Online Magazine of the Visual Narrative - ISSN 1780-678X
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Online Magazine of the Visual Narrative - ISSN 1780-678X |
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Ribbon Shirts in Rasta Colors: Native American Syncretic Musical and Visual Strategies of (Jamaican) Resistance in the Lyrical Imagery, CD Jacket Art, and Performance Costuming of Hopi/ Diné Reggae Singjay Casper Loma-Da-Wa |
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Author: Loretta Collins Koblah Abstract (E): The article argues that in discourses narrating the globalization of Jamaican reggae music, references to the Native American interest in reggae have largely been generic or loaded with cinematic resonances. Based on interviews with Hopi/ Diné reggae and dancehall singjay Casper Loma-Da-Wa, the article insists that critics must engage critically with Native reggae artists in order to better understand their complex musical, ideological, and personal negotiations. Loma-Da-Wa's retort to the Jamaican romance with Western films in his song “How the West was Won' suggests cross-cultural dissonances. Analysis of performance costuming, CD cover art, and image clusters of song lyrics demonstrates how Loma-Da-Wa creates countertraditions to both Jamaican and Native roots musical traditions. Abstract (F): Le propos de cet article est de démontrer que dans les analyses de la globalisation du reggae, le traitement de la manière dont les Indiens d'Amérique du Nord ses sont réappropriés cette musique est marqué soit par des clichés soit par des références au cinéma. A partir d'interviews fouillées avec Casper Loma-Da-Wa, un reggae « singjay » reggae de la tribu Hopi, cet article plaide pour une approche plus respectueuse des spécificité musicales, idéologiques et personnelles des nouveaux usages du reggae. La manière dont Loma-Da-Wa's enchevêtre reggae et western dans sa chanson “How the West was Won” met à jour des stratégies de résistance culturelle plus complexes, tant par rapport aux modèles jamaïcains que par rapport aux cultures indiennes locales. L'article s'attache non seulement aux interviews avec le chanteur, mais analyse également le code vestimentaire des performances, les illustrations des CD et le réseau métaphorique des textes des chansons. keywords: cross-cultural politics, Jamaican reggae, Native American popular music, Casper Loma-Da-Wa, Havasupai |
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(Steffens 1998, p. 264)
In the passage above, reggae historian, founding editor of The Beat magazine and showman, Roger Steffens, lauds Marley, the most internationally revered and popularly enshrined of reggae ambassadors by succinctly evoking 'remote,' 'pre-industrial,' 'timeless,' but particularly iconic and culturally, geographically, and historically significant locations of indigenous anciency and sacredness. Referring to Marley's enthusiastic worldwide reception and the expansion of Jamaican reggae culture to nearly inaccessible and spiritually charged regions, Steffens once more alludes to Havasupai devotees who live in Supai Village in the Canyon, proclaiming, 'Although his work was brief, the lasting effects of it shall be felt throughout the rest of time, as his philosophy spreads from the bottom of the Grand Canyon to the jagged peaks of the Himalayas, chanting down Babylon in all its insidious incarnations' (1998, p. 254). These brief passages should suggest the way that particular indigenous nations have been assigned a fixed and overly-determined place within reggae literature, serving as markers of a kind of pre-modern, pre-colonial native purity of spirit and harmonious relation to dramatic regions of the natural world. Commentators, more often than not, shape their reportage of First People's interest in reggae to illustrate and legitimize the globalization of Jamaican reggae by affirming the music's grounding in native 'roots' traditions. Few critics go beyond the basic acknowledgement that processes of transculturation are not unilateral in order to study the reciprocal impact of indigenous expression, cultural arts, historical struggles and social agendas on Jamaican reggae artists. Few academic or popular essays document in detail the active contemporary participation and critical interventions of indigenous peoples in reggae production. If critics interviewed Havasupai reggae musicians and DJs of Tribal War and Creation Sounds, the two Jamaican-influenced bands of Supai Village, for instance, they might come to a more complex appreciation of how First Peoples have both borrowed musical forms and resistance strategies from Jamaica and innovated a creative counterpoint to both indigenous and Jamaican traditions of expression. In Dangerous crossroads: Popular music, postmodernsim and the poetics of place, George Lipsitz insists on viewing the processes of musical and cultural translation as a 'creative and often contentious dialogue': 'What sometimes seems like simple appropriation may take on very different qualities in the context of energetic contestations and conflicts over meaning between individuals and groups' (Lipsitz 1994, p. 56). This essay criticizes essentialism in the body of circulated stories that narrate the Native American relationship to reggae culture. Insisting on the personal interview as indispensable research tool, the paper documents the way that Hopi/ Diné reggae singjay Casper Loma-Da-Wa draws upon, draws away from, challenges, and is challenged by his connection to both Native American and Jamaican roots traditions. Countertraditions generated by the indigenous reggae artist in response to Wild Wild West traditions in reggae and dancehall music are analyzed. Finally, the paper examines Loma-Da-Wa's performance costuming, CD jacket art, and lyrical imagery, arguing that studying these areas of his 're-visualization' of Native and Jamaican syncretism facilitates a nuanced appraisal of cross-cultural identification and clash. [1] For more than twenty years scholars and popular commentators have referred to reggae's appeal beyond Jamaica as a source of indigenous renewal and resistance. Stephen Feld provides a typical catalogue: '[Reggae's] perception by indigenous people outside the Caribbean as an oppositional, roots ethno-pop form has led to its local adoption by migrants and indigenes in places as diverse as Europe, Hawaii, native North American, aboriginal Australia, Papua New Guinea, South Africa and South East Asia' (Keil and Feld 1994, p. 273). In 'Transnational popular culture and the global spread of the Jamaican Rastafarian movement,' Neil J. Savinshinsky explains the universalistic attractions of reggae music, its spirituality, its 'anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist stance' (Savinshinsky 1994, p. 273), its demand for 'deliverance from poverty and oppression' (p. 272), its assertion of a dignified 'self-image and identity,' its emphasis on knowledge of 'indigenous traditions and culture' (p. 274), and its 'espousal of a return to a more natural and traditional way of life' (pp. 273-274). Linking Rastafari to other revitalization movements amongst 'cultures ravaged and displaced by colonial powers' and referring specifically to Native American groups of the American Southwest that have 'embraced Rastafari,' Sw. Anand Prahlad argues that the 'movement has become more and more associated not simply with ideas but with political and social activism leading to enormous changes and advancements for poor and historically voiceless masses' (Prahlad 2001, pp. 62-63). William David Spencer's 'Chanting change around the world through Rasta riddim and art' (1998) usefully maps the reggae planet from the Havasupai to Surinam to Zimbabwe; however, his article provides scant analysis of particular bands or recordings. Neal Ullestad's 'American Indian Rap and Reggae: Dancing "To the Beat of a Different Drummer"' devotes a few pages to discussion of poet and saxophonist Joy Harjo and her reggae band Poetic Justice. [2] These critics, who avoid Roger Steffen's style of praise-song and rhetorical flourish in 'Bob Marley: Rasta warrior' (1998) still restrict their commentary to brief generalizations about the relevance of Rastafari and reggae values for indigenous people. Commentators largely de-emphasize or fail to document both the particular social issues that first peoples confront and the differing means by which indigenous reggae artists learn, incorporate, critically engage with, or in some cases dispute both Native American and Jamaican traditions. Rather than reifying reggae, mythpoetically containing it by resorting to orientalist discourses and 'cinematic' representations, or categorizing it according to broad concepts of liberation theology, studies of the globalization of reggae should be ready to engage in specific inquiries with specific artists to understand how they negotiate their complex and not always completely harmonious relationship to roots cultures.
