Carolyn Cooper | Buju walking down redemption street

Buju Banton is one of the songwriters whose lyrics were on the syllabus of the ‘Reggae Poetry’ course I taught for a decade at The University of the West Indies, Mona. He was in excellent company with Jimmy Cliff, Burning Spear, Peter Tosh, Bob Marley, Steel Pulse, and Tanya Stephens.

At the end of the course, I would ask students what they had really learnt. The oral presentations, research paper, and final exam they did were the usual indicators of serious academic work.

I wanted to get at the significance of the course beyond the expected outcome. Too many times students pass (or fail) a course and forget its content. Knowledge is not transferred.

Going to university is often a purely mechanical process of ticking off courses and marking time until graduation. I was always encouraged by those students who reflected on their very first experience of studying popular music, especially their own.

A Jamaican student discovered Peter Tosh in the course, much to the disdain of his classmates who couldn’t believe it. He was so inspired by Tosh’s militant poetry, he wrote his own perceptive poem on the fiery songwriter, which he performed at the annual Peter Tosh symposium. Another student said she would never listen to reggae music in the same way. She had started to hear surprising overtones.

SEX AND ITAL LIVITY

Buju’s Til I’m Laid To Rest is one of the songs I enjoyed teaching. It’s on his landmark album Til Shiloh, which defined a turning point in his career.

The self-styled ‘Stamina Daddy’, who urged “all di sexy body gyal dem” to “run come” to him, takes on a new mission: “ ‘Til Shiloh we chant Rastafari’s name.”

It’s not that sex and ital livity are incompatible. It was a matter of focus.

Buju chanted new lyrics that were explicitly political. He contested the “propaganda dem spread” about Africa, asserting that “tongues will ha fi confess” the truth.

Grounded in the Bible, Buju alludes to Philippians 2:11, King James Version: “And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

Ironically, the singer’s tongue confesses a truth about Africa that is often obscured by fundamentalist Christian images of a ‘dark’ continent in need of salvation from savagery. The missionary impulse to compel Africans to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord disregards the indigenous spirituality that has long sustained the peoples of the continent in adversity and prosperity.

THE MAN AND THE MASK

The singer recalls the places in Africa he visited. Referring to himself in the third person, Buju seems to make a distinction between I & I – the person and the persona; the man and the mask; Mark Myrie and Buju Banton.

This is a difficult concept for many literal-minded people to understand. They say, “But of course Buju is Mark Myrie!” They wouldn’t make this assumption about Miss Lou and Louise Bennett. They understand that the characters Miss Lou impersonates are fictions Bennett created.

For them, Miss Lou’s poetry is literature and Buju’s is not.

This is what the singer chants:

“Buju go down a Congo

Stop inna Sashamane land

The city of Harar is

Where Selassie come from

In Addis Ababa

Den Botswana

Left Kenya

An end up inna Ghana”

He concludes:

“Oh what a beauty

My eyesight behold

Only Ethiopia

Protect me from di cold.”

Ethiopia was once the name for the entire continent of Africa. It comes from two Greek words – ‘aithein’, meaning ‘to burn’; and ‘ops,’ meaning ‘face’. To the Greeks, Africa was the land of burnt faces. It is only people deprived of melanin who would assume that the face of Africa is burnt. In fact, it’s melanin that protects the face from burning. Skin bleachers have foolishly forgotten this life-saving truth.

Buju’s song is a reminder of the beauty of Africa and the unblemished black body.

LONG WALK TO FREEDOM

Til I’m Laid To Rest is also Buju’s affirmation of the Pan-Africanist philosophy and politics advocated by Marcus Garvey:

“Africa fi Africans

Marcus Mosiah speak

Unification

Outnumber defeat

What a day when we walkin’ down

Redemption Street

Banner pon head

Bible inna hand

One and all

Mek we trod di promised land.”

Buju evokes African-derived religious practices in Jamaica, which incorporates the Bible and the language of redemption. But this promised land is also Rastafari’s Ethiopia.

As I stood on stage for Buju’s magisterial performance at his ‘Long Road To Freedom’ concert, I was moved by his very first line, a prayer, which established the spiritual tone of the occasion, “Have mercy on me!”

But with undeniable stamina, Buju covered the whole range of his repertoire: sexuality and spirituality. With one understandable exception! His singular reference to homosexuality was his testimony that he had suffered no sexual abuse while incarcerated.

In the opening verse of Til I’m Laid To Rest, Buju humbly vowed, “No longer will I expose my weakness”.

After all the trials and tribulations of Mark Myrie, I know intuitively that, like Buju, he’s now confidently walking down Redemption Street.

n Carolyn Cooper, PhD, is a specialist on culture and development. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and karokupa@gmail.com.