away, when I returned the whole place was blue ... which isn't unthinkable considering this is a land that can conjure up the ol' igloo imagery ... please don't tell me you haven't heard the urban-myth/joke-tenet which holds that Canadians are all bilingual ice-dwellers ... ice, like water, being blue ... kinda ... but I digress ...

... having "fast-forwarded" to a time when political conservatism doesn't necessarily mean hardening of the arteries and Liberalism laments it's loss of lustre, the blue I'm observing is a sang-froid PC blue ... worthy of comment, not only because 1993 was the last time Canada had a Conservative majority government, but because, in recent years, inexorable political blue-ing has been tempered by a liberal touch of rouge ...

... embedded in the "blueprint" and original nomenclature of this regrouped party is the instinctively seductive oxymoron Progressive Conservative ... a term which reaches for a middling territory that if we're all honest we'd like to think we can inhabit ... the "progressive" prefix psychologically loosens the reins of conservatism and sets up a rocking abbreviation - catchy, multi-purpose initials ... PC! ...

... but just as easily, as seen south of the border, the script can flip ...

... allow me to represent for the word "liberal" - from the Latin root "liberalis"(another freedom) which somehow acquired a sheen of shame when right-wing pop culture set the context ...

... consider too the mixed (up) shadings within the term Politically Correct - to be correct is good, yeah? ... yet, the words flatter to deceive, proving far too subjective to deliver either correctness or even the promised connotation ...

... in Pan-Canadian terms, there is still per-capita nostalgia for Trudeau style liberalism despite the slipped Grit grip on parliamentary control ... but with tories twiddling the pitch-control knob in virtually every postal-code and owning up to their lack of a rockstar Prince Charming leader, there's probable cause to expect Canada to strut some staid stability for years ... until the pendulum corrects ... meantime, Brigette DePape has decided, braveheart pagegirl princesses can be rockstars too ...

... for more of my favorite things about Canada, see another urban-myth/joke-tenet which casts us as polite pedestrian crossing users, members of a Peace Corps who have Police Constables instead of Po-Po ... a place where the Pacific Coast (and everything east) is just that, Pa-cific, as in peaceful ... and "up there in the beaver-belt" your playboy clubs are littered with pussy-cats eh? ...

... the thing is, it's all true, Canadian flava is served on ice, pretty cool, but we do hold proficiency certificates in some regular "found-all-over-the-world" type stuff as well ...

... private citizens get prostate cancer "up here" too ... Lotto and Petro-Canada make a lotta money! ... pre-natal and palliative care is just about free, but, too many of those who can find jobs punch cards or sort paper-clips to eke-a-living (beware, oblique reggae reference) ...

... the previous century loomed Canada's proto-cultural cloth into is its own kind of blended fabric and we've become our very own parent company, a feat which happened on the Liberal watch, in the interest of keepin' it real ... Prince Charles gets to keep his Kingdom and Privy Counsellors who once lorded, get new peers ... a genteel momentum spins Canada away from empire, but with enough rotation to run a young realm and bring balance to old allegiances ...

... the trick now is to reconcile the concoction of red and blue essences that gives Canada soul, and to season the stew with some-o'-dat Latin liberalis, as provided by Canadians of exotic origin ("exotic" - used the literal way, not any PC one) ... the Maple Leaf flag may only have red on it, but the white spaces, if taken for snow and ice, make frigid blue inescapable and implicit...

... conservative Canada can afford to allow itself to lead, but "Progressive" must preface PC regardless of what PC stands for ... ... except for the, um ... prostate cancer ...

... beneath "The Skin" ...

... they have fangs, suck blood, creepy-crawl or fly by night,

dress in cloaks, sleep by day, shy from crucifixes on sight,

they fascinate us and seem to be everywhere of late,

books... TV... on Halloween they may even appear at your gate ...

... folkloric characters are found in all world cultures and there's a wide variety to choose from in Caribbean societies populated by slave descendants who have commingled African traditional beliefs with those of European origin, resulting in some pretty gruesome geo-specific ghouls ... known collectively in the region as jumbies or duppies ...

