Great Jamaicans in history

[mikesiva]

John Hearne....

'Hearne's first published work was the novel Voices under the Window, issued in 1955. Set in Jamaica in the late 1940s or early 1950s, it uses the framing device of a progressive politician's injury and death in a riot to narrate the story of a man who, born into racial and economic privilege, decided to cast his lot with the underprivileged. Hearne followed this with four novels written between 1956 and 1961 -- The Faces of Love, Stranger at the Gate, The Autumn Equinox and Land of the Living—set in the imaginary island of Cayuna which is a fictionalized Jamaica (the map of Cayuna included with the novels bears a remarkable resemblance to Jamaica), and which referred to issues relating to Jamaican life at the time, such as the beginning of the bauxite industry and the Rastafari movement, or to events in nearby territories such as the Cuban Revolution. He also wrote a number of short stories, one of which, "At the Stelling", set in Guyana, was included in the Independence Anthology of Jamaican Literature. Hearne then turned to the academy and journalism—writing a regular column for the Gleaner newspaper, first under the pseudonym "Jay Monroe", and later under his own name, and administering the Creative Arts Centre (now the Sir Philip Sherlock Centre for the Creative Arts) at the University of the West Indies. In the late 1960s and early 1970s he collaborated with planter and journalist Morris Cargill on a series of three thrillers -- Fever Grass, The Candywine Development, and The Checkerboard Caper—involving an imaginary Jamaican secret service. These were written under the pseudonym "John Morris".'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Edgar_Colwell_Hearne" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[mikesiva]

Another outstanding artist, Carl Abrahams....

'Abrahams was born in Kingston, Jamaica and began his career in commercial art at the age of 17 as a cartoonist and an illustrator for The Daily Gleaner and the Jamaica Times. In 1937, while on a working holiday in Jamaica, Augustus John, the iconic British artist, encouraged Abrahams to begin painting professionally. Abrahams taught himself to paint through self-study courses and manuals and by copying masterpieces from art books. In 1944, during World War II Abrahams served in the Royal Air Force in England. By the mid-1950s he had found his calling as a painter of religious subjects. The National Gallery of Jamaica said of his monumental series of 20 paintings of The Passion of Christ that "the devout sentiment of a true believer marked Abrahams as Jamaica and the Caribbean's finest religious painter." He was awarded the Musgrave Gold Medal for his work by the Institute of Jamaica in 1987. His final decades saw few new developments in his style and he often repeated or created variations on many of his earlier paintings. Abrahams died peacefully at his home in 2005 of cancer and a brain tumor.'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Abrahams" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[mikesiva]

Desmond Dekker....

"Desmond Dekker (16 July 1941 – 25 May 2006) was a Jamaican ska, rocksteady and reggae singer-songwriter and musician. Together with his backing group the Aces (consisting of Wilson James and Easton Barrington Howard), he had one of the earliest international reggae hits with "Israelites" (1968). Other hits include "007 (Shanty Town)" (1967), "It Mek" (1969) and "You Can Get It If You Really Want" (1970)."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desmond_Dekker" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[mikesiva]

Tomorrow is Remembrance Day, so I thought we could remember a Jamaican who was awarded the Victoria Cross for valour with the West India Regiment....

"William James Gordon VC (19 May 1864 – 15 August 1922) was a West Indian recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces. He was 27 years old, and a Lance-Corporal in the West India Regiment, British Army during the Second Gambia Campaign when, on 13 March 1892 at Toniataba, Gambia, the major who was in command of the troops was superintending a party of 12 men who were trying, with a heavy beam, to break down the south gate of the town. Suddenly a number of musket-muzzles appeared through a double row of loopholes, some of them being only two or three yards from the major's back and before he realised what had happened, Gordon threw himself between the major and the muskets, pushing the officer out of the way. At the same moment the NCO was shot through the lungs. He later achieved the rank of sergeant. The medal is on display at the Jamaica Defence Force Museum."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James_Gordon" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.kaiserscross.com/188001/246843.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[mikesiva]

Gregory Isaacs....

