Buju Banton's Gay Inquisition

Sitting here wondering whether to have another cup of this wonderful brew i brought back from Costa Rica. Just the packaging alone is a joy to behold, and the coffee itself is decidedly superior.

Yes, we do have the most expensive coffee in the world in Jamaica but it's a tad too delicate for me, and considering that you have to use twice as much to get a decent tasting cup, its even more expensive than you think. Also i do wish Jamaican companies would invest more in package design; the Costa Ricans could really teach us a thing or two there. I mean the burlap bag is a cute idea but when you remove the tinfoil pouch from the little jute sack there is nothing to identify what brand of coffee you're drinking and it's very hard to keep track of changes in taste, quality and so on unless you happen to scrawl the name of the coffee on the blank tinfoil.






See what i mean? Two different Jamaican companies, Wallenford and Coffee Traders, both using jute bags but when you discard the bag there's no way to distinguish one tinfoil pouch from the other! The Costa Ricans on the other hand print the tinfoil pouch itself with a super attractive, brightly coloured depiction of the landscape the coffee was grown in. There were so many different varieties available at the airport, all in brightly coloured packages. Fortunately there were also coffee salespersons available to advise. Now there's a country that takes its coffee seriously.

Ok, i know this is a bit of a leap, but trust me I won't let you fall. One of the things that caught our attention here in the last week or two was what you might call Buju's Gay Inquisition in San Francisco. The so-called meeting produced the following photograph which was widely distributed and reproduced showing a serious-faced Buju surrounded by a group of gloating individuals who one presumes are gay rights activists.



Buju Bows, screamed headlines in Jamaica, "bow" being the local term for the subjection of a person to humiliating defeat at the hands of someone far more powerful. A comprehensive account of the meeting was carried in The Star.

The Jamaica Observer carried the responses of the local gay rights organization J-FLAG which actually disagreed with some aspects of the strategy employed by the group in San Francisco. J-FLAG's position is that no "tangible results" had ensued from the meeting nor were likely to.


"The Jamaican society has not necessarily increased its tolerance towards homosexuals over the last five years according to J-FLAG," (says the Observer article). I beg to disagree. Change is a process, a time-consuming process that can neither be bullied or "bowed" into existence. This was vigorously discussed in the comments section of my recent post Eyeless in Gaza (Gully). Sometimes the comments section is almost better than the post itself, check it out.

Source: www.jamaicaobserver.com

I marvel at the naivete of the gay activists who demanded at the meeting that Buju "hold a pro-gay town hall meeting and sing pro-gay lyrics". Yeah right, the Jamaican public is going to listen and learn from a castrated Buju when he tells them he has recanted and they should all follow suit by becoming 'pro-gay'--whatever that means.

They need to listen to Mutabaruka for the best expression of the Jamaican view on the matter (on his radio programme Cutting Edge). Not only is it a thorough and lucid exposition of local views on the subject he actually recieved a call from Buju Banton in California during the programme to discuss the latter's much-hyped meeting with gay groups in San Francisco (about 15 minutes into the recording). Incidentally I don't agree that Buju is being hounded only for his early 90s song Boom Bye Bye that was written in response to a widely reported man/boy rape case in Jamaica. It has been alleged that in 2004 he was part of a group of who brutally beat six men believed to be homosexuals at a house near Buju's recording studio.

Muta's discussion of the San Francisco meeting neglected to take into account the above incident and more recent pronouncements from Buju on the subject of homosexuality. Still, if you listen to the audio provided below you'll hear Muta criticize DJs who threaten gays with violence during their stage performances (towards the end of the recording) and he has often said that he wished DJs would speak out as vehemently against the various forms of violence and criminality plaguing society as they do against the free expression of a person's sexuality. His is a considerably more nuanced view of homosexuals, homosexuality and homophobia in Jamaica than the campaign of foreign gay rights groups would have you believe; And one that is representative of quite a few prople here. The campaign's weakness lies in not having either an informed strategy or grasp of the local ground and mindset. So like Napoleon Bonaparte in Haiti approximately two hundred years ago, they may win the battle of the moment but they will lose the war. Is this what they want?

Here is the excerpt from Mutabaruka's Cutting Edge. You will need to know some Patwa in order to understand the audio fully.

Buju Meets with Gays - Mutabaruka

A few of my favourites...

In lieu of having anything amusing, meaningful or useful to say at the moment I'm going to present a selection of videos, blogs and articles i find totally worth recommending.

First, on the tail of my last post did you know that there is soon going to be a movie version of Bashment Granny? Click here for the Bashment Granny movie trailer which certainly looks promising. The film boasts good production values which bodes well for what might soon become an important new chapter in Jamaican film-making.