... with such a rich heritage of mythical demons it's somewhat surprising that there isn't more overt usage of demonology in modern Caribbean artforms ... such folklore is largely consigned to oral tradition of countryfolk, archives of heritage traditions, underfunded cultural festivals and nostalgic mention ...

... enter one intrepid husband and wife filmmaking team lending their initials to HAMA productions of Antigua ... HAMA developed a feature-film script centred around the drama that ensues when the dormant malevolence of a Soucouyant is aroused, terrorizing residents of the post-colonial tropical isle ... the small but growing local film industry benefits from those of us with experience in the filmworld at large, and on this fourth HAMA effort, it was a rewarding experience to have assisted in the preparation of the two leading players ...

... yours truly, as the sleazy Detective Morgan, along with Jamaica's eminent Carl Bradshaw (The Harder They Come, The Lunatic, Third World Cop) and Britain's Jeff Stewart (The Bill, Dr. Who) as an obeah man and opportunistic yachtie respectively, add weight to a cast of colorful local performers, many gracing the screen for the first time ...

... the result is an entertaining supernatural thriller-with-a-difference entitled The Skin, a reference to the specific habits of the (female evil-entity) Soucouyant, known by variable but similar pronunciations and other names throughout the diasporic carry-beyond (Caribbean) ...

... just as it takes a community to raise a child, so too the processs of making a film, particularly in places where the infrastructure is embryonic ... The Skin benefits from skills brought by Howard University's Professor S. Torriano Berry who held the camera and augmented the crew with his film students eager to combine an island getaway with an on-set practicum ...

... quid pro quo deals, deferred payments and "favoured nations" arrangements to use scenic locations, combine to lift this one off the page ... actual filming was intense but not without its lighter moments to mitigate early mornings and late nights ...

... well received at an incubatory screening for the Caribbean Tales film cognoscenti in Barbados this spring, The Skin was to premiere at last month's Reggae Film Festival in Jamaica but organizational cross-wiring, of the sort that too often undercuts effort in this region, meant that the grand unveiling took place last week in front of an appreciative home crowd in Antigua ...

... things have a way of working out as they properly should - part of the pervasive mysticism that governs life in the Caribbean ...

... heartbreak on di gully bank ...

... if the rapturous triple-play I heard on the radio in Kingston last week is anything to go by, you are going to hear this choon all summer long, so ... nuh watch no face, yuzimi! ...

... riding high for a couple years, Mavado (a.k.a. the Gully God) from the quaintly named but periodically volatile community of Cassava Piece, has been pulling away at the top of the pack ... this is partly natural transition as leaders like Buju Banton deal with career complications and partly due to bizarre abdications like that of Vybz Kartel, whose penchant for skin-bleaching and aesthetic self-alteration alienates fans in droves and sets back his high-profile rivalry with Mavado ... at the same time Mavado, after a stream of hardcore hits, seems to be embracing a transformation from gangsta to golden-boy, a road travelled by several before him ... "Delilah" takes it to the nex' level with a melodic hook and lyrics on a universal theme ...

... there was a time not long ago when speaky-spokey announcers eschewed home-grown music in favour of foreign fare, but today, while you can still hear a wide variety of international sounds on Jamaican radio, there is little doubt that Patwa (the dominant lingua franca) with its attendant riddim, rules the airwaves ...

... Jamaican music, I suggest, is best appreciated as a mercurial continuum rather than a loose collection of (so called) "classic eras" ... some folk savor the Ska or rub-up to the Rock Steady, others revere one-drop Roots, Rock, Reggae and the yout' dem dig the Dancehall ... as such, there's a style for everyone in the musicality of this island, even if you don't regard anything beyond the Mento era or the one singer you know of is named Marley ...

JAMAICAN GLOSSARY

"choon" - tune, song

"nuh watch no face" - don't be misled by naysayers

"yuzimi" - you see me ... y'understand

"speaky-spokey" - describing attempts at proper pronunciation

Patwa" - Patois, Jamaican English