'International stardom seemed assured in 1978 when Isaacs signed to the Virgin Records offshoot Front Line Records, and appeared in the film Rockers, in which he performed "Slavemaster". The Cool Ruler (which became one of his nicknames) and Soon Forward albums, however, failed to sell as well as expected, although they are now considered among his best work. In 1981, he made his first appearance at the Reggae Sunsplash festival (returning annually until 1991), and he moved on to the Charisma Records offshoot Pre, who released his The Lonely Lover (another nickname that stuck) and More Gregory albums along with a string of increasingly successful singles including "Tune In", "Permanent Lover", "Wailing Rudy" and "Tribute to Waddy". He signed to Island Records and released the record that finally saw him break through to a wider audience, "Night Nurse", the title track from his first album for the label (Night Nurse (1982)). Although "Night Nurse" was not a chart hit in either the UK or US, it was hugely popular in clubs and received heavy radio play, and the album reached number 32 in the UK. This success for Isaacs coincided with drug problems with cocaine that saw him serve a six-month prison sentence in Kingston in 1982 for possession of unlicensed firearms. Isaacs claimed that he had the weapons only for protection, but it emerged that this was his 27th arrest and that he had become involved in drug dealing and was addicted to crack cocaine. He celebrated his release from prison with his second album for Island, Out Deh! (1983). He was featured in the 1982 documentary Land of Look Behind. When his contract with Island ended, Isaacs returned in 1984 with the "Kool Ruler Come Again" single, and began a period of prolific recording, working with producers including Prince Jammy, Hugh "Redman" James, Bobby Digital, Tad Dawkins and Steely & Clevie, maintaining a consistent standard despite the volume of work produced. Isaacs then built a strong relationship with Gussie Clarke of the Music Works label. They began with Isaacs' 1985 album Private Beach Party, and had a massive hit with "Rumours" in 1988, which was followed by further popular singles including "Mind Yu Dis", "Rough Neck", "Too Good To Be True" and "Report to Me". The association with Clarke continued into the early 1990s, teaming up with singers including Freddie McGregor, Ninjaman and J.C. Lodge. He dueted with Beres Hammond on the 1993 Philip "Fatis" Burrell-produced "One Good Turn", Burrell also producing Isaacs' 1994 album Midnight Confidential. In the 1990s the African Museum label continued to release all of Isaacs' music, and that of artists he produced. In 1997 Simply Red covered "Night Nurse" and had a hit with it. Isaacs continued to record and perform live in the 2000s. In 2005 Lady Saw produced another version of "Night Nurse" with her toasting over the original lyrics. Isaacs' drug addiction had a major impact on his voice, with most of his teeth falling out as a result. Isaacs said of his addiction in 2007: "Drugs are a debasing weapon. It was the greatest college ever, but the most expensive school fee ever paid – the Cocaine High School. I learnt everything, and now I've put it on the side." He also performed at the ICC Cricket World Cup 2007 Inauguration at Jamaica. In 2007 he collaborated with the Spanish rap group Flowklorikos / Rafael Lechowski album Donde Duele Inspira. In 2008, after some 40 years as a recording artist, Isaacs released a new studio album Brand New Me, which was nominated for the Grammy Awards for 2010. The album received positive reviews from critics, such as this review from Reggae Vibes: "Gregory is back, and how! 'Brand New Me' is a very suitable album title for the cool ruler's new album. He is back in a different style, more or less like we were used to from this great 'lovers & roots' artist" This was followed in 2009 by the album My Kind Of Lady. In 2010, Gregory Isaacs put out the last of his albums to be released while he was still living; Isaacs Meets Isaac, with Zimbabwean reggae singer King Isaac. In November 2010, Isaacs Meets Isaac was nominated for Best Reggae Album for the 2011 Grammy Awards, giving Gregory Isaacs his fourth Grammy nomination, and Zimbabwe's King Isaac his first.'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_Isaacs" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[mikesiva]

John Figueroa....

