Podcast S1 E3: The Destiny of Liberation

Welcome to Jahmi Roc’s Jottings, your seriously silly space to hear deep insights on music, especially reggae and samba reggae. It is my intention to share meaningful musicological arguments and observations, to inspire and, frankly, pass my doctoral exams. Welcome all! I’m your host, Jahmi Roc aka Racquel Bernard. Let’s start jamming!

Come with me and here the words of the legendary Buju Banton:

"There was good and evil

We chose good

Why raise the time of the Most High

His sons of men

The rich man's wealth is in the city yeah

Destruction of the poor is his poverty

Lord

Destruction of your soul is vanity

Yeah, ay, yeah

Do you hear

I and I, I wanna rule my destiny yeah

I and I, I wanna rule my destiny"

This week we are diving into what I am calling Treatises for liberation. I think about the conditions under which we try to rule our destiny in this current world and how popular songs like Banton’s “Destiny” shed light on the trials and tribulations black folx face. On our scholar roster we have Charles Hamm, Fongot Kiki-yen Kinni, Kate Quinn, Leniqueca Welcome, and David Walker.

Charles Hamm is a historian of American popular music, musicology, racial and ethnic dynamics, as well as oral and written traditions. As Charles Hamm explains in the preface of Putting Popular Music in its Place the essays of the volume assume that “(1) popular music, like all music, is both an acoustical and a social phenomenon and thus must be dealt with musically, though not necessarily at a technical level, as well as culturally (2) one cannot fully understand the nature of a given musical event unless one is present at it, or can reconstruct it from critical or historical documentation; (3) popular music has never existed in isolation from other types of music and is best considered in terms of its interaction with other genres, most certainly including classical repertory” (Hamm 1). “In general terms ‘Classical Music.” like Classical Literature, is that which has been recognized by the ages as of the best and highest class. Thus, in common acceptance, ‘classical’ is the antithesis of ‘popular’ (Hamm 3).

Part of why I am driven to work on black musics in the field of musicology is to diversify a field that was preoccupied with white music, put plainly. The music of black women and black people more broadly stands to shake the foundations of musicology at its roots and for me, is part of fulfilling my academic destiny.

"Destiny, mama look from when you call me

Destiny, mama look from when you calling

I wanna rule my destiny

Yeah, yeah oh help I please

Jah-Jah mek mi rule my destiny

I've been blessed I've been touch

I love Jah so much

They keep fighting me I'm not giving up

May the realms of Zion fill my spiritual cup

Wisdom overstanding must never be too much

Give I protection day and night

From even the pestilence that walketh get a daylight"

Banton’s delivery makes me feel like I am time-traveling when I listen. The imagery of Zion indeed takes me back to old testament times or times that only feel almost as far in the past: colonial times. David Walker was writer of “Walker’s Appeal, in Four Articles; Together with a Preamble, to the Coloured Citizens of the World, but in Particular, and Very Expressly, to Those of the United States of America, Written in Boston, State of Massachusetts, September 28, 1829.” It’s a firmly colonial document, meant for people of color across the world but especially in the United states, a nineteenth century treatise; and important to note that the people who worked on this document's revision are women.

David Walker, YO this man was a hustler according to the African American registry organization, Walker was Born in Wilmington, N. C., to a slave father and a free mother, Walker grew up free, obtained an education, and traveled throughout the country. Settling in Boston, he became involved in the abolitionist movement and was a frequent contributor to Freedom's Journal, an anti-slavery weekly. Sometime in the 1820s, he opened a secondhand clothing store on the Boston waterfront. Through this business, he could purchase clothes taken from sailors in barter for a drink, and then resell them to seamen about to embark.

In this text Walker often refers to the “God of the Ethiopians” and refers to “Ethiopia as a site of black resistance” EAST as Rastafari would chant, the God of the Ethiopians, is affirmed by RASTAFARI and ties to His Imperial Majesty Emperor of Ethiopia Haile Selassie descendant of King Solomon and Queen of Sheba. David Walker wrote this appeal one hundred years before Haile Selassie became emperor in Ethiopia, but I’ll be darned if he does not sound very similar to Rastafari who chant down Babylon when he says: " I appeal to Heaven for my motive in writing--who knows that my object is, if possible, to awaken in the breasts of my afflicted, degraded and slumbering brethren, a spirit of inquiry and investigation respecting our miseries and wretchedness in this Republican Land of Liberty! ! ! ! ! !" This spoke to my senior thesis point which considered the ways black Americans reimagined the Christian God as a being that did not approve of slavery but instead, would hear the cries of the oppressed and judge all those upholding the structure. Walker declared: "God rules in the armies of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth, having his ears continually open to the cries, tears and groans of his oppressed people;" and if this does not sound like a prediction of the Civil War I don’t know what does.

