On cannabis in colonial Africa

#cannabis

Jah Billah says:
This article delineates pre-colonial and colonial use of cannabis in Africa. Starting with prehistoric cultivation 1300 BC in Ancient Egypt, and 2000 years ago in Madagascar. Going over North African and Sub-Saharan cannabis cultures, we learn that cannabis use was associated with coffee and that in Ethiopian language plant was once called esha tenbit “prophecy plant”. But what we choose to highlight here is documented use of tobacco as a colonial weapon against African cannabis cultures:

Cannabis Commerce and Legality

African cannabis markets were earliest documented in 13th-century Egypt, and 17th-century Southern Africa. Europeans widely observed commercial and exchange markets in all continental regions during the 1800s and early 1900s. In the Maghreb, 19th-century markets were highly formalized. By 1870, governments in precolonial Morocco and Ottoman Tunisia both began selling annual monopolies to their cannabis (and tobacco) trades. These monopolies continued under French rule until 1954.

European-controlled trades arose within colonial contexts and mostly supplied hard laborers. Three major trade regions existed, including the Maghreb. In South Africa, European merchants and settlers farmed and traded in cannabis from the late 1600s into the 1900s. Portuguese Mozambique also supplied South African laborers via exports to British Transvaal between 1908 and 1913. Miners were prominent consumers in colonial Southern and Central Africa. Finally, cannabis trades in western Central Africa included local traders stocking locally grown cannabis, as well as formal exports from Portuguese Angola to São Tome and Gabon during the 1870s to 1900s.

Even as these trades developed, colonial regimes increasingly suppressed cannabis. Rarely, colonial laws
rose upon indigenous prohibitions, as in Madagascar, where Merina royalty forbade cannabis by 1870,
decades before the French. Colonialists considered African cannabis an Eastern hindrance to Europe’s
civilizing mission. “The tobacco introduced by the Portuguese has contended successfully against the stupefying or maddening hemp […] from the far Muhammadan north-east,” told a British administrator in Belgian Congo in 1908.




Cannabis-control laws were enacted in Africa generally earlier than elsewhere worldwide, and were stricter too. Initial laws mostly aimed to improve public health, primarily by prohibiting behaviors considered detrimental to “native” health. Many laws clearly served ulterior motives, particularly labor control and religious proselytizing. British Natal’s 1870 law aimed to control Indian laborers, while Portuguese Angola’s 1913 law targeted colonial troops while also pushing farmers toward tobacco production. Cannabis was banned in most colonies by 1920. The plant drug first appeared in an international drug-control convention in 1925, based on the request of South Africa’s white minority government supported by newly independent Egypt, whose conservative authorities had suppressed cannabis since 1868 to control laborers.
Colonial authorities accepted and encouraged some drug crops—particularly tobacco, tea, and coffee—but cannabis was excluded, despite the existence (around 1840–1940) of an international market for Western pharmaceutical preparations of cannabis, supplied primarily from British India.


From:

Cannabis and Tobacco in Precolonial and Colonial Africa
Chris S. Duvall, 2017.
https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.013.44

Sensational VS Abu Ama

#sensational

Sensational

If you don’t know by now step correct and re-frame Sensational of Crooklyn fame: subterranean lyrics over over lo fi dub noise beats, same as it ever was.
Originally grazing with Wordsound label, post apocalyptic illbient stable, alongside Bill Laswell rocking blue light torch of avant-garde hip hop and bass music since 1999, here comes Sensational VS Abu Amu with 2 tracks that don’t disappoint.



Yabass Yaba Radics – Year Zero Dubb

#yaba #yabass
Jah Billah says: don’t sleep on this 2020 classic, no sah!

Art by Stanley Cush

If you don’t know Yabass, Alan ‘Yaba’ Blizzard, by now, time to know. Original UK sound from way back when you all had a smaller head.
I remember the original DUB ark at Versionist.com would rejoice when new Yabass DUB would drop cause they were heavyweight guaranteed.
Raw DUBness ahead!!!
Respectfully recommended for all DUB heads who nah miss out on that old haunting roots DUB Sound.
All instrument played with guests and mixed and recorded by Yaba himself.
Released on Hornin’ Sounds label outta France.
You can jump from easily selected Kunta Kinte version titled “Kinte Fights Pandemic” or start from the top to the very last drop.
Fulljoy sound of Yabass Guardian of the Underground!