'Figueroa was born in Jamaica, where he was educated at St George's College. He won a scholarship to attend Holy Cross College, Massachusetts, graduating in 1942, after which he taught at St George's College and at Wolmer Boys' College in Jamaica. In 1946 he went on a British Council fellowship to London University to study for a teaching diploma and a master's degree in education. He subsequently taught in some London schools, and spent six years as an English and philosophy lecturer at the Institute of Education. He also contributed criticism, stories and poetry to the BBC's Caribbean Voices radio programme produced by Henry Swanzy. In Jamaica Figueroa became the first West Indian to be appointed to a chair at the University College of the West Indies, and the first Dean of the Faculty of Education. Between 1964 and 1966 he was a visiting professor first at Rhode Island University and then Indiana University. In the early 1970s he became Professor of Humanities leading the Department of Education of the Centro Caribeno de Estudios Postgraduados, Puerto Rico. He later spend time as a professor at the University of Jos in Nigeria. In the 1980s he moved to the UK, where he worked for the Open University, was a Fellow at the Centre for Caribbean Studies, University of Warwick, and an adviser in multicultural education in Manchester. He edited the pioneering two-volume anthology Caribbean Voices (vol 1: Dreams and Visions and vol 2: The Blue Horizons, 1966 and 1970 respectively), comprehensive landmark collections of West Indian poetry. He was also the first general editor of the Heinemann Caribbean Writers Series. He also played an important role in the development of Caribbean studies as a founder member of the Caribbean Studies Association and the Society for Caribbean Studies. His own poetry "reflects his origins as a Jamaican of [Hispanic] descent and a Catholic who, whilst deeply committed to the Caribbean, was concerned to maintain [the diversity of its] heritage without apology. He insisted that drums were not the only Caribbean musical instrument (no doubt a dig at Kamau Brathwaite) and championed Derek Walcott's relationship to the classical and European literary tradition. Ironically, one of Figueroa's most effective poems is in Nation language." In the words of Andrew Salkey, "The phrase 'cosmopolitan poet' does not really adequately describe him or the impact that he has had on Anglophone Caribbean poetry, but it certainly goes some way in defining a part of his concern in not being tagged as regional or provincial. This is so because he is absolutely free from national limitations."'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Figueroa" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[mikesiva]

'Trevor Rhone, was the last child of twenty-one, grew up in a tiny town of Bellas Gate in Jamaica. After seeing his first play at the age of nine he fell in love with theatre. Educated at Beckford & Smith High School now known as the St. Jago High School, , He began his theatre career as a teacher after a three-year stint at Rose Bruford College, an English drama school, where he studied in the early 1960s on scholarship. He was part of the renaissance of Jamaican theatre in the early 1970s. Rhone participated in a group called Theatre '77, which established The Barn, a small theatre in Kingston, Jamaica, to stage local performances. The vision of the group that came together in 1965 was that in 12 years, by 1977, there would be professional theatre in Jamaica. His prolific work includes the films The Harder They Come (1972), co-author; Smile Orange (1974), based on his play of the same name; Top Rankin′; Milk and Honey (1988), winner; One Love (2003), Cannes Film Festival favorite. He was awarded the Musgrave Gold Medal in 1988 for his work by the Institute of Jamaica.'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trevor_Rhone" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[mikesiva]

'Victor Stafford Reid (1 May 1913 - 25 August 1987) was a Jamaican writer born in Kingston, Jamaica, who wrote with an intent of influencing the younger generations. He was awarded the silver (1950) and gold (1976) Musgrave Medals , the Order of Jamaica (1980) and the Norman Manley Award for Excellence in Literature in 1981. He was the author of several novels, three of which were aimed towards children, one play production, and several short stories. Two of his most notable works are New Day - "the first West Indian novel to be written throughout in a dialect form" - and The Leopard. As a writer, Reid aimed to instil an awareness of legacy and tradition among the Jamaican people. His writings reflected many of the social and cultural hardships that pervade the time periods illustrated in his literary works. As literary critic Edward Baugh has stated, "[Reid’s] writing shows a fondness for the rebel with a cause… he wanted people to learn about their heritage through his writing." Reid was one of a handful of writers to emerge from the new literary and nationalist movement that seized Jamaican sentiment in the period of the late 1930s. From this "new art" surfaced many of Reid’s literary contemporaries, including Roger Mais, George Campbell, M. G. Smith, and H. D. Carberry. A common objective among this new generation of writers was an inclination to "break away from Victorianism and to associate with the Jamaican independence movement." Reid’s emphasis on resistance and struggle is reaffirmed in a 1978 lecture he delivered at the Institute of Jamaica on the topic of cultural revolution in Jamaica post-1938. In the address, Reid contended that the collective discontent of the working class majority was the public assertion of a "new brand of loyalty" that situated itself not only beyond, but more importantly, in direct resistance to imperial rule.'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Stafford_Reid" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[mikesiva]

Perry Henzell....

