Robbed to Riches

It was not hard to see that my mother was a hustler, she did not really have a real job but always had enough money. Grandma was a black woman but my mother’s father was a Syrian man from a prominent family that never owned her because he was married. I was born when my mother was supposed to be attending commercial school. So that is something my mother could not really live down she was my grandmothers second child and her mother basically disowned her eldest daughter to give her an education. My two younger siblings were from a marriage that did not last, there father left when the youngest was three. My aunt my mothers oldest sister basically helped to take care of all of us because she did not have any children. The difference with my aunt and my mother was clear my aunt was responsible but my mother was lackadaisical. Nevertheless there was a good balance, my grandmother was a quiet woman and did not speak much about her life but she was very kind. Being the oldest child I was named Susanna by my grandmother who taught me to cook and clean which I did exceptionally well. I never really worried about how I would make it in life until I was finished high school and had no means of going to college. Although I was not rich myself I went to a prominent high school which was the good thing about taking about common entrance placement. Fredrice was a nice girl a very humble person she was the third child and was name after her father and had a totally different life from I did. She had a driver that brought her to school, she had two helpers in her home and basically had people at her beck and call. Strangely her best friend would only exchange hi and byes with me simply because I was not in her class. Fedrice invited me to her house and at that time I was amazed I never new people lived like that but the relationship she had with her mother was what made me speechless. Her mother behaved very high class and was very attractive, Fedrice was also very pretty but she looked more like her father who was mullato. Fedriced ignored her mother and only gave her one liners for an answer. Anyway I told Frederica that I did not know what I was going to do after I was finished sixth form and she told me that I could apply for a student loan. She told me that she had an aunt that worked at the bank that could help me with the paper work.

Frederica went away to school and I was able to secure a student loan for CAST now UTECH. My first year of school I did very well and I got a lot of support from my aunt who would travel to come and see me more often than my mother did. Due to the fact that I wanted to improve my situation school was very easy and at the time I was involved with a young man four years my senior who gave me some support. The relationship did not develop merely out of love but mostly because I needed financial support. In my second year of school the relationship was getting hard because I was trying to focus on school and he wanted more out of the relationship. One evening Frederica contacted me and told me that she was visiting for the weekend and wanted to meet up with me and I told her that I would love to. That night she was happy to see me and of course her best friend was there and occurs she gave me the cold shoulder. By the end of the night I met several people one of those people was William Keane a very good looking older man.

Mr. Keane was a man that I heard about before but never really seen in person I new his family were wealthy and dealt in real estate and tobacco and other businesses. Mr. Keane was very charming and charismatic he looked and smell expensive and always seemed important. I was shy immature and poor but that night I made my self available. He smiled with me and nodded his head and I smiled back at him to show my interest in his notion. He bought drinks for Frederica, Thalia and I and to her he was known as Uncle Bill. Although I was two months shy of 21 years I new the way that this man looked at me was different from how he looked at everyone else. After the night ended I was given a phone number on a piece of paper by a man who walked up to me and stuck it in my hand. On the paper it said Billy Keane with three telephone numbers written on it. Although I was shocked I was receptive. For days I had the number and decided that I would not call because I was so afraid that I would say the wrong thing. One week passed and I got brave and gave “Billy” a call, but I did not get an answer. The next day while I was preparing to go to school I got a phone call and it was Billy. He asked me how I was doing and wanted to know when I would be available for a date. I did not want to seem eager so I told him that I would be available on Saturday which would be four days after his phone call he accepted and the conversation ended with me having butterflies in my stomach.

The night before the date I could not sleep I lied to my boyfriend and told him that I had to study for exams the following week. Mr. Keane came right on time and I bought a new green dress with money I had saved for a rainy day. When I walked up to the car Mr. Keane came out of the car and opened the door for me and told me that green was his favourite colour and that I looked beautiful in it. Mr. Keane did not ask me if I had a boyfriend or anything about relationships, he asked me about my parents, my religious beliefs, my ethnicity and my major in school. I asked him about his interest and he told me that he was interested in life and he smiled. Never once did he touch me or made me uncomfortable at the end of the date he asked me when I would be available again and I told him Tuesday. On my second date he told me to wear something comfortable and I did not go to school that day because I was so anxious about the date as he said that our destination was a surprise. That day I saw him for the second official date and I recognized that I wanted the life that this man had to offer me. It was clear that he was happy to see me because his hazel eyes lit up when I walked up to his car and he came out of the car and greeted me and told me that I was beautiful. After driving for about an hour he told me that he was going to take me to his farm and asked me if I like animal and such and I told him yes. This farm had to be about 80 acres it had a house and there was some persons working on the farm it was beautiful and he took the time to explain to me what he was doing and that it was his “hobby”.

