Podcast S1 E4: Musical Maroons

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!

Welcome to season 1 episode 4 of Jahmi Roc’s Jottings.

Happy belated National Heroes Day to Jamaicans at yaad and abroad. To open this episode I want to highlight Nanny of the Maroons, the only national heroine of Jamaica. She is remembered for the inspiration she gave to her people fighting against colonial powers in the early 18th century. She was a leader of her village Nanny Town in Portland parish.

My ultimate goal in this episode is to contextualize thinking of Rastas as musical maroons borrowing what I learned from Raquel Rivera’s article "New York Afro-Puerto Rican and Afro-Dominican Roots Music: Liberation Mythologies and Overlapping Diasporas." On our scholar Roster this week, Rivera is joined by Jacquelyn Grant, Lisa Tomlinson Donna P Hope, and Carla Peterson. My overarching theme is women and liberation spirituality. For my musical selection I am actually revisiting a film that I first watched during my undergraduate years called Quilombo.

Quilombo was based on a famous maroon community in what is now northeast Brazil. The film outlines the leadership of Acoterene, Ganga Zumba and Zumbi, three leaders who resist valiantly against Portuguese oppressors. Important to note that Acoterene is a heroine similar to Nanny who blesses Ganga Zumba and Zumbi. The 1984 Brazilian drama was directed by Carlos Diegues. All those involved in this cinematic myth-making fashion the 16th century-founded maroon community as erupting with color, joy, movement, sex, nature, exhaustion, enthusiasm and silence. If the question is what does black freedom sound like? The film Quilombo has a fire soundtrack lead by Giberto Gil to offer several responses.

Take a listen to the translated song lyrics that accompanies Zumbi's return to Quilombo Dos Palmares after being kidnapped as a child.

Come Acotirene, lady of the secret

Priestess that calls Ganga Zumba

Offering you the throne of plenty

All that is beauty and the amulet’s power

Springs and more springs

Pots and more pots

Heaven on Earth is Aruanda

This is Palmarés

Palms in the air

Sing and dance and open the ring

This is “Festa do Cometa” produced by Gilberto Gil and Liminha. Freedom in Quilombo dos Palmares dances back and forth to the rhythm of surdos (large bass drums), the cuica, congas, other percussive elements, a mixed gender chorus and the crooning voice of Gilberto Gil.

Festa gives us an introduction to this bustling community and market economy based on communal sharing of land that only belongs to earth, not any human. The movie emphasizes the connection between the maroons of the community with sovereign indigenous peoples who lived and continued to live in these locales.

Black freedom sounds like Brazilian Portuguese in this iteration, a language that sounds almost absolutely nothing like Portuguese in Portugal because of the Indigenous and African influences in its formation. Black freedom, though sometimes historicized to center male leaders, is also led by women of color. Acotirene is the leading matriarch figure who blessed Ganga Zumba to reign.

Festa mirrors the bustling pace of the community and the chorus of voices represent the cacophony of shufflings in vibrant space. Listening to the studio version released on the film’s soundtrack, the song fades in at the start and out at the end almost mimicking the start and end of a day. At sunrise, only the instruments are heard, representing the rhythmic presence of nature. By sunset, the humans are settling down but still excited to sing of the wonders of their community. The adlibs Gilberto sings when the chorus drives forward in an intense shuffling remind me of blissful war chants. The present state of wars in the world have been particularly draining for me as a thinker, speaker and writer and so I want to take this episode to more deeply explore women’s roles in quieting and stirring the flames of spiritual warfare.

As my longtime listeners know, Gender and Spirituality in Postcolonial Liberation Musics is the overarching field that Jahmi Roc’s Jotting is constructing. In Quilombo, the Christian, and Catholic faith are rejected as useful for the leaders of Palmares. It is then in great contrast that I ask you to consider Jacqueline Grant’s work. Grant wrote “Black Theology and the Black Woman.” It can be found in the edited volume by Cornel West and Eddie S Glaude Jr. African American Religious Thought: an Anthology. Grant is known for her work as an American theologian and Methodist minister, one founding developer of womanist theology, Systematic Theology (1st black woman to get PhD in this field), and her research interests include women and religion scholar, theological/religious/social issues that affect women.

For me, what does black freedom sound like, when I am singing it, the sound is necessarily preoccupied with confronting sexism. Grant stakes out the nature of sexism and the ways liberation gets complex when you consider the scope of freedom in terms of race and sex. She writes,

“Moreover, it is natural that Black men would claim their "natural" right to the "man's world." But it should be emphasized that this is logical and natural only if one has accepted without question the terms and values of patriarchy- the concept of male control and supremacy.