And the region is beginning to produce world-class animated shorts as well. Check out this absolutely charming flick about rivalry between street vendors of different nationalities in the republic of Trinidad and Tobago. The innovative cartoon focuses on the jostling between an African sno cone vendor and an Indian 'doubles' man. Featuring hilarious dialogue and a creative plot, the two resort to karate moves to settle their argument. The film won Animae Caribe's 2009 Most Oustanding Caribbean Animation Award.



Another innovative video offering from Trinidad and Tobago features Gabi Hossein, a lecturer at UWI, St. Augustine. A dedicated activist Gabi has employed her formidable creative skills to produce a video blog called "If I Were Prime Minister..." in which she mercilessly lampoons and takes down the political directorate of TnT about the absurdities that pass for governance. In the process Gabi also slyly parodies the aggrieved, aggressive posture of young male rappers. There are only two video so far but i look forward to regular instalments.

Gabi's introductory shot:



and her latest volley in which she deconstructs poll numbers:



And from further afield I really like this Zina Saunders portrait of Michael Jackson, done originally for The Progressive. What do YOU think?



Also check out the Booman Tribune for the best response to all the criticism of President Obama, it looks like a great blog which i'm going to try and check regularly.

And on the increasingly dismal Literature Nobel an excellent post by the Akhond of Swat:
Who, or why, or which, or what, Is the Akond of SWAT? well click on the link and find out!

Now to wind up, here's a despairing post from a schoolteacher in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. They are beginning to feel the kind of violence that we have become inured to here and Abbott, who is a powerful and eloquent writer vividly captures the sense of being drowned by a crime tsunami. Is this the way small islands crumble?:

"For the past month or so, SVG has been suffering from one of the most belligerent heat waves that I’ve ever experienced. My headaches, which had all but disappeared due to my quitting smoking and putting myself on a strict health regimen, are slowly becoming a constant irritant again. The other day, one of my students stripped off his shirt in class because the room where all my classes are held is a two by four plywood box that holds heat like a Pyrex dish. I allowed him to carry on simply because my own shirt was moulded to my body like I’d just been in a wet dress-shirt contest or similar. “Me skin hat” is a Vincentian Creole expression that goes further than just saying, “I feel hot”. It implies that the heat is so oppressive that your very skin feels as if it is peeling away from your flesh, the way an envelope peels open when it is steamed. This is the kind of heat we’re facing here."

And if you need a pick-me-upper after that read the latest Letter from Jamaica on what five years in Ja has taught the author: "1. White people who live in the ghetto are apparently either: (i) NGO workers (ii) crazy (iii) 'wutless' or (iv) German roots reggae singers."

Finally Heart of a Pirate, a novel about Anne Bonny by Pamela Johnson, the female pirate who once inhabited these shores, is now available in local bookstores.

Eyeless in Gaza (and Gully): 'Mi deh pon di borderline'

Clovis Brown, Wednesday, October 7 2009, Jamaica Observer

Gaza. Gully. The two words, inscribed in locations all over Kingston and Jamaica, signify internecine zones of conflict competing for supremacy in the dancehall universe here. For those who don't know: Gaza=Kartel and Gully=Mavado. Mavado, popularly known as 'Gully Gad (God)', comes from Gullyside in Cassava Piece, an impoverished community in the foothills of Kingston. Kartel comes from a neighbourhood in Portmore that was once known as BORDERLINE.

And thereby hangs a tale. A story you wouldn't find in the normal media yasso which specializes in skimming the surface and shallow moralizing. The Jamaican media generously accommodates both sinners and sermonizers, protecting the former by voluntarily gagging themselves and the latter by giving them as many column inches as their sermons demand. In the US it is citizens who usually “plead the fifth” and have “the right to remain silent”, both stemming from the Fifth Amendment of their constitution. In Jamaica the media seem to have arrogated such rights to themselves; they provide a minimum of in-depth coverage of events apparently on the grounds that the information given could be used as evidence against them!

So like me, you may not have known the etymology of the term 'Gaza' in the Jamaican context (Talk bout the media being eyeless in Gaza!) or why Borderline came to be so renamed. It's a fascinating story which is intimately connected (as a batty is to a bench you might say) with this culture's notorious attitude towards male homosexuals or 'batty' men as they are called here.


Shebada Ramsay, the 'Gender Bender'

It all has to do with an actor called Shebada, the star of a super successful series of plays put on by Stages Productions. This company produces what is known in local parlance as 'roots plays', a kind of farcical, over the top production with picaresque characters performing or acting out the issues of the day. Sex is a big part of it, and subtlety is not, but Stages Productions whose slogan is “Comedy is serious business” always plays to full houses.