Liberation was black people’s destiny indeed. And with every move to liberate themselves, there often came a backlash of new reimagined oppressions that had to be dealt with again. Caribbean Studies and History Scholar Kate Quinn researches Caribbean Black Power, imperialism, slavery, capitalism, racism, and classism. I am moved by Quinn’s words: "black government is not black power", that is precisely why I have deep seated hangups with the propping up of progress by black visibility vs. black power. She explains "Radical variants of Caribbean Black Power thus always had a class dimension." (30) I hear echoes of Dr Hope emphasizing class in my cultural studies class at the University of the West Indies. While the US often was framed as a racist place, she said, Jamaica identifies with strict classism. Kate Quinn’s introduction to Black Power and the Caribbean outlines the unequal socioeconomic conditions that most Caribbean countries had. Quinn describes fishermen being pushed out of their areas with construction of resorts, high unemployment for black communities, unequal distribution of income during economic booms (35). Can you hear Banton sing?

The rich man's wealth is in the city yeah

Destruction of the poor is his poverty

Fongot Kini-Yen Kinni was a Camooronian power house. He was Dean of faculty of law at Bamenda University of Science and Technology BA in Philosophy, a BA in Theology and MA in Philosophy and Theology from the Pontifical Urbanianan University of Rome, a BSc in the Social Sciences from the International University of Social Sciences Pro Deo, Rome; an MSc in Anthropology with specialisation in Industrial Anthropology, from the University of Paris V Rene Descartes Sorbonne; an MA in History with specialisation in Economic History, and a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Paris VII Jussieu; an MSc in Political Science, with specialisation in International Relations, an LLM in International Law with specialisation in Comparative International and African Law and a PhD in Political Science from the University of Paris I-Pantheon Sorbonne, Paris, France.

He wrote a book called Pan-Africanism: Political Philosophy and Socio-Economic Anthropology for African Liberation and Governance: Caribbean and African American Contributions. Kinni’s words touched my soul as he lauded the women who made Pan Africanism what it became saying: “It is true that African American women always participated in the various movements that gave birth and progress of the Pan African movement. It is true as mentioned that they were also the movers and shakers of the policies and ideologies that moved Pan Africanism forward. But it is also true that these women were never celebrated enough or given their rightful place in the Pantheon of Pan Africanism” (Kinni 504) “Women addressed the attendees as well as served on prominent committees. They were sponsors, organizers, supporters and leaders.” (in quote 505) IQuoting Salma Maoulidi, Kinni writes “indeed, the faces and voices of Pan-Africanism tend to be male, black, mostly middle-aged, and located in academic institutions or think tanks.” This books' introduction has various lists of people African American, Caribbean, and African persons who liberated themselves. It's concerned with thinking through the neo-post colonial Africa, capitalist racism and how these liberators confronted these structural evils.

These structural issues run deep and they can often be laid bare in the face of environmental disaster. Leniqueca Welcome is a multimodal anthropologist and designer from Trinidad and Tobago. Her research and teaching interests are postcolonial statecraft, racialization, gendering, securitization, visuality, and affect. Her work combines more traditional ethnographic methods with photography and collage. Welcome opens the article “The Infrastructures of Liberation at the End of the World: A Reflection on Disaster in the Caribbean” with a reflection on the 2018 floods of the residential neighborhood of Greenvale Park, La Horquetta, Trinidad. I enjoyed the musical way Welcome described the rain saying “The rain tapped a gentle rhythm” and “Eventually, the rain stopped drumming” (Welcome 96). Welcome reflected on the ways community members had to resume paying mortgages to the government and credit payment for destroyed appliances and launched into reflection on the “post”colonial state of the locale saying “Thus for centuries the Caribbean—“a complex product of a long and continuous exercise in colonialism and neocolonialism”3—has been ceaselessly living with approaching end times, without the promise of salvation and rebirth”^4 (97). Welcome contextualizes the apocalyptical contexts that animate our present moment including: “The expansion of nuclear military technology, fossil fuel–driven global warming, and the growth of inequality because of neoliberal economic globalization and financialization” and explains that “While our fatalistic planetary future requires mobilization, there are scholars, most notably Joseph Masco, who have called attention to the way “Western and mimetically Western” state actors capitalize on the unyielding threat of crisis to foreclose revolutionary change^5” (97-98)

"The rich man's wealth is in the city oh

Destruction of the poor is our poverty yeah

Destruction of your soul is vanity wooooy

Do you hear?

Do you hear?

Destiny

Destiny

We are in the present not the past, while we learn from the past, we are presently building a new world that has our whole destiny our communal destiny at the forefront. At institutions like UCLA we are fight fight fighting for a world that is just and humane, the work that we are doing cannot be undone.

One Love one heart let’s get together and feel alright

"One Love" if this is what your institutions fell in love with, the dream is coming into fruition. We don't have to live in a nightmare if we are grateful for the present and future we are building.

Thank you for joining me for this episode of Jahmi Roc’s Jottings! I hope you enjoyed! Don’t forget to subscribe and hop on over to my artist page to hear some music that I hope changes the world for at least one soul!

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I look forward to sharing more musical moments with you next time. Take care and keep jamming!