Cinematic modes of representation of Native Americans in reggae culture
Let me return to the Havasupai briefly in order to examine how certain essentialist representations of Native culture get embedded into reggae literature over time. The Havasupai Nation, consisting of one hundred families and around six hundred members, lives at the bottom of the Grand Canyon in the U.S. Occluding the complexity of Havasupai culture, reggae media has focused on the grandeur of the canyons, the isolation of an ancient nation living on the canyon floor near a pristine waterfall at the spiritual center of the universe, and the reverence for Bob Marley as fulfilment of prophecy. Although reggae remains a vital presence in Supai village, static depictions— which have been promulgated for more than twenty years in privately circulated but unreleased film footage, one documentary, radio interviews, reggae articles, books, and most recently web pages— have reified the cultural 'essence' of the Havasupai, nearly reducing it to a single term. In the early 1980s, as one of the earliest attempts to document how Bob Marley brought 'the music of Jamaica and his deep beliefs to the rest of the world' (dirs. Menell and Chabot, U.S.A. and Britain 1986), [3] British director Jo Menell, working in collaboration with Chris Blackwell of Island Records, visited Supai Village and negotiated permission to film Havasupai reggae fans on the condition that he would bring along some Rastafarians or Jamaicans. Bob Marley's mother Cedella Booker and the Wailer's keyboardist Tyrone Downie went to Supai for three days of concerts and filming. Menell and Downie were interviewed by Roger Steffens on his The Reggae Beat radio program about the experience later, [4] and reports of the Havasupai-Marley connection were published in The Reggae Beat magazine and Malika Whitney and Dermott Hussey's Bob Marley: Reggae king of the world (1982, pp. 127-128). [5] Although the filming was limited to the three day encounter and the footage was never made commercially available, the radio and print versions of this Grand Canyon story would ensure that the Havasupai would be referenced in the majority of subsequent popular, academic, and internet articles on the globalization of reggae. [6] The point that I make in this introductory section is that in reggae literature, a cinematic, mythopoetic or generic mode of representing Jamaican and Native American cultural and musical affinity has endured. [7]
Greetings in the name of Jah-ronimo, this is the diary of the one Casper Loma-Da-Wa, also known as the big-bellyman, in the house, ha-ha: The importance of the personal interview in anti-essentialist studies of indigenous resistance.
At the close of the preliminary stage of this research project, I chose to approach the dynamic Hopi/ Diné reggae singer Casper Loma-Da-Wa, winner of the 2001 Native American Music Award for Best World Music, and Gerry Gordon, a non-Native founding member of the Hopiland reggae festival organizers Culture Connection, for extended personal interviews. [8] I selected Casper Loma-Da-Wa because of his rich arrangements and rhythms that syncretized roots reggae with other musical genres. He composed lyrics with narrative drive and poetic image clusters that bridged the cultural divide between Jamaican life and his experiences in Hopiland. His songs incorporated references to the natural world, agricultural settings, the divine, social justice, poverty, genocide, governmental oppression, violence, and unity that can be found in reggae music; however, his topics and image clusters were directed at very specific current social issues that the Hopi and other Native American groups currently face.
Loma-Da-Wa was not singing generic roots reggae songs that stayed close to the Bob Marley or the Jamaican Studio One traditions. He modeled his rapid-fire singjay style after Jamaican dancehall DJs from the 80s to present, especially Michigan & Smiley and Pato Banton, yet he had also experienced from an early age the live performances of Jamaican reggae artists who played the Reggae Inna Hopiland festivals organized by Culture Connection. [9] He was the only Hopi reggae artist to emerge out of the years of the Reggae Inna Hopiland concerts since the first Jamaicans had played at Hopiland in 1984 (the first time Jamaican artists had played on any Native American reservation in the United States). He had also traveled to Jamaica to the Reggae Sunsplash festivals and played US concerts with reggae megastars. [10] Loma-Da-Wa attempted (often more successfully than not) his own 'version' of urban Jamaican patwa and, less frequently, his own untutored approximations of traditional Native singing . He understood and deployed Rastafarian and reggae rhyming structures. Most interestingly, some of his music actually implicitly challenged some of the Western film-influenced themes, role playing, and metaphors that had played a foundational role in the development of Jamaican reggae and dancehall deejaying. His performance costuming and CD cover art displayed the same kind of creative tension between his cultural and musical modalities. He was critically engaged with Jamaican reggae and dancehall music, negotiating his complex relationships to roots performance traditions of both Native American and Jamaican cultures.
During the summer of 2003, I traveled to Mesa, Arizona. In preparation for the interviews, I composed questions that not only referred to the historical and contemporary socio-political links between indigenous and 'New World' black societies but also aesthetic, cosmological, and spiritual commonalities that might explain why reggae (beyond its protest dimension) has been an especially popular medium for First Peoples in the North American context and elsewhere. [11] In the course of our dialogue, Loma-Da-Wa expressed his views on cultural synchronicity, yet he also called into question the very conventions used by reggae scholars and popular commentators to categorize, conceptualize, and label musical hybridization and resistance. He viewed reggae and Jamaican dancehall deejaying as a 'kick-ass' musical means of revising history, creating memorable messages through 'word/sound/power,' increasing awareness of the social realities of the Hopi and other indigenous peoples, and forming communities within and across ethnic divides. [12] However, he also made it clear that he is constantly in the process of re-negotiating his relationship to traditional and popular elements of Native American, Jamaican, and U.S. urban societies. We see emerging in Loma-Da-Wa's mixture of cultural codes, symbolic resources, and musical registers a kind of ambiguous but intuitive move towards cross-cultural imagination and malleability. Yet, Loma-Da-Wa's blending of codes embraces, syncretizes, and 'troubles' both Native American and Jamaican roots traditions; in his doubleness, he is neither comfortably what he calls 'beads and feathers' traditional Hopi/Diné nor full-blown imitator of Jamaican style. The essay will now examine how Loma-Da-Wa creates countertraditions to both Jamaican and Native roots musical traditions and the challenges this effort poses to him as an artist.
