babble on bout babylon

monday morning becca, charlie, and i joined barbara blake-hannah and several other guests for a demonstration of some online educational tools at tivoli gardens high school, which sits in the middle of one the poorest and most crime ridden sections of kingston. the school is in JLP (jamaica labor party) territory, under the care of opposition-leader, edward seaga, and seems to be quite an impressive institution in spite of its surroundings. i should say something here about jamaicas political system and my relation to it. there are two parties in power: the JLP and the PNP (peoples national party). they are viciously opposed to each other yet seem to have few ideological differences: both are populist parties in rhetoric and, although some might characterize the PNP and JLP as left and right, respectively (they split during the seventies over socialism and market-capitalism), today they appear to be mere territorial camps, scrambling for the limited resources within a neo-colonial state, and fighting over the right to allocate resources to them and theirs--pork-barrel politics style. the individual, one-party-allegiant neighborhoods--or garrisons, as theyre often called here--are dispersed across the city, making for plenty of dangerous border zones (which heat up most around election time, which is war here). the PNP has been in power for about a decade now, i believe, and as a result they have been the party i have had contact with since the fall of 2001, when i first visited jamaica to observe a rehabilitation movement in prisons, particularly its musical dimension. for our digital music project, we have continued to meet with PNP ministers in order to get approval (though it seems getting in on the ground may be the more effective route). recently, we met seaga, a longtime figure in jamaican politics and music, who is very interested in using music and technology to stimulate learning and skill-building. he is interested in bringing our workshops to tivoli gardens and denham town, and we are excited about the prospect. thus, we are currently working with both sides of the fence, which makes me more comfortable. many people in jamaica are deeply distrustful of the government (chant down babylon?) for obvious reasons, and i am not looking to have my good name tarnished, covered in green or orange. stripes are aiight, though. i cant do plaid or polkadots.

i enjoyed getting a look at the school, but the demonstration was not the most productive, or riveting, way to spend my time. moreover, it was a bit alarming: the software purports to be a comprehensive source for educational information, and therefore blocks google and other "non-child-safe" sites; no fear, though, it provides its own set of links to other sits on the internet, such as "all you want to know about ancient china." as the software was being pitched by an indian gentleman from the chicago area, i couldnt help but make a comparison to my friends, shilpa and manish jain, also chicagoans of indian-descent, who have spent the last several years living in india and attempting, through shikshantar, to reform the very system of formalized, standardized, universalized teaching, which this software upholds rather rigidly. the present system of "factory schooling," they argue, is not the best way to develop human beings, considering their individual idiosyncracies and local needs. as global a place as the world has become, most people still must live in some local context with a particular economy and social framework. with such a critique in mind, not to mention the whole missionary/colonial legacy, i sometimes find myself questioning my motives as someone claiming to have a way to reinvigorate education in jamaica using technology, but i am satisfied by the very simple though profound effects digital music making can have when it turns people into musicians, artists, and technicians all at once and in an extremely engaging manner. (what's more, i've been doing it in roxbury and cambridge, too; not just in "developing" places. it seems to me that all places may as well be seen as "developing" places, if any are.) i remain committed to the project, for if nothing else, it's a way to have fun, to expose kids to a new activity, and to learn more about the different ways that people hear and understand music.

i was not too discouraged by the event because it was also an opportunity to see an actual school's computer lab, which seemed up to snuff enough to do a little riddim-building. the TG school is also creating a new audio/visual lab, which seems perfect for some multimedia work. if that were not enough, across the street from the high school is an entire digital music studio that seaga recently created. it is covered with paintings of righteous reggae stars (dennis brown, bob marley, peter tosh), which either suggests a nice awareness of their political critique on seaga's part or represents an attempt to co-opt them. most likely, it's a little bit of both. we did not get to see the studio because the head engineer was not there, but it seems to promise great possibilities for the fruits of the digital music workshops i will conduct. we took a small tour of downtown kingston, including an immense market, in seaga's car. when we passed raetown, i mentioned that we had attended an oldies dance there last sunday night. barbara said that we were lucky to have had a chance to see it. though she has been living in kingston for decades, she has never been, since she has had no one to carry her there (an escort is a must for many, even if our raetown-dwelling guide told us that sunday night dances were "neutral" affairs--i.e., foes stay on the other side of the street from each other).