On online collaborations

#HajiMike

Snyclavier II

Writing music online is nothing new. In 1994 ResRocket was the first online ‘band’ project with over 1,000 participants who exchanged ideas and files via a mailing list and ftp server.
By 1999 this had developed into one of the first live online music collaborations, screened on BBC TV in front of 55 million viewers. Bob Marley’s ‘Them Belly Full (but we hungry)’ was recorded live involving Sinead O’Connor, and Brinsley Forde in London, Thomas Dolby in San Francisco and Lucky Dube in South Africa.
While this marked a radical change in online music production it would take another few years before such creative collaborations would have more mass appeal from a production standpoint.

An obvious change came in radical developments in music production itself. The advent of more accessible and affordable Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs) which evolved from early pricey microprocessor based non-analogue tapeless systems, such as the Synclavier and Fairlight CMI to software such as DigiDesign’s Pro Tools, Logic Audio and Cubase ( the latter via the earlier pioneering Atari ST). Digitisation in more recent years has resulted in even cheaper or freeware options.
A PreSonus soundcard for example comes with a free version of the company’s own DAW software called Studio One (Presonus, 2010). Reaper from Cockos calls itself ‘Audio Production without limits’ and while it can be purchased the free evaluation copy functions in exactly the same manner (Reaper, 2010).

Simultaneously, The Internet itself has changed dramatically in terms of bandwidth, speed and accessibility. We have moved from archaic (by today’s standards) brick sized modems for the few who knew how to use binary computer code in the mid-1980’s to more compact modems with increased bandwidth and more recently DSL and fibre optic connections. Ten years ago it was possible to send a wav or aiff file online, it may have taken a few hours but now, it is much faster and easier, taking perhaps 10-15 minutes for say a 54 megabyte wav file. This is usually done through file transfer web sites such as ‘Sendspace’ and ‘Yousendit’. Many musicians now work together through their own ftp sites accessible with a username and password through their own web sites.

These advances have made a-synchronous music collaboration much more accessible to more people online in different locations around the world.

Fully synchronised collaboration exists as well, although this is usually subscriber based with a fee and requires substantial outbound bandwidth, often not accessible to as many people.

Examples of this include RiffWorks ( http://www.riffworld.com/) and NinJamm (http://ninjam.com/) although at times there are latency issues with both.

So although it is possible to link up studios in real time by using a service such as ‘source direct’ or an Avid Satellite link the cost of these options would be substantially high.
Synchronised music production online in different studios is still an emerging form of technology at least in terms of mass usage. It is likely, given rapid changes in technology that this may change through existing online communication tools, such as say Skype.

It is tempting at this point to view all these developments simply from a technologically deterministic standpoint, a view which one often finds in professional music production magazines which can be interpreted like a bunch of reviews on products, software and releases which exist in a kind of non-social world. I find such approaches based on technological determinism to be flawed from the outset as for me it is more important to understand how we can utilise various tools to create and make music through social engagement. The bottom line is not so much how the tools use us but how we use the tools and how these changes have had a sociological impact in interactive creative processes from symbolic and symbiotic points of view.

We have moved from a ‘sit-back-and-be-told culture’ to a ‘making-and-doing culture’. There are many social media web sites now which allow us to upload, share and exchange music, such as FaceBook, YouTube, Twitter, ReverbNation, Myspace, Soundcloud and Soundclick to name just a few. More niche oriented social media sites and web portals that specialize in particular forms of music and music scenes also exist. So people work within specific genres and across them. For example, Dubstep, The Dub Scrolls, BeatPort, and HipHop Makers. Through such sites, generic and niche, I found myself working online with people in Greece, Malta, Portugal, Sweden, UK, USA, and Cyprus.

The main reasons why I engaged in online musical collaboration was partly a frustration I had with studio based work, particularly being a spoken word based artist based in Cyprus making reggae, where many local studios and producers lack experience in these genres. I also entered into online collaborations by being approached by various people, who were more grounded in the kinds of music I engage in, to work with them online.