Black men must ask themselves a difficult question. How can a White society characterized by Black enslavement, colonialism, and imperialism provide the normative conception of women for Black society? How can the sphere of the woman, as defined by White men, be free from the evils and oppressions that are found in the White society? The important point is that in matters relative to the relationship between the sexes, Black men have accepted without question the patriarchal structures of the White society as normative for the Black community.” (834)

Let’s return to thinking about Quilombo dos Palmares. Acoterene and Nanny were both famous women leaders which stands to question the so-called normalized patriarchy that faith based communities sometimes center. In my own desire to be a musical maroon, I lift up femme, trans, and women leaders because I don’t think leadership should be restricted to one gender expression, gender identity or gender presentation. We can stand up for families if we stand up for communal unity, mutual respect, and healthy alliances.

I want to invite you to think about this prompt: What tunes would they play in your Quilombo?

Liberation sounds like something. It sounds out and resounds. I propose that DOING THE WORD, speaks to the power of song and speech. In this field the right for black women to speak is something contextualized in spiritual communities. Consider Carla Peterson’s excerpt of “Doers of the Word.” found in the same Anthology as Rivera’s.

Peterson’s research interests are nineteenth-century African-American women writers and speakers in the northern US, African-American novelists in the post-Reconstruction era, and gender and culture in historical literature.

Peterson lays bare the American Judeo-Christian spiritual landscape in which nineteenth century Black nation-building was influenced by “the site of religious evangelical activities that had been unleashed by the Second Great Awakening and drew the powerless—women, blacks, rural folk, and all those dislocated by the economic upheaval of the Jacksonian market revolution—to religion as a course of power.”

Religion in the context of Peterson’s narrative involves values and community contracts. Yet Palmares was built by wisdom coming from African orixas. African American women speakers stayed committed to extracting purity from their own form of Christianity, in which their speaking and writing defied societal demands to be quiet and fulfilled the Christian call to be “doers of the Word.” Peterson explains:

“In invoking themselves as such, these women recognized the extent to which their efforts to "elevate the race" and achieve "racial uplift" lay not only in their engagement in specific political and social activities but also in their faith in the performative power of the word-both spoken and written. For these and other activists- Sojourner Truth, Maria Stewart, Jarena Lee, Nancy Prince, Mary Ann Shadd Cary, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Sarah Parker Remond, Harriet A. Jacobs, Harriet E. Wilson, and Charlotte Forten- speaking and writing constituted a form of doing, of social action continuous with their social, political, and cultural work.

In Rastafari tenets a similar focus on the illocutionary force of sound, is communicated by the adage “Word, Sound, and Power.” Words have power and doing the word sparks speech in action. Peterson presents a clear summation of what her text Doers of the word is all about

Doers of the Word is an attempt to understand the cultural work of these black women activists. As such, it forms part of the recovery work currently being undertaken by literary critics and historians alike to rediscover and reinterpret the complexities of nineteenth-century African-American culture and in the process shed new light on our present historical moment.” (366)

Our present historical moment is at a height in human conflict. I find it hard to podcast at a time like this but I do take seriously the responsibility I take on for research and Black Study. I find that in these times many of the things that I’ve read give me the language to name what is happening and thus the power to transcend it. To be an intellectual maroon also comes with its own challenges.I hear the war cry in Festa do Cometa and see resistance and violence play out on screen throughout Quilombo.

But JAH and but JAH’s liberation musics offer healing balm. At the top of the episode I mentioned that I wanted to frame Rasta’s as musical maroons. At this time I turn to

Rivera’s article "New York Afro-Puerto Rican and Afro-Dominican Roots Music: Liberation Mythologies and Overlapping Diasporas” which appeared in the Black Music Research Journal 32 no. 2 (2012): 3-24.

Let’s dig deeper into the term maroon. Rivera outlined her goals for the article in ways that shed light on how using maroonage as a theory pans out:

“In this article I want to focus on another concept that we can think about as an additional key myth propagated through song: maronnage. Maroons, viewed as heroic figures of centuries past who escaped the bondage of slavery in the Caribbean, have become constant references in these musicians’ artistic and educational work. And, even more importantly, maroons become a source of personal inspiration and spiritual strength for musicians who deploy the concept of urban marronage to describe the type of work that they do.” (10)

Inspiration and strength are sources that keep people going in hard times. Music inspires and strengthens. When I remember the shuffle and spirit in Festa Do Cometo, I am inspired by what the maroons of Palmares were able to accomplish. This is the magic of history-inspired music. If the maroons could defy oppressors of their time, perhaps urban maroons can achieve the same.