We had gone out every week since we met and I was very impressed with this man. my aunt had called me because my birthday was coming up. She told me that she was coming to visit me and I politely declined and told her I had to study. She understood and then told me that she would wait to see me the following week. It was my birthday and I knew that my boyfriend would try to see me and I had to avoid him because I didn’t know how to break it off. On my birthday I got a call very early in the morning from Mr. Keane who told me that he was overseas but he will return before the days end to give me a gift. I thought to myself I just saw him three days ago and he was away needless to say I only had a passport I had never been on a plane. He did keep his word and gave me a kiss for the first time and handed me a small box light blue in colour with Tiffany written on it. In the box was a pair of earrings it seemed to be diamonds with a green stone at that time I was happy I didn’t even know what Tiffany was until months after. This would be a beginning of presents that I would receive from Billy for my presence.
Written By lKing/Real

Is Jamaican patois inherently vulgar and base?

written by
Charles H E Campbell

So far, I have stayed out of the public fray between the Broadcasting Commission and Ragashanti. Meanwhile, in various interviews since the removal of his afternoon programme on Nationwide, Ragashanti has been positing that one of the unstated, ulterior motives of the commission, occasioning their request for the programme’s discontinuation, is a middle-class prejudice against the almost exclusive use of the Jamaican lingua by his guests and himself, in expressing their views.

This has found fertile ground with some of his supporters because; historically this bigotry has been a significant trait amongst our colonial indoctrinated petty bourgeoisie. To illustrate this from a personal experience, I remember taking the decision in the mid 70’s to begin incorporating the use of our national vernacular into a television programme called Farm World, of which I had been the presenter for about two years. After a few episodes using this new approach, the programme was suddenly discontinued because of a flood of complaints from influential people, even though simultaneously, the feedback I was getting from our, then mostly unlettered, farming community was quite positive, in that they were able to better grasp my interpretations of the techniques and methods being taught by the featured expert guests.

I dare say however, the backward, narrow-minded position of the Jamaican middle class, on this issue, has significantly eroded over the years, as a generation passed. Today, Jamaica has become far more liberal in its acceptance of this media practice, as is evidenced by merely scanning the media landscape at any given time of day. In fact, to be fair to Ragashanti, whereas on his daytime programme, he is versatile at the use of English and patois interchangeably, it seems that many of our other media personalities — especially Disc Jocks — can’t, but ‘haxcentuate’ the patois. So Dr Kingsley ‘Ragashanti’ Stewart cannot claim to have broken new ground in this regard. Afterall, Mutabaruka’s very popular, successful, on-going Wednesday night programme on Irie Fm, The Cutting Edge, predates his programme by many years.

To go even further back, actor/comedians like Bim and Bam, Ranny Williams and Charles Hyatt, for decades, made the use of patois in public performances on stage and in the electronic media, their calling cards — without offending our sensibilities. Miss Lou’s children’s programme Ring Ding ran on morning television for umpteen years. Their judicious use of patois to entertain and educate, is a blueprint that still serves as a guide to many of us who have followed in their footsteps, in legitimising and raising the profile of Jamaicanese.

To accept the spoken language comparisons of English versus patois, given by Ragashanti, an anthropologist by profession, in his television interview with Winford Williams last week, would lead one to also conclude that Jamaican Patois is inherently vulgar and base. Furthermore, for him to hide behind the guise of a comedian in denying the social responsibility of daytime radio is disingenuous at best, while pandering to the most base instincts of his listeners, with an objective to exploit. As our folklore tells us, in our society, “what is joke to one man is death to another.”

