ripley in jamaica

2007-10-02T13:08:00.000-07:00

ended up back West, but with a few leftover health problems from the trip. then school began and what do you know, I haven't ended up posting my notes from the rest of the time in Jamaica.

I will do so again, but for now, regular posting on music, copyright and other stuff will be available back at my regular site: http://djripley.blogspot.com . when I post more notes, I will announce it there as well as posting it here.

Thanks for reading and commenting y'all.

safe in the USA

2007-08-20T06:24:00.000-07:00

I will post more soon - internet access has been sporadic. I made it out Saturday afternoon just before Dean hit. Cross your fingers for my fellow traveler, who was supposed to leave today. Cross your fingers for Jamaica that the damage was not too bad.

The airport in Kingston was filled with tourists and rich Jamaicans fleeing the island - it wasn't frantic yet, but it was urgent. I got a final taste of Jamaican food - albeit fast food- from Island Grill in the airport. Mmmmm callaloo rice and fish tea. still more spices than you get in US fast food. and I just discovered (at Brunch at the Alhambra when we went last sunday) that Hominy corn porridge is yummy in that "I'm eating pap" or babyfood kind of way, so I had that as dessert (it's sweet and vanilla-ish tasting).

The plane flight was full as could be and there were many loud white american teens exclaiming over how glad they were to leave early. One insisted on moving an elegant, elderly black man (in a fedora) from the window seat he had mistakenly taken and shouted across him to her friends for the rest of the flight about how glad she was to get away. I think ther were several school groups on the flight. I put my headphones on and read The Iron Council. Back in the US now, although I will continue to upload accounts from my trip over the next few days.

some pics to cheer you up

2007-08-15T14:16:00.000-07:00

no I'm not back in NYC or anything. we went to a ROCK NIGHT last night.

before that were many adventures, pouring rain, and a visit to the immensely creepy and sad house that Dennis Brown was born in.

other than that, due to the rain and the heat and all my shoes being filled with rain at one point over the weekend I have trench foot basically. Makes walking around on my last week a bit less fun than usual. But at least I have something to scare off cat-callers with.

Made our final trip into the prison system today. Fort Augusta, the women's prison. It was a more relaxed trip than the last one, where I gave an abbreviated version of my copyright workshop. This time we talked about future plans for SET in the prisons, and different inmates told a bit of their stories of how they came up there. What is increasingly evident is first the lack of choice facing people in poverty, but also, the fact that 75% of the women there were there because of men, in one way or another. People fighting back against abuse, or acting out because they had been abused, were the most common stories. We left energized but also enraged all over again at how little the women have to work with to improve their situations, whether inside or outside.

Gotta run for now, but this site will be updated soon with accounts of

The walking tour of Orange Street, historic record label/studio lane
Some accounts of tasty food eaten while here
more fashion talk (uptown vs. downtown and men vs. women mostly)
another trip to Rae Town, this time with my partner as well as my roommate.
Wedi Wednesdays at Stone Love
A full account of ROCK NIGHT

Evening at Half Way Tree

2007-08-03T14:29:00.000-07:00

(from last week, when my roommate and I walked down to Half Way Tree to look for clothing to go out dancing in - I've been feeling severely underdressed these days)

The sun is setting by 7 but even as it grew dark people were everywhere when we approached Half Way Tree (site of the only walk/don't walk sign I've seen in Kingston so far). Most shops were closed except for hair salons (somewhat segregated by gender, I think), where I could see people getting gussied up for later tonight.

As we walked down Half Way Tree road towards the clock tower, the sidewalk on one side was lined with vendors although they seemed to be multiplying as the night goes on – some were only beginning to set out their stuff at 8pm, unrolling big plastic tarps or laying out garbage bags flat and layering clothing -mostly women's clothing – brightly colored tops especially, and occasionally piles or bunches of underwear. Coming up on the main corner, we passed a woman sitting on a stool or something I couldn't see, with a huge bag of 3-stacked boxer shorts in front of her. All the clothes for sale (and stacks of washcloths –very useful for wiping sweat off in the clubs) looked pretty new and clean.

There were also a few drum chicken vendors, across the street from the clothing vendors, although I don't hear the whistle of the nut roasting machines. On both sides of the street a few folks had set up small tables with drinks and candy, and there is a guy with a fruitstand, rows of mangoes and a small pile of breadfruit visible in the dark. As we walked into Clock Tower Plaza, most of the shops were closed but a van parked in the middle of the parking lot had an entire fruit and vegetable market crammed inside of it – I could see piles of onions, plantain, tomatoes, other foods.. a scale hangs from the back of the van. At the back of the parking lot a rasta guy in his 30s stands by a table piled high with sugar cane.

All the women's clothing and shoe shops were still open when we arrived at around 7:30, and we begin our exploration by wedging ourselves into a series of tiny places with as much clothing as possible stuffed into racks and women pushing through and around them and each other.

The first three stores we visited were in the half way tree mall (a c-shaped structure around a parking lot – two levels small shops ranged around the center). These were buzzing with activity, mostly women in their 20s I think, with women the same age or slightly older working behind the counter. IN all the small places, it's only women's clothing, hanging on long lines across the window or hanging from the metal grates over the windows, and hanging from the ceiling.

There is hardly room to turn around, although most places have a fitting room (everyone I go into is piled with shoe boxes and a mirror leaning in the back). Lots of stuff was cute – mostly looked like stuff I would see at home in the cheap stores like Tellos, the step below H&M – mostly synthetic fabrics, microfiber and thin cotton, or some of the club-clothing stores where everything is microfiber, draped and pinned with shiny hardware. But it's not really so cheap here. I see a really cute sundress but it's 3800 jamaican dollars – about 45 bucks. Everything is made in china, and the sizes are demoralizing. I'm an 8-10 in the US and when they have larges (which is rare) I don't fit into most of them. Even when I do, many of the cheap fabrics are too see-through or stretch unflatteringly. O well.. We walked past at piles of denim jeans, bedecked with sequins and crystals and embroidery. Many women wear tight jeans all day here – I can't imagine it myself, in the heat.

The shops farther back from the street, or not in that mall are quieter, and staff more likely to be male. Most of them are larger shops, and have a men's section on one side and women's clothing on the other. Several of the men running some of the larger and quieter shops appear to be middle eastern, although one or two other shops are staffed by black Jamaican men.

All of the shops play music, mostly dancehall and R&B. I can't tell if it's a radio or a player of some kind – I don't see the source and I can't remember any djs talking.

Outside, in the cool of the evening the scene is pretty jovial. People are clearly preparing for evenings on the town, gathering in groups on streetcorners. There are mostly groups of women or groups of men, segregated by age and gender. We walk back up the street, to get to the supermarket before it closes. As we leave the supermarket, we walk towards a fruitstand where Christina gets a coconut to drink from. Just past it there is another vendor with a drum of chicken, a table piled with snacks and a TV plugged in (somewhere?) with the news on. People sit or lean nearby, catching up on local news.

wuh?

