There's tendency among some reggae fans to tune out most of today's dancehall deejays, dismissing them as untalented shysters. While that's an essentially justifiable reaction, there are deejays - mostly of the conscious variety - who are worthy of our attention. One in particular is Prezident Brown. Tune out his new release - To Jah Only - and you'll deprive yourself of a relevant body of work that's likely to sway and have you listening for more of this style. To Jah Only is a neat package that adroitly intertwines the traditional with the contemporary. The title track, which leads the album, gently combines slow guitar picks with Nyabinghi drumming, amid Brown's assiduous delivery of some trusty Rasta melodies. The familiar Duppy Conqueror rhythm by Bob Marley is acquired on In This Life, and it's superimposed with a message that counsels mankind about his covetous ways. This theme is also continued with Pomps and Pride. One of the livelier tracks is Micro Chip, and Brown does a nice job keeping pace with a very demanding tempo. But the strongest is undoubtedly Faith - an instant classic that unveils Brown's versatility and true talent. His encyclopedic expressionism sets him apart from the ordinary, and he's truly one of our best links between the past and the present. [Dean Fraser]'s latest album - Retrospect - is a delightfully appetizing reminiscence of classic hits that are masterfully reproduced for everyone's listening pleasure. With 12 tracks, this album takes you back to mento, through ska, roots, and up to the present.
"We're not a Jamaican station. We're not a Trinidadian station. We're not a Bajan [Barbadian] station. We're not an African-American station," [Carl Nelson] says of his station, which broadcasts from Davie, near Fort Lauderdale. "Our target audience is the entire Caribbean [community], and that includes second-generation Caribbean Americans and people [of other nationalities] who like Caribbean-American music." Nature of service "We don't see the radio as a juke box," he says. "We're here to serve the community and just because you put some music on the radio doesn't mean you're serving the community." "Everybody who's advertised with us has reported good results," he says. "That's because they're getting a mix of people. They [reach] people from all the different islands. They get African Americans. They get whites. For them [the advertisers]it's a plus."
Escaped slaves became Spanish Florida's first settlers. They joined refugees from the Creek Nation and called themselves Seminoles which means runaways. Intermixing became so common that they were soon called Black Seminoles. The black Seminoles struck frequently against slave plantations and runaway slaves swelled their ranks. The U.S. government launched three massive war campaigns against the Seminole nation over a period of 40 years. The second war alone cost the U.S. government over 40 million dollars and 1500 soldiers. The Seminoles eventually signed a peace treaty with President Polk which was violated in 1849 when the U.S. Attorney General ruled that black Seminoles were still slaves under U.S. law.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
197 p, In Miami, Lieutenant Gutierrez investigates gruesome, ceremonial killings by Santeria, an Afro-Caribbean cult. To solve the case he joins forces with a student who is writing a thesis on the subject. By the author of The Cuban-American Experience.
"There was no trial. No formal accusations. They just dumped all of the prisoners like animals into a cage," [Jan Mapou] recalls. "they stripped us and then crammed 14 of us into a small cell. We had no idea if we would ever see our families again. We had no idea if we would even be alive from one second to the next." Tell no one "When I first started working with Jan Mapou and the Sosyete Koukouy, I knew very little about the meanings of the daces I was performing," says Nancy St. Leger, who is now the dance troupe's choreographer. "Mapou opened me up to the significance of each dance. He didn't want the dance troupe to perform anything we didn't understand." "What Mapou is promoting through his work is not just Haitian culture but what Haitian culture represents," says [Yves Colon]. "He keeps alive those ideas of beauty, harmony and black pride which are all a part of what Mapou believes is Haitian culture.