Stages Productions has also pioneered the explicit exploration of alternative sexualities and Shebada himself, whose stage persona is camp as they come and twice as provocative, sports a bleached face and gay-ish attributes that complicate the argument that Jamaica is unremittingly hostile to Gays. In fact international Gay rights groups who have targeted the island's musicians repeatedly would do well to analyze such productions and feed the resulting insights into their jackhammer strategies at outing and combating what is touted worldwide as Jamaican homophobia.

The induction of the name 'Gaza' into the Jamaican firmament came about because in the very first insanely popular Stages Production, Bashment Granny, there is a scene where a policeman confronts the sinuous Shebada asking “Yu a man or yu a woman?” “Mi deh pon di borderline” declares Shebada unabashedly, emphasizing his retort with an exaggerated wag of his hips. The phrase became so popular in the context of discussions about sexuality that Vybz Kartel decided that the name of his community 'Borderline' had been irrevocably contaminated by association. He therefore adopted the name of the most violent place he could think of at the time—Gaza in Palestine.

Again Fernando Guereta, or Mr. Previous, as I have nicknamed him, the man responsible for the film, Why Do Jamaicans Run so Fast? has been quick off the mark. He is already in the middle of his next film, which documents the Gully Gaza phenomenon (please note he was NOT the source of information for this post). The interview with him I promised is still pending. I will unveil it over the course of the coming week. In the meantime check out these two video clips of Shebada in Bashment Granny (the relevant declaration is four and a half minutes into the first one). The second one has some priceless footage of Shebada teaching Bashment Granny how to walk and dance with credibility. Enjoy!

The Boy with the Golden Shoes

Sign in Jamaican storefront during Beijing Olympics

One of the things I most regretted about being in India this August was that I wasn't in Jamaica during the World Championships in Berlin. Having experienced the sheer exhileration in Kingston, August gone, during the Beijing Games, I knew only too well what I was missing. Because of the time difference and probably because India itself had minimal participation (for such a great nation we have produced remarkably few great athletes) I wasn't able to watch any of the races live, though by the end of the month Usain Bolt had become a household name all over again in India as well as the rest of the world.

In the last couple of weeks the airwaves and other media have been buzzing with reactions to the Government's decision to rename Highway 2000 (the superfast major cross-island artery built with French technology) the Usain Bolt Highway. Yesterday on Facebook a local journalist posted what are allegedly a parliamentary reporter's notes on a Cabinet discussion about honouring Usain Bolt...read on.

Yesterday at 5:38pm

So I managed to pull off a coup. A major scoop so to speak. I got hold of some very interesting cabinet notes on honouring Usain Bolt.

Apparently, Prime Minister Bruce Golding asked his ministers to come up with ideas on what tangible things the country could do to honour Usain and here's what they came up with:

1) Change Jamaica's Coat of Arms to "Bolt Arms"

2) Rename the parish of Trelawny - Usain Bolt

3) Rename Yam - call it Usain

4) Make him our 8th National Hero ( It was decided this will come after the next Olympics, they'll need that long to research how to accord a person National Hero status)

5) Put him on the 10,000 dollar bill (Audley assured Cabinet that the denomination would be coming by next May)

6) Have 9.58 days of bashment celebrating Usain ( I swear Babsy did suggest this)

7) Rename William Knibb High School Usain Bolt High ( Ruddy Spencer asked who is William Knibb and why does he have things named after him? )

8) Declare August 21 Usain Bolt Day and make it a public Holiday ( Cabinet was very upset with Chris Tufton for this one. Andrew Holness said it sounded too PNP. Di man hold up di "fist" one time and tell Jamaica to put di "X" beside di Head and dem won't let it go.)

9) Make his home in Sherwood Content a national landmark ( It was pointed out that the community still lacks piped water and Dr. Horace Chang couldn't guarantee that they'd get it in Usain's lifetime.)

10) Make Usain's favourite food the National dish and create a new designation national night club and give that to the "Quad".

11) Change the national dress, to all Puma and make it mandatory for everyone to wear the Yamm shoes. (However all agreed they certainly wouldn't be orange like the ones that Usain wore. Chris Tufton was eerily silent).

12) Finally settle this Gully/Gaza mess and make everybody say Gaza since ah dat Usain say (I feel Babsy in this again)

13) Write Oxford to have the word "fast" in the dictionary replaced with "Usain" (Mike Henry). Babsy agreed and thought we should get "sobolious" added as well!

14) Rename Air Jamaica, Usain Air.

15) SUGGESTION FROM BRUCE GOLDING: Rename Jamaica - Usain. The PM said "There's no honour that's too great for this young man and right now the national profile has been taken to echelons far beyond our greatest expectations because of Usain's feet!"

