Thu | Oct 9, 2025

Gordon Robinson | It’s all about community

Published:Sunday | August 10, 2025 | 12:09 AM

People celebrate Jamaica’s 63rd anniversary of independence at the Grand Gala held on August 6 at the National Stadium.
People celebrate Jamaica’s 63rd anniversary of independence at the Grand Gala held on August 6 at the National Stadium.

I’ve just spent another disappointing Emancipendence filled with clear signs of Jamaica’s societal corrosion.

Independence (Festival) is a celebration of a radical change in Jamaica’s history. Since Emancipation Day was re-instated twenty-eight years ago, there’s a full week when we ought to be celebrating Jamaica. Starting in 1966 when Eddie Seaga conceptualized and introduced Festival to a newly independent Jamaica, it was all about celebration, family and community.

That last should be two words spelled C-O-M-E. U-N-I-T-Y!

Families would gather along roadsides to witness annual independence float parades highlighting Jamaican culture. Communities attended street dances dressed in their best fashions. In the float parades, Jamaican identity – the one we brought with us from Africa and fought quietly but fiercely, often secretly, to maintain – was on full display. We thought the annual celebrations would keep that identity at the forefront throughout the year.

Instead, 60 years later, we line sidewalks to watch almost naked people “wine” on each other while a moron on a truck yells “1-2-3-4!” and loud “music” repeats instructions like “Catch the cat” or “attack it from the back!:”

What. Has. Happened. To. Us?

Why have we allowed technology to make us slaves to foreign culture? Carnival has its roots in ancient pagan festivals which, as the religion has done for so many other “traditions” (including Easter) Christianity later sampled carnival like a dancehall cover and made it a pre-lenten “farewell to the flesh”. In Brazil it’s held on Shrove Sunday; Shrove Monday; and Shrove Tuesday before Ash Wednesday. The costumes are lavish and the masks allow individuality to take a vacation.

Mardi Gras, the original carnival, started in southern Louisiana in 1699. It also ends on midnight Shrove Tuesday and features large, elaborate parades (organized by social clubs called “krewes”); magnificent costumes; and masked balls.

Even in Trinidad, from whence we’ve tried to copy carnival, the J’ouvert (pronounced “Jou-vay”) celebrations are more costume and music oriented and end at midnight, Shrove Tuesday.

So carnival is revelry, yes. What it isn’t is a public display of implicit and explicit drunken sexual debauchery conducted after Easter in a context of nothing Jamaican and everything copied loosely (very loosely) from Trinidad. But the Trinidadian context involves revelry with subtlety instead of the display of public vulgarity that passes for carnival here.

So we’ve replaced Festival with our dub version of carnival. Meanwhile actual Festival, the Jamaican celebration of Jamaican identity, has become a discreet, disconnected, disintegration of what it once was. The Festival Song contest has degenerated into a race to see who can most frequently refer to ackee, saltfish, sea and sand (or mention Usain and Shelly-Ann) as lyrics. Festival songs should capture the essence of the celebration:

I need a big heel boots and a bell foot pants

fi go dance this ya festival.

I need a suede bootie and a calico shirt

fi go judge dis ya festival.

1976 was probably the most discordant and politically divisive year in Jamaica. We were under an island wide State of Emergency that was declared on June 19 and lasted a year. Tribal political hostilities were at peak with key Opposition party officials and activists locked away at Up Park Camp under Emergency powers with an election to come in December. Yet the great Freddie McKay, who was famous for a picture still “’onging on di wall” was able to cut through the heated rhetoric and capture the essence of Festival in that year’s winner, Dance Dis Ya Festival.

Come, let’s all unite.

Stop the fuss and fight.

Do the good you should

to all in your neighborhood!

For one glorious week in August, we forgot political tensions and personal stresses and danced blissfully to Freddie McKay’s invitation to celebrate.

I need a tourist and all those pretty girls

come swing this ya festival.

I need di natty dreads and all di bald heads

come jump dis ya festival.

Everybody come swing and dance and jump and shout now

Everybody come dance with me….

Despite what Generation Born Yesterday might think about the noisy nattering that passes for election campaigning this year, the year 1980 was the most intense political campaign Jamaica has ever experienced. Prime Minister Michael Manley made a gigantic governance gaffe by announcing in February that election would be held that year. The actual election date announcement didn’t come until October 5 but, by then, political violence as campaign tools had reached cataclysmic proportions.

But, in August that year, Stanley Beckford (and the Turbines) used his unique styling to remind Festival celebrants what the moment was all about:

I’m dreaming of a new Jamaica

A land of peace and love

Some say they cannot see no hope

That’s why they keep us down

I know there is hope somewhere

That’s why I wrote this song

So let me tell you

All who believe in love

I say to sing this song with me

Like Freddie McKay four years earlier, Stanley, one of the most under-rated songwriters and entertainers in Jamaican music, knew how to capture the essence of independence celebrations:

And everybody dem a rock over town

And everybody dem a rock all around

And everybody dem a rock over town

When they hear this song, dem a rock over town

And everybody dem a rock over town

And everybody dem a rock all around

And everybody dem a rock over town

When they hear this song, dem a rock over town

In 2025, on August 1 and again on August 6, social media was saturated with lowbrow, tribal trash talk and puerile political one-upmanship. One track minds incapable of a single non-political thought insisted on proving the old adage that empty barrels make the most noise. Freddie McKay would probably ask his timeless question: “Does it gots to be dere?”

The Festival song winner sounded like a cheap rip-off of Tinga Stewart’s No Weh No Betta Dan Yard (1981) and Eric Donaldson’s Sweet Jamaica (1977). For me, it lacked creativity, context or relevant content (kept touting “jelly wata”; reggae; track and field) BUT, sadly, it was the best of the finalists on offer so deserved the medal. I found myself hankering for Tinga’s 1981 winner, a song I remain steadfast should’ve lost to Festival Jamrock (Sam Carty and the Astronauts). But, like George W. Bush, Tinga’s song now seems like a welcome winner.

All this only highlights the urgent need for fixed election dates accompanied by fixed campaign periods and mechanisms to delay elections for emergencies such as war or natural disasters. It cannot be healthy for our Independence Day to be annexed by politicians and their surrogates calling political opponents nasty names and making wild allegations without evidence or personal knowledge. It doesn’t help when party leaders’ independence messages come across as poorly disguised campaign speeches.

Very sad.

Why are we making a political brouhaha of party leaders’ wealth? One side says the other hides assets overseas. The other says its opposite has become wealthy illicitly despite not having a shred of proof. So what if both are wealthy? So what if it turns out one holds assets abroad and the other’s declared assets have increased markedly over two decades? Isn’t increased wealth the dream of every Jamaican?

Jamaicans are entitled to hold assets anywhere and political leaders are entitled to be rich. So what if declared wealth has increased? Would you prefer a political leader whose wealth increased whilst in politics but failed to declare it? Or would you trust a political leader whose declared assets decreased while in office? Unless some authority can lay charges and prosecute a political leader for any of the insanely imagined crimes being bruited about on social media we should stop carelessly maligning persons who decided to serve in areas that we wouldn’t. This is especially so during independence when we should be celebrating together and as the allegations are based on salacious speculation and groundless gossip.

There should be a political ceasefire declared during Emancipendence. No political bile allowed. When the cease fire ends, can we focus on issues rather than personalities? Can we overcome this nonsensical, envious mindset that suspects persons’ integrity because of personal wealth alone? Can we please (pretty please) presume wealth was achieved by hard work, creativity or entrepreneurship until otherwise proved?

Peace and Love.

Gordon Robinson is an attorney-at-law. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com