we spent the rest of monday and all of tuesday attempting to get our visas extended so that we can stay past this friday, the original period of time we were granted. becca and i are applying to stay for seven months (a process we were told we could not begin until arrival), and even though we are completely self-funded (the main concern for immigration is whether we are adding to the economy or sucking from it), we got the runaround like you would not believe. to be honest, i was not surprised, though i could not help becoming deeply frustrated. i will let becca's account, for i believe she wrote a lengthy one, fill in the details here, but i must say that i felt like a character in a play co-authored by franz kafka, joseph heller, and terry gilliam. bureaucracy is ingrained in the architecture (narrow, whitewashed, winding halls, all looking the same) and in the tone-of-voice in these places, at least for those working behind a desk or glass-partition. it is a cold, dingy, labyrinthine kind of thing. it is grueling experience, and an inevitable one.

i feel like i may come off a bit negative in these journal entries, so i should note that i am also very much enjoying myself. the days are filled with sun and the city is a rather green and pretty place for the most part, even amid the squalor. i am almost constantly stimulated simply by being in a new place, surrounded by different sights, sounds, and smells (from burning trash to burning grass to curry goat). i enjoy the several taxi rides i take a day, soaking in as much as i can from the scenery, the conversation, whatever is on the radio station, and the unique stylings of each taximan shouting his tag into the CB: three-five three-five three-five three-five! zero-two! zero-two! taker-taker-taker-taker! seven-two seven-two. it comes out like musicanother part of the amazingly rich soundscape here (and something i will try to share in sound-form as soon as i get an internet connection at home). there is plenty of beauty and humor around, and that's enough to get by on. add a little music and some love, and you've got heaven.

finally, speaking of music and love, last night becca and i attended a reggae concert promoting the concept of "one love," as popularized by bob marley. interestingly enough, the event was organized, along with a dozen similar concerts over a fortnight, by a white, american couple--perhaps in their fifties--who became particularly enamored with the jamaican phrasing of the old abrahamic-judeo-christian-islamic revelation of one-god. it was a rather difficult event to sit through, interesting as it should have been to someone like me. though i may be an ethnomusicologist, i resist being a misanthrope, and this concert was tickling my disgusted-with-people nerve. for one thing, it was full of proselytizing and awkwardness, perpetrated by a bunch of white people at that (including some impressively-dreaded white rastas). because some american acquaintances invited us, we had to sit up front with all the white people. finding myself too close to missionary position once again, i was put off and made quite uncomfortable by the whole tone of the event, which seemed condescending and out of touch. even worse, the music oscillated between bob marley rip-offs and new age rehashes of good ol' "roots-and-culture" reggae.

perhaps my critical position here will dissuade any readers who might accuse me of romancing jamaican music or sensibilities. i have found, while making my way across town in various vehicles, that people in jamaica have as much bad taste in music as people anywhere else in the world. part of my dissertation will involve a philosophy of aesthetics that allows me to make such judgments, but for now you can take my word for it. (i'll provide examples soon.) let's face it, though: to today's jamaican youth, bob marley is a bit like martin luther king for america's hip-hop generation: iconic but outdated, and a little corny.

on our way home, we rode with the people who invited us, a group of consultants-with-a-conscience who are providing services to jamaican business-interests. they seemed more or less complacent about the concert and did not seem to feel, or at least voice, the discomfort that becca and i shared. we discussed the concept of bob-marley-rip-offs, which seem to me to be doing little for jamaican economic or public relations these days, and becca and i proposed that dancehall performers seem a bit more responsive to contemporary circumstances than the guys we saw tonight, who could shake their dreads and vocalize in perfect mimicry of bob. one of our interlocutors, who seemed more in favor of a "roots-and-culture" package for the international market, voiced the concern that exporting dancehall, with all its glorification of violence, misogyny, and homophobia, might be a bad idea. i suppose it depends on ones definition of bad. hip-hop, with all its glorification of violence, misogyny, and homophobia, captivates a large share of the global market these days. if economic growth is the idea, dancehall, with such a close idiomatic relationship to hip-hop, would seem to be an obvious choice. exporting a morality is an entirely different question. if music that sounds like hip-hop is considered by many young kingstonians, not to mention their peers around the world, as an "international sound," perhaps jamaica should join the global conversation in an understandable language, without, of course, losing its claims to the local, which, in the world-music/hip-hop authenticity game, is everything.

this seems to be the strategy of young artists like those in multicast, a collection of producers and vocalists that i have been working with and observing closely since last summer. their musical expression strikes me as almost a direct response to, or perhaps an organic urge toward, the opening in the international (i.e., mostly american) market symbolized by sean pauls recent success (see, "gimme the light"). as dancehall and hip-hop continue to converge, those fluent in both idioms will be most poised to capitalize on the confluence. multicast's music definitely sounds like contemporary jamaica in all its color and contradiction, which is something that kids in new york, never mind iowa, might find quite compelling.