Well, long before the Jamaican government decided to honour Usain Bolt and before he became a household name outside Jamaica a Spanish national named Fernando Guereta (Nando) decided to honour Bolt and Jamaica's athletes with a film celebrating their exploits. Called “Why do Jamaicans Run So Fast?” this superbly conceived and crafted documentary-style film creatively captures the environment these athletes spring from in Jamaica.

On the verge of signing major distribution and international TV rights deals Guereta has scooped the world on this. With a beautiful soundtrack and interviews with Usain from the age of 15 onwards the culture that has produced such indomitable talent is centrestaged, with a prominent role accorded to dancehall music and the dances that inspired Usain, Melaine Walker, Shelly Ann Fraser and others to dare to grab their share of the pie.

I asked Nando about the role of music in the film and this is what he said. Keep in mind that he's not a native English-speaker which makes what he's done that much more remarkable.

“My two main concerns were to cover all music genres, from ska, to roots reggae and moving towards the latests dancehall hits. The second concern was to make the music match the images properly, even if I sound a little bit arrogant I think we achieve to deliver very well in both matters.

Heptones' Country Boy matched Bolts origins, Bob Marley's Bad Card reminds the world that dem a go tyaad fe see Bolt face, Movado reminds Melaine Walker not to forget about the Gully, Bugle ask Carl Lewis what have Bolt done to him, and Jah Cure seh as long as I live he will remember those days.”

Watch this spot over the next week for more from Nando on the making of “Why Do Jamaicans Run so Fast?”

India Art Summit et al

loved this work at the India Art Summit but neglected to note artist's name.
India Shining

Landing in Kingston after five weeks away reminded me vividly of why I love returning to the Rock so much. As I waited with my lootcases and laptop for the offspring to arrive, I noticed two individuals hovering nearby. One of them sidled over muttering something that sounded like “Mi like yu eyes y'know, wicked eyes yu ave.” I complimented him on his prowess with lyrics while trying to return a basilisk stare.

“Well, a lady like you must elicit lyrics y'know,” growled the other wolf (trust me he actually did use the word 'elicit'), approaching and shooing the first lyricist away. Before I could contemplate my next move, Worm, a taximan I occasionally use, appeared out of nowhere: “You look like you need to make a call” he said, slipping his cellphone into my grateful hands. And in two twos the offspring who had inexplicably been lurking a few cars away (“I thought you'd still have credit!”) appeared and whisked me off after the lyrical ones had manhandled my baggage into the trunk. A few bills were distributed hither and thither and off I rode into the Kingston night, thrilled to be back.

Dalmatian by Ved Gupta

India was a trip and a half. The parents live in Bangalore and that was my base, a cool Southern city with a remarkable number of pubs, cafés and restaurants. From there I went to Kochi and Trivandrum, Kerala, for a week to visit extended family and friends. Then a week in Delhi to visit a cousin, more friends and the India Art Summit, an art fair and forum of discussions around the state of art in India.

Compared to art in Jamaica and the Anglophone Caribbean, Indian art is thriving, despite much hand-wringing and laments from sundry art interests who populated the rather expensively priced discussion fora. The pocket would only permit two sessions, consisting of four discussions or talks altogether. The standout speakers for me were Jitish Kallat, one of the most successful contemporary artists in India today and Geeta Kapur, the single-most respected voice on the Indian artscene speaking on Emerging Markets and Subversion, Perversity and Resistance respectively.

Two Gandhis by Balaji Ponna

A panel titled The Role of the Gallery—The View from the Street turned out to be a riveting one as well when the matter of pre-eminent Indian artist M.F. Husain's absence from the Fair was raised, provoking an impassioned debate about the role of the state in relation to the politics of art-making and the corresponding role of galleries. 94-year old Husain is in voluntary exile in the UK after a group of Hindu extremists declared the equivalent of a Fatwa on him for portraying 'Bharatmata' or 'Mother India' in the nude. Previously the artist had also drawn the ire of religious extremists with his depictions of Indian Goddesses in their birthday suits. This was one thing, but was it also necessary for his work to be kept from display at the Fair was the question posed.

Jab we meet by Saptarshi Naskar

With a panel including Sharon Apparao of Apparao Galleries, the venue where the offending artwork by Husain had originally been exhibited, the ensuing discussion was pretty intense. The Galleries unanimously maintained that they would have been happy to exhibit Husain's work but were prevented from doing so by the organizers who had forbidden the work to be shown for security reasons. "We acknowledge the iconic stature of Husain, but are unable to put all
the people and art work at risk," Neha Kirpal, associate director of the India Art Summit said in an AFP interview.