Ragashanti should take heed. It truly despairs, to observe someone who has pulled himself up by his own bootstraps, turn around, emphasise, encourage and manipulate his (mostly female, uneducated) listeners’ perverse, destructive domestic habits and a lifestyle spurred by them having been socially retarded, as a consequence of dwelling in the oppressive, twilight ghetto zones of our garrison communities, ruled by the
gun, sustained by the drug trade and various forms of extortion, with their predisposition to embrace warped values, manifest in bleached-out skins, wigs, false nails and numerous children born to, and sporadically maintained by a retinue of sperm/income donors, themselves exploiting the situation to the hilt.

The question I wish to ask Ragashanti is: should standards of public decency be completely sacrificed in our drive to further indigenise our media culture? In this matter, I am in full agreement with the sentiments expressed by Ian Boyne in his Gleaner commentary last week Sunday. “Such outrageous and offensive content has no place in daytime radio, if at any time.” It also goes, without saying that — my favourite source for news and news analysis — “Nationwide’s demise would be catastrophic to Jamaican Journalism.” Therefore, as Boyne concluded, “a way must be found to protect both public morality and press freedom.

* WORDS CAN BE VULGAR BUT A LANGUAGE CANT BE VULGAR AND BASE ON BEHALFOF ONE PERSON WHO YOU THINK IS VULGAR AND BASE*

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LELA SIMONE IN BLUE..CUTTY RUNKAZ IN THE SWEATER BLEND

PONY..ETC

PONY---DI TAPPEE

RATTATAHTAHTAWWWWWWW
SEZ:-

Prize Ladyp: PONY DON’T WANT TO EAR ME U SEE HOW MUCH THING U TELL TAMAR AND ME STLL NO PAY U NO U MISS PONY KNOW THAT ME LADY P KNOW A LOT FIX UP U STORY AND DON’T MEK IT GET OUT OFF HAND. BIG BIG WARNING

Le’la-Simone Bennett ▶ QueenBlossom Multitalented Blossom enough is enough… Look how far wi deh from di nastiness dem & dem still a call wi name… A wah suh? Mi tyad a di lie dem now man!!! Because dem si wi mek one slide di whole a dem think dem ago have the same luck!!! Well unnu think again.

Le’la-Simone Bennett Why when dem Jamaican man yah cah get yuh p*ssy dem walk a tell bear lie pon yuh! PONY (Confuse) HYPE don’t mek mi start upload from mi Iphone & BB. Mi a woman & mi nuh have nuh man a pay my car note, & you do… PONYSHA HYPE don’t bloodclat disturb mi pon di ppl dem job!!! Unnu si how far mi a stay from unnu. LOH MI FUCCING NAME!!! Dam brite bout mi a luk yuh… Mi nuh luk GAL!

SUSHANA A COUNT YUH DID COUNT YUH LUCK GOOD OR NEVA COUNT IT? YUH DID EXPECT FI GET DI RING OUTA DI 25/30?… A ELE SEH BREED AN BREED DOE SEH HIM KAW HE IS NOT STAYING BOO.. NOW…ELE MANAGER/MR KEEP IT CLEAN A DEM TINGS DEH MANAGEMENT SUPPOSE TO DO? ELEPHANT MAN DEH A FARRIN AN SEN SUSHANNA FI MEET YUH ONLY FI YUH TELL HAR FI GI YUH ELE KEY AND PACK UP HAR TINGS DEM? NOW SHE DEH RIGHT BACK PAN SHERLOCK WID HAR BELLY…SHE AN KEDS…..KEDZ…..HOIE…HOI THUR..HOW YUH DUZZIN? KEDS YUH BABY FAWDA FIND YUH OUT MAMMIE AN SEN YUH BACK LIKE JIM DANDY? UNNO NUH HAVE NO LUCK HEE MAN..NO RING NO MAN..NO HOUSE..NUH LAN…DI LIKKLE RIDE WEEZIE USED TO GI UNNO..IS NO MORE… FARRIN SEH SHE AND SHE SEH FARRIN…KEDS N SUSHANNA WHAT NEXT? CAN SMADDY NEUTER ELEPHANT MAN PLEASE! DIS A MORE DAN MECHANICAL BREEDING…NOT EVEN COMPUTER TO RHATID.. NO MAN..SUMBADDIE ANYBADDIE…..CORK HIM HOOD HOLE PLEASE!