2007-07-31T14:37:00.000-07:00

Is there a simple reason for the style of lettering on this gambling machine?

why hebrew lettering and scrolls?

language's meaning contracts

2007-07-27T13:42:00.000-07:00

As we cooled our heels last weekend due to a threatened strike by prison workers that meant nobody could get into the prisons, I've been thinking about all the different kinds of work I've been involved in.

I've been struggling with drafting contracts and forms to provide a legal framework for what's happening in the recording studio. This is because I'm not clear how to make them meaningful legally and meaningful to the inmates who sign them.

Contracts, in order to be rock-solid, are supposed to have extremely specific language in them, to cover all contingencies and prevent any fancy footwork or nit-picking after the fact.

But the situation in the prison is that there is nothing at all protecting these folk, pretty much all rights are theoretical here, and also nobody is very sophisticated –on either side. It's not that people are manipulating loopholes for their benefit, it’s that one side has all the power. Down to even things like who has freedom of movement, or who has access to information about what's happening outside the prison.

Any ripping-off that could be going on here is pretty straightforward, people get recorded, the person who records them disappears with the recordings. I'm enough convinced of the usefulness of law, and beyond that, of the importance of modeling fair agreements between people , that I think there should be an agreement on paper. But the importance of creating a clear legal relationship should be because the relationship has real meaning, that is, that it gives the inmates the sense that they can make choices at all about this kind of thing, that they are not completely at the mercy of people who have more power than them (although I'm ambivalent, because, practically, they are, if the guards want to play it that way).

In order for the experience of participating in legal processes to be transformative, (which is part of the point of this whole project), I think it has to be a conscious choice, a choice they can understand. This means I'm really fighting with the fact that I want people to actually understand the agreements.

The problem is, the more specific they are, and the more contingencies they include, the more chances for misunderstanding and manipulation there are. A longer document is more intimidating, the use of legally specific and foreign language is alienating and confusing. And 9 times out of 10, no matter which way the meaning of the language is slanting the contract, any confusion is going to benefit the powerful person in that contract. Because who is in a position to interpret the language?

Add in to that the fact that a contract that is longer than a single page runs a very high chance of pages being separated, signatures lost, pages mix up.. not even through maliciousness but because the er "in-prison filing system" is perhaps a bit precarious. I'm working on a scanner as a backup, but not sure how that stands legally either.

Basically, it seems to me that contracts rely on an assumptions that both parties signing it are on equal footing with respect to the law. As if rights were automatically enforced by the fact of their existence. But if one side has more legal resources (whether it is access to lawyers or a higher level of literacy), then the contract itself will tend to benefit one side automatically. While the tendency is to write something extremely cautious and defensive, and then insist on the inmates signing it "because it will protect them," this seems both a bad model for them to practice engaging with law (and inherently no more reliable as not signing contracts) because I'm basically asking them to trust me on what is in their best interest, based on their feelings about me –which is the same reason the trust the people they work with without contracts, and also practically suspect. If they can't understand them, does it matter what's in them?

Rae Town Rock

2007-07-26T08:28:00.000-07:00

So we roll out from the studio, Sunday night, around midnight: Andrea, a friend of Andrea's in a camo minidress and long blond dreads, a younger woman T (daughter of one of the gentlemen hanging in the studio), Earl Chinna Smith, whose studio we've been hanging out in all evening, a visiting musician from the US, Berklee-trained, who’s working with them on an album, and a few other venerable cats.

Taking a circuitous route through downtown to the highway (following Chinna's car, the women exclaim this route makes no sense, both because traffic in the city is no problem at 11:45pm on a Sunday, and because this takes us near downtown during election season, when the chance for politics-related violence is high), we come to Rae Town, definitely not New Kingston. Small houses and shacks, gullies for drainage, but also a good sized crowd. Andrea says this is small, but it's perhaps 800 people maybe, or gets there in the next hour or so.

Towers of speakers line the back of the sidewalk at key points, and people stand in front of the speakers but with their backs to them. This means there are two thick rows of people facing each other across the street, being blasted in the face and back by speakers playing oldies, "vintage" music. Which in this case means everything from funk (I think "last night a dj saved my life" was playing as we pulled in), to rocksteady (to which everyone sings along, Alton Ellis crooning over the crowd).

We park in a lot at one end, and walk back towards the crowd, collecting at one end. I am already dizzy with sensory overload. The crowd ranges from teenagers to people in the 70s. Clothing styles are wide-ranging but definitely have not much upper limit on the flashy side, from tight jeans with golden zippers hanging off and high heels, to halter tops, mini skirts, leggings, men strut in near-zoot-suits (with a fedora in one case), or rocking the look more popular uptown: the slim-cut button-down shirt with embroidery (gothic letters or eagles or other crests), plus white shirts and vests, enormous dreadlock crowns.

I should point out that tonight at Rae Town age does not appear to dictate style – either in flashiness or sexuality (although tight and revealing clothes appear on women only here) the first women I notice are a woman in her 50s wearing a crocheted outfit that is like long trousers that are only opaque in the hotpant region, and then become see-through crochet for the entire legs, a black crochet top that is equally revealing, a black bra and red men's suspenders hoisting the pants up. Her friend has a black one-piece outfit that is a bra top attached to the pants part by a sort of fishnet, stretched over her round belly. I turn around and there is my guide talking to Errol Dunkley, who is magnificent in a white satin buttondown shirt with a Chinese-style collar, clipped at the throat with a thick golden chain, a more enormous golden chain hanging around his neck over a black pinstripe vest, a matching one on his wrist and a huge seal ring on his finger.

The age range is striking compared to the other places we've been out. A nice thing about the scene is the number of older people dancing enthusiastically –something I rarely see in the US (both because we are so age-segregated in terms of nightlife, but also I think dancing is not assumed to be so usual here). I'm particularly taken with the older men with dreadlocks piled high and beards, standing and wining, eyes shut, bending their knees and rocking out to the beat. Across the street from me when I first arrive, is one such man, hair wrapped in a white turban, white buttondown shirt under a blue knit v-neck vest, white beard glowing in the reflected car lights.

I'm the only white person there, and I don't see any asian folk either (Christina and I had been talked earlier on the visible presence of Chinese folks all over Kingston), although later a crew of 3 japanese girls and a guy walk through, the girls are dressed to death –I think one of them might be one who won a dancehall queen competition here a while ago – Junko. Long bleach hair, skinny skinny. I hear other folks say that name, and from what I've seen I can believe it would be her. Then again, all that external stuff is pretty movable/changeable, and I can guess any blond skinny asian girl gets called Junko here.. Anyway, she and her female friend disappear, although I see the guy walk back and forth through the crowd a few times.

There are things for sale all along the street behind the crowd - mostly food, drum chicken (steel drums cut in half lengthwise and turned sideways into a barbecue pit), rickety tables piled high with drinks, or coolers full of ice and drinks. Small rum shops/bars are open as well, along the sidewalk - just a bar and a few stools and a chair or two in teh corner. People selling nuts walk back and forth with huge bundles of small plastic bags, or pile the bundles on their heads. Some of the drinks sellers also sell cigarettes and candy, and there is at least one little shop selling candy and cigarettes and other small things I can't make out.