When asked about this at the Forum Kirpal explained that the organizers had tried their best to enlist the support of the Government security forces in protecting the Fair against possible terrorist threats but that the police had shown complete indifference, only complaining that they had not received their VIP passes to the fair (!). Under the circumstances it seemed unwise to court almost certain disaster by exhibiting M.F.'s work.

Reclining Gandhi by Debanjan Roy

At the Emerging Markets forum Sotheby's deputy director, Maithili Parekh, lamented the lack of an 'art ecosystem' as she put it—that is, the network of artists, curators, critics, dealers and gallerists required to maintain a functioning and healthy artworld. Self-titled 'artworld worker' Jitish Kallat summed it up as “a lot of art being viewed and very little art being reviewed.” Hmmmm, over here you would have to say--very little art being viewed and even less reviewed. Saying that serious cultural stewardship was required Kallat went on to observe that India has an “art scenario completely orphaned by an absent state.” The sharp-tongued artist also described the current recession as “a kind of greed tax”.

At the session on 'difference', cultural, sexual and otherwise, the next day, Geeta Kapur chided the Fair organizers for billing the Summit as “400 crores worth of art on display” (a crore is an Indian unit of counting equivalent to ten million). Vigorously embodying the spirit of resistance Kapur invoked Guy Debord's 1967 tract Society of the Spectacle to dismiss the art fair as “the epitome of the idea of the spectacle” or “money which one only looks at”. In response to an art writer who had celebrated her ability to critique art without being in possession of an abundance of erudition ('swallowing an encyclopedia') Kapur declaimed that she would have liked to “perform an encyclopedia that I have swallowed.” In the final analysis she urged that exhibition sites such as India Art Summit be kept open for innovation. A slideshow of some of the work on display at the fair, courtesy Livemint.com, may be viewed here.

Another redoubtable interlocutor on the discussion circuit was Shukla Samant but enough about the words that were exchanged at India Art Summit. The best part of the Fair was of course, the art. I was struck by the number of artists who focused on Mahatma Gandhi as a suitable subject and by the sense of humour that pervaded much of the work. Graças à Deus there were not too many tormented, tortured bodies as would have appeared in the Caribbean or that sense of leaden solemnity that pervades much visual work here.

A fortuitous meeting with Singapore artist Ketna Patel (we were both staying at the India International Centre) introduced me to Siddhartha Tagore, the editor of Art and Deal and the artists in his circle, among them Vibha Galhotra, whose brilliant work Construction, Deconstruction and Reconstruction, drew much attention at the Fair. Other highlights were meeting Abhay Sardesai, editor of Artindia, photographer Gauri Gill and on old friend George Jose, now with the Asia Society. Hanging out with George at the Devi Art Foundation reception is a memory I will cherish for a long time. The fortress gallery of Anupam Poddar, the most canny collector of contemporary art in India (sometimes called the Indian Saatchi) was opened to summit participants one evening complete with bar, dinner and disco. An amazing collection of art letters between four Sri Lankan artists* and artwork by a Bangladeshi artist** were testimony to Poddar's subcontinental vision, ignoring national borders in favour of a regional purview. Hint hint, Caribbean collectors who still confine their collections within national borders.
Through an Anish Kapoor, darkly

Back in Bangalore I gave a talk at Gallery Ske called Kingston Logic vs. The History Brush about Jamaican music, art and culture. It went down really well. Gallery Ske is one of the most interesting galleries in Bangalore/India along with No. 1 Shanthi Road, where I spent a little time. I also commissioned a portrait of the offspring as a Hindu deity, by Afsar Pasha, a billboard and sign painter of renown in Bangalore—Varun, as God of the Sea and water, his namesake—hopefully I won't be targeted by religious extremists, after all Pasha is a Muslim while I'm a Syrian Christian by birth.
Varun by Afsar Pasha

So much more to tell, but here finally is the first installment...from India...with love.

*"‘The One Year Drawing Project’ is an experimental drawing exchange that takes the form of an artists’ book, involving four of Sri Lanka’s most critically acclaimed artists- Muhanned Cader, Thamotharampillai Shanaathanan, Chandraguptha Thenuwara and Jagath Weerasinghe. It comprises 208 drawings created by the artists in response to each other’s works. From May 2005 to October 2007 these artists exchanged drawings via post between Jaffna in the north of the country and the suburbs of the capital Colombo." (from Devi Art Foundation website)

**"Mahbabur Rahman, 40, is a painter and performance artist, a key figure in the Bangladeshi art scene. Setting his performances within larger installations, Mahbub often uses his own body as material. Some draw from literary references – a performance titled Transformations (2004) is an enactment of a story by Bangladeshi writer and poet Syed Shamsul Haq about an indigo farmer who was forced to plough his field with his own body." (from Devi Art Foundation website)

The Last Don: KOTE 09 Part 2

Word on the street has it that the Jamaican Security Forces have created a “Don Squad” which is systematically eliminating “Dons” or Ghetto strongmen around the country. Popular belief is that although the eliminations are staged as shootouts between rival gangs it is the police who are behind the killings. If this is true it would seem to be a clever strategy and might very well give an added resonance to The Last Don, at least in name, by the Rickards Brothers.