Let me tell you how the West was won: Loma-Da-Wa's intervention in the 'lyrical gun' tradition of reggae and dancehall music
According to J. Richard Middleton, reggae music provides alternative stories that aid in identity-reformulation, as we 'come to a sense of self-identity, in a manner that enables us to resist the dehumanization of a world system undergirded by its own large story or metanarrative' (Middleton 2000, p. 190). Yet Jamaican musical traditions have also absorbed and rediffused imported 'metanarratives' that deform and erase brutal and painful Native American experiences. For Loma-Da-Wa, part of the struggle in negotiating a place for himself and indigenous people in relation to the reggae tradition is addressing the way that Jamaican culture has appropriated Hollywood visions of the 'Wild Wild West.' Moved to create a countertradition to the enthusiastic Jamaican consumption of filmic narratives of cinema cowboys, posses, sheriffs, and 'Indians,' Loma-Da-Wa also must confront his own changing and variable stance towards contemporary Native American recordings that include traditional singing or powpow drumming and his contradictory feelings about 'authenticity.' The often improvisational nature of working in the recording studio adds another dimension to his on-going practice of musical adaptation and personal reorientation towards both Jamaican and Native forms. Reggae literature does not address this kind of (one wants to say, 'obvious') complex cultural clash that might arise in the organic process of the production of indigenous reggae music. In ''Lyrical gun': Metaphor and role play in Jamaican dancehall culture,' Carolyn Cooper argues that Jamaica, like other Caribbean societies, has had 'a long history of ghetto youth internalizing images of Hollywood heroism and gun violence that they regularly absorb in the movies' (Cooper 1994, p. 431). She traces the assimilation of cowboy Western themes in ska music 'performed by Don Drummond and the Skatalites, such as 'Ringo,' 'Lawless Street,' and 'Ska-ta-shot' (1994, pp. 431,432). Although Lloyd Bradley's Bass culture: When Reggae was King refers to the diversity of thematic material during the transitional eras of ska, rocksteady and reggae musical development during the 1960s to early 1970s, he also notes the impact of Hollywood films on both music and neighborhood posses, with 'cowboy motifs a clear first choice' (Bradley 2000, p. 288). Bradley refers to Derrick Harriot's 'spaghetti western series of Crystalites instrumentals—the Undertaker songs,' and Lee 'Scratch' Perry's 'cowboy classics 'Django,' 'Clint Eastwood,' 'Van Cleef,' etc.' [13] Cooper contextualizes contemporary Jamaican dancehall gun lyrics, theatrical badman role play, and deejay-created metaphors for verbal dexterity and prowess (the 'lyrical gun') by referring to the symbolic connection between 'the power of the gun' and the 'fire power of the singer's music and lyrics' (Cooper 1994, p. 433). For Cooper, the 'theatre of the Hollywood Western' is directly connected to the 'theatre of Jamaican Popular culture' (Cooper 1994, p. 433). As she observes, 'the nom-de-guerre of many [dancehall] DJs encodes the film origins of their fantasy personae: Dillinger, Trinity, Ninja Man, Red Dragon, Bandolero.' [14]
Discussing his song 'How the West Was Won' ( The Sounds of Reality 2000), Loma-Da-Wa explained that he participates in and derives his lexical codes and verbal performance modes from a competitive tradition of sound system clashes and deejay battles: 'The essence of the deejay is that you want to be better than the next guy. Even though you don't wish them no harm or nothing…. I am the baddest deejay at what I do. It will never be taken to violence. I'm just kind of bs-ing.' Influenced by the 'theatre of the Hollywood Western,' Jamaican deejays praise their own verbal dexterity and threaten to attack their opponents 'lyrically' 'inna murder style.' Yet that kind of metaphorical 'high-noon' showdown does not recognize how the mission of Manifest Destiny, the Westward migration, and the Wild Wild West scenario included the programmatic defrauding, genocidal slaughter, relocation, forced-assimilation and (mis)education of indigenous nations that experienced disruptions of cultural traditions and thievery of their lands through force and broken treaties. Nor do Jamaican deejays interrogate Hollywoodesque distortions of Wild West culture that have deformed U.S. images of indigenous history and society. 'How the West was Won,' a driving and haunting dancehall/ rap song, combines a hallucinogenic and deconstructive Jamaican dub reverb effect on line endings, Jamaican verbal phrasing without patwa, and Loma-Da-Wa's powerful attempt at 'Native American'-style singing. He explains: '"How the West Was Won." Basically, we're telling how it was conquered and how it became what it is today. The whole gun-- I'm the territorial sheriff-- and all you bad men, that's part of it. But we also talk about the conflicts between the Spanish and the Apache…. Between the Cavalry and the Sioux.' Jamaican appropriations of the Western motifs erase and simplify a complicated history of multiple conquests.
Loma-Da-Wa explained his implicit critique of Jamaican deejay posturing in the song thus: 'On a serious note, when I say I come in a 'murder style' in "How the West was Won," it's a fact that the West was conquered by murder and deception. When I say that the soldiers came in a murder style, they really did come to conquer.' He acknowledges his debt to Jamaican deejays, but distinguishes his difference from them, deliberately mentioning Jamaican deejays who have selected a nom-de-guerre from Western films:
He challenges the kind of historical metanarratives presented in Western films and creatively consumed by Jamaican musicians, arguing for awareness of Native counter-narratives: 'We have history that proves this, and I'm not talking about history from an American or English history book, I 'm talking about history from the elders' mouths. Written history for the Hopi people to read. Written history by the Sioux nation, and the Cherokee, and the Apache, and all these other peoples who have been harassed for years. We have written history that tells about this.' Western films also portray indigenous people as nearly relics of history, cultures of the past. However, Loma-Da-Wa points out that the 'murder style' still impacts native peoples. 'It happened in my backyard and is still happening. Maybe not to the extent of how they conquered this land in previous centuries, but they're still doing it. And they're killing Mother Earth by poisoning the air and land, and using pristine 2,000, 3,000-year old glacier water sources to move dirt [the Peabody Mining Company]. To me, that is just unfathomable…Yeah, "inna murder style" is definitely something that's happening today.' The sound of the forceful and mournful Native vocals and Diné speech re-insert into the Wild West saga the voice of the eradicated, murdered, and dispossessed. Loma-Da-Wa noted that the recording process led him into confrontational zones with both Jamaican musical traditions and Native American roots music, however. He found that he had to confront and adapt his own attitudes to what he has called the 'beads and feathers' dimensions of some Native American popular performances. I quote at length:
Without the personal interview, it might be easy for a critic to generalize about the harmonious and intentional syncretism of Jamaican and Native musical traditions in 'How the West was Won.' Despite his strong commitment to Native issues and readily apparent love for his heritage, Loma-Da-Wa actually feels less comfortable imitating traditional Native singers than he does Jamaica patwa. Loma-Da-Wa explained his initial resistance to incorporating any kind of 'inauthentic' 'beads and feathers' elements into the song, his growing understanding of the power and meaning of that blend in this case, and the fortunate serendipities of what was improvised in the studio and added to the mix by the engineers. The particles of Diné language uttered by Loma-Da-Wa in the song, are, fittingly, the appropriate ones in this situation, as they signal the initiation of a dialogue. In response to the long-standing Jamaican enthrallment with the 'power of the gun' and Western narratives, Loma-Da-Wa simply asks, 'Ha-e?'—'What?' as in, 'What did you say?'