Cars cluster at both ends, although there are a few parked within or behind the crowd. Occasionally someone drives down the street, the crowd parts sulkily for them, people push back a bit but make a point of not moving quickly or too much for the cars. The most common drive-through is the cops, in a really beat up looking Toyota. There are three of them crammed in there in blue suits, toting old m-16s. T tells me it's just a "routine check" when they get out of the car near where we stand, slinging their guns around. we step across the street to the rum shop, I peek over my shoulder but I don't want to stare and I can;t tell what they are doing but nobody is moving quickly. T says they are checking for drugs. But later they drive through again, and a young guy with scraggly cornrows terminating in a kind of mini-fountain at the top of his head, who's been striding around with a kinda scraggly set of branches of weed, is walking past them. He talks to them through the window and I think I see a hand go in. Anyway he walks on and they drive past.

Most of the cars driving through and parked are beat-up, older models, although occasionally a newer one in better shape comes through. The most dramatic car is a big white and silver one that comes at us through the crowd around 1:30 in the morning.. it looks like a big SUV of some kind but there's something on the hood, where the leaping jaguar would be a on a jag. It's a golden lion, sitting majestic and metallic on the hood. I peer past it and through the tinted windshield is an older dready man in a huge white tam with the red-gold-green stripe in the front, and I realize it's Bunny Wailer. When he comes out his clothing is a vision in white and cream – kind of a colonial look actually, except for the tam. The woman with him has a black dress with a gold mesh underskirt and a tall headdress with a sort of gypsy-like gold coin chainmail thingy hanging over her forehead. There's a few other folks but I don't want to stare. They hang out a bit beyond us away from the biggest part of the crowd.

This happens as we stand in the middle of the crowd. People mostly dance solo in these two groups facing each other across the street. There isn't (at least until I leave at 3am) much of the grinding and hot+heavy pair dancing that I've seen in the clubs. People groove and sing along, the sense is of a broader camaraderie through the music, rather than one-on-one attention or performance for watching eyes. I don't notice a lot of pairing off or flirtation in general – people seem either en masse or in same-sex groups mostly. There are watching eyes with respect to me, a bit, although people say less to me (in the way of "whitey, white girl, hiss hiss") than almost any public place I've been since I got here. But of course I still stand out. Older folks seem less interested in me, overall. It may also be that I'm escorted by people who are clearly jamaican, and that could be what keeps the commentary down.

Near the end of the evening, when we're in the middle of the crowd in front of a mountain of speakers, I'm happy I know the lyrics to a lot of the sweet rocksteady, thanks especially to my weekly rocksteady gig back home at the Guerilla café, I had time to brush up. It's a pleasure to dance and sing along, during which I occasionally stop thinking of observing and just enjoy the music, but that feeling is rare. And there's also the nice feeling of surprising people –they notice when I carol along.

Linking and Thinking

2007-07-24T10:24:00.001-07:00

Sunday night I linked up with a friend of a friend(that cat helped Jamaica write its patent policy, with some of the same concerns I get into below about copyright). Andrea a woman involved in the roots music scene (who has also been a consultant for the Rough Guide to Jamaica and related RGs). She's great – I had a good conversation with her about the prison work but also about my future dissertation work. She seemed excited about the idea of someone coming to JA to listen to people's creative processes, to try to talk back to the colonial legal structure, and to the IP structure that wasn't written with them in mind.

I don't think Jamaica is unique (or no more so than every cultural scene is unique), I think it's a more dramatic case of what's true in the US and everywhere – people's creative practice bears little resemblance to what IP law seems to assume. Considering that a lot of IP law states its purpose as fostering creativity (for example, the US Constitutional justification for copyright), it would make sense to make sure we understand more about how creativity works, and thus how best to foster it. Anyway in JA the copyright law, recently re-written, is mostly shaped by the same old assumptions that were never really designed to foster the kinds of practices most common in Jamaica. There's a colonial narrative that works pretty well here, since the laws were not changed from the British system after independence (as if their purpose was somehow neutral) although some aspects of that are true the world over - I don't think assuming laws are neutral is helpful anywhere.

But anyway, it was cool (hot and sweaty actually) to sit on a porch in the evening surrounded by musical equipment. I also spent some time hanging out in a studio and witnessing people making music and talking about music in a way that just inescapably relies on a system of borrowing, copying, tweaking, and referencing. Of course, the other side is the deeply felt injustice of artists who are still living hand to mouth, while watching folks elsewhere profit mightily. Is that because their practices don't fit with law? which should be changed? the law or the practices? Can copyright law remedy this situation anyway? I'm not sure that's what it was written for, and I'm pretty sure that is not how it has historically functioned. That's one of my long-term plans - to understand more about the relationship between particular definitions of access and exclusion rights w/r/t culture and the ability for people to flourish.

But all of this is preliminary thoughts – and just the preface to my first real street party here in Kingston – Rae Town, a party that has been running for 30 years in a neighborhood in southern Kingston. more on that to come!

haps and mishaps

2007-07-19T14:48:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was the culmination of a series of mishaps that are re-training me in getting along here. I'm starting to guess: a combination of NOT being a control freak or in too much of a hurry, but also trying to stick up for yourself when necessary. There's also a certain level of bravado, so they shout and you shout, and then later you get together and move on.

Trying to deal with a large bureaucracy has its own delights, which have been educational for me. People I have spent a lot of time with at Berkeley talk about policy, but not as much about how policy gets interpreted by organizations.. or ignored.. or how it gets lost in the shuffle. Actually, quite a few folks in my own department do study this (policy in organizations), but none of them do IP policy, and the IP and privacy people I have been surrounded with don't seem to talk much about that kind of stuff (This is a split I've noticed before).

So anyway, it's been interesting to watch how and when things get done through the bureaucracy of the department of correctional services. What the deciding factors and moments seems to be, and also, what officials say, feel they have to say, or feel they cannot say, and what that really means.

One example: with respect to (only some) bureaucrats: when you are in conversation with them, and they say "you know more about that than I do" – you might think this is an invitation for you to explain what's going on, share your information, etc.. or even a sign they might listen to your opinion..

But no, what it really means is "I hate you." Anything that involves looking like they could learn from you is reversing the power dynamic they want to maintain. So they simply will not listen to anything you say that depends on you explaining to them. I've come to take that phrase as a warning sign, to try to get my point on track with what their assumptions already are, if at all possible.

Anyway, there are a series of struggles going on that have nothing to do directly with the tasks I had come here to do, but in another way are exactly what it means to do work for a nonprofit engaging with a government bureaucracy (especially one that consistently loses the paperwork we are required to fill out, or does not send it along to the relevant entity who needs to see it).

But our challenges yesterday were of another sort: Coming back from Fort Augusta, which is the women's prison by the water, a bit outside of Kingston, our van began to make an awful noise. Awful enough that we pulled over, opened up the engine (which is under the passenger's seat), and poked around. Seems to be well destroyed, actually. We limped back to the office, but after parking it it's clear that van is not going anywhere. Of course, tonight is when the technical team from Antenna Alliance are supposed to arrive at Kingston airport. So we have to round up another way to pick them up. A friend of SET offers her company van, which is more of a cargo van but at least will hold the five of us that will come back from the airport.

