Jah 9 (Year Of The 9)

“New name” was a pivotal album; it was also a pivot in itself as one of the thematic soundtracks to a wave of Jamaican creativity that is being likened to the Harlem Renaissance. This wave represented a shift from more traditional conceptions of society, to more indigenous and intuitive outlooks.

It was an unapologetic exploration of self, through the focals of Rastafari and its legacy. In a similar way her newest offering draws from her usual Jazz on Dub sound, the heavily woven word, sound and power in her lyricism, and the soul clenching melodies and complexities of her emotive vocals. Jah9, since her emergence into the musical sphere, has defied with grace and wisdom, many of the stereotypes set for her as a woman in the music industry. With “Year of The 9,” she has actually managed to exercise that defiance even further, whilst she grows as a person. She speaks on some of the less glorified traits of the feminine energy, traits that are not delicate or petite, but natural and essential, protective, nurturing, strong and so on. 9 is arguably more convicted in this project, even though she is generally a passionate person, there is definitely a seriousness in this that almost commands attention.
It’s early when we pull up to Jah9 ‘s gate, I’d been invited there once before for an interview similar to the one I was about to undertake. The morning was cool and sunny, the mango tree inside her yard providing a sanctuary for a choir of birds that presently were impressing my ears with their chorus. The air was fresh and crisp and as the Backayard team proceeded, we were greeted at the gate by 9 herself. It was brief and she went back inside to change as we awaited Samo. The light was good so we decided to shoot first, and when Jah9 finally emerged in more fitting attire with a cup of pea soup in hand, just like that, the show was, as they say, on the road.

The second album for many artistes, is a turning point. It’s the point where the dust has settled from the last album. Time has passed and brought with it experiences, but also wisdom about how to approach the craft to take it to a new level, wisdom about the relationship between the music and the audience and so on.

What has your experience been like approaching this second album?

Exactly that. That’s correct [laughs]. Ye, it’s learning, constant learning, and it’s three years between first album and second album, so whole heap a time to grow, lots of activities, whole heap a seeds turn to fruits so that I can see and be better prepared. A lot of patience I put into it because I wanted to do it a particular way, and the patience has borne fruit. Because I was able to do it my way, you know, executive producing it, being able to shop it around and choose the people who I thought would best suit what it is I need. Intelligence, give thanks for it, we’re able to read contacts and we’re able to be confident and assertive with the things we require in order to make us comfortable working with, a label and all these things. Having enough clout to be able to say I’m coming to you as a producer, this is the work I have done and so on. I feel great to be able to present something that was authentically me with all it’s errors, all it’s flaws, but it is I. So when the next record comes one will be able to see growth from there and track it and know that this is sincerely 9 that you are watching grow.

Your trip to [the African] continent must have been a very interesting and overwhelming experience. We were able to see some of it through your social media feeds, sure there’s more footage to come, but tell us about that experience and how much it influenced this album.

Hmm. You see all them question deh you have to get real specific about Africa, because Africa overwhelms me every time I visit her. I am changed every time I go to the continent. I have seen so very little and it has affected me so much. It has affected me to the point where I know, that a major part of my life’s journey is going to be travelling through that space, absorbing it, meeting my people, seeing the originals, the untainted ones. Getting closer to the indigenous experience. Those things have been theory in my mind for so many years, so to go the continent and see and test it against what I’ve been told, versus what I am experiencing, is crucial to life for I. There’s so much that ones could be disappointed in if one forms too many opinions before going. So I steered clear of that, and in going there I see the trials, I see the evidence of the oppression and the rape of my continent. I see it. But I also see why, because it is tremendously wealthy and vast and pregnant with fruits and life. Anybody who goes there would see that. It’s just that the diaspora not really going there so much, certainly not as much as the Chinese and the other people who are going there to rape and plunder. So I woulda just love to see more of us go there and really take advantage like how others are taking advantage and that would give our brothers and sisters the confidence too. There are so many powerful people there, is just that connection that is missing now, and I see more and more a way being made for that connection to be strengthened. Those things affect me because they now engulf my thoughts. If they affect me that way they are going to affect my music. The things I chose to do with my actions and activism definitely affect how I write and so on. So it’s impossible to be unchanged by that experience.

This is the year of the nine, the album was released on the ninth day of the ninth month, it’s the name of the album, your name is Jah9. Go into the symbolism of the number 9 briefly and what it means to you.

Nine. This is the year of 9. Memba say a nuh me say so. So I can’t sit and tell you everything about that number that has affected me, throughout the course of my life I’ve watched it affect me because I am paying attention to it. You know the whole participant observer effect and so I watch in mathematics, in geometry, I watch it in the spiral, I watch it’s shape, I watch how it falls in the different bodies of knowledge like the Metu Neter and the tree of life. I watch where 9 falls, the ninth sphere, being Auset the feminine principle, the goddess principle which brings life into earth. I watch 9 in numerology, I watch what it means about unfolding, I watch in terms of even quantum physics. The ninth dimension, that folding over, and what results from it is a new beginning so it will always go back to zero. Allowing a new opportunity to start again, so 9 brings it all together, 9 completes the cycle of renewal. 9 contains the zero as much as it bring forth the zero in it’s shape, so zero is born from 9 or 9 is born from zero. Even zero represents the circle which is 360 degrees and 3 plus 6 is 9. You can’t remove 9 from the circle, you dissect it you get 180 that is still 9, and dissect that is 45, which is still 9(4+5). and so on and so forth. We watch the Fibonacci spiral and how 9 represents the spiral, and what the spiral represents in terms of phi and what phi represents to us as people connected to antiquity. Descendants of kemet, descendants of the pyramids, it’s crucial that we connect with these principles, because is these principles we need to move us into the future. As distracted as we are by the world. We have to move to a higher level of brain functioning so that we will be prepared for what is to come. There is no amount of money that is going to prepare you for what is to come. The things that I am inspired to research in life, I woulda love fi see my youts dem become some engineer and some physicists and scientists, some sacred scientists who going to reconstruct some of the ancient works and principles. Incorporate them into modern day, where meditation meets science. I want to inspire that, I don’t want to inspire people to drink and be promiscuous and to live in that way that depletes themselves, not because I don’t love fun. Of course everybody love dat fun ting, but we’ve all been conditioned with the idea that pleasure is something outside of ourselves. We don’t know the pleasure and ecstasy to be had from meditation and connecting with the most high. We are so locked away from our legacy and our inheritance, so me doing a simple thing as naming my album 9, I am trying to dismantle so much of what the music industry is trying to do to my brothers and sisters right now. I’m trying to shift dem brain completely away from what the world is trying to distract them with. So 9 is the beginning, it’s the beginning of something, it is the end of something. For me being so personal with this record, it kind of give people an eye into some of the things that rest in my headspace why I am the way I am. Hopefully they can learn from me and even better me, becoming examples for even I.

