A Bigga Ford.

By now you might have heard of the delightful Tessanne Chin. She's that Jamaican songstress and media-darling who recently swept all before her on the way to triumph on "The Voice" USA. Charming, centred, adroit and demure, our Tess rode da riddims of her native wordsong into the hearts and souls of millions.

Well, for every Tessanne, it seems there's an anti-Tessanne.

In a turn of events, closely resembling a Maury Povich premise, Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has become the latest flashpoint Jamaican dialectician. Boombastic epithets, viral memes and all.

A nuh Missis Chin likkle girl dis ... it's the bumboclaat antithesis.

Loyal bro, Doug, stumps for Rob's political survival just like sis Tami pulls for Tessi's rising star. Comparisons end there. Y'see, Tessanne is a goodaz gyal, while our Mayor makes uncool copy and has running beef wit' da local sheriff - Police Chief Bill Blair.

"Babylon newspaper seh so, I and I seh so, so what more the people want to reveal?," mused the Rasta prophet. Now, if everyone's commenting on the same thing, it's that much harder to be original.
Enter those easy-to-reach cultural signifiers for Jamaica, add a dash of reticence to appear culturally adrift - cue tricolour Marley memes.

As Rob rhymes with Bob - bobsled down this linguistic luge with me. Paraphrasing Rastafari dread style and pattern is its own cottage industry. Broadsheets, blogs and twitter parody accounts, like @MayorRobMarley, leap enthusiastically at typical Marley-brand imagery to feed Toronto City Hall's Tuff Gong-show.

 

 

"Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise." (Proverbs 20:1).

 

Rob Ford's synapses, inebriated and along for the ride, default to bad words in the face of Bacchanal. Not unusual by itself, until incongruity rears its ugly head in a too-cute performance of base guff, communicating on more levels than he likely understands.

And the hits just keep on coming. Wheel up selecta!

  

 Jamaican language is a dynamic mix-up-mix-up of English and Patwa. Perpetually evolving. It is confident and coolly captivating in cadence. Together with its kin, Reggae, we have a contagious combo. Only the uptight are genuinely immune, but the case of  Mr. Mayor shows signs of advanced Yardie-mylitis.

 

Despite being as good a bloodclaat Ja-fake-an mimic as rassclaat Snoop Lion, Natty Rob is no Mystic Man like Peter Tosh, who once scandalized polite society by releasing a song entitled ... yes, "Oh Bumboclaat!"

 

 

My Tessanne Chin references are admittedly a tad gratuitous, but the piece was desperately seeking beautification, y'nahmean?

 

In realworld Jamaica, politicians often flex like rockstars, and cops too. I crack up - no pun intended - visualizing the unseemly outcome if this played out on the public scene there. Rob Ford clashing with a top cop and cussing him all kine a claat! 

 

If, after a storied career, he wasn't approaching retirement I'd have just the match-up. Robamuffin vs. Legendary Supercop (and coincidental namesake), Cornwall "Bigga" Ford. Then again, they're both facing impending retirement, so why not?

 

#Readytorumble meets #Mannersanddiscipline Uptown.

Ringside sell off.

  

... Gladwell and I ...

... the story's been told so often I take it as truth, part of my personal mythology, repetetive support for one of my earliest memories ... indeed, I can see the scenario now without closing my eyes ... being led through the front entrance of the public library on Tom Redcam Drive in Kingston, Jamaica, not long after my fifth birthday, by a purposeful thirty-something mother, isn't the sort of life-experience you'd expect to be emblazoned on the brain, but that day caught us on a determined mission ...

... before I had a passport, or a driver's license to guarantee my adult freedoms, I first had to get a library card, a ticket to a world of possibility and a gateway to an unending avenue of education and reading for pleasure ... for years all was so, until bookishness yielded sway to relatively sexy tele-news and glossy periodicals ...

... my book-reading love affair eventually took a hiatus but the die was cast, I was hooked on words ... the likes of War And Peace remain unfinished but National Geographic, The Economist and TIME subscriptions were faithfully renewed ... dailies were devoured, specialty-mags mined for target info, while Mad honed sarcasm and satire ... Shakespeare, Chaucer, Steinbeck and Miller, sounding like a law firm, were covered academically but my own reading stream was fed by populist tributaries ...

