Bookshelf of the Month, April 2018
I have been cultivating books on Jamaican music, culture, and history for about two decades and feel my bookshelf is more of a collection. As a writer of books on Jamaican music history, any book that touches on this topic is something I want to add to my shelf. It’s not enough for me to borrow a book and read that section or copy that section — I need to own it, to devour it, to feel its pages and the heft of the tome in my hands. I want to smell the pages, to experience the history with my senses.
Sometimes I will purchase an old magazine just to see if there might be a photo or an article worth adding to my collection, and I have made some very exciting discoveries this way. I once purchased a copy of Jamaica Journal, a magazine, from 1978, just to see if there might be something interesting in it. I paid only $9.99, so it wasn’t a large investment, and the advertisements alone are enjoyable to see. This issue had an article on baobab trees, which I hadn’t known at the time of my purchase. Lo and behold, featured in the article was a photo of a baobab tree on the campus of Alpha Boys’ School. I had previously written about this school, and this very tree, in one of my books on Don Drummond. As a student at Alpha Boys’ School, Drummond would practice his trombone every day underneath that very tree. But when I visited the school in Kingston, Jamaica, I was told that the tree had long been removed and that a building now stood on the site. I think I may have screamed when I opened that magazine to see the famous baobab tree at Alpha Boys’ School — one that the students called the Dibby Dibby Tree.
Another book on my shelf that I consider important to my collection is a Report of the Rastafari Movement in Kingston, Jamaica. This is an original publication from 1960. It was written by Rex Nettleford who was an expert in the study of the Rastafari movement, and when I visited the University of the West Indies at Mona, the university where Nettleford taught, I was able to view his document collection. I asked the librarian tasked with cataloguing this collection if I could see it. She said yes and I think she was just as excited to be sharing it with someone who understood its value to scholarship and history as I was to see it! I told her that I had the Report in my collection at home in Northwest Indiana, and I think she about fell over! Not because I had the publication, as it’s not particularly valuable or rare, but because, well, why would a person from Northwest Indiana be interested in such a book when students who are part of the Jamaican culture and study this history every day make little note of Nettleford. At least that is what she expressed to me. We had a wonderful few hours together discussing the importance of Nettleford’s contributions to scholarship, all over the world.
Every time I open my mouth to talk about my research and my passion for Jamaican music, people in America, people in Jamaica, people in England will ask me how a little girl in Chesterton, Ind. came to write about Jamaican music from the 1960s. I always wonder if people ask these questions of those who author books on the Woodstock or Andy Warhol or ballet. To me, music, or any art for that matter, knows no boundaries, and certainly no geographical boundaries. But, I will acquiesce and explain. I’ve always been a music connoisseur. When I love a song or a band or a genre, I have to experience it fully, and that includes researching the hell out of it. It’s just a deeper form of appreciation and consumption for me. I was first introduced to ska through MTV in the mid 1980s. One of my first cassette tapes was Madness with the song, “House of Fun.” I next bought The Beat. And then in 1994 I went to my first ska concert. My brother Charlie took me to see The Toasters at the Metro in Chicago and I couldn’t believe that everyone was dancing, moving, enjoying the music through experiencing it. Down the rabbit hole I went. And when I went to find out where this music called ska had come from, there simply wasn’t anything. No library bookshelves contained anything, except maybe a page or two in a book on reggae. And there wasn’t much on the internet since the internet was a new creation for mere mortal users. So I decided to begin my own investigation. I started interviewing musicians — those who came to Chicago to play, as well as on the phone. I had soon amassed a shoe box full of little microcassette tapes. It would take me some time before I could wrap my head around all they said, and years before I could organize and utilize the information. In addition to collecting interviews, in preparation for this work, I also began collecting books. My first was one called Cut ’n’ Mix: Culture, Identity, and Caribbean Music by Dick Hebdige. I learned so much from this one book, and like a hydra, I cut off one head and two grew back — my collection grew.
Someday I hope to be able to donate it to a library in Jamaica since some of these books are rare and out of print. Nettleford’s Report will be one of these donations, as well my Jamaica Journal and other books on slavery and the African diaspora, socioeconomic conditions, gender studies, folk music, the history of the Maroons, dancehall culture, Rastafari culture, calypso culture, African drumming traditions, soundsystem culture, Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, reggae, and more. Until then, I will enjoy them!