The Last Don was premiered to much acclaim at the recently concluded Kingston on the Edge in its Films on the Edge segment. The pilot for a putative TV series Last Don is an ironic, irreverent look at music promoter Josef Bogdanovich and the contortions he goes through in his attempt to corral and showcase Jamaican musical talent. I took the opportunity to quiz the prime mover behind the film, Peter Dean Rickards, about the process of making this comic documentary and his own history as a film-maker and photographer. Check out the priceless footage of Kingston Signals, the show that started it all, with Sean Paul before he hit the big time.

Q. So what are the origins of Last Don? How did the idea come to you? What are you trying to or interested in portraying?

The Last Don actually originated about 8 years ago when I began working at Downsound Records which was then in the basement of Globe Furniture on Constant Spring road. The boss was a guy named Josef Bogdanovich, an American from Los Angeles who had moved to Kingston a few years earlier to produce Jamaican music and concerts. Although the initial purpose of meeting Josef was to build him a website, I ended up working there for the next three years after we created Kingston Signals – the first live-to-broadband webcast of hardcore Jamaican soundsystems.

It was a great job and I quickly became addicted to the fast pace and unpredictability of the business; but what was far more interesting was the day-to-day hustle of running a music studio in Kingston and the personalities involved, particularly that of Bogdanovich who could be described as ‘constantly in first gear.’

Several years later when I began to think seriously about jumping into film, it occurred to me that the story of Downsound was something I really wanted to do because I had practically written the story in my head a thousand times; constantly explaining ‘episodes’ to people who would ask me what it was like to work in such a crazy environment with a person like Josef, who is often misunderstood by people who either don’t know him or are put off by his management style which goes something like : “Get it done or get the f*** outta here!”

Then, when you stop to consider that there are no guarantees in that line of work, and that each day can end in great success or terrible failure, the potential for a series or even a film becomes more obvious, especially when fused with the character of Bogdanovich himself, an unlikely underdog , a white guy in Kingston working in Jamaican music who does things his way, because, after all -- he can.

As far as what we were trying to portray, it is simply a true-to-life observation of some unusual people in an unusual business, with Jamaica, and particularly Kingston as an interesting backdrop.

Q. What is your background in film/video? Is it true that this is your first attempt at film having experimented with music videos previously?

I have no formal training in film or video but just like my photographs I believe it’s all about a solid concept followed by framing and then ‘painting’ the story from the pieces. Although my cousin PJ (the other half of the Rickards Bros.) has been working as a video editor for over 10 years, I’m very new to video/film. After we got our first camera in late 2008, PJ came down from New York and we immediately got to work; creating two videos for Terry Lynn before jumping right into production of The Last Don. Also involved in the team is Jarmilla Jackson (another cousin) who writes, creates and participates in the meticulous editing process with me and PJ. The three of us are highly critical of our own work so hardly anything slips by without heavy scrutiny-- but we like it that way.

Q. You're clearly immersed in visual culture, who are your influences? (Weejee etc) is it true you have no photographic training? how did you learn to do what you do?

Weejee wasn’t much an influence you know. I only discovered him the other day but I can certainly relate to his ambulance chasing from the perspective that he had to sell his stuff. Photography is not an easy business to be in if you want to actually earn a living taking pictures of what interests you (unless you actually like taking wedding photos and talking about ISO settings). In my opinion, you have to have an angle and be doing something different from the other 50 million people who own a camera. I guess that’s why Weegee took pictures of murdered gangsters instead of that rusty boat down by the airport.

No I didn’t have any formal photographic training but let’s be serious here, how could you justify more than a week of ‘photographic training.’ You might as well go to school to learn how to put batteries in the thing and attach a lens. It’s just an instrument that anyone can operate. No school can’t teach you to be creative no matter how many years you study the work of others. Dentists need school, not photographers.

To be sure, I learned to make a decent photograph by simply shooting and looking at what I did, then adjusting to make it better. It can be fun but it also made me a lazy writer and so I’ve been drawn towards video and film because it combines the visuals that I enjoy doing with a return to storytelling.