... eventually the book bug bit back, coming full-circle, and again Mama featured in da mix ... on a recent visit she hit me with the question, "Have you read any of Malcolm Gladwell's books?"...

... this, it turned out, was less of a query than a recommendation, to which I wasn't unreceptive, having been exposed to the author via publishing blitzes illuminating his bestseller celebrity, and, I had previously taken note of his pre-eminent New Yorker byline ... plus, knowing what he looked like, I felt a quasi-cosmic kinship not entirely unrelated to politics of hair and heritage ...















... so, God bless 'er, Mom marches me to the nearest bookstore in a manner reminiscent of our library visit in an earlier age ... by the time we exit she has gifted me The Tipping Point, Blink and the fascinating Outliers, Gladwellian pop-philosophy tomes which become my proper introduction to this modern thinker who, like me, has a preternatural penchant for verbiage, and proto-filial connections to Jamaica, Britain and Canada ...

... at this point she sweetens the pot with archival information dating from beyond her own childhood into the days of her father, my grandfather, the late Rhamos Sutherland Taylor ...

... "Teacher Taylor," as he was respectfully known, was a formidable man by nature ... an educator, and one of a legion of unsung nation-builders who, by discipline, tenacity and sense of self, embodied the fortitude of Jamaican identity leading up to and beyond 1962's independence from British colonial rule ...

... a man of average height ... "Saddie"(derived from Sutherland) to his inner-circle, possessed a crisp countenance, garrulous laugh and a passion for tall glasses of ice-water and sweet mangoes ... because of him I learned to peel an orange the skillful way, in one unbroken, coiled peel ... he had quite the insatiable predilection for citrus and fetching fruit was deemed to be one of my primary duties as eldest grandchild ...

... but, more pertinent to this anecdote than his Ortanique habit, is the fact that one of his closest friends and associates was a man I know only by the surname Nation ... fast friends since their days as batchmates at Mico College, Taylor and Nation were cut from similar country-cloth ... Mico, today a University, is a respected teacher-training facility established in 1836, roughly coinciding with the official end of African enslavement in Jamaica ... it survives as the oldest institution of its type in the Western Hemisphere ... nuff tradition, in other words ...














... such tradition is layered with inter-generational markers ... Taylor's pride, my mother Ivy, is one of the first daughters of an Old Miconian to have actually taught there too, a significant gender breakthrough at the time ... one of Nation's twin daughters, Joyce, Malcolm Gladwell's mother, is herself an insightful author, a key strand of her famous son's poly-cultural chromosomal psychology, and his own understanding of it ...

... like their fathers before them, these "girls" are contemporaries from adjacent rural towns ...

... they continue to parlay paternal impetus into lifelong contributions to community and offspring, with strong faith being a common, sustaining thread ... in fact, the other Nation twin, actually named Faith, in her capacity as board member of the Bible Society of The West Indies, is at least partially responsible for a Jamaican patois, audio re-enactment of popular Bible stories falling into my hands ...

... appropriately titled "A Who Run Tings?" in the vernacular, complete with reggae instrumental background music, this work came to me via Miss Ivy's social network ... on listening, it's not difficult to imagine looks of satisfied ('Saddie-sfied?') mirth on the faces of Taylor and Nation, runnin' tings in repose from inside the Pearly Gates ...

... as they gaze upon the vibrant extensions of their bloodlines ...

... Attack The Block, aliens and allegory ...

... ok fam, so it's jus' a movie right, 'cept it's more' than tha', innit ... it's bere laffs for one fing, and it chucks right off th' screen at u, an' pawns u by the bollocks ... not just y' biggie smalls bruv, but them bollocks in y' brain as well ... f'real gangsta! ... an' you done know seh it's not jus' di man dem pon the ends got bollocks, the girls dem too, yeh ... trus' me! ...

... Red, Gold and Grey, the colorz of a new Rainbow Country ... don't fear if you're allergic to spoilers, the call whether to continue reading is entirely up to you, but I'm more likely to be looking at a bigger picture than specific plot-points in this fun indie flick ... Attack The Block is set in the same Britain that recently ruptured close to social seams that have been straining for some time ... when they call it "Blighty" you can picture the traditional imagery, 'cept now a swathe of pop-youth-culture is inflected with reggae-isms and hip-hop ... 