Ribbon Shirts in Rasta Colors: Native American Syncretic Musical and Visual Strategies of Jamaican) Resistance in the Lyrical Imagery, Performance Costuming, and CD Jacket Art of Loma-Da-Wa
According to Savinshinsky (1998), 'the Rastafarian color motif of red, yellow (or gold), green, and black function as one of the most conspicuous symbols of the movement globally' (Savinshinsky 1998, p. 134). Rastafarians, 'Rasta-emulators,' reggae fans, and 'sympathizers worldwide' wear red, green, and gold items. Savinshinsky credits the adoption of these colors by Rastafarians to their reverence for Ethiopia— the homeland of the divine Emperor Haile Selassie I (JAH)— (and thus the colors of the Ethiopian flag), and the pan-African banner of unity that Jamaican Marcus Garvey envisioned. [17] Syncretic costuming signifies Casper Loma-Da-Wa's transcultural positioning, as he combines the traditional Native American beaded and ribbon shirts with red, green, and gold trimming. He usually wears a handmade yarn Rastafarian belt.
His cordless microphone is taped in red, green, and gold. He sometimes wears a bandana
headtie, creating in a rapper-style look. His backing band, the '602,' is comprised entirely, with the exception of Loma-Da-Wa, of dreadlocked musicians, all of them African-descended except for the keyboardist. He expresses a strategic alterity from
both mainstream culture and the various roots cultures that he is moving between. His choice of costuming suggests that he is interested in being part of a cross-cultural collectivity and styling himself as a unique musical entity at the same time. He is not just another store-rack Rasta who turns mass-produced and distributed Rasta fashions into fetishes of cultural appropriation. Nor is he a 'beads and feathers' New Age Indian or a powwow singer or dancer. [18] In the fusion of performance dress codes, he has revitalized Native and Jamaican symbols that have lost significance in commodity culture.
Cover Art and Lyrics of Loma-Da-Wa's CDs
Casper Loma-Da-Wa's CD cover art alludes to the Jamaican reggae traditions that he borrows from but also stakes alternative claims, making a place for more complicated and nuanced representation of Native American experiences and worldviews in reggae culture. The artwork represents Loma-Da-Wa's attempt to define his ideological positions and music in complementary relation to or in contentious response to at least four forces, the Hopi belief system and struggles with the larger society, reggae tropes of Rasta philosophy, the land-grabbing policies of the U.S. government and big business, and the long-standing Hopi/ Navajo (Diné) land disputes. His first CD, Original Landlord (1997) features as jacket artwork a photograph of Loma-Da-Wa leaning against a cliff wall of petroglyph rock carvings of ancestors, corn, deities, human figures, religious leaders, animals, insects, and elements of nature that encode ceremony, history and prophecy.
In his title, Loma-Da-Wa alludes to the Rastafarian and reggae concept of anciency— of the African and/or Rastaman as the 'original man'—a theme that reggae singer Andrew Tosh's album Original Man (1994) develops ('I'm the original man, straight from creation'). Sw. Anand Prahlad explains the Rastafarian concept of anciency thus:
By selecting this centrally important roots ideology from reggae and merging it with Hopi beliefs that the Hopi have been designated as divinely-gifted caretakers of the mesas and surrounding land from ancient times to the present, Loma-Da-Wa asserts a counterclaim: in the 'New World,' in fact, the Hopi is the 'original landlord.' This counterclaim is offered as not only as harmonious counterpoint to Rasta claims but also as a defense against encroachments on Hopi land and lifeways by the U.S. government and the Navajo (Diné). [19] However, like the reggae singer who claims spiritual wisdom as an 'original man' who is able to convey a sense of truth, justice, the divine, and natural wholeness because of his connection to the earliest moments of creation, Loma-Da-Wa also establishes his authority to accurately and insightfully 'chat culture' and history on the microphone. His cream-colored shirt blends in with the rock face, making him appear like a pictographic carved figure and a contemporary man at the same time. Computer-assisted overlay positions the bands of sedimentary layering in the rock and petrogylphs across his shirt. The earliest traces of indigenous artwork, story, and religious divination are written into the natural landscape, and the Hopi reggae artist's project is projected as a continuation of this ancient mode of indigenous expression blended with the 'modern.' The 'Original Landlord' theme established in the cover art is further defined in several songs as Loma-Da-Wa asserts the Hopi role as the original custodians of territory now bitterly disputed over by the Hopi, Navajo (Diné), Peabody Coal (a British-owned mining company), and the U.S. government. Loma-Da-Wa directly deals with the conflict in three songs from the album, 'Hundred Years of Redemption,' 'Mr. President,' and 'Original Landlord.' Although the iconography and images of the cover art of this first album are primarily drawn from Hopi culture, the 'original landlord' theme is narrativized in these songs through adaptation of Jamaican roots reggae melodies and motifs, contemporary Jamaican dancehall singjay-style verbal delivery, and Loma-Da-Wa's version of a Jamaican patwa. The synergy between the Native visual and the Jamaican-influenced aural dimensions of Original Landlord lend power to the messages. 'Hundred Years of Redemption,' of course evokes Bob Marley's ballad 'Redemption Song.' It establishes a Hopi claim to the land by depicting the Hopi—and the DJ— as farmers and caretakers of the land: 'In the fields me hoe the weeds, turn around/ then me plant dem the seeds./ Ask Jah mon to yield me good crop/ check the corn from bottom to stalk.' Loma-Da-Wa draws on his experiences of growing and harvesting corn with his Hopi grandfather:
Waters comments on Hopi corn cultivation thus: 'Growing in small ears, on short, stunted stalks in sandy fields and rocky hillsides with only an occasional rain to nourish them, Hopi corn is still an agricultural miracle and a dependable staple that has earned for the Hopis the name of Corn-eaters among neighboring meat-eating tribes' (Waters, 1963, 1977, p. 135). However, corn and other agricultural images abound in reggae, especially in songs by Bob Marley on his Rastaman Vibration album. As Sw. Prahlad states, 'corn is one of the dominant images' (2001, p. 186). According to Prahlad, in the Marley song 'Crazy Baldhead,' 'this agricultural image takes on significant symbolic value, representing the civilization and labors of black people that have been consistently exploited by colonial powers' (Prahlad 2001, p. 186):
