Bookman speaks on the revival
The Reggae Revival maintains its uncanny feature to stimulate conversation. The truth of it is that some people will disagree with the idea and some people will agree. More critically, outside of that, there remains the topic of its effects and functions as not only a movement, but also a social instrument used to readily pass information about the movement of energy that is taking place in Jamaica. Riddim Radio caught up with Dutty Bookman, the published author of Tried and True and also the one credited with coining the term Reggae Revival. He shared some very interesting thoughts and information about the movement, its controversial nature and literature in general.
Riddim Radio: One of the biggest questions surrounding this whole thing is, whether it is about the artistes/musicians identified and involved or about the people.
Dutty Bookman: I think both are kind of true, but I think from my perspective the revival is more of a spiritual uprise in consciousness. I always kinda put it in the same vein as Arab Spring, Occupy Wall street, Reggae Revival. It’s just a different cultural context y’know. But it’s the same young people wishing up to the system and finding different ways to combat it. But in Jamaica we grow up in a culture where we have a better idea than most people in the world of the power of arts and culture. Even if we unable to articulate it, we just know, is something that we born with. I’ve been trying to get people to look at the word Reggae, as less of a noun and more of an adjective, in that context. So when you say Reggae Revival, it’s a Revival with a Reggae quality. It’s across all art forms and it’s in the heart and minds and souls of everybody who working within it. But at the same time because so far the music has been our most powerful cultural output, it deserves to be looked at from that angle as well. Also because the word Reggae was used, it inadvertently draws into the music industry. So there has to be some reconciliation between people who think one way about it and people who think the other way.
RR: How do you feel about the movement so far, in terms of how its progressed so far and what you expected?
DB: I never really had an expectation y’know. I just wanted it to be something that we could talk about. What really happened was that It was on the way to being talked about nationally, but it blew up internationally so fast that it caught everybody off guard. We never got a chance as a family to say, as people who were in the culture, who were born and grow in Jamaica and know what it is that we want to project to the world. We never really got the chance to come to a consensus, about how we want to, project it and what this thing really means to us. So we’ve been having these conversations a lot slower than I expected. Because we’ve been focusing on the international attention and a lot of people doing dem own ting and using the Reggae Revival as a marketing tool and forgetting the social aspects y’know. But I still wouldn’t have it any other way, I never really practice having regrets. I just think we in a place where people are starting to realize it’s more than music one by one, so we ready, to move to another level of conversation.
RR: The thing about the whole topic of the Reggae Revival, is that it always calls for discussion. Namely because it may different things to different people, some may have issues with the name and so on. What do you say to all this?
DB: Keep having them. I don’t even want everybody to agree with me just for agreeing sake, I want people to talk it out. Have the discussion, you don’t even have to call it Reggae Revival, but everybody can agree on the facts of what is happening. There’s something happening for sure. So talk about it, and the point is again, let’s raise the social consciousness while we’re doing that. It can do a lot more for us than just nice music and feel good.
RR: We’ve been in contact for some time now, initially due to our shared interest in the phenomenon that is this movement we speak of. From a literary perspective, what role do you feel like writers play in this movement and people who document in general?
DB: Well documentation is very important. Apart of the reason I offered the term Reggae Revival, is because I was born in 1982 and I ew up my entire life not knowing about this great cultural uprising that took place a decade before I was born. When I found out about it was really exciting, but all the information I could get was kind of just from oral tradition, people telling me, people who were alive in Bob Marley time. I was just wondering why nobody never think to write down certain things, why nobody never pick up a camera and document certain things. I mean there were a lot of documentaries and stuff but I feel like a lot of those were outside and we never really got the inside perspective. So documentation is very important and another reason for the Reggae Revival was to kind of recreate that Harlem Renaissance vibe. Something that you can research online, type in two words and you get a time and place y’know. Writers more specifically now, I think very important because, the written word, even though the oral tradition is very key, but written word allows you to enshrine certain information and over time once those documents stand the test of time, Then it becomes ingrained in the culture. That’s what we really need to balance the oral tradition. I spoke to an elder in DC living close by me, who was a big part of the uprising back in the days, in the sixties and seventies, Nana Farika is her name. She told me about the writing collectives that were around at the time. She showed me a lot of books and told me a lot of things about each of the authors, and there was a real concerted effort for writers to get together and reason and publish together and things like that. A lot of them didn’t get credit after the fact because the music was so powerful at the time, a lot of the other art forms just got phased out and some of these writers even wrote the lyrics for some of these big artists and they still didn’t get credit and all kind of tings. But I think we missing that, and I don’t know if today’s youth in Jamaica reading as much as they were, so I don’t know if writers today going get the recognition that they got, which was a likkle bit already. Still, writers are important and we have to nurture that.
And we live in a time where we have to get innovative because as you say man have ADD in these times. But we still have to get it done, we have to have writers, have to have writers.
RR: What are some of the things that you’ve learned from your time abroad about our history and literary culture as Africans home and abroad?
DB: Well I mean I’ve been reading a bit, I work in a bookstore , been reading couple authors lately, like I read this Ethiopian author the other day. I’ve been reading a lot of Caribbean, Kei miller is one of my new favorite authors, The Last Warner Woman is probably my favorite book from him, and he just wrote a book of poetry that winning pure awards now. Marlon James is another one, they kind of write in a similar way to me. Earl Lovelace from Trinidad, him have a nice book too that I read called, Is Just A Movie, is a wicked book that. So I’m trying to catch up on Caribbean authors right now, because I really never read a lot of fiction growing up. When I start reading it was just pure non fiction, Che Guevara and ting.
RR: What do you think of movements like Paint Jamaica and the role it has assume as kind of a secondary wave of energy?
DB: It’s just the greatest thing. I love Paint Jamaica, love what manifest out of Paint Jamaica. Everything to me is one energy so is like I can see how dots are connected and lead up to Paint Jamaica. I can’t even imagine what’s going to come out of Paint Jamaica because it has impacted so many people positively. I can see it even just going down Fleet Street and looking at the people and the community and ting. I really love it and I think Paint Jamaica, it already legendary, it gone down in history.
RR: What are you working on now in terms of literature?
DB: Well I’m about to release my book of old writings, old blog posts primarily, called Fatadic . So early next year for that. But I’m always working on something, I always start something and I might get a chapter out of it and then I have to park it for a year. But one that’s been progressing nicely and I think it might be the next one, is a book about my experiences and observations living in Washington, D.C. I think it’s interesting that I’m even there because I never want to live in the states and every time I try is like something always pull me to go there and witness something . This time it’s been long and I dying to leave still but I observe a lot about D.C. It’s an interesting town, and is like is a city but it have a rural feel to it, because is almost like on the border of southern U.S. and northern U.S. which have different cultures so it’s like a mix. It was historically called chocolate city because it had the most black people, but the gentrification happening so fast that it’s no longer that way. Only where I live have black people but them soon get push out because them moving the department of homeland security over into that side and all the poor people going get push out into Maryland. Then you can go to like capital hill and you can see these guys walking around in them suit and tie and you will know that they are a congressman or so and to you they are like babies. But they make these decisions in this building and mashin up di world, y’know it affect the world. I just have a lot of interesting thoughts, just being in DC that I wouldn’t have had if I wasn’t there, so I’ve been putting them down on paper and I think a book going come out of it.
Images: Jik Reuben Photography
Words: Gladstone Taylor
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