RUMOR DID A SPREAD LIKE WILDFIRE SEH HIM BEAT HIM BABY MOTHER A UPTOWN MONDAYS…………..NOT A TING SO

Music has the power to shape society — Tanya Stephens
BY BASIL WALTERS Observer staff reporter

ONE of the most influential female voices in reggae/dancehall has brushed aside what could be deemed a hypocritical view that music doesn’t have the power to influence societal values and attitude. If there is one Jamaican artiste thinking out of the box, it certainly has to be Tanya Stephens. Sounding truly Infallible (the title of her last album), Tanya Stephens in her lecture, nay, reasoning on the UWI (Mona) campus on Thursday, was not just verbally creative, but as social scientist Clinton Hutton once said of her, was intuitively intelligent as she deftly tackled a relevant issue relating to her profession.
STEPHENS… we accept the credit that comes with positive change but are not willing to accept the responsibility of the part we play in negative trends.

Anyone who was in doubt at the University’s Assembly Hall, of Who is Tanya?, the title of song in which she described herself as “the gyal weh come fi change di whole game wid a pen”, would have been convinced that the singjay is more than just an artiste.

In one of her most penetrating (non-musical) performances to date, coming on the heels of Vybz Kartel, Tanya Stephens prefaced her discourse under the theme, Music: the Power to Shape Societies, thus.

“I feel like this forum this evening demands this particular topic. This being the last day of Women’s Month. This being a presentation following on the heels of another presentation by one of my co-workers, one of my peers. And based on the social climate right now, I thought it would be relevant to provide a different perspective from what you used to be hearing from artistes.”

As far as it turned out, she challenged her peers. But this should come as little surprise to anyone familiar with the artiste who developed beyond what she once called “the same old four topics.”

“Music has the power to shape society. I have heard that debated often. I have heard people from within my industry refute that claim. I have heard people saying music is not responsible for what is happening in society and musicians are not to be blamed, and I agree with them. It is not the sole responsibility of musicians to raise our children or to shape our society, but music does have the power to do this and as a result it is important that we wheel it responsibly,” Stephens cautioned.

“Numerous scientific studies,” she added, “have been conducted without producing conclusive evidence of the exact neurological process by which music evokes emotional reactions. However, the fact that it does affect us emotionally is not at question. From the chanting of Negro spirituals by slaves as a method of keeping the dream of freedom alive and conveying hope; to Public Enemy’s 1989 single Fight the Power; a call to arms in which rapper Chuck B instructed the African- American community to revolt, music has been an effective means of rallying the masses and creating ideological groundswell.”

“It is incredible that we can accept the credit that comes with sparking social change in positive directions without being willing to accept the responsibility of the part we play in negative trends”, she added.

For further emphasis, the entertainer, who emerged in the late-1990s, rolled out another impressive list of songs that made the point. “I Am Woman by Helen Reddy, I Will Survive by Gloria Gaynor, R.E.S.P.E.C.T. first performed by Otis Redding and later made an anthem by Aretha Franklin, are all songs which spurred women into action and emphasised the need to demand more from our male counterpart,” she noted.

“The messages contained within these compositions provided a script for many who had previously been rendered powerless by the inability to express themselves. These are some of my theme songs. These are some of the anthems that I grew up with. I was born in 1973, and I incorporated them into my life. Many people called me feminist. I am not. I stand up for myself, I happened to be female…”

She unleashed more from her armoury. “Music amplifies and adds urgency to emotions as evidenced by successful use of love songs to set the mood for a romantic escapade. Artistes like Beres Hammond, Freddie McGregor, Marvin Gaye and Smokey Robinson have provided a soundtrack to countless nights filled with passion. And that’s just talking about my life,” Stephens said to rousing applause. She then joked, “What, oonu don’t have dem kind a night deh too?”

She didn’t stop there. She went on to stress the role that music plays in the marketing of various products. “The capacity of music to galvanise the masses has not been limited to affecting political change or aiding and abetting intimacy. Mention of brand names in the lyrical compositions of popular artistes has been instrumental in promoting numerous products to market in which they had previously been significantly less popular and sometimes unknown. We cannot continue to say we are not responsible for situations within our society. ”