Likewise, the carefully tended soil, corn seeds and growing corn stalks in Loma-Da-Wa's 'Hundred Years of Redemption' can symbolize the Hopi role as caretakers of the land, the Hopi experience of being scorned in their own land by the U.S. government, the mining company, and the Navajo (Diné), and the DJ's desires to plant of seeds of social unity rather than contention. He asks 'Tell me why in the world we fight/ Can't we come together, Can't we unite?' This question can be understood as referring to global strife in general, but more specifically to the Hopi and Navajo land dispute: 'The Hopi tribe upon reservation, in between Navajo occupation/ There's speculation, of the situation/ But still my people witness total annihilation.' In both 'Hundred Years of Redemption' and 'Mr. President' and other album songs Loma-Da-Wa uses the common Rastafarian and reggae technique of implicitly indicting Babylonian society by rhyming on the '-tion' ending sound of words that suggest the institutional practices and structures that oppress: 'occupation,' 'annihilation,' 'reservation,' 'observation,' 'destruction.' In 'Original Landlord,' Loma-Da-Wa attacks strip mining by the Peabody Coal Company, which uses pristine Hopi groundwater to slurry coal to the processing plant, the Navajo encroachments on Hopi land, and the US legal decisions regarding Hopi and Navajo land rights: 'Tell you about the things the world not see/ and of the ways, government policies/ they strip upon me land at ah Peabody/ this is very serious, this is not ah funny.' He refers to the small territory now inhabited by the Hopi and the harshness of survival conditions on the mesas of Hopiland. He again uses a Jamaican rhyming style as he mourns the reduction of territorial holdings through governmental acts: 'You see the judges, the court, they have no vision,/ they take my land away, they make the wrong decision.' Loma-Da-Wa adapts Jamaican toasting-'stylee' to address very serious and pressing issues for Hopiland. Loma-Da-Wa explained the context of the 'original landlord' songs. His comments are worth quoting at length:
Although the cover of The Original Landlord does not employ any ostensibly Jamaican icons, images or Rasta colors, the relationship between Jamaican-influenced album title and cover art invokes two traditions of anciency that empower the message of the Hopi/ Diné singer addressing this crisis. [20]
The cover art of Loma-Da-Wa's second album The Sounds of Reality (2000), like the first album, primarily uses his Tá-Há's (uncle's) artistic renderings of Hopi images of the mesa dwellings, the sun, rain clouds, geometric pottery or wall mural designs of clouds, circle patterns, and symbolic colors blue, white, red, and yellow. The front cover drawing positions over the Hopi homes of the mesa a large native figure with face obscured and dressed in a traditional blanket. He offers a long wood-carved pipe. He appears to be like a grand spirit of the sky (at dawn, noon, and twilight), music and rain. Musical notes surround the large sun behind him and rain down unto the mesa and through the homes. The overall impression of the cover suggests a positive cleansing of spirit and awakening of mental consciousness through the refreshing medium of music. The spiritual figure and pipe also suggest that guidance and ceremonial smoking (ganja or indigenous tobacco?) leads to higher consciousness and/or communication with the godhead. The song 'Make it Rain' provides imagery similar to that of the cover. It begins with the sound of falling rain, rumbling thunder, reggae drum roll, a chunky guitar, thunder claps, and a 6/8 syncopated rhythm of descending intervals on keyboard that bring to mind the ambience of falling rain.
This song brings together the Jamaican idea of 'positive lyrics' and vibrations that can combat negativity and clear the way for enlightened thinking, the Hopi belief that they are 'keepers of the rain,' and a thankful attitude that makes the singer receptive to experiencing the fresh, organic elements of his immediate environment. Loma-Da-Wa explained how he generates his songs out of the images of his immediate surroundings:
In composing the song, Loma-Da-Wa attempted to meld his personal observances with Jamaican rhythms and evocative and recognizable images of the rainy mesas: 'I had Hopis coming up-- and Apaches, and skins, in general, come up to me and say, I could feel, I felt, I could envision what you were saying. I mean, when you were talking about the rain coming to you and seeing the lightning, and smelling the fresh air, I had that happen to me.' The cover art depicts the connection between music and the visual imagination of the revitalizing image of rain. Drawing again on the 'original man' motif, Loma-Da-Wa points out in other album songs that Hopiland is the site of ancient Aztec ruins ('Crossing the Borders'). In 'Don't Dem Know' he contrasts his modes of authority and knowing to U.S. metropolitan systems of knowledge: 'No college man I'm surely no professor'; however, he defends his role as organic intellectual who gains perspective from his relationship to the natural world and daily living, as well as his relationships to both Native and Jamaican tactics of resistance. In the funky reggae song 'Rub-a Dub Stylee' Loma-Da-Wa names himself 'Loma-Da-Wa from the Hopi posse' ('posse' refers to Jamaican street gangs or sound system crews or audiences/'massives'), and explains how he derives his underground stance naturally: 'me live in the shadows of ah pumpkin seed hill.' In 'No Dibi Dibi D.J.,' he claims his dual-status as 'a true native lyric veteran' who sings in the 'patois' style. In 'No Indian,' which begins with the deadpan, bluesy voice of Native American poet John Trudell, Loma-Da-Wa objects to the misrepresentation of indigenous people by Europeans since the time of Columbus and claims title to Hopi territory, alluding again to the Hopi/ Navajo (Diné) conflict: 'Me not no Indian come from India/ a true native man me come from Arizona/ Northern Arizona that me territory/ Original landlord, that me theory/ And if you not agree become, that no bother me/ Cause ancestral roots, that ah what ah guide me.' He claims his right to speak about the intertribal dispute because he is 'ah half a Hopi.' He documents his legitimacy as a Hopi, as his Quah, or grandfather Sankey Lomayesva came from the village of Kykotsmovi on First Mesa, and he descends from 'ah sun clan people come from Polacca.' However, his claim as lyrical 'rainmaker' and his pop-music use of the rain as metaphor for positive spiritual and perceptual refreshment and consciousness-raising in 'Make It Rain' brought Loma-Da-Wa into a conflictual relationship with the Hopi elders. He explained:
According to Waters, the Kachinas, respected spiritual messengers ('Ka' means 'respect' and 'china' means 'spirit'), 'bring rain, insuring the abundance of crops and the continuation of life' (Waters 1963, 1977, p. 166). Loma-Da-Wa continuously has to renegotiate his position vis-à-vis traditional Hopi 'roots' culture, in part, because of the cross-cultural confusions that occur when he deploys tropes from Jamaican music and when he role-plays the reggae singer's function as 'natural mystic' in an indigenous cultural context ordered by religion and directed by religious ceremony and leadership.