The van and driver comes by the office, and the two of us pile in. As we rocket along to the airport, a cloud of smoke goes up behind us. Yes, it is the van. We pull over, and commence the same ritual, only this time we are in an Esso station on the way to the airport and not by the side of the road coming back from Fort Augusta. This van too, mash up. "It lick out the head-gasket" he says with a shrug. We are left to call a taxi, but need to get a taxi-van to hold all of us, get us to the airport and get us home. No cheap thing! At least the van that comes is new and cushy inside. The driver is jovial and swears it nuh brek down. He's right. No more mishaps for the night for us.

As could be expected, the guys take almost 2 hours to get through immigration + customs, especially because those who have checked their luggage have had it lost, as mine was. (American Airlines must spend as much in luggage delivery costs as it does in fuel for the planes.) We finally extract them from the airport and taxi home to a late dinner and much tapping on our respective computers.

monday tuesday wednesday..

2007-07-17T09:44:00.000-07:00

BEMBE!

Although we hit up Quad again on wednesday night, I don't have so much to say about it. The dj was not as good, the crowd was more fun - more fabulous clothing (especially on the men) - my favorite was a cat with a black fedora at a fierce angle, bling earrings, a long button-down shirt/tunic thing in black with white swooshes on it, black trousers and shiny shoes. Maybe more dancehall and less commercial hip-hop, a few classics thrown in there, and upstairs in the voodoo lounge was all dancehall from the 90s, pretty much.

Anyway the big night was the Thursday night party at Weekends club. Wayne having finally arrived (a day late, thank you connecting flights and logan airport silliness), he's ready to hit the town again, as he did his first night at Quad's Wednesday nights. Tonight promises to be a bit more down-home.

Got there around 12:30am – already really crowded, although folks have assured me nobody goes out till midnight. The road is well full of people, cars, drum chicken (roasting in yellow metal drums split for coals and meat to rest inside), those roast-nut-sellers with their rusty tin stove-carts ricketing along on wheels, whistling constantly, a slightly threatening sound like kettles about to run dry or explode.

As we jump out of the taxi and wander up through the people, clustering, chatting, watching and selling, we note 3 separate entrances – one for Entertainers, one for Ladies, one for Men - $300. I don't mind not paying, I tell you! We separate, head through our lines (I don't get searched either), and then we are in. When Wayne's Jamaican friend (Dami D, catch him on the Boston Jerk album, or soon come on myspace) shows up he steps through the Entertainers line and nobody stops him.

Anyway, on arrival, there's a big open space, dirt floor, –open except for the hundreds of people- in front of us as we come in with a wall of speakers at the back. To the left is a brightly lit table with a vendor selling cigarettes and candy, and a tall rasta in his 30s, standing around smoking. Women in groups of two and three and men in ones and twos circulate or dance, although the dancing is pretty subdued. Heading left, the actual dancefloor is through a second entrance – the whole place is open to the sky with a dirt floor, except for the big stage at the back which has a bit of roof. Along to the left on the way to the entrance to the dancefloor, a long corridor leads back to the bar, which is made of wood and some trees overhang, and it's all on a raised platform which partly overlooks the dancefloor (though from the back so you can't see the front of the stage).

We head in to the dancefloor and have to turn sideways to get through the crowd. One we stand, I look around, although so many people shoulder past us I get a steady stream of people going by. Many many men in polo shirts, often brightly striped with horizontal stripes. There is a Japanese kid in front of us on the dancefloor for a while, also in a polo shirt. A particular look among some of the ladies, many of those who have it turn out to the dancehall queens onstage later, they rock huge amounts of hair, straightened or a wig, blond or black, piled into a massive almost-beehive on the head, and thick eyeshadow and lipstick. From the neck up they resemble the ladies in 1960s girl groups, especially when the lipstick is pale. From the neck down.. well there's plenty batty-riders going on, and plenty low-cut tops, bustiers or even bras. Not so Supremes-looking really. Not all the ladies are so elaborately dressed, although everything, pretty much all over the body, is tight. If I haven't mentioned it before, I'll just get out there that a really high percentage of Jamaican women appear to have unbelievable figures (or a variety of amazing figures), I must say, and the standard here is to dress to accentuate it all pretty unrelentingly. It's rather dizzying.

Wayne's friend Dami shows up (red polo shirt with oversize polo horse+rider on the chest), we struggle through the dancefloor to find him and head back to the bar. There are a few chairs up against the bar, and as we head over one comes empty and I perch in it for a while. The music is more hardcore dancehall than anywhere we've been so far. Later someone calls it an uptown crowd but downtown music. The vibe feels more soundclash-y to me, not that there's a competition going on, but more that it's about the dj performance, and the performance consist mostly of playing new tunes and chatting on the mic (not so much crafting a dynamic set). The mic chat is often totally filthy, and appears to drop a lot of names, talking a lot of mess about various people, some of whom I know and some I don't. I find out later this is Tony "Mentally Ill" Matterhorn. Called Matterhorn because of the cigarettes he constantly smokes ("man light one cigarette from another"), and called mentally ill because he's pushed the limits of acceptable discourse on the mic, apparently. Naming names, and using curses like 'suck your mother' that used to be fighting words and are now filtering (according to some of our friends) into more common usage. One thing I find irritating is the way he cuts out the music whenever he speaks, rather than waiting for a break or speaking over the tracks. This interrupts the flow of the music. Wayne says later this is common dj practice at soundsystems, but since I keep trying to bounce to the music, the constant but irregular interruption is jarring. Some radio djs do this as well – which reminds me a bit of some UK pirate radio moments- but I still find it jarring, especially because it's usually more about the personality of the DJ than the music.

We end up hiding out in the back (a few minutes later a cop wanders through, bullet-proof vest stark over a white t-shirt, not stopping any of the rastas selling big trees, nor any of the smokers), and watch the crowd, listen to the music and chat. Some of the tunes are intense –one keeps dropping almost into a Chicago-house beat, keeps changing, really weird and interesting. There's a few I make mental notes of, but promptly forget in the wash of visual, sonic, and other messages I'm receiving. The vibe, despite the tightly packed crowd, is pretty positive. I spot two white women in ponytails, walking behind them I think I hear German, but I'm not sure, could be Scandinavian of some kind.

As the night develops, the crowd keeps circulating but not depleting, and then starts thinning out by 2am. We get back to the dancefloor and most people now are just watching the stage, where the dancehall queens are leaping, wining, and disappearing below my line of sight. When they disappear, their feet, legs and waists reappear as they do headstands on the stage and flex lower muscle groups in time to the music. Sometimes men leap up acrobatically over them or lean and wine or vibrate against them. The partnering increases, and men and women fling themselves together –women's legs around the men's waists- and spin around until they can't stand up. And then something weird happens: a man grabs one of the women and starts tossing her around and it's like lindy hop time: around the back, over the shoulder, through the legs.