'Henzell, whose ancestors included Huguenot glassblowers and an old English family who had made their fortune growing sugar on Antigua, grew up on the Caymanas sugar cane estate near Kingston. He was sent to Shrewsbury School in the United Kingdom at 14 and later attended McGill University in Montreal in 1953 and 1954. He then dropped out of this school, choosing instead to hitchhike around Europe. He eventually got work as a stagehand at the BBC. He returned in the 1950s to Jamaica, where he directed advertisements for some years until he began work on The Harder They Come with co-writer Trevor D. Rhone.
In 1965 he married Sally Densham. Henzell also shot some footage for what was planned as his next film, No Place Like Home, in Harder's aftermath, but he went broke before he could finish the film. Fed up by this, and the lack of finance for further production, he went on to become a writer, publishing his first novel, Power Game, in 1982. Both were meant to complete a planned trilogy of films centring on Ivanhoe Martin. The footage for No Place Like Home was lost. Years later, he came across editing tapes in a lab in New York. Just to have a sense of completion, he worked on the project. When he showed it to a few friends, their response was enthusiastic. He eventually was able to retrieve the original footage. No Place Like Home was screened for the public at the 31st annual Toronto International Film Festival in September 2006 at the Cumberland Theatre; it was sold out. Film leads Carl Bradshaw (The Harder They Come, Smile Orange, Countryman) and Susan O'Meara attended and answered audience questions with Henzell after the screening. The film was scheduled to be screened at the Flashpoint Film Festival at the beginning of December 2006 in Negril. Henzell died of cancer on 30 November 2006, aged 70, and is survived by his widow Sally and three children: Justine, Toni-Ann and Jason.'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_Henzell" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[mikesiva]

Byron Lee....

'Lee was born in Christiana, Manchester Parish, Jamaica, to an Afro-Jamaican mother and a Chinese father (a language teacher) originally from Kowloon, Hong Kong. His mother was from Auchtembeddie, where mento and junkanoo were popular musical forms, and his family actively upheld the cultural and musical traditions of their African ancestors. The family moved to the Mountain View Gardens area of Kingston when Lee was around 8 or 9 years old. He learned to play piano at a convent school in Mandeville, but put music on hold when he became a member of the Jamaican national football team. He taught himself to play bass on a homemade instrument, and around 1950, along with his friend Carl Brady, he formed the first incarnation of the Dragonaires, named after the college football team that they played for, at that time concentrating on mento. The band turned professional in 1956 and went on to become one of Jamaica's leading ska bands, continuing since and taking in other genres such as calypso, Soca, and Mas. According to Michael E. Veal in his book Dub: soundscapes and shattered songs in Jamaican reggae, Wesleyan University Press, 2007), Byron Lee is known to have introduced the electric bass guitar to Jamaica in late 1959 or 1960. However, the reason Lee began to use the electric bass as opposed to the double bass had nothing to do with sound. Rather, it was a way for Lee to avoid carrying the large and heavy double bass to the truck to move from gig to gig. The bass guitar soon gained popularity throughout the country and soon became the standard. The electric bass's louder, clearer, and more in-your-face sound soon changed the entire sound of Jamaican music entirely, especially after Skatalites bassist Lloyd Brevett took a liking to it. Lee also worked as a producer, producing many of the ska singles by The Maytals, and his entrepreneurial skills led to him setting up the Byron Lee's Spectacular Show tour, which involved several Jamaican acts (including The Maytals) touring the Caribbean. He also became the head of distribution in Jamaica for Atlantic Records. Lee purchased the West Indies Records Limited (WIRL) recording studios from Edward Seaga after fire had destroyed the pressing plant on the same site, and renamed it Dynamic Sounds, soon having a new pressing facility built on the site. It soon became one of the best-equipped studios in the Caribbean, attracting both local and international recording artists, including Paul Simon and The Rolling Stones, who recorded their famous song "Angie" there. Lee's productions included Boris Gardiner's Reggae Happening, Hopeton Lewis's Grooving Out on Life, and The Slickers' "Johnny Too Bad". Dynamic also acts as one of Jamaica's leading record distributors. In 1990, Lee inaugurated what became an annual event, the Byron Lee Jamaica Carnival, held on Constant Spring Road, and attended by hundreds of thousands of people that united the "uptown" and "downtown" residents of Kingston, an event that Lee called "the happiest moment in my life". Lee had performed with the Dragonaires at carnivals around the Caribbean since the mid-1970s, and chose the location for the carnival to attract revellers from all of Jamaica's classes, stating: "The biggest problem was that most Jamaicans said it wouldn't work, that it isn't a carnival country, but I persisted 'cause I believed in it. I wanted carnival to go to the public. You always had other carnivals that were held mostly indoor, where persons had to pay to get in. I went to the people and choose Half-Way Tree where uptown and downtown meet. That is where the route will remain". While in the early days of ska, Lee was credited in taking it from the ghettos and giving it appeal among Jamaica's "uptown" middle- and upper-classes. He has also been credited with taking soca in the opposite direction, popularising a genre that had previously only been enjoyed in Jamaica among the upper classes, with the island's working class.'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byron_Lee" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;