Lee Scratch Perry recently died. He was a hero of mine, so I feel loss. I once slept outdoors in a hammock year round in Idaho for a year and a half. Every night I fell asleep to the Scratch-produced Arkology. I probably haven’t been the same since! My sense of loss, mixed with coming around here, has made me wonder why I feel compelled to post about this at a place like DK. So I thought some thoughts... Culture is political. Art is political. Rastafari is political. Ms. Denise’s black music Sunday posts are political. Saying Thank You is political, yes?
I saw Scratch Perry once, in Seattle. He was with Mad Professor who opened the show. It was thunderous and resonant. Freakin’ LOUD. I know just enough about resonant frequencies to wonder if we all might spontaneously discombobulate. I was afraid the building was going to come tumbling down ala Jericho. Neither worst case happened.
When Scratch came out it was Star Time. It was not hard to believe that, yes, he was indeed, as he proclaimed, an extraterrestrial being walking amongst us. One enduring memory I have is of him having CDs, shiny side up, attached to the tops of his shoes. The enduring memory part is that he and the lighting crew played footsie all night with those mirrored surfaces on his feet. He would find their aimed spotlights and bounce light off his feet at us. It was a beautiful manchild at play thing to behold. We played along, while that poor old building groaned to stay upright and not kill us all.
Now here’s where I get fuzzy. I think that place was called the Phoenix? Phoenix Underground? That nightclub actually did get hit by an earthquake either before I was there or after I was there. I’m too lazy to look it up, and my memory is apparently in whatev mode...make it up, dude, so I’m going with the earthquake shook it after I was there. It fits my Thank You story. Plus I think it really did happen; I just forget when.
So, quickly, back to the “is this political and does it belong at DK” part of the post. Straight outta Wikipedia:
“Rastafari originated among impoverished and socially disenfranchised Afro-Jamaican communities in 1930s Jamaica. Its Afrocentric ideology was largely a reaction against Jamaica's then-dominant British colonial culture. It was influenced by both Ethiopianism and the Back-to-Africa movement promoted by black nationalistfigures such as Marcus Garvey. The religion developed after several Protestant Christian clergymen, most notably Leonard Howell, proclaimed that Haile Selassie's crowning as Emperor of Ethiopia in 1930 fulfilled a Biblical prophecy. By the 1950s, Rastafari's countercultural stance had brought the movement into conflict with wider Jamaican society, including violent clashes with law enforcement. In the 1960s and 1970s, it gained increased respectability within Jamaica and greater visibility abroad through the popularity of Rasta-inspired reggae musicians, most notably Bob Marley.”
Scratch persisted well into the new millennium. He was in the thick of it all. Can’t get much more political than that. With music. What’s that old quote about a revolution needing a good soundtrack, asked the lazy poster.
Thank you, Mr. Perry