The cover artwork of the third and most recent CD Honor the People (2004) consciously blends visual codes and symbolic colors of Native American and Jamaican traditions. The cover features a painting by Keven Horace Quannie, done in traditional chalky colors of blue, white, yellow, red. The painting depicts a circle divided into quadrants and filled with bowed images of people and Kachinas spirits. Loma-Da-Wa explains that these four quadrants have universal meanings such as the four seasons, the life cycle, the four directions, etc. They also symbolize the 'Fourth World,' which we now inhabit. The lyric booklet features a circular drawing by Damian Lomayesva. The inner circle contains a depiction of what seems to be a view of either the Grand Canyon
or a Hopiland Mesa. Two outlined faces represent ancestral spirits. This reflects Loma-Da-Wa's respect for the elders. [21] This corresponds to one of the most powerful songs on the album, 'Honor the People,' which honors the ancestors and uses the Rastafarian technique of rhyming -tion words in order to catalogue broken treaties between the U.S. government and Native nations ('extermination,' 'relocation,' 'reservations,' 'six nations,' 'separation,' 'education,' 'destruction,' 'submission,' etc.). On top of the canyon stands the Jamaican Rastafarian/ reggae symbol of the lion drawn in graffiti-style in black with a red, green, and gold tail. Of course, the lion represents the 'Lion of Judah,' the supreme deity of Rastafarians, Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie I and the dreadness of Rastafarian culture. It is also a popular icon of reggae culture and the reggae industry. The lion, too, has a spectral appearance, making it, like the ancestral indigenous figures superimposed on the rock face, a source and symbol of ancestral wisdom and strength. The graf-writing style signifies Loma-Da-Wa's recent involvement as a promoter of emerging rap artists and his own rap-style verbal delivery and use of record-scratching samples on such album songs as 'If You're Ready,' 'Rez Cop,' and 'Who is the Enemy?' Hanging over the lion in the place of the sun is 'Da-Wa,' a Hopi feathered face mask representing the sun, framed on either side by four eagle feathers. The red, green and gold sky glows above the canyon. This album most consciously syncretizes divergent musical styles from Jamaican, African American (blues, R & B, gospel, and rap), and Native American musical cultures (a pounding, synthesized 'war drum' is heard on 'Mighty Rebels' and traditional Native singing and rattle are heard on 'Honor the People'), and this admixture is reflected in the images of the cover art that draw on modes of iconography related to specific musical genres. [22] The inside tray card of the CD contains a drawing by Bonnie Seeyouma that seems to summarize and synthesize several of the symbolic dress codes, CD cover artworks and lyrical images from Loma-Da-Wa's performances and recordings to date. A square, black night-time sky contains at its center a luminous moon on which Hopiland buildings that look as ancient as the Aztec ruins are drawn. The dry, dusty cratered surface of the moon is not unlike the terrain of Hopiland. On the cream-colored soil, white petroglyphs of ancient religious leaders seem to dance. In fact, Loma-Da-Wa explains that this planetary body represents the Hopi belief that Hopiland is the 'center of the universe' (2005, phone interview). On 'Last Train,' a song from the album that alludes to the many reggae songs about the 'Zion train,' Loma-Da-Wa speaks the prelude, recalling his grandfather's words of wisdom, 'To have inner peace requires pure and deep thought, and time always stands still in the center of the universe.' [23] Hopiland has always figured in Loma-Da-Wa's music and conversation as a place of meditation. Those who take the 'last train to Hopiland' will receive 'Jah light," the song proclaims, blending the Hopi and Jamaican concepts of enlightenment. The singer raises one hand to drop tiny musical notes that fall like rain over the dwellings. His other hand holds a red, green, and gold corded microphone. The red strand of the cord curls into a concentric circle that might resemble the migration record petroglyphs that can be found in the village of Oraibi, depictions of the 'Road of Life,' the symbol for Mother Earth, or the 'concentric boundaries of the land traditionally claimed by the Hopis' (Waters 1963, 1977, p. 24). The singer wears a blue jeans shirt, often the kind of attire that Loma-Da-Wa has chosen for his concert performances, but he wears longer hair blunt-cut around his shoulders, a style that Loma-Da-Wa does not wear, but can be seen in photographs of Hopi ceremonialists from an earlier era in Waters' Book of the Hopi . The strands of hair loop over each other, suggesting the possibility of dreadlocks and, thus, inviting dual cultural interpretations. Four flute dancers, whose hair could as easily be Rasta as Native, decorate the bottom of the image. Geometric Hopi clouds in colors red, yellow, and blue are placed in the top corners. Red, green and gold ribbons that frame the square's
top contain figures that resemble a 'nakwách' symbol of brotherhood (a symbol that adorns the CD The Sounds of Reality, as well) (Waters 1963, 1977, p. 52). Even to the viewer unfamiliar with Hopi iconography, the scene clearly amalgamates elements from the two cultures, positing the singer as the creative source of syncretism between traditional and contemporary urban global musics, between past, present, and future.
Native American reggae dub
Most reggae albums these days end with 'dub' tracks. Let me end with mine, by reiterating my argument that in reggae discourse, the popular and academic literature that narrates the globalization of reggae, references to the Native American interest in reggae have largely been illustrative and generic, at best, or loaded with cinematic or mythopoetic resonances. Film footage taken twenty-three years ago (that few people have ever seen), through the narratives created by a limited number of people directly involved in the event, has come to signify the expression of the Havasupai identification with Bob Marley. The Havasupai then represent in an iconic way Native American reggae culture. A close critical engagement with such artists as Casper Loma-Da-Wa reveals that the musical, ideological, personal—and even imagistic—negotiations of the reggae artist in the global setting (or at the universe's center) are more complicated than might be suggested by reggae literature. What Loma-Da-Wa seems to seek in his effort to synthesize, diverge from, and sometimes challenge musical and cultural forms (an effort often fraught with minor discords) is an expressive flexibility that is enriched by but not overly-determined by the Native American, Jamaican, and U.S. contemporary musical traditions through which he manoeuvres.
REFERENCES
Bradley, L. 2000. Bass culture: When reggae was king. (New York) Viking. Cooper, C. 1994. '"Lyrical Gun": Metaphor and role play in Jamaican dancehall culture.' The Massachusetts Review autumn/ winter 1994 (Vol: 35, No. 3 and 4) pp 429-447. Fast, R. R. 1999. The heart of a drum: Continuance and resistance in American Indian poetry . (Ann Arbor) U of Michigan P. Feld, S. 1994. 'From schizophonia to schismogenesis: on the discourses and commodification practices of "world music" and "world beat."' In Music grooves. C. Keil and S. Feld. (Chicago) U of Chicago P. Gunn Allen, P. 1986. The sacred hoop: Recovering the feminine in American Indian traditions. (Boston) Beacon P. Hill, R., ed. 1983. Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association papers, vol. 2:27 August 1919-31 August 1920. (Berkeley and Los Angeles) U of California P. Lipsitz, G. 1994. Dangerous crossroads: popular music, postmodernism and the poetics of place. (New York) Verso. Loma-Da-Wa, C. June 2003. Personal interview. (Mesa, Arizona). ---. April 2005. Phone interview. Lincoln, K. 2000. Sing with the heart of a bear: Fusions of Native and American poetry, 1890-1999. (Berkeley, CA) U of California P. Menell, J. and C. Chabot, dirs. 1986. Caribbean nights: The Bob Marley story. BBC, Arena, Island Visual Arts. Video 440-082 373-3. Middleton, J. R. 2000. 'Identity and subversion in Babylon: Strategies for "resisting against the system" in the music of Bob Marley and the Wailers.' In Religion, culture and tradition in the Caribbean, ed. H. Gossai and N. S. Murrell (New York) St. Martin's P, pp 181-205. Murrell, N.S. 1998. 'Introduction: The Rastafari phenomenon.' In Chanting down Babylon: The Rastafari reader, ed. N. S. Murrell, W. D. Spencer, and A. A. McFarlane. (Philadelphia) Temple UP, pp 1-19. Prahlad, Sw. A. 2001. Reggae wisdom: Proverbs in Jamaican music. (Jackson) UP of Mississippi. Savinshinsky, N.J. 1994. 'Transnational popular culture and the global spread of the Jamaican Rastafarian movement.' New West Indian Guide/ Nieuwe West-Indische Gids (Vol: 68, No. 3-4) pp 259-281. ---. 1998. 'African dimensions of the Jamaican Rastafarian movement.' In Chanting down Babylon: The Rastafari reader, eds. N. S. Murrell, W. D. Spencer, and A. A. McFarlane. (Philadelphia) Temple UP, pp 125-144. Spencer, W. D. 1998. 'Chanting change around the world through Rasta riddim and art.' In Chanting down Babylon: The Rastafari reader, eds. N. S. Murrell, W. D. Spencer, and A. A. McFarlane. (Philadelphia) Temple UP, pp 266-283. Steffens, R. 1998. 'Bob Marley: Rasta warrior.' In Chanting down Babylon: The Rastafari reader, eds. N. S. Murrell, W. D. Spencer, and A. A. McFarlane. (Philadelphia) Temple UP, pp 253-265. Ullestad, N. 1999. 'American Indian rap and reggae: Dancing "to the beat of a different drummer."' Popular music and society (Vol. 23, No. 2) pp 62-81. Vickers, S. B. 1998. Native American identities: From stereotype to archetype in art and literature. (Albuquerque) U of New Mexico P. Waters, F. 1963, 1977. Book of the Hopi: The first revelation of the Hopi's historical and religious worldview of life. (New York) Penguin. Whitney, M. L. and D. Hussey. 1982. Bob Marley: Reggae king of the world. (San Francisco) Pomegranate Books.