The song ‘Unafraid’ touches on a very pertinent issue in the Jamaican society, which is child abuse and molestation. It’s an issue that as a country we don’t give enough attention to how do you feel about it?

I think this is a issue we’re having around the world now because that same agenda, that is pushing war and violence, is pushing for violence against children in particular. We see this because there is a way where it is usually economics that is tied up in certain levels of pedophilia. There is economic protection for this way of life as well. There are certain religious cults that have great power in this world and that is a major part of dem ting. In their religious books, they justify sex with children and there is an agenda of perversion and the children are the ones who suffer most from it. Some break something in the children very young when we introduce them to that level of abuse. The impact of it, especially in our African societies where certain things are not commonplace like how they are commonplace in European societies. Our history is a little different and so because of that when you introduce these foreign things, just like how when Africans came to the west, when were stolen and taken to the west. We did not come with our food, we did not come with our rituals and so on, we were taken from all of that and out into this place and fed a different diet and all these things affected our mental space and have led to what we now see as the black experience in the west, which is a shadow of the reality of what the African prototype is. That is not to say people from Africa are perfect or were perfect or that everything from antiquity is whatever but is to look at it and say when you are so far removed from what is truly yours things that are going to affect you on a cellular DNA level, you will see it and the effects it has on your community, and personal being. I start there to say, because remember even the Romans and all these people who came to Africa and learned from us and took that and plagiarized it and turned it into their now religions, all those people, when they tell their stories, things [like] pedophilia are not even looked at as a taboo thing, they are the way. When you read about Ancient Greece and Rome and see the life that they lived, this is now in our society for those of us who are not yet completely desensitized to these things, it’s frightening. For me, it’s really crucial that we acknowledge the issues as they come so that we don’t have a long length of time before anything is done, and all of a sudden these things are normal and you have to worry now for your six year olds and three year olds because you know that predators are lurking unchecked. Now pedophilia is one of the offenses in this world that has the highest rate of recidivism. This means that when people commit this crime, they have higher chances of relapse even if reprimanded. You cannot rehabilitate this, so I don’t posit the solution to that particular disease, but I say, it crucial to identify who these people are in your community, if they are people who have this disease and find some way to mitigate against it.

Like pull them from society?

Move them out of the society, there are way more violent things that can be done to them, I am not promoting violence, but nature has a way of correcting issues because is not everybody going take that. So I might be able to say look, you can’t live around here, somebody else might take it a different way right? But because a lot of the time who it is, they’re not going to address the issue or because is a don man in the area, is almost like you give your girl or boy child over to them as a sacrifice for peace. You know? We have to move that out of the mindset. High society people practice these things too. Judges and lawyers and their little circles, there is a great deal of nastiness being perpetrated in high and low places. So I think it’s really important to talk about it, to make people uncomfortable if they are made so by it, because there is nothing more important than the children now for me. I’m not even on any campaigns to change people’s minds and teach them anything, or force out the information already stuck in their head. I would much rather spend my time teaching di yutes who are empty and open and full of potential and catch them before they are broken. So it’s really crucial and some of the things we talk about, the sister circle, the home schooling, all of those things are crucial to mitigating against this disease.

You are an advocate for marijuana, a plant which right now is a source of much controversy globally, and even in Jamaica where it is such a big part of our cultural identity. What are your thoughts on the plant and where we are right now?

I’m really excited about herb right now. I think it’s the best time ever for herb. I think more than ever Jamaica is moving in that direction as well. I think it’s really short sighted the way that the government has approached the industry, almost as if they’re not really trying to free it up, they just understand that it doesn’t make sense to give people a prison record for it. But they’re not really trying to give us any economic freedom with this, they’d much rather take money from China. Like that twenty billion they’re going to get to put up that coal power plant down Alpart. Even coal as a source- Ganja, marijuana from the oil you can make jet fuel, you can make food, fabric, so many things and we are not exploring that. Yet we are so willing to just sell tings out, it make you see dat nuh matter what party is in power everybody is functioning off the same agenda and marijuana is not something that will ever be apart of that or the status quo, and the status quo is governed by those same one percent who govern all the other things in this world. They don’t want nobody mind fi be free, so dem not going to legalize herb in that way. They are the ones who control cotton, they’re not going to trying and create competition for themselves, they are very heavily invested in fossil fuel, they’re not trying to change anything. So little Jamaica now with our puppet politicians, no way we’re going to see any great strides made unless there are individuals who can accumulate enough wealth and resources to just put those things in place. I’m really trying to become one of those people.