Not even simulating sex at all, which seems disorienting since that has been the common theme of most of the late-in-the-party dance moves. Then some of the guys start tossing one woman back and forth between them. Higher and higher she goes until the inevitable – I can't see it but the crowd dissolves in laughter and it's clear somebody missed. boom! However, when I return my attention to the stage, there are three men holding a woman horizontally in the air by her limbs (she's on her back I think) and swinging her against a fourth. A bizarre image, but everyone up there seems into it. Tony Matterhorn is interrupting the music every 15-30 seconds at this point to say something filthy. As people are leaving he shouts "all the man go home all the girls wan' f*ck stay here." This makes me feel like leaving, but basically it's time to go anyway. Our taxi company of choice pulls up in 2 minutes and we head home.

Last Tuesday

2007-07-16T10:16:00.000-07:00

Lots of nightlife as well as daylife to catch up on - so far we go out during the week more than the weekend.. This is a recap of last Tuesday

Courtesy of a circular set of connections (New York, SF, Jamaica, Vienna all intertwined through a few people) I ended up being invited to the Tuesday Night Live party at the Village Cafe in Ligaunea

We rolled up after having waited unsuccessfully for our team-mate the mighty wayneandwax to arrive. His flights all delayed too much to hop on (no connections can be made tonight), he spent a lovely day in Logan airport and plans to try again on Wednesday. We take a taxi out to the party to drown our sorrows, leaving unfashionably early at 10:30pm, but we hear that Lady Saw is going to be shooting some of her video there and we don't want to miss anything.

It's rooftop club, partially enclosed, and part open to the sky. Going upstairs to the entrance, you look right and see the open porch, lined with folks, especially rastas with guitars. Looking left is the sound engineer and the dj (playing Virtual DJ off a laptop), and then downstairs (but still semi-open) was a bar. A nice laidback vibe, not too glitzy, more rootsy. Crowd was definitely older than Quad, more Chinese and white folks around, seemingly a bit more upper class overall, as far as I can tell.

It was "ladies' night" with a female dj and female-fronted or all-female acts. First was Mosharee, who did some spoken word – quite confident, good stage presence, commanding attention and reaching for a kind of "weave-a-spell-with-words" approach. I kept being distracted by the fact that her face and body language reminded me of LL Cool J (without all that lip-licking).

Next was L &S who were a two-sister team who wrote their own songs, one on guitar and one on keyboards. They were pretty good, like the top of a high school talent show, with some clever musical turns and clever lyrics. Absolutely not my kind of music, but it was entertaining for a while, to watch how they were putting together a pop act. They had matching outfits of black pencil skirts and red halter tops, but one (the keyboardist) was extremely thin except for her chest, with a dramatic face – huge eyes, wide mouth, small chin; while the other was much curvier in the body and less dramatic features. At first, I thought the first one had a better voice – it was louder and more in tune, although rather thin and piercing. The second one's voice seemed a bit weaker and huskier overall, but then there was one song where she dropped it lower, and it became clear that she had a pretty powerful voice, but she was forcing it up high to be the harmony for her sister. It made me thinking about the girl-girl dynamics, especially because the one that (at least in the US) would be "the pretty one" was clearly dominant, to the point of moving her sister physically to where she wanted her to be a couple times, dragging her across the stage by the hand at one point. They had some interesting vocal harmonies going on, but I kept wishing the other sister would just blow the first one off the stage. Also, something about the girl-group style made me wonder if there was a svengali somewhere. There was clearly tons of practicing in their past, and also a lot of control over their image and their relationship.

Next was a tremendous singer, I think her name is Alison, she only did two or three songs but she ruled it. The only problem was her mic was up too high – her voice was so huge it was overpowering the system and clipping. But she had great presence, slightly aggressive, but humorous as well, not too hammy, but also in control of the stage. She wore a simple dress that wasn't too glam, longsleeves and a short skirt in a sort of military style, and black leather boots. Hair down, not a lot of makeup. But she opened her mouth and wham! Hugeness.
Her backup band was a crew of high school kids from the music school (Edna Manley?) who were all pretty great. Not a ton of stage presence from them yet, but clearly focused on music and loving playing, which was nice to see. One of the guitarists looked about 12, but he came up with some soulful stuff.

One of the women who sang backup on Alison's last tune came back (with the same band) to sing some solo tunes. Sabrina Ward had a more rootsy look and vibe – shaven head, tall and elegant, big round earrings, a long skirt in green and an orange and red top made out of a big swathe of silky fabric tied around her with the ends in the front (my fellow intern said it looked like she was wearing a goldfish butt). She had a nice deep throaty voice that was a lot less trained than Alison's but conveyed good emotion, and she seemed pretty sincere and thoughtful.

Then there was a break, while the main backup band stepped up. Mostly rastas, including a white rasta (big beard and tam) dude on solo guitar, and a rhythm guitarist who looked like a young Jackie Mittoo a bit, or like one of the handsome basketball players I remember from my youth (late 1970s). The bass player was wearing a sports jersey and white trousers and some fabulous colorful patent leather sneakers. The keyboard player had a purple vest over his white outfit, it had outlines of Africa on it. They set up some sound, lay down some rhythm, sang a number together, and then surprise surprise, Prince Al-Lah stepped out from the late 1970s! This is when the crowd started to get really lively. He was pretty elderly, and pretty happy. My favorite thing was when he suggested that one song he sang (from 1976), killed the pope. All in a kindly smiling voice, he said "when I first play this in 1976, three days later the pope dead!"

Next up was the official headliner, Empress. Whew. Well first I should say, she is incredibly polished, great performer, very skilful, good voice, well-put-together tunes. However, and maybe I'm prejudiced by the article I read that talked about her spending age 12-20s in Australia, and how she talked about herself there, but I found her kinda phony. Everything was so extremely self-consciously "I AM JAMAICAN." There was a song about how great a rastaman boyfriend is, all the good sex and all that righteousness. That doesn't rule out the rent-a-dread, it seems to me, or rather, echoes some middleclass tourist women's talk. Then there was a song that started out "raise your fist if you think Jamaica is a Paradise." My fellow intern and and I just looked at each other. I mean, there are many wonderful things and people in Jamaica. But what do you leave out with a statement like that? Who is your audience?

At this point I was basically holding out for Lady Saw. I know she was only going to sing one song – since she was filming her video. But I just wanted to see her in action. Of course, she had been in action all night – she and Cecile were glamming it up in the front row, sort of holding court, projecting star energy, in nearly identical little black dresses, with sparkling jewelry at the neck and high heels. Lady Saw's makeup artist, a younger woman with a lot of elaborate makeup, kept hovering around and reapplying Lady Saw's lipgloss with a brush as she (Lady Saw) perched on a stool in the crowd. Later in the night, her two backup dancers showed up and stood around in the crowd in hotpants, black fedoras with long ponytails of braids, and black longsleeve tops with strategic windows or slashes in them. Actually they looked rather styley, although from the waist down they were rather teenage-slumber-party-in-high heels (the hotpants really did look like boy shorts underwear and the ladies were on the hipless side). The crowd was also livened up by Wayne Marshall (the reggae one, not our friend from Boston) lurking around in his camouflage taking pictures of the show.