My biggest influences are Stanley Kubrick, Woody Allen, Tarantino, Coppola (and many others but those stand out). I’m a huge fan of SCTV, The Office (UK) and anything Charles Schulz did.

Q. Ideally what would you like to be doing? What are the obstacles or constraints you face?

For once in a long time, I’m actually doing what I really want to be doing – making stories that can be shown on a big screen in front of many people…and watching as they react to the things they see and hear. It’s an incredible high to experience that, especially since I always dreamed of doing it. The goal is to constantly improve, both technically and creatively so that we can justify bigger budgets that will enable us to do bigger things.

As far as constraints are concerned, I suppose it’s the typical stuff: limited resources and the limited mindset of a rather stagnant television industry here. Considering the creative currency of Jamaicans, it’s sad that one has to look outward, not only for funding but for outlets to present your work without someone like Cordel Green telling you what is suitable for the eyes and ears of the adult population.

Thankfully, we have the Internet and Fed Ex to circumvent certain things.

Kingston on the Edge (KOTE) 09: UnCONVENTional Edges out Rest

Neila Ebanks

It was June 22, Day 4 of Kingston on the Edge and UWI’s Philip Sherlock Centre was full as the audience, mostly young folk, waited for Dance on the Edge to begin. I was with Deborah Thomas and Junior Wedderburn, the former a seasoned dancer (and author of Modern Blackness), the latter an accomplished drummer who performs with the Lion King on Broadway. As the lithe, young dancers pranced around on stage we joked and laughed to ourselves, commenting among other things on the full house and the meaning or meaninglessness of the various dances.

Then right after a performance that Junior dubbed Johncrow nyam Dove, the tempo changed and the quality of the offerings went sharply uphill. A video with the puzzling title The Edging of Sister Mitzie Margaret started playing, featuring the exciting young dance maven, Neila Ebanks. With a quirky, offbeat, almost Chaplinesque sense of timing and parody Ebanks completely reinscribed the idea of dance as it has been known in these parts as she fluttered, skanked and slid her way on film along UWI’s Ring Road toward the Sherlock Centre. Dressed in a nun's habit the film opens with Neila in the character of Sister Mitzie Margaret, intently inserting earphones and plugging into an ipod. As the music begins Sister Mitzie responds by quaking, shaking and feeling her way along the ground as if afraid the road might suddenly be pulled from
beneath her.


As the camera follows Sister Mitzie's comical progress towards the Sherlock Centre, it suddenly dawns on you that she is mugging her way up the path to the auditorium and as you see her hand reaching for the door you realize with a shiver of anticipation that the dancer is actually outside and about to enter. Loud applause broke out as the the film then morphed into a live performance by Ebanks and she entered the auditorium, slipsliding across the stage and out a door on the other side, the film taking over once again, showing her emerging from the exit as the credits started to roll. Brilliant. Just brilliant.

Other memorable performances were by a group of tough looking chicks who took on the Broadcasting Commission and the recent ban on 'daggering' and what it deemed ‘lewd’ dancing. They lay the ground for the high-energy, wickedly creative male dance troupe, Shady Squad, who captured the audience with their imaginatively choreographed dancehall moves and style. At one moment they even performed a version of Michael Jackson's anti-gravity lean. Superb. The audience screamed with delight at their performance and a mere one and a half hours after it began the show ended on such a high note that as someone said on Facebook the next day it was a pity there was no after-party to capitalize on the incredible vibes.

For me KOTE’s evening of dance was the most memorable of the week-long self-styled urban art festival. This is KOTE’s third year and it keeps getting better and better. The thirty-something organizers managed to bring out filled-to-capacity audiences for all the events. I’m only sorry that I missed the opening night at Red Bones and the premiere of the film “Why Do Jamaicans Run so Fast?” a production that has been attracting a lot of attention. A clip of video i shot of my office co-workers watching the 100m men’s relay in Beijing is actually included in the film but more on that when I’ve seen it.

An effervescent fizz fills the air at successful cultural events and there was plenty of snap, crackle and pop at KOTE this year. Theatre on the Edge was pretty good but only one production stood out for me (I missed the first of the eight offerings). Everyone had ten minutes to present their work and Amba Chevannes as playwright made the most of hers. Using just one eccentric character talking directly to the audience, Miss Burton Gets A Promotion was quirky, natural and best of all contemporary. No ‘folk’ dressed in turbans and bandana trotting around shouting at the audience, thank God.

Its not that the rest of the eight ten-minute productions that evening weren't good, the audience was certainly appreciative, judging by the loud applause that attended most of them. It's just that i like to focus on the really outstanding performances, artworks, music—the ones its worth telling the rest of the world about. There was at least one of these in every field except visual art, which continues to trail behind the other arts in Jamaica (and the rest of the region for that matter), the works either too conventional or pedestrian or just plain bad. The best of a bad lot was The Core Insight at Olympia Art Centre, an atmospheric art space if ever there was one.


