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Forward march…Barry Chevannes
LOUIS EA MOYSTON
Saturday, November 13, 2010
MODERN Jamaica has produced a collection of worldclass scholars who have laid the foundation for a new intellectual tradition in this post-colonial experience. Some names from this distinctive tradition are, George Beckford, Carl Stone and Rex Nettleford to name a few who have passed on. These men had profound influence in the development of a new thinking in Jamaica. George Beckford gave new understanding and meaning to the plantation experience. His famous piece on the bauxite deal of the 1940s and its impact on Jamaica's future is a hidden gem. Professor Carl Stone, with his revolution in political debate and public polls, was indeed one of, if not the finest pollsters in the world. Professor Nettleford in public scholarship, “blackness” and helping the Rastafari movement in the search for legitimacy and in black aesthetics, was indeed, another foundation; and so too is Alston Barrington Chevannes.
The 1970s can be described as the “Jamaican Renaissance”. The word renaissance means “a rebirth or revival of culture”; like the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. It was a period of openness and an environment that nurtured a new way of thinking. There were many groups and individuals who were advocates of this new world. I recall the size of the “Anti-Imperialist solidarity movement” and the variety of organisations, especially youth and student organisations that were most active in public life. It was a time when the country's foreign policy was advancing activism for black liberation and anti-imperialism. It was during this period that I met Barry Chevannes. He was like the Pied Piper for the Workers’ Party of Jamaica. Barry was a guitar-playing radical. He won the hearts and minds of many when his song, Forward march… played and echoed throughout Jamaica on July 7, 1977, as we marched from Stony Gut to Morant Bay. This was a famous non-radio-playing song, Bogle march from Stony Gut…..forward march….forward march, forward march against imperialism… As I write, I can't help listening to the echoes of the song at that time and place. My next encounter with Barry was in New York somewhere in the late 1980s at the Research Institute for the Study of Man, where he did research on his PhD work on the Rastafari movement.
CHEVANNES... doing what he liked to do best – sharing his knowledge of Jamaican history and culture. He was onstage with members of the LTM Pantomime Company in their 2008 production Emancipation Grounding at the Little Theatre. (Photo: LTM)
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I think it is correct to say that Barry has left a legacy of studies in lower-class Jamaican religions. In trying to make sense of religion and power, the established religion and the elites, the Marxist idea that religion is the “opiate of the people”, Barry looked at the transformative qualities of the religion of the oppressed – a range of study that covered the Myal and Revival traditions, the Native Baptist (Bedward) tradition and the emerging Rastafari movement. Like Beckford's new thinking of the plantation experience and Stone and Nettleford trailblazing scholarship, Barry sought to make new meaning of lower class religious ideas and movements whose leaders were persecuted, movements driven underground and scorned by the status quo. His scholarship on the Rastafari movement has inspired new approaches to the study of this area. He earned his PhD dissertation, “Social origins of the Rastafari movement”, at Columbia University in 1989.
In one of his major works Chevannes provides new knowledge on the “roots” Rastafari and the organisation and activities of this early movement. He notes also the role of Howell and his street meetings in St Thomas. He places emphasis on Howell's anti-colonial and antiimperialist links with George Padmore of the African Service Bureau in London. He provides new light on Pinnacle, the early Rastafari commune with emphasis on the celebrations, and linked the musical activities of Pinnacle to the emergence of the modern music form of Jamaica. This work is very important to the study of the Rastafari movement and the development of the emerging new Jamaican intellectual experience.
Barry as he was affectionately called tried to look at the Jamaican experience within philosophical proportions. In another important work Rastafari: Roots and Ideology, Chevannes (1994) argues that the world view of the Jamaican peasantry resonates in the Rastafari movement. He writes, “I call this world view revivalism”. His story unfolds a creative flow of resistance from the Maroons to Tacky through the Myal and the Revival era, and from Bedward to Paul Bogle. The argument is that the Rastafarian idea of “chanting down Babylon” is rooted in the world view of the earlier resistance. He was one of those who embarked on a journey to “uproot” the buried truth. His scholarship went beyond the boundary of the university's wall. He was the scholar-activist type of person who was able to link research and scholarship to our everyday experience.. His contribution to the emerging Jamaican scholarship is evidenced in his many publications, books, journal and magazines articles. His contribution to music is noted. I am still hearing the song, Bogle march from Stony Gut…..forward march…. Alston Barrington Chevannes has laid his stone in the foundation of a new thinking of the Jamaican experience.