But it was all worth the wait because Lady Saw just busted out on the mic and blew everyone away. Her song for the video was the only dancehall vibe of the night, and she was repeating bits of the chorus so the video folks could shoot. But it was still awesome. And then, as a special treat for the crowd, she belted out an a capella song about not being born beautiful but getting along just fine. Simple lyrics, somehow really affecting. Plus, it worked with her voice, which wasn't as naturally powerful and beautiful as some of the other singers that night, but clearly showed she had worked on it 10,000 times as hard as anyone else, and that she was experienced in making the most of it. Sometimes that's more satisfying than a natural gift used boringly.

Pretty soon after that we left, having to get into the office bright and early next morning.

backing up - a brief explanation

2007-07-11T14:28:00.000-07:00

Well this was first started to report back to folks I know, but it's already gone wide (thanks J.Eden!) so I guess I should back up a bit.

As well as being a DJ, I am a graduate student in the Boalt Hall Law School (UC Berkeley) Jurisprudence and Social Policy program. This program does not create professional lawyers, necessarily, but does produce scholars and policy makers. My particular focus for the past 3 years has been on the social implications of intellectual property law.

This summer, I have joined the Jamaica-based nonprofit the Students Expressing Truth Foundation, which is working in the prison system in Jamaica. The aspect I am most focused on is the fact that SET has built low-power radio stations and recording studios in two prisons (so far) in the Kingston area, and computer labs in three. These are used as part of the Rehabilitation Through Music program which emphasize both the healing and connecting aspects of music-making and also the specific skills that can be learned both to provide respite and healing to inmates who are here for life but also for those who leave to take with them. Several former SET members are now employed in the video and audio field in Jamaica, for example, while SET, overall has an amazing 0% recidivism rate over its 7 years in existence (compare to at least 50% recidivism rate for the Jamaican prison system as a whole).

Having spent the past three years exploring intellectual property debates from a critical social perspective, trying to keep my eye on actual power relations, actual historical and social science evidence while learning the letter of the law, it is amazing to see how these issues are played out in one of the more extreme power situations I can imagine. This is part of what I was getting at in my previous post.

Basically, I am here to provide information and a basic legal framework for a lot of the recording - based especially on conversations with the inmates about what they want and need, and SET's assessment of the important issues facing them.

to respond to a question in the comments to my previous post (hooray! comments! more please!), you can definitely get a sense of my attitudes towards copyright law by perusing the other blogs I write for, especially my regular dj blog and also my blog entries for boalt.org, the our law student groups for public interest issues in technology. The fact that I am a dj, and my style of djing (check out my mixes on the dj blog), should give some more clues.

But I will describe my attitude as it relates to these inmates now: I plan to talk to them about what they are interested in, with respect to their music - what is it they want to do with it? What goals to they have? And I will talk to them about how they feel about music that they make and the music they listen to. What kind of rights are expressed in these feelings?

To the extent that copyright law as written helps them serve their interests and their rights as they see them, then focusing on traditional copyright is helpful. In other cases, giving music away, selling a copyright, or using a CC license may serve their needs. I think the conversation should be about people's needs and interests first, with the law fitting into that. Taking IP law as-is can cause lots of problems. Especially in developing nations I think a more critical stance is necessary.

This is not to dictate a final choice: I want the inmates to be able to make informed choices about what happens to music they make. What I'm noticing is that I am more comfortable with shoring up their ability to control that music because of their extremely powerless position. I don't feel the same moral urgency about many other people or groups' ability to control their music. This is not to say that I will not tell them what copyright law says about their rights - but as far as what those rights mean in reality (both morally and materially), I think there is too much hype about that and not enough clear thinking going on.

I'll stop there for now.

What good is copyright for inmates?

2007-07-10T17:07:00.000-07:00

I guess this is the part of legal aid I'm finding scary. Not dealing with the inmates, who so far basically seem happy to have anyone there who cares to help them (sometimes maybe too happy, but hey, it's a men prison). What's scary is drafting legal documents that will stay here after I go, for the purpose of putting some decision-making back into the hands of the inmates, as respects the labor they do.

But it's also totally fricking brilliant, to have to think about this in a such a practical way.

The part of the SET project I am most connected with is that of the recording studio and radio station – currently there is no explicit or specific legal framework defining what rights inmates have against outsiders who engage with them or their music. Even though overall I am not a copyright enthusiast, I can see how copyright is an appealing legal argument, because it is an assertive property right you can appeal to against even the powerful.

Of course, everything about the creative process here complicates claiming a property right. DCS (Department of Correctional Services) technically owns the building, the SET foundation owns most of the equipment, although an outside NGO owns some of it. The Rehabilitation Through Music program is an SET program, undertaken courtesy of DCS. So there's a tangle of ownership of the material and non-material infrastructure.. Add in that inmates may be collaborating (as all artists do, heck as all people do), what rights do each of them have?

Then, to complicate it further if outside producers and engineers come in, they undoubtedly contribute something creative and important to the sound recording. On the basis of contribution, weighing the value of all of these is pretty difficult.

What is clear is the power imbalance – if an outsider comes in and records an inmate, and goes off with the recordings, legally the outsider might even be okay, because in Jamaica absent a written agreement the recording person is considered the copyright owner. But it feels terrible, to allow that to happen. It seems unethical based on the POSITION of the people involved.

This is what I've been feeling all along, that if you can't incorporate the positions of the people involved into your analysis, then you can't really be sure the system you are setting up is positive. In this case the freedom and power of the outsider, and the restriction and relative weakness of the inmate are at such opposite poles it seems dreadfully unfair to have the outsider profit, or have control.

Of course, a great many guys here are in for life, they are mainly interested in hearing their music spread. If an outsider can spread it, then that may be a plus for them. The traditional trade-off for copyright is that the labels will take care of what may be expensive, confusing work of distribution. Nowadays people are arguing the internet can counterbalance that, but I don't think that's so convincing for inmates in Jamaica.. That is where the Antenna Alliance comes in, of course, offering networks of promotion and distribution of CC-licensed music. That's why they are here in Kingston. It's an interesting experiment, I'm curious how far it goes this summer.

Another argument maybe against retaining copyright is the guys here may not be able to profit much from any money, even if there is any: it might come too slowly, or not at all. Some producers give payment up front, which is appealing to poor folks for a lot of good reasons. I'm wary of acting as if any copyright automatically equals royalties, because it's unlikely enough generally that I'm not sure it's a good context in which to make decisions.

I guess, along with the contextual, ethical issue, the main concern I have of giving up copyright is the lack of exposure if an owner decides NOT to promote the artist, then the artist can't try anything else.

I don't have any answers for now – right now the biggest challenge is fitting the contract on a single page so there can be no confusion later as to who signed what, no lost or separated pages..

big tings a gwan on weekend! part 2

2007-07-10T10:32:00.000-07:00

The rally for the PNP started heating up at 6, but I first came there at 2. My companion/host/ride to the event was a young entrepreneur, planning to sell to the audience. When we got there, the sun was beating down, alternating with spots of rain that barely seemed to cool the air. No audience folk were around, but vendors were setting up, and the stage was being constructed, with gangs of men in various event company t-shirts setting up cables and backdrops and lighting. We walked around for a while, he knew a good number of the crew. He wasn't carrying anything yet to sell, but talked to a few folks, and we walked over to an Ital restaurant called Eden. I was too hot to eat much – I just got a veggie pattie and a really good fruit juice (bottled coming from South Africa). He had a full plate of hot food that looked really tasty but I couldn't face a full meal yet.