Urban marronage is an important concept that according to Rivera weaves into history. She says

“The ethnomusicologist and musician, Paul Austerlitz, presented a conference paper in 2007 titled “Urban Maroons: Music as a Counter-Narrative of Blackness in the Dominican Republic and the Dominican Diaspora.” In it he explores the links between historical marronage and the modern-day “urban marronage” that he suggests Afro-Dominican musicians represent. A key aspect of this urban marronage is the centering of blackness (past and present) in the Caribbean context, particularly the Dominican context, and the destabilizing of the myth of racial democracy and peaceful coexistence in creole/criollo societies.” (10)

What I want to emphasize from this rich excerpt is that maroonage is a useful concept that bridges liberation musics that vary on a gender scale as well as a class scale. Before elaborating on this point, I’d like to take a moment to plug the talk I did on the book Dancehall Queen Erotic Subversion at the L.A. Art book fair available now on YouTube under the Printed Matters channel Dancehall Queen was edited by Donna P Hope.

Donna P. Hope is tenured Professor of Culture, Gender and Society in the Institute of Caribbean Studies and former Deputy Dean, Graduate Studies and Research in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus in Kingston, Jamaica.

She is the Founder and Executive Director of The Dancehall Archive and Research Initiative ("DHA") that aims to preserve and disseminate the knowledge and culture of dancehall for current and future generations across the world by facilitating and encouraging the pursuit of research and scholarship, art, culture around dancehall culture. The DHA also encourages innovation in the Dancehall industry by providing tools and lead-ins to participants.

Rivera considers dance and rhythm forms like bomba, and I see an opportunity to think through

EROTIC MAROONAGE in the example of dancehall music and dance with the musical maroonage of reggae, it’s musical roots and routes by reading Dancehall Queen Erotic Subversions beside Rivera’s article.

Specifically, I am taking up Lisa Tomlinson’s contribution to the edited volume. Lisa Tomlinson is Lecturer in the Institute of Caribbean Studies, the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica. She is the author of The African-Jamaican Aesthetic: Cultural Retention and Transformation across Borders.

Tomlinson Contrasts Dancehall fashion with Rastafari conservative dress

“The dancehall queens defy through their costuming respectability politics or morality through their explicit style of dressing or “elaborate undressing”

My field Gender and Spirituality in postcolonial liberation musics premises that spirituality and morality go hand in hand but liberation is read across class lines and are not confined to respectability’s push to Shame black people into eurocentric values of clothes and fashion.

Carlene Smith, the first Dancehall Queen who coined the term, donned revealing dressing and suggestive dance moves.

Tomlinson explains “Societal restrictions have not stopped Dancehall Queen’s from wearing X-rated outfits as a Dancehall continues to provide a space where women can assert themselves through bodily and fashion choices”

“In so doing, they have accomplished an “erotic maroonage” a form of subversion, that allow them to escape their everyday lives bounded by a rigid class structure and marred by sexist male culture”

Erotic maroonage is then defiance of sexism, classism, and respectability slippery slopes. Dancehall and Reggae-Rasta musical maroons have varying alliances with patriarchy. As spaces for movement, these styles can be read alongside womanist movements described by Carla Peterson. In the next episode, I will depart from this point and investigate Margareth Menezes’s song “Rasta Man” as a an example of how women’s voices shape the cultural understanding of Rastas as urban maroons.

To conclude, I want to reflect on what Raquel Rivera placed in the afterword of her article that sums up some of my feelings of occupying space as a musical artist and music scholar. She states: “Though committed to documenting grassroots cultural expressions and particularly its dreams of social justice and freedom, I am one of those salaried and accredited scholars whose academic writing is a business transaction with the powerful. I am a researcher in an academic institution, writing inaccessibly about the dreams of justice and freedom in the music that my fellow musicians and I make. The contradiction sits heavy on my shoulders.” (22) As I move closer to exams I hope my listeners can bare with me as I storm over this contradiction.

Like the Maroons I have mentioned do I encourage my listeners to

Get up, stand up

Stand up for your right

Get up, stand up

Stand up for your right

Get up, stand up

Stand up for your right

Get up, stand up

Don't give up the fight

Preacher man don't tell me

Heaven is under the earth

I know you don't know

What life is really worth

He said all that glitters is gold

Half that story ain't never been told

So now you see the light, hey

You stand up for your right

Come on

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!

You can find me on IG, FB, YT and TT @JahmiRoc

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