... aliens and allegory, right and wrong, cops and robbers, boys and girls, weed and wisdom, not to mention guns and guts ... this movie finds a balance between modest (in focus and means) and boasty (in characters and thematic riches) ...

... trash an' ready for the Leicester Square red carpet, the young cast of this entertaining little feature presents a reflection of an emerging generation of tenancy in UK inner-cities ... young, gifted and bored ... poly-racial little-big-men slinging yard slangs and attitudinal overtones of cockney-cool and bluster ...

... the allegorical story survives precocious characters, even daring to feature a leader named Moses, humanizing the very people historian David Starkey pointed to before invoking lurking memories of Enoch Powell's 1968 "rivers of blood" speech ... his statements read like cliche formula, race equals riots, but the big picture is more instructive, beginning with the historical veracity of expansion into lands considered claimable ... occupants therein deemed inferior and taught, indeed bred, behaviors of subservience, in deference to a lust for sweet lucre ...

... zzzzzp (the sound of scrolling through intervening years) ... to a world where Bolt and Becks are boss, Mavado matters more than Mountbatten and Yellowman is still known in some dances as King ... a one-time vortex of empire we know as Jamaica continues to resonate that very energy, only now it plays out in the wider world precisely because of the complicated psychologies associated with shedding shackles of any kind ... the pushback of life's pendulum is the riddim of Creation ...

... it doesn't escape my notice that Starkey and Bob Marley were born early in the same year ... I compare how relevant their respective legacies are to the youth on the block, who, like punks generations ago, get called-out publicly by people who just don't get it ... is like dey dealin' wit' aliens, blood ...

... and still, natural as change is, there's always friction at the intersection of past and present, with lessons to be learned and adjustments to be made by all concerned, assuring social advancement, even as variables continue to require adaptation ...

... writer/director Joe Cornish sends for extra-terrestrials in Attack The Block as foils for our heroes, effective dramatic counterweight, the blackest of avenging intruders ... ironically, their deep darkness actually illuminates common-ground above the socially stratified post-colonial Queendom ...

... British expediency, Tudor through Victorian, before and after, has woven itself into social DNA far beyond the ports of Bristol or Liverpool, and back ... that the hybrid language of the street should bristle is understandable, but the true "tell" is in the tone of the reaction it elicits ... Mr. Starkey's freestyle, on-air apoplexy over "Jamaican patois" was fed by troubling imagery of wanton looting, but the selective tack and torque of his commentary betrays fear and revulsion, two cornerstones of racist reaction, so often negative in intent and impact ...

... the economical, character-driven storytelling of Attack The Block ecourages viewers to calibrate private sensitivity to larger issues via developments that find truth in the personalities of the protagonists and their personal choices ... but, lest you get the impression it's a dry celluloid lecture, and use that as reason to delay, I assure you, this rollick's a real riot ...

... oops, I mean ...  it's a lark innit, bashment yeh?! ... the movie's boom! ... believe! ...

... Barack dip dem in di healin' stream ...

hear parable people ... mi tun on TV dis mornin',

hol' a coffee an' a food and go fi sweep out di house ...

when mi look fi di broom me si seh a two broom in deh,

one new-bran' stiff broom, an' a old mash-down soft one ...

I tek up the two a dem an instantly memba wha' granny seh,

how "new broom sweep clean" an', "old broom know corner"...

same time, man an' man come pon TV a big-up Obama,

an' a labba-labba how Uncle Sam a gwaan,

when BADAM! ... it lick me ... clear as day ...

certain sittn suppose' to brush wit' new broom,

the odda res' have to caress with the sof' one ... den,

mi mind jump to Joshua, wid di famous Rod-of-Correction ... 

likkle mos' mi apoplexy to vision Prezi a brandish two broom,

mi seh! ... laugh an' kiki keep up inna livin' room a mornin' time!

"sweep dem Barack sweep dem, sweep dem in di healin' stream"

- JAMAICAN GLOSSARY -

"labba-labba"- chatter, "likkle most"- almost, nearly,

"kiki"- laughter, "lick"- hit,

"Dip Dem in di Healing Stream"- popular Jamaican Folk song

... i-slam, you-slam, livin' on almshouse lane ...