Afterwards we walked back through the growing crowd, I was hot and dusty and felt like a swim, so we went back to the apartment. As we drove home we passed parking lots and open spaces in which there were buses carrying crowds of teenagers in orange, who were gathering to ramp up their energy before joining the main rally. Flags, hats, and bright orange T-shirts abounded. One popular look was wrapping sections of the t-shirt around the face like a bandit, or cutting eyeholes in it and wearing it like a Mexican wrestler mask. Many of the women had strategically cut and tied the official PNP shirts to be form-fitting, fringed, or strategically windowed in various creative ways. If people didn't have an official shirt or hat, almost all of them still had orange clothing.

We went back to the apartment to pick up my teammate and headed out again with her as well. This time we had to circle around Half Way Tree a few times to find a place that we could park that was reasonably close. Everywhere were people in orange, or yellow, or occasionally red t-shirts with PNP slogans and the face of Portia Simpson-Miller (the prime minister) or their regional leader. The main slogan (indicating PNP is the party in power now) is "NOT changing course!!" said with great emphasis. Or shouted. People also shouted out Portia's name occasionally. My companion took some photographs, something I am always a bit shy about doing. Being an outsider anyway, sometimes a camera makes people angry, and it often makes it harder to actually talk to people – I think it kind of signals you are not actually interested in talking to people on their level but see yourself as outside the situation. We were, of course, in one way, but then again we weren't. One woman did get angry, and asked us if we were going to support the PNP in return for taking her picture. I learned quickly that since we were both obviously foreigners, anything one of us did was ascribed to the other one as well. So the fact that I wasn't taking pictures didn't matter at all, I was held to account for her (and her likewise for me). Good to know.

I decided that telling people we were just here to listen and learn was a good way to go. Revealing ourselves as learning from the people and the situation instead of setting ourselves above. It did seem to defuse some of folks' questions.

Later another guy with a small videocamera tried to ask us questions and film us, and it took some polite refusals, repeated a bit, to get him to go away. Not knowing what it's for or where he was going to show it.. Didn't want to be videotaped myself. Photographs would have been okay, but for the most part people were only interested in us enough to say "whitey whitey" and "miss chin." Walking through the crowd was tiring because especially men were all saying this or variations on it, or hissing or trying to get our attention in some way that didn't seem to suggest they actually were interested in talking. Some were interested in talking, it seemed, but still, the main way of signaling it was to say "come here" in a commanding tone, or gesturing us to come to them in a way I always find off-putting – I wouldn't speak or gesture like that to anyone but a pet animal.

I noticed that for the most part groups of people were either men or women – rarely a mixed group. Lots of single older women and men. A smattering of rastas, mostly older men. Groups of teenagers from various districts representing. We made our way through the crowd and ducked underneath the stage where the sound engineers were set up, directly facing the main stage across a wide swathe of ground (filled with hundreds of people). When a bit of rain threw down, everyone jumped the barriers and crammed under the stage with us, and then would come hot sun and wind, which made me slide through to the edge of the stage to try to get some air as people spread out.

The event began, was underscored and punctuated by music. There is the PNP theme song, but also a band playing selections of big hits, and a dj as well. Each speaker had their own theme song that seemed to be a regular reggae tune hit, which would get the crowd excited, they would start jumping and singing along –and the dj would cut out the music just as the chorus came so people were singing out. Similar technique to the nightclub dj from the night before. The whole atmosphere was part gospel revival, part dancehall show, and part political rally.

The speakers referred to everyone as "comrades" (always disconcerting to Americans I think), and also called an a great deal of Christian language and imagery. The event was kicked off with a Christian prayer. The speeches focused on call-and-response, relying on short, repeated phrases, and giving the audience a way to be involved. I will have many of those phrases burned into my memory for a while, as they increased in repetition and enthusiasm as the day went on. Many of the speeches called on the history of the PNP as a party that made great strides for women, it was PNP leaders that presided over the equal pay act as well as, earlier, votes for women, etc. The PNP being the current ruling party with a female prime minister, the emphasis was on women all through the introductions: "It WOMAN TIME NOW."

After a few hours, we got hungry and tried to find the ital restaurant again for dinner, trying to go around the main body of the crowd and take a side street. We were perfecting our technique of moving assertively (so people would actually step out of our way or make space), not making eye contact (so the people, mostly the men, would not bother us too much), and watching where we were going. Unfortunately the Ital restaurant had closed, so we settled for patties from a local chain – Mother's. this concession was mitigated by the fact that they also serve ice cream. Nice1. After a fortifying break – oh I can't forget the coco bread which was actually really yummy as well – we walked back around and through the crowd and staggered home.

big tings a gwan on weekend! part 1

2007-07-09T09:52:00.000-07:00

This weekend was a lively one. Clubbing in downtown Kingston on Saturday night, and attended the PNP rally outside at Half Way Tree on Sunday afternoon. We have a few connections here so we didn't go alone to the club (The Quad - the biggest club in Kingston apparently). We also had a guide to the rally, initially, but then he went off and we were on our own for the end of it. My partner in adventuring right now is my fellow intern at the SET Foundation. We will get to know each other pretty well, I think.

I'll start with a recap of the club night, which was a blast:
When we first came in, around 1am, the main floor was pretty bad – everyone standing around stoneface, and the dj playing sort of non-diva house, unmelodic and slightly breaky, but really uninterestingly mixed. Nobody was having it. It reminded me that Jamaican audiences are pretty intimidating, from a DJ perspective. Never seen people so specific about what they want, or so clear about how much they were not into it. No bottles were flying, but there could be no doubt about people being unimpressed. We went upstairs to the "voodoo lounge" where they were playing 80s funk, better mixed, but not my scene.

When we headed back down to the big dancefloor, a good dj came on, and it was pretty fascinating to hear him work. The crowd got pretty crazy and was fun to watch, but I was most interested in what the DJ was doing.

Selection-wise, he was playing local hits, hip-hop hits, interspersed with Jamaican lyrics over big hits. When the big hits relied on a sample, he would often cut in the original for musical emphasis. One example: the Jamaican version of Mims' "this is why I'm hot" featuring Junior Reid and, I think, Bounty Killa, also samples the intro to Dawn Penn's "No no no," which then the dj cut to the actual Dawn Penn version. Another popular thing was dropping in totally obscene Jamaican sex chat on top of hit tunes, sometimes letting the vocals play out after the instrumental had ended. What I could follow made even me blush a bit. Also because a lot of it describes what happens to the female anatomy when it is receiving aggressive attention, and it was obvious the singer was not imagining what that would feel like if you identified with the female. "poom poom split in two" is not really an attractive image to me. Ouch. In other places I heard some songs or segments of his sets as a dizzying selection of samples and references that caught you up in a web of references, where the familiar pulled you into the unfamiliar, or was in conversation with other tunes with similar lyrics, sonic qualities or references. The sonic and lyrical interrelationships were a major highlight of the dj skill, and also really engaging as a listener.