thearchives01@yahoo.com
LOUIS EA MOYSTON
Saturday, November 13, 2010
MODERN Jamaica has produced a collection of worldclass scholars who have laid the foundation for a new intellectual tradition in this post-colonial experience. Some names from this distinctive tradition are, George Beckford, Carl Stone and Rex Nettleford to name a few who have passed on. These men had profound influence in the development of a new thinking in Jamaica. George Beckford gave new understanding and meaning to the plantation experience. His famous piece on the bauxite deal of the 1940s and its impact on Jamaica's future is a hidden gem. Professor Carl Stone, with his revolution in political debate and public polls, was indeed one of, if not the finest pollsters in the world. Professor Nettleford in public scholarship, “blackness” and helping the Rastafari movement in the search for legitimacy and in black aesthetics, was indeed, another foundation; and so too is Alston Barrington Chevannes.
The 1970s can be described as the “Jamaican Renaissance”. The word renaissance means “a rebirth or revival of culture”; like the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. It was a period of openness and an environment that nurtured a new way of thinking. There were many groups and individuals who were advocates of this new world. I recall the size of the “Anti-Imperialist solidarity movement” and the variety of organisations, especially youth and student organisations that were most active in public life. It was a time when the country's foreign policy was advancing activism for black liberation and anti-imperialism. It was during this period that I met Barry Chevannes. He was like the Pied Piper for the Workers’ Party of Jamaica. Barry was a guitar-playing radical. He won the hearts and minds of many when his song, Forward march… played and echoed throughout Jamaica on July 7, 1977, as we marched from Stony Gut to Morant Bay. This was a famous non-radio-playing song, Bogle march from Stony Gut…..forward march….forward march, forward march against imperialism… As I write, I can't help listening to the echoes of the song at that time and place. My next encounter with Barry was in New York somewhere in the late 1980s at the Research Institute for the Study of Man, where he did research on his PhD work on the Rastafari movement.
CHEVANNES... doing what he liked to do best – sharing his knowledge of Jamaican history and culture. He was onstage with members of the LTM Pantomime Company in their 2008 production Emancipation Grounding at the Little Theatre. (Photo: LTM)
1/1
I think it is correct to say that Barry has left a legacy of studies in lower-class Jamaican religions. In trying to make sense of religion and power, the established religion and the elites, the Marxist idea that religion is the “opiate of the people”, Barry looked at the transformative qualities of the religion of the oppressed – a range of study that covered the Myal and Revival traditions, the Native Baptist (Bedward) tradition and the emerging Rastafari movement. Like Beckford's new thinking of the plantation experience and Stone and Nettleford trailblazing scholarship, Barry sought to make new meaning of lower class religious ideas and movements whose leaders were persecuted, movements driven underground and scorned by the status quo. His scholarship on the Rastafari movement has inspired new approaches to the study of this area. He earned his PhD dissertation, “Social origins of the Rastafari movement”, at Columbia University in 1989.
In one of his major works Chevannes provides new knowledge on the “roots” Rastafari and the organisation and activities of this early movement. He notes also the role of Howell and his street meetings in St Thomas. He places emphasis on Howell's anti-colonial and antiimperialist links with George Padmore of the African Service Bureau in London. He provides new light on Pinnacle, the early Rastafari commune with emphasis on the celebrations, and linked the musical activities of Pinnacle to the emergence of the modern music form of Jamaica. This work is very important to the study of the Rastafari movement and the development of the emerging new Jamaican intellectual experience.
Barry as he was affectionately called tried to look at the Jamaican experience within philosophical proportions. In another important work Rastafari: Roots and Ideology, Chevannes (1994) argues that the world view of the Jamaican peasantry resonates in the Rastafari movement. He writes, “I call this world view revivalism”. His story unfolds a creative flow of resistance from the Maroons to Tacky through the Myal and the Revival era, and from Bedward to Paul Bogle. The argument is that the Rastafarian idea of “chanting down Babylon” is rooted in the world view of the earlier resistance. He was one of those who embarked on a journey to “uproot” the buried truth. His scholarship went beyond the boundary of the university's wall. He was the scholar-activist type of person who was able to link research and scholarship to our everyday experience.. His contribution to the emerging Jamaican scholarship is evidenced in his many publications, books, journal and magazines articles. His contribution to music is noted. I am still hearing the song, Bogle march from Stony Gut…..forward march…. Alston Barrington Chevannes has laid his stone in the foundation of a new thinking of the Jamaican experience.
thearchives01@yahoo.com