What appealed most to me was the openness of the Internet and the fact that it allowed users to explore so many different avenues in an accessible and democratic manner. Immediacy was also a major bonus. A song as I found out could be created, recorded, edited, mixed and mastered in different
places in say 24 hours. Additionally, various aspects of music production, distribution, promotion, and management became demystified. It became that much easier to make and share music with specific audiences via free social media web sites.

Chuck D from Public Enemy


So independent net based labels, which Chuck D from Public Enemy dubbed as ‘Winties’ (web based independent labels) sprouted up in many countries around the world. The traditional filtering role played by radio and TV in the music industry in some ways became obsolete, after all much of the time they played only material that was signed to major labels and artists that had spent substantial amounts of money on their video clips. Now it is much easier to set up say a myspace account, upload some songs, live band footage, and gets known. Guerilla music making and self-marketing techniques are nothing new. They were deeply embedded in so many popular music scenes from punk rock to reggae. But the Internet suddenly gave that much more power to musicians to simply make, share and raise awareness of their existence. It is for example pointless and many people could also argue that it was from time, to send hundreds of cassettes or CD’s or vinyl demos out to record companies for consideration. Now an electronic press kit (EPK) could be assembled for free and sent to hundreds of targeted people with the click of a mouse.

Parts from Background – The Revolution has many interfaces! found in

Virtual Oasisthoughts and experiences about online based music production and collaborative writing techniques

By Mike Hajimichael aka Haji Mike, 2010.

On International Reggae and secularization of Rastafari 1972-1980

#rebelmusic #reggae #rasta
Ultimately, however, international reggae‘s appeal to international audiences may have had more to do with changes in the image of reggae artists, the packaging of the albums, and the sound of the music itself.

In his efforts to market the Wailers, for example, Blackwell first molded the Waiters‘ image into that of a rock-and-roll group. While reggae “groups” typically had consisted of a loose collection of singers and hired studio musicians, Blackwell promoted the Wailers as a stable, self-contained “band”—much like the Rolling Stones or Led Zeppelin.

Second, Blackwell led a new trend among Jamaica’s record producers toward original, thematic, and full-length LP (long-play) albums, again following the lead of rock-and-roll groups. Previously Jamaica’s
record producers had distributed mostly singles or cheaply produced compilations of “greatest hits”.

Finally, those albums came packaged in glossy, well-produced jackets promoting the image of the rebellious, ganja-smoking Rastafarian. On the back cover of the Waiters‘ 1973 album Burnin‘, for example, Marley was pictured smoking a 12-inch spliff, or marijuana cigarette. On Peter Tosh‘s 1976 album, Legalize It, the singer was photographed crouched down in a ganja field. Reggae album covers also emphasized the Rastafarian’s symbol of black defiance, the dreadlocks, or displayed the Ethiopian colors of red, green, and gold. The cover of the Wailers‘ 1980 album Uprising, for example, featured a drawing of Bob Marley, along with the album’s title in red, and a background of green mountains
and a gold sun.

While most of the major instrumental innovations of international reggae were established during the early reggae period, international reggae was marked by a more sophisticated and polished studio sound. Most early reggae songs were recorded in primitive studios in Jamaica. International reggae, however, generally was recorded in state-of-the-art studios in the United States or Great Britain.

According to Jones, this helped to undermine “the common accusation made by rock fans that reggae was a music of ‘inferior’ quality”. In the first attempt to reverse this trend, Chris Blackwell took the Wailers‘ instrumental tracks for Catch a Fire, previously recorded in Jamaica, and remixed, edited, and mastered the tracks in a London studio.

Rock critics Ed Ward, Geoffrey Stokes, and Ken Tucker highlighted the dramatic change in reggae’s new sound: “Catch a Fire” was a “revolutionary example of reggae recording, far superior in its technology than most other reggae records”.