The most impressive skill showcased was the dj's sense of pacing. There was a clear rhythm and cycle – he would start slower, then build the crowd up, speeding up the music in intensity, peaking with a hit song where everyone knew the lyrics, getting everyone to sing along at top volume, cutting out the sound so you heard everyone singing, and then he would cut out the tune and drop back to something slower or less familiar and start building it up again. The songs that really got people going (not usually the peak song, but the tunes building up to the peak) were usually extremely homophobic lyrics, unfortunately that's what got people jumping, lyrics about burning, shooting and killing batty boy, and songs distancing the singer from 'dirty' acts like gay sex, but also about "nah f*ck batty," or "nah s*ck batty" or "p*ssy." The peak song was usually a tune I recognized as a big dancehall tune, but occasionally a US hip-hop tune or a remix would get in there. The level of vocal interaction between the crowd and the dj increased as the excitement increased. Really good to be involved in the experience, although part of me kept splitting away when the lyrics were too horrific. I find my body shuts down too, I don't feel like dancing when i hear certain things. Still incredible to see the energy from the crowd.

Content-wise, the DJ played no Sean Paul at all, I noticed. I guess he has no big tunes right now. Also, my impression is he is not considered big here as he is in the US. I did hear a decent selection of big hip-hop tunes: some JayZ track, and Rick Ross (2 versions of every day I'm hustling"), and "It's Going Down" and the awful T-Pain song about the bartender.

I heard almost no female lyrics/chat (although there were crooning female backup vocals in some of the songs early in the cycle). At near-peak times he would occasionally play a really sexual female chat. Around mid-cycle or right after the most homophobic lyrics he would drop some tunes that were really political. I wished I knew what they were, but they were really dancehall-sounding (not roots) and were about politicians, and pretty specific political criticisms. A couple of them were really impressive, both as good dancing music and good lyrics. More of this please!

The dancing definitely got crazier as the night went on. By the time we left, the benches against the wall were lined with couples – the women on the benches and the men slamming against them in various creative or straightforward ways. People were on the floor, dancing or just simulating sexing, with great enthusiasm. The woman-bent to 90degrees, table-back, doggy-style dance also very popular. Now, I like dancing.. I like dancing alone, but I'm not averse to dancing with a partner, even getting a bit freaky, but still, there's something to me about dancing that is separated from performing the sex act fully clothed. I can't see the separation here any more. I'm also curious as to whether people who do this on the floor of he club leave together to do it somewhere else without clothing, or whether the public interaction is the extent of it. In that case, it's the safest one-night-stand I can think of (if perhaps lacking in some of the physical pleasures).

the landing

2007-07-06T15:21:00.001-07:00

After a few shouted phone calls, I coordinated the drop-off by American Airlines peeps, of my suitcase at the office. This didn't stop the woman who works the door from scaring the bejesus outta me by pretending it didn't come. whew! such a sweet face, and so sarcastic and so young.

this morning we headed from the office to the prison with the most established computer lab and studio, and the one where the radio is currently being broadcast from.

The first striking thing about Tower Hill was how relaxed people seemed. I tried to have as few expectations as possible, but one thing (maybe left over from prison movies and TV shows, which are, of course, dramas) was that people are constantly tense, upset, or aggressive, or that tension is on the surface, or constantly threatening to break out. Watching people wandering around (the prison being open-plan in the morning hours), hanging their arms up on the fences to watch us, having conversations with each other or calling out to my teammate (the other intern here), it reminded me that boredom is probably as much of a problem as anything here.

Inmates were wearing street clothes, basically - t-shirts (or occasionally vests) and shorts. This was disconcerting in that I could forget I was in a prison for a minute - especially as all of Jamaica was physically pretty alien, so the prison environment didn't seem that much more alien. For a moment it was simply a place, large dirt enclosure with fences around it and building around that, with a lot of men, mostly in their 20s and 30s, hanging around. Then I would see a guard, or some barbed wire, or some other sign that changed the image my mind was trying to build.

The guards wore uniforms and badges. At the front door one had an automatic rifle (as do, I think) those up in the towers. But the rest of them were unarmed, and mostly fairly large men in their 40s. In demeanor most were serious, of course, but most of them seemed to see their job as a job - and didn't project a visible concern or identification with their role as jailors. Some also appeared to have some almost cameraderie, or at least understanding, with inmates as opposed to outsiders like us. Not that it was liking, necessarily, but it highlighted the closed society that many people say a prison is. At times guards were more careful to distinguish themselves from the inmates (and us) in demeanor or in asserting authority (the ability to move people around or move themselves around, especially.) I found it difficult to know how much to smile, or how relaxed to appear. I wanted the guards to think I was serious, and the inmates to know I took their position seriously. Talking with people one-on-one (although I had little chance to do it this time) was easier than deciding on what to project to a group.

In the SET space, the main room is a meeting room/computer lab, secured from the outside space by a simple lock. People were constantly knocking during our meeting, and coming in and out. Partly perhaps to see the new female faces (any female faces seemed to be a source of mostly quiet excitement).

As we sat in the main room, I could see the sound studio through a window - there's a stage and some men with a saxophone and a drum set and bass noodling about. The radio station, through a door by the entrance is a small room with 2 cd players and a laptop digital dj program, and two microphones. the computer lab has a slew of PCs and 3 macs as well. Only two of them were set up. The rooms are all airconditioned, a mercy in the sticky heat. As we came in, the large table in the middle was strewn with newspapers, and a crew of men were sitting around them with notebooks,writing away and leafing through the paper.

My teammate told me they are the news team, every day they read through the newspapers, note down the good stuff, and read it through on the radio in the afternoon. fantastic. Sports, weather, news relevant to folks listening. They were very serious and all covered quite a few pages.

I only was formally introduced to two of the inmates, but the atmosphere in there was generally quite good. People seemed focused and serious, and also positive: there were just moments when I would realize again the unusual situation we were all in, and that I was perhaps making it easier for myself to relax by assuming too much about the people around me. Not that people were secretly worse than they appeared, but more that their experiences and knowledge are in such different realms than mine - even though we can all meet in the same room (and laugh about the different pronounciations of -ough in english), their experience with literacy, their relationship to education systems especially are as far from mine as possible. I didn't even begin to think about whatever the experiences were that brought them to the prison in the first place.

It's kind of an amazing gift that we were able to be relatively easy with each other because we are to some extent having common goals. I'm trying to keep clear that having common goals is completely different from having common background or common understanding.

landed

2007-07-06T08:19:00.000-07:00

Arrived last night, without my suitcase. Rains in Miami delayed my flight from Boston, so I just made the connection to my Kingston-bound plane. Unfortunately, my suitcase did not. I have my computer with me, and a contact lens case. But that's about it.

Here at Destiny Productions, the office of the man who also runs Students Expressing Truth. SET is the group that is running the project in the Jamaican prison system, setting up computer labs, low power radio stations, and record studios so that inmates can communicate, create and transform. There is already a radio up at Tower Street, and soon one will go up at Fort Augusta (the women's prison), or possibly South Camp.

Destiny productions is an all-round event production company. It's (mercifully) air conditioned, clean, and has wireless internet, so I plan to spend significant time here.

we are off to the prison now, more later.