STORY OF THE SONG - 'Cancer' grows from parents' deaths

Mel Cooke, Sunday Gleaner Writer

Richard 'Influential' Powell's 2009 song Cancer reverberates from his parents' graves, the idea germinating as he rode a bicycle away from the health-care facility in Elletson Flats, St Andrew, where his mother laid dying, wracked by pain from breast cancer.

That experience is recorded in the first lines of the song when it gets personal, after the general consolation:

"This one is for all who have lost loved ones

I'm sure someone can relate

Don't lose the faith

Jah is great

Fe see me mother in such pain and know me couldn't even help you know it hurt me

If it was to risk me very life I would have done it for this special one who birth me."

Many can relate. On Saturday, August 7, The Gleaner reported that "a new study on prostate cancer among Caribbean men of African descent has revealed there was a 270 per cent increase in the disease among Jamaican men between 1983 and 2007". The study was to be published in a book by Dr Henry Lowe.

The Gleaner also reported in October 2007 that "breast cancer is the most common cancer among women in Jamaica, followed in incidence by cancer of the cervix, large bowel and uterus".

Influential points out that initially he wrote the line in the present tense ("fe see me mother in such pain and know me can't even help ..."), changing it to the past tense after she had passed on.

Edith Powell died five months after she had buried her husband and Influential's father, Lloyd Powell. Cancer was completed and written shortly after Influential helped lay his mother to rest in Maidstone, Manchester.

Shocked

As painful as their deaths were and continue to be, Influential is still shocked by the transformation in his mother between his father's funeral and when he saw her five months later.

"She was living in Florida, then the doctor send her out and say there is nothing more them can do. Them go through all the chemotherapy, everything. She must just go home and we keep her comfortable," he said.

She wanted to come home to Jamaica and Influential got a shock.

His mother's eyes were sunken and she had lost a lot of weight. "Five months before she come down to bury my father. When I saw her I say 'no, is not my mother this'," he said.

Two weeks later, she was dead.

The shock was even greater because Influential was accustomed to his mother being a very strong person. On the other hand, his father, who was also blind from glaucoma in addition to having prostate cancer, would always talk about being ready to 'go home'. He eventually did when Influential was on his way to see him in Mandeville.

Again, the experience makes its way into song, as just after singing about the sacrifice he would make for his mother, Influential sings:

"I never get the chance to say the last goodbye to me father and it hurt me

Him died when me on me way to Mandeville at May Pen 9:30"

Influential says on the night his father died, when he heard that he had been rushed to hospital "something inside me say you have to go down". His friend 'Spawn D' carried him to Half-Way Tree on a motorcycle for the first leg of a tedious journey. Influential caught a bus to Spanish Town, then got a taxi to May Pen, reaching there at 9:30 p.m.

And got stuck.

At this point, his brothers in Mandeville were calling incessantly, asking "How far you reach?" When he finally got to Mandeville, he saw his brother and sister-in-law outside the gate. "Me start walk towards the security post. Them say 'no'. I said 'me waan go see him'. They said 'him gone'," Influential recalled.

"Mi feel cold and everything one time. Is the first time mi feel that way. It mash me down."

However, even up to the very end, Influential's mother tried to ensure that he was spared the worst of emotional trauma.

Painful experience

"My mother, she really hang on to life. She did not want to leave. It reach a point where she couldn't hold on any more," he said. "Is a lady who don't show emotion and she bawl out for pain."

"Mi wouldn't want my worst enemy go through the experience. She a weep and my eye jus' a run."

He would hear her crying out in pain when he rode up to the facility where she was staying, but as she caught sight of him she would try to restrain her tears. "She always a try protect me. Believe me, shi nuh waan see me cry," Influential said.

And so in Cancer he sings

"But Mama always say, don't cry

She never like to see me cry

She always say, don't cry

She never like to see me cry."

Then the drum and bass hit and Influential widens his message, speaking to early detection and also offering hope:

"This is a warning on breast cancer what a terrible disease

Only early detection, do your mammograms please

Cancer, blowing away people life just like the breeze

Me can still see me mother weep

The other one is prostate cancer

What a deadly disease

That very same one make me father now decease

Cancer, oh my oh my

I can only cherish the memories of the moments that we spent

Because I am so very sure this could never be the end

But Dada always say, if this is the only place that we have life

Oh my, then we are of men most miserable"

But still death me no pree dat

Me say more life pon more

Still I cyaa deny the facts of life me know sey death sure

Is only salvation that I can't ignore

Lloyd and Edith oonu gone on before

Look at the state of the world how every day skull a bore

It pays to live yu life good, live it clean and pure

More time we no sure we ago even make it offa tour

Only a prayer a day, let's cut to the core"

Yet, there are the regrets about what death has now made impossible, as well as a statement of purpose about the entire song:

"Me still memba the nights, house whe me promise to me mother

But death come spoil up that, right now Mama no deh ya

A she sen' me go music school go learn music like Dada."

The memories of me parents me a honour."

• Tears at writing, applause at performance

Although Influential started writing the lyrics of Cancer in his mind, while his mother was still alive, most of the song came after she had been buried. It was not, however, the easiest song to commit to paper.

The progress was halted by his tears.

Influential was given the rhythm by Spawn D, who had got it from manager Sonny Spoon, who in turn had received it from another producer.

"Writing the song was ... mi nuh know," Influential said. "Eyewater jus' a run, tears jus' a wet the leaf. Even my little daughter seh 'Daddy, every time you write that song you cry'. She always don't want me to write that song. She say, 'every time you start it you cry'." He was alone with the then seven-year-old (now eight) a lot at the time, as her mother was not in Jamaica.

The recording process, at Wong Studio in Portmore, St Catherine, was relatively easy, Cancer was completed in about two hours. No tears came then.

There have been many cheers for the song at Influential's performances. He remembers one in particular in Mandeville, where he performed after the in form I-Octane, who naturally had the audience in a frenzy. "Him really heat up the place," Influential said. Coming on stage after him was a daunting task, but "my manager say gwaan, me believe in you".

Influential says "I went on stage and just be meself. The entire focus was to know it is a mission. The people receive it well". While he was performing Cancer "about five people walk up just to shake my hand in the middle of my performance, when I was singing the cancer song. Them walk up to the stage and me just have to bend down and shake them hand".

"Who to tell, they could be people in a similar position," he said.

Influential says he has received calls "from all over the world" about Cancer. "Is one of those songs that not hype, but it have a message," he said.

Influential has been in music professionally for five years and played the guitar, drum and keyboard in church. However, long before, he says "me born come see my father a play this little banjo. Him like the mento sound. The whole community know him for this banjo. Him say in his days him used to go dance quadrille. Him say people would come up to him and buy him anything".

Learnt by watching

However, Influential says "him never really teach me how to play the banjo. But when me a little youth, six, seven, eight, me just sit down and watch him".

When his father was not around Influential would go and practise, so when his father eventually heard him playing he marvelled and asked who had taught him.

He says that while his father made up many songs - including when there was friction in the home and it was used as a stress reliever - "is a man who never go studio yet".

Now the banjo is still in the district of Bath in Maidstone, Manchester, at the place where Lloyd and Edith Powell are buried, which Influential has not been able to bring himself to visit since his mother's funeral. "Is something in mi mek me can't even go, all now," he said.