U.S. and British record producers also manipulated the instrumentation in reggae arrangements to create a lighter, “softerreggae. Some U.S. record producers would deemphasize reggae’s dominant instruments, the electric bass guitar and drums, and push the keyboard and electric guitar to the front of the mix. In 1980, Jamaican dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson provided a clear rationale for the systematic manipulation of the reggae sound:
“[there was the] belief that the hard Jamaican sound, with the emphasis on the drum and the bass, would not be as accessible to the non-Jamaican listener as a lighter sounding production would be”.

To appeal to international audiences, reggae musicians also incorporated familiar genres of American music into the reggae arrangement.

During the remixing of the WailersCatch a Fire, for example, Blackwell dubbed traditional rock-and-roll instruments, including rock guitar and synthesizer, over the reggae beat. During the recording of
the same album, a session guitarist, Wayne Perkins, also added guitar solos. Throughout their career, the Wailers dabbled in blues (“Talkin’ Blues” [Natty Dread]), funk (“Is This Love?” [Kaya]), and folk music
(“Redemption Song” [Uprising]). Similarly, Toots and the Maytals, in their 1973 Funky Kingston, fused R&B and reggae into the album’s title song.

In sum, the new international success of reggae music in the 1970s may have been more the result of marketing and changes in its sound than changes in its “message.” Reggae was still a “rebel music.” Growing up in some of Jamaica’s worst slums, reggae musicians still critiqued Jamaica’s neocolonial society. Reggae musicians also expressed concern about international affairs, specifically political problems on the African continent. While still sensitive to the problems at home, they also began
to identify themselves more as Africans than Jamaicans. In the final analysis, however, reggae’s international success probably was more the result of changes in its sound. Record producers improved and “softened” the reggae sound and incorporated new instruments, such as synthesizers and rock guitars, into the reggae arrangement.
Reggae musicians also borrowed freely from musical genres including rhythm and blues and funk. Yet whatever the explanation, reggae’s sudden status as an international musical sensation focused unprecedented attention on the Rastafarian movement and exacerbated tensions within the move-ment. Indeed, the music created whole new groups of supposed Rastafarians apparently attracted to the movement by little more than the image of the “Rastaman” and the music itself. These “pseudoRastafarians had little in common with traditional Rastafarian principles and beliefs.

Parts of Chapter Reggae Music in the 1970s: “Bubbling on the Top 100” from:

Stephen A. King (1998) International reggae, democratic socialism, and the secularization of the Rastafarian movement, 1972–1980, Popular Music and Society, 22:3, 39-60,
DOI: 10.1080/03007769808591713

On Rasta continuum in Cuba

#rasta #style #Cuba

Real versus fake Rastas

Not unlike in many other Rasta communities around the world some of the more conservative religious brethren have introduced a view and language of authenticity with regards to what it means to be a Rasta. Framed in a discourse of cultural purity, they speak of so-called "real" and "unreal or “fake" Rastas.
But, given the myriad of ways people in Cuba identify with and express Rastafari, who can be considered a “real” Rasta?
The aim of my research has precisely been to go beyond fixed ideas of what constitutes a Rasta and instead look at how and why people define themselves as such and what processes go into making that
identity. Apart from this all-inclusive approach, the movement’s own fragmented entrance into Cuba and the many ways in which it has been appropriated have led to the wide array of definitions and expressions of the movement.

Although I have grouped certain main characteristics together and created certain "types" of Rastas for analytical purposes, in actuality every individual has his/her own idiosyncratic understanding and way of manifesting Rastafari.
Ulf Hannerz’s views on the social organisation of culture are particularly helpful in understanding Rastafari’s heterogeneous character in Cuba:

The social organisation of culture always depends both on the communicative flow and on the differentiation of experiences and interests in society. In the complex society, the latter differentiation is by definition considerable. It also tends to have a more uneven communicative flow - that is, different messages reach different people. The combined effect of both the uneven flow of communications and the diversity of experiences and interests is a differentiation of perspectives among the members of the society.