Discography
Casper Loma-da-wa ( surname Lomayesva) 1997 Original Landlord Third Mesa Music 2000 The Sounds of Reality Third Mesa Music 2004 Honor the People Third Mesa Music Andrew Tosh 1994 Original Man Heartbeat
Web page
http://travel2.nytimes.com/mem/travel/
NOTES
[1] This research was made possible by a FIPI grant from the office of the Dean of Graduate Studies, University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras. I wish to thank Mr. Casper Loma-Da-Wa and Mr. Gerry Gordon for participating in personal interviews and Mr. Roger Steffens for our informal conversations and access to his archival materials. Mr. Loma-Da-Wa participated in one follow-up interview by phone in April 2005. I thank Mr. Loma-Da-Wa for the permission to reproduce his CD cover art work and photos by Lee Hyeoma and Mr. Gordon for providing the 'Reggae Inna a Hopiland' flyers that are reproduced in the article. Finally, I thank a Havasupai tribal council member for our informal conversations about the concert held in Supai Village by Cedella Book and Tyrone Downie and the current interest in reggae music. [2] See also 'Reggae on the Rez.' Reggae Report 8:2 (1990): 21. [3] See the video jacket of Caribbean Nights: The Bob Marley Story (Dirs. Jo Menell and Charles Chabot. Britain and the U.S.A., 1986). BBC, Arena and Island Visual Arts. Featuring Bob Marley and the Wailers. The Havasupai footage was not included in the finished film. [4] See Roger Steffens, '5 th Annual Bob Marley Memorial Special.' The Reggae Beat (radio program). Radio station KCRW 89.9 FM of Santa Monica, California, 12 May, 1985. With guest BBC documentary and film maker Jo Menell. Audio tape #289, 2 of 3 tapes, Side A; Roger Steffens, '7 th Annual Bob Marley Memorial Special.' The Reggae Beat (radio program). Radio station KCRW 89.9 FM of Santa Monica, California, 10 May, 1987. With co-host Wailers keyboardist Tyrone Downie. Audio tape #393, 1 of 3 tapes, Side A. [5] A Jamaican member of The Fire This Time Collective of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada also traveled to the bottom of the Grand Canyon to film the Havasupai for the 1990s documentary Dancing on John Wayne's Head. (See website <http://www.thefirethistime.com>). [6] I was allowed to screen the footage directed by Jo Menell during the early 1980s in Supai Village. It reveals that Menell attempted to match scenes of Supai life to themes and images of Marley's songs. One of the most amazing examples of this is a sequence of multiple 'takes' of a group of young Havasupai men and boys galloping horses bareback at breakneck speed down a winding canyon hill. The position of the camera and the visual composition of the shots are imitative of the stereotypical way that Native Americans were depicted in Hollywood or Italian 'spaghetti' Western films. [7] The most readily accessible contemporary chronicle of the globalization of reggae, the internet, archives approximately one hundred references to the Havasupai in various languages. Most of these references, one may assume, were formulated in response to the circulation of stories about the Havasupai that began with the filming trip by Jo Menell, Tyrone Downie, and Cedella Booker, and the reporting of this event by The Reggae Beat. On a German site, we learn that 'Havasupai-Indianer am Fuße das Grand Canyon verehren Bob Marley als Prophet und stellen daheim Bilder mit ihm auf' ( http://www.nordischer-klang.de/nokl2002/veranstal/tungen/rasta.html ). Memorializing the 20 th anniversary of Marley's death, an online English-language fanzine from Portugal notes that the 'Havasupai Indians of Arizona regard Marley as a tribe member' ( http://www.reggaeportugal.com/ ingles/news.htm , 7/2004). In the journal Les Inrockuptibles, Francis Dordor sensationally writes: 'Plus au nord, dans le Grand Canyon de l'Arizona, vit la tribu indienne des Havasupai, dont les membres vouent un culte á Bob Marley. Les sorciers conduisent même certains rites sacrés au son da sa musique' ( http://www.ifrance.com/ lostsongsandotherblues/chroniques2/1998jesusmarley.html , 7/2004). Matthew Durand cites the French version of Stephen Davis' Bob Marley (Point Virgule 1994), in his brief discussion of the deification of Marley among indigenous peoples: '…après sa mort, Cedella Booker et Tyrone Downie, ex-Wailers, 'furent invites à se render dans le Grand Canyon de l'Arizona, où des members de la tribu Havasupai vénèrent Bob, et vivent au son de sa musique'' ( http://www.grioo.com/opinion441.html , 7/2004). [8] I began the current project by listening to over ninety recordings of contemporary US and Canada based First Nations and Native American recordings of various genres, including powwow singing and drumming, traditional flute, rock and roll, blues, rap, alternative, jazz, spoken word poetry, and reggae. Studying with greater attention the recordings that include reggae songs, I then focused on Native Roots, Clan/Destine, Natay, Stumpa and Gathered Nation, Joy Harjo and Poetic Justice, Red Earth, The Fire This Time Collective, and Casper Loma-Da-Wa (also known as Lomayesva). 'Loma-Da-Wa' is pronounced with an accent on the syllable 'ma.' [9] In our June 2003 interview Loma-Da-Wa explained the impact of the Hopiland reggae festivals on his development as an artist: 'I grew up listening to the best reggae music in the world, and not really understanding, not really knowing that this is what I wanted to be. I just knew that is was something to do on a Thursday, or a Friday, or a Saturday night. And the music was good, you know. It was just like, wow, this is great…. I just couldn't believe the way they were delivering the message with their lyrics. I just thought, wow, that's like rap, but it's not rap, you know what I mean? What is it? So I think it was my first introduction to the chat, "chatting stylee," again, that was the real early attempts.' Born to a Hopi father and Navajo (Diné) mother, he grew up in Northeastern Arizona, between Holbrok, Hopiland, Winslow and the Navajo Rez, known as Houlk, Arizona. The festivals he attended in Hopiland hosted Freddie McGregor, The Meditations, Yellowman, Steel Pulse, Third World, Culture, Maxi Priest, Burning Spear, the Mighty Diamonds, Dennis Brown, the Wailing Souls, and Sister Carol, among others. [10] Jamaican musicians such as Danny Clarke, Tippa Irie, and Ira Osbourne and One Blood and Native poet John Trudell have been featured on Loma-Da-Wa's recordings. [11] I turned to such works of Native American literary and cultural studies (Gunn Allen 1986; Lincoln 2000; Fast 1999; Vickers 1998) that noted the sacred connection between the breath, word, prayer, chant, song, heartbeat, drumbeat, movement, dance, power, and medicine in the ceremonial context, since Rastafari and reggae also valorize this sacred connection. In The sacred hoop: Recovering the feminine in American Indian traditions, Paula