... there's nothing like the threat of a little koran or bible burning to prompt waves of indignation and reflexive repercussion ...

... the post 9/11 world is crying out for a new kind of detente ...

... growing up Jamaican you're not often exposed to that sort of secular vitriol nor are you given any divine answers to life's questions, but you are supposed to become familiar with supernatural mysticisms ... geographically blessed, the island was fashioned out of disparate strands by that very kind of energy ...

... looked at another way, I come from this vibrant land in a region which boasts country-comforts and urban challenges both plentiful and real ... they combine to make it a great place to practice faith ...with more churches per square mile than anywhere else in Christendom (Guinness Book of World Records), the people are into faith ... if the colonially-imported fundamentals of high and low Christianities don't entirely engage, then check the knowledge of faith-systems anchored in the enduring African nature of the popular zeitgeist ...

... this is an age of resurgent tribalism ... I choose my images thoughtfully for this post, knowing there are those who will constipate at the sight of a dreadlocked last supper or sigh at the repeated use of Bob Marley's image as a banner ... instead of a currently active representative ... or anything else for that matter ... ... well, while Marley is still the benchmark standard, there was a prior time when non-dreadlocked Prince Buster invoked Allah and became Jamaica's scandal ... and all the rage ...

... public focus on Prince Buster's Islamic involvement has faded in time and the currently-informed will now recognize Sheik Abdullah al-Faisal, deported recently to Jamaica from England via Africa, as the scandal du jour ... and the outrage ... once again giving Jamaica a home-grown link to the apparently insoluble impasse between Christians and Muslims ... both camps appear to insist on moral and territorial ascendancy ...

... inter-faith tension is nothing new ... what could be new is a neo-Rasta application to the friction based on the intrinsic one love/one heart tenet ... simplistic as it sounds ... for ultimately this must be the bottom line ... "a man is just a man" as Garnet Silk sang ... freedom of faith is an inalienable right but not if one belief occludes the liberty of another perspective ... then it becomes tyranny ... no faith has a veto on this ...

... most of us in the human family have been exposed by now to the top messengers and palliative philosophies of Rastafari, the pre-eminent Ethiocentric Jamaican belief-system ... and have had a taste of that rhythm ... or riddim ... in spite of the anomalous fact that the spearheading ambassadors of Roots Rock Reggae, Bob Marley and The Wailers, never actually got to Rock The Casbah like that timeless Clash refrain, in an Islamic country ...

... nonetheless, the vibe permeates ... in Canada I had the pleasure of reasoning with random Iranians across a language barrier during one of GB's memorable Bob Marley birthday bashes at Vancouver's Graceland niteclub back-in-the-day, grooving to half-Muslim, half-Christian Ivorian singer Alpha Blondy and some stunning Reggae-Rai fusion from North Africa ... 'mongst plenty Jamaican raggamuffin dancehall ...

... I understand ... or overstand, that arabs and muslims can identify with themes found in Rasta-inspired Jamaican music ... Algiers, Lagos, Paris, London, Chicago, Toronto, Montreal and New York are fertile ground for cultural interface when the theme is togetherness ... music as healer ...

... Jamaica's metaphysical dimension engenders psychological pride in the face of often jarring mismanagement and rampantly destructive social habits, but its dynamism is also its strength ... witness the creative outlook and humor of the people ... and the patwa (patois), that ever-more-phing language of choice ...

... any guy burn dis ya bible? ... brimstone an' more fyah!!

... one word that has taken on alternate meaning after treatment from Jamaica's relentless etymology machine is "almshouse" (i.e. poorhouse ... literally an address where alms are collected for the poor) ... in the Jamaican context its original meaning, though not lost, has given way to popular meanings ... foolishness, fuckery, combativeness, cussedness ... wickedness an' badmind ...

... though this might sound like hot air to those inclined to dismiss, it's meant as an elementary discourse on an entangled situation ... so just imagine, as Bob did ... if Imam and everyman, and woman ... and I man ... could be Irie man ...

... leave out the almshouse ... simple key open complex lock ...