Rastafari in Cuba has been localised in just such a fashion. In an almost consumer-like attitude towards culture, individuals have selectively chosen, imitated and modified Rasta elements as well as mixed and matched them with other cultural practices. Whilst some have thus consciously hybridised different cultural elements together, others have kept them consciously apart by way of “cultural crossing” or “milieu-moving". Others yet again have adopted what Swidler (1986) has referred to as a “toolkit” attitude towards culture, in which people engage in their everyday activities by “selecting certain cultural elements (both such tacit culture as attitudes and styles and, sometimes, such explicit cultural materials as rituals and beliefs) and investing them with particular meanings in concrete life circumstances“.
In illustrating their skills at maintaining, mixing and serially selecting facets of different lifeways and styles all Rastas have demonstrated a high degree of multiple cultural competence as well as an attachment to a multiplicity of identities. In addition, all Cuban Rastas, even those who insist on an ideology of purity, have to a greater or lesser extent juxtaposed and fused objects, symbols and signifying practices from different and separate domains and in so doing have produced new, creolised versions of Rastafari.

On the whole, what we thus find is a wide variety of identifications with the movement, which can perhaps best be described as a Rasta continuum, ranging from orthodox religious brethren and sistren to those who identify with Rasta as a style. This same continuum is in addition in constant flux as individuals engage in an ongoing process of learning, adding, copying and reinterpreting Rastafari symbols and doctrine. As a cultural phenomenon Rastafari can be said to be in a constant state of cubanisation.

Chapter from:

Katrin Hansing (2001) Rasta, race and revolution: Transnational
connections in socialist Cuba, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 27:4, 733-747,
DOI:10.1080/13691830120090476

Free Leonard Peltier: Hip Hop’s Contribution to the Freedom Campaign

Free Leonard Peltier: Hip Hop’s Contribution to the Freedom Campaign

CAMPAIGN: PRESIDENT BIDEN SHOULD FREE LEONARD PELTIER

Dr. Campbell on Cannabidiol

Dr. John Campbell looking into antiviral properties of CBD.
CBD or cannabidiol is non-psychoactive compound found in cannabis.

Going from there he extrapolates that:
There would be no pandemic” – if cannabis was legal and available worldwide.

Think about that.

Wu Tang Everything

Wu Tang Clan acapellas and King Tubby riddims were pioneer champion mashups choice by Macro Dubplates and staple of Jah Billah selection since way back when.

Seems there is Wu Tang everything prophecy coming true. We reported about Wu+Fugazi as Wugazi before, here comes:



Wu-Tang Clan x Led Zeppelin – The Wu-Tang Zeppelin

Wu-Tang Vs. The Beatles – Enter the Magical Mystery Chambers

Wu-Tang Clan vs ATCQ – A Clan Called Wu : Enter the Marauders

Wu-Tang Clan Vs. Pink Floyd – The Dark Side of the Wu

Wu-Tang Clan – Wu-Tang Meets Rhythm and Blues

Wu-Tang Clan – Wu-Tang Meets Jazz


…And many more out there in digital wilderness including Wu Christmas mashups!

BONUS:

Wu-Tang Clan vs B.B. King – C.R.E.A.M



One of the most haunting remixes of all times with 85M views:

Wu-Tang Clan – Back In The Game – Phoniks Remix

Wu-Tang Clan vs Notorious B.I.G. – The Notorious Wu

On word, sound and power!

Mortimo Planno (1929-2006)

Rastafarians have as common parlance the philosophy that word sound is power!
After the 1960s, one can identify the development of a fraternity of Rastafari faithful, taking their message into musical expression. In much the same way perhaps that the Psalms are constructed as sacred records of the ‘livity’ of the Old Testament patriarchs. The philosophy of the Movement moved to some extent (but not entirely) off the street corners, due partly to colonial repression and police brutality, into ‘the mixing lab-Oratory’ to create music that would teach the lessons of Redemption of the African.
Planno, in philosophizing to his students who would congregate in his yard in Trench town, West Kingston (including ones such as Don Drummond, Bob Marley and the Wailers, Ras Michael and the Sons of Negus, Alton Ellis and Jimmy Cliff ) taught them to ‘tell out King Rasta doctrine around the whole world . . . Get your bible and read it, read it with understanding’ as his basic guide and teaching on liberating the individual. He would conduct his class room in the informal gatherings in his yard as together they built verses animating the experiences, ideals and aspirations of the Movement. The King James Bible consisting of its 66 books, the laws, Prophets, wisdom songs into the Revelation provided a source of reading, reasoning – analysis and interpretation. It was from this source that the Knowledge of liberation was to come, in particular from the Revelations in the Bible – revealing the identity of the Ethiopian Emperor, Haile Sellassie I, the Power of the Trinity as the returned Messiah. Planno and a number of other brethren were to develop on the earliest teachings brought by the elders of the 1930s, a multifaceted cultural approach, and a network of over 60 bases in the west Kingston and the surrounding corporate area.