Gunn Allen states: 'One should remember, when considering rhythmic aspects of American Indian poetic forms, that all ceremony is chanted, drummed, and danced' (Gunn Allen 1986, p. 64; also pp. 63, 72). [12] Asked about why reggae is appealing as a vehicle to him, and more generally to Native Americans, Loma-Da-Wa responded: 'I think that what it is is basically- it's that I've always looked at reggae music as struggling music. You know what I mean? Poverty. These musicians that are coming out of poverty are singing about the exact thing-- you know, they are talking about how they can't pay their rent, or whatever. And you know, how times are hard. Well, guess what? Every reservation in American is below the poverty level. You see what I'm saying?.... All I know is that in a lot of places I go, they don't have running water. They don't have electricity. And some of them are by choice. There are some villages in Hopiland that they don't want none of that, you know what I mean? However, everybody wants to be counted, you know, and Native peoples are not counted. So they can relate to exactly what a Jamaican is broadcasting, you know, the struggling in the person's life, or whatever, is everyday on the reservation. So that's the similarity-- that Native people can relate to exactly what they're saying…. I think that's what it is, the Native people can relate to what the Jamaicans are talking about, hand in hand, because, they're the same way. In my opinion, Jamaica is one big reservation. People are so poor that they struggle everyday. And it's the same deal in Hopi.' [13] Several critics, including Bradley and Cooper, have commented on the international impact of the Jamaican film The Harder They Come (dir. Perry Henzell 1972) in the popularization of reggae music. According to Bradley, the appeal of Ivan (played by reggae singer Jimmy Cliff) as Jamaican social rebel who poses as Wild Wild West gunslinger outlaw was not unconnected to his fashionable gear: 'Ivan. Kitted out in a trend-setting blue t-shirt with yellow six point' sheriff's star… 'snakeskin boots,' and a pair of Western-style six shooters (Bradley 2000, pp. 284, 285). [14] The scanned painting inserted here is by the well-known Jamaican intuitive painter Ras Dizzy and is titled 'Dick Mangomry in Stars of Guning Outlaws.' Actor Dick Montgomery's body forms the shape of a gun. The painting suggests the intense Jamaican romance with the Hollywood Western and its 'gun culture'. Painting from author's personal collection. [15] Lyrics by Yankie Rebel/ Jamie Cirrito. [16] June 2003, personal interview. [17] Savishinsky cites a Garvey speech: 'I can see in my mind's eye now twelve million black citizens of American, with those of the islands of the sea and from Central and South America, from all over the world, educated, uplifted, discovered, proud, prideful, loyal, and royal—and I can see the flag of the green and the black and the red floating to the breeze upon the seven seas, and I can see upon yonder hill the beautiful flag waving in the land of Africa, the home of the gods, the place where liberty first sprang for the black men of the earth' (Hill 1983, p. 250 cited in Savishinsky 1998, p. 134). [18] Loma-Da-Wa recounted stories about his many concert opportunities and music festivals; however, he also spoke about the difficulty a non-Jamaican artist, especially a Native American reggae artist, encounters when attempting to play at the larger reggae festivals, where his 'doubleness' has been at times a double-strike against him. [19] According to Waters in Book of the Hopi, the village of Oraibi on Third Mesa in Hopiland contains ruins dated by tree-ring chronology to 1150 AD, which makes it 'the oldest continuously occupied settlement in the United States' (Waters 1963, 1977 p. 118). [20] This album also contains 'Nuff Dread Dem Come,' which documents the history of superstar Jamaican reggae artists performing at the Reggae Inna Hopiland festivals organized by Culture Connection and suggests the possibility of intertribal unity that the concerts promoted by drawing a diverse audience of indigenous people of various tribal affiliations and non-natives from as far away as Idaho, Colorado, and New Mexico: 'Nuff dread dem come, dem coming back to Hopiland/ Dem come by bus, sometimes dem come by van/ Only the best come to ram jam.' [21] It might also incorporate images from Loma-Da-Wa's recent trips to Supai Village and his growing awareness of Havasupai interest in Rastafari and reggae, as well as their legends of ancestors that can be seen in the rock formations of the canyon walls. In Jo Menell's film footage of the Havasupai, Cedella Booker, Bob Marley's mother, talks with a Supai informant who explains the legends of the ancestral beings that one sees in the canyon rock formations. In our April 2005 phone interview, Loma-Da-Wa indicated that I would be 'right on' with either interpretation. [22] Back-up singer Philly Blunt, a recent addition to the '602' band, brings her influence to the musical mix in powerful gospel-influenced, bluesy vocals that appear on several tracks. The talented keyboardist, Jackson 'Elliot' Rauch—or 'E'— and the experienced guitarist William Banks also bring diverse musical traditions into the band's repertoire. [23] Loma-Da-Wa also referred to the Hopi belief that Hopiland is the spiritual center of the universe in our 2003 interview: 'Everything is supposed to be in harmony and balance. And right now, we live in a time when it's not. There are a lot of things going on. Just out of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The uranium that destroyed those places, as you already know, came from the center of the universe. It came from Hopiland. It came from the land of the Diné. It was prophesied. These people said that there was fire under the earth, and it could be used for the good of man, but it could also be used for evil, the destruction of mankind, and lo and behold, it was used for just that. So I mean, everything we need on earth is in front of us, everything to maintain that balance and harmony. That's what the Hopis are telling.' |
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Loretta Collins Klobah is an Associate Professor of Anglophone Caribbean and Black British Cultural and Literary Studies and creative writing in the English Department of the College of Humanities at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras campus. Her scholarly articles on Caribbean, Black British, and South Asian film, music, fiction, poetry, masquerade, religion, "soundspaces," and social change have been published in essay collections and such journals as Small Axe, Anthurium, South Asian Popular Culture, Sargasso, Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies, Caribbean 2000, and Literature and Medicine. |
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