In Film on the Edge again one film dominated the rest, The Last Don, by the Rickards Brothers. A trailer for a proposed TV/video series the film depicts a typical day in the working life of music producer and promoter Josef Bogdanovich. Again the film is offbeat, quirky and brilliant along the lines of the innovative Brazilian documentary, Manda Bala (Send a Bullet). I plan to follow up soon with an interview with the conceptual force behind The Last Don, Peter Dean Rickards.



HABITUAL OFFENDER?

Meanwhile back to dancing on the edge: “Psychological, cathartic, layered. I rarely go for the easy or obvious” is what Neila Ebanks said about her work in an interview with Karin Wilson of Yardedge.

I asked Ebanks to tell me more about the birth of Sister Mitzie Margaret and how her KOTE project unfolded in real time. Who were her models or sources of inspiration? Was she trying to convey anything in particular? Why a nun? Interestingly The Edging... was conceived, planned and performed in a very short space of time with the dancer liasing with the film director, John DaCosta, at the Lit Fest Calabash in Treasure Beach a scant four weeks before Kingston on the Edge started.

Here's what Neila told me:

My Sister Mitzie personality comes out of a love of classic goofiness —– think Carol Burnett, Dick Van Dyke, The Muppet Show, Mr. Bean —– and intelligent physical comedy. Her character has been inspired by my Catholic prep and high schooling and my wondering how much of themselves the sisters had to give up to serve (and sometimes not) as they did.

The piece is the second in what is to become a series of Sister Mitzie capers in which she tries to balance her whimsy with her duty as "bride of Christ" (said like the announcer for "Pigs in Space" from the Muppet Show ). The first in the series, UnCONVENTional, was actually premiered 10 years ago in my Improvisation examination @ the Edna Manley College School of Dance. The night before the exam I had a eureka moment when I thought of a striptease in reverse, and the most unlikely character to perform it. She wasn't named at that time but she has been able to surprise and make an audience laugh everywhere she goes.

I often take my work back to the lab to tweak and twiddle and so in 2003, I revisted that first piece, called it A Life CONVENTtional and I created a 10 minute version of it which debuted @ the HIP Festival of Dance in London in. From that experiment I discovered that the effect was not as arresting when the piece was that long and so I returned to it's original 3 minute format. The best thing about that trial, though, was that I got to really examine the character of Mitzie (@ that time still unnamed) and uncover her reasons for being and the layers behind her nuances.

Fast forward to KOTE and Mitzie's edging... She wasn't even supposed to appear! Lighting designer John DaCosta and I had a Calabash discussion about making a film for KOTE in which I (Neila) would be dancing off the edges of surfaces @ UWI until I reached into the theatre. I have always been interested in dance film, and John is making a foray into film-making and so we were both excited about the collaboration. We had further discussion about the concept with my right-hand man Michael Holgate but Mitzie only came into the picture the day before the shoot, after our rehearsal when we realised that the film needed another layer, the character needed history, a little complexity.... and rather than have us create a new character Mitzie raised her hand and said "Me please!" . We shot on the Saturday before Monday's performance and as I improv'd John filmed while we tried to beat the inevitable sunset. The music was found (before we filmed) by my musicmate, Renee, who has the knack for finding just the right soundtrack for my life, but I didn't listen to it more than once before filming, and not immediately either. In fact, as I danced I just made up my own music, because I couldn't remember the melody. Editing was done in record time by Serchen Morris of Phase 3, and magically, even when he was asked to make things faster, the movement still fit the music perfectly. Sister Mitzie was obviously an idea whose time had come.

I don't know if I was trying to do anything particular with Mitzie, except probably crack smiles and get to play with my audience and allow them to put the puzzle pieces together in a way which used technology and live dance differently. I mean, I know full well that in other contemporary dance circles the work might be described as too literal and simplistic, but as far as JA goes, not many persons are stepping into dance on film, and this is my starting point. It's as I write this that I realise how interested I have always been in the illusions that film can help to create. The applause on entry to the theatre really surprised me, especially because I wasn't sure how many people had seen the first installment (done most recently @ Jamaica Dance Umbrella in March 2009) and I was concerned that without that information the audience would not find it funny. Though the applause was great to hear and feel, I was most pleased with the engagement that I saw in the audience's eyes when the house lights came on and Mitzie realised where she was. It's a beautiful thing to realise you have been able to build that kind of connection with an audience in just a few minutes, without words.