At these bases, the hitherto wayward – brothers in particular – became transformed, they could find hope, a receptive environment to mould and teach themselves about their identity, their history, the politics of the time, self-sufficiency and most importantly in the context of their survival how to develop a habit of industry – mostly focused on the development of self-employment ideas, and especially music that when it hit ‘yu feel no pain’. Music has been the product emanating from what has been described as the business of hardship resulting out of the Poverty Laboratory.


These bases provided vibrant centres for debates on life, philosophy, the politics of Jamaica and the globe especially as far as it affected the people of Africa, some centres even provided training in Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia.
The community bases also provided shelter, humble though this may have been, where warm meals (often a one pot of porridge or ‘a sip’/soup) for all who came, books and newspapers, instruments, recording devices and of course the Wisdom Herb as sacrament to inspire the meditation and reasoning a way forward.

Soon west Kingston was to develop a reputation as a Mecca for musicians and scholars from all across Jamaica and surely enough became a fascination for researchers from around the world, the attraction being the Rastafarians and secondarily their cultural panacea – the emerging institution/industry of reggae music.

Excerpt from:
Jalani Niaah (2003) Poverty (lab) oratory: Rastafari and cultural studies, Cultural Studies.

On distant drums

The Drums of Count Ossie

We need to give proper consideration specifically to the Buru (or Burru) tradition as well.

Among the Buru drummers of the first half of the twentieth century was one outstanding and very influential musician who, like Babu Bryan, remains unknown to most Jamaicans, not to mention the rest of the world. The man I am referring to is Watta King. Not to be confused with the notorious West Kingston bad man Woppy King, nor with the Rastafarian patriarch known as Bongo Watto, who were two entirely different individuals, Watta King was a Buru master drummer of Kongo descent who migrated to West Kingston from Clarendon parish.

Although he made his living as a barber, and was not himself a Rasta, Watta gained renown as a drum-builder during the 1940s and 1950s – the very time that Rasta consciousness was beginning to gather force in West Kingston. During these formative years of the Rasta faith, Watta King was the owner of the most sought-after set of African-style drums in the area, and he and his fellow Buru players became the main drummers for the earliest grounations, or ceremonial gatherings, in the Rasta hotbeds of Salt Lane and Back-o-Wall.


It appears that Watta King represents the crucial link between the rural Buru tradition of St Catherine and Clarendon, and the nascent Nyabinghi tradition of West Kingston. His playing appears to have served as a model for many in the first generation of Rasta drummers, and his great influence can be traced through at least four important drummers of later years (and likely several others).
Baba Job (also known as Brother Job), who was to become Count Ossie‘s mentor, and Seeco Patterson, Bob Marley‘s percussionist who I mentioned earlier, both spoke to me of Watta King as their “teacher” – the man most responsible for their early development as drummers.
And Skully Simms, one of the most important session hand drummers from the 1970s on, told me in considerable detail about the influence Watta King had on him.

NOEL “ZOOT” SIMMS aka SCULLY(1935-2017). Here with LEE “MILO” SPENCE at Jack Ruby’s in Ocho Rios, Kingston, Jamaica, March ’76 © David Burnett

Excerpt from:

Distant Drums: The Unsung Contribution of African-Jamaican Percussion to Popular Music at Home and Abroad
Author: KENNETH BILBY
Source: Caribbean Quarterly, Vol. 56, No. 4, Pioneering Icons of Jamaican Popular Music, Part II (December 2010)

Murray Man – Walk & Talk

First release on Homegrown records in form of transparent 10″ vinyl now on pre-sale.
Featuring Murray Man vocal cut and Vanja O melodica cut followed by dubs.

All profits from physical 10″ release will be donated towards organisations and solidarity actions for human and animal rights!