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In London in November 1997, thawing in the studios of the Caribbean service arm of the BBC, I listened to Colin Channer being interviewed about his new novel, Waiting in Vain. I watched as the engineers in the studio began to look for the track that would take the interview out. What had been selected was, appropriately, "Natural Mystic" by Bob Marley because Channer's second (the unpublished) novel was tentatively titled Natural Mystic and that novel hints at the notion of Natural Mysticism as an aesthetic framework for a distinctively postcolonial generation of writers from the Caribbean. The engineers were not sure which album the track was on. Someone suggested Exodus and I quickly said, yes, that is the one. They began to hustle to cue the CD. There was some panic because the two engineers were not able to hear the song on the monitors even though they had cued it properly. One kept complaining that something was wrong with the console. I could tell what was happening, but I remained quiet, strangely amused by the mysticism of this moment, the slight trickery of it all, which I felt Bob Marley would have appreciated. The interview wound down, and the two engineers were decidedly beside themselves. just when they were about to put something else on, the cut of the rhythm guitar bean to insinuate itself on the ear. Then the lock-step roll of Carlton Barrett, and Bob Marley's faraway, world-weary voice carried across like a balm;
Indeed, the mystic was in the air, and the metaphor inherent in the very arrangement of the tune was once again playing its magical self out. Marley constructs the lyric around a musical arrangement that is itself a metaphor. The song begins with a barely perceptible rhythm guitar playing that quintessential reggae chop, a tightly and lightly brushed guitar strum that builds gradually. The mystic is in the distant sound that is only heard and appreciated by those who will listen carefully. In the faint intimations of the melody, in the barely audible guitar. Marley introduces a metaphorical and spiritually powerful articulation of the apocalyptic voice crying in the wilderness: the voice that needs to be heard and heeded. There is nothing declamatory in the rhetoric of the lyric, though the song as a whole is a symbolic trumpet, heralding the coming of the new day. In this seemingly simple lyric, in which Marley brings a spiritual rhetoric of change to bear on political realities, he condenses the meaning and power of reggae and the poetic grounding of his own imagination. The lyric offers us a way of understanding the "Natrual Mysticism" that characterizes all of Marley's work., the work of other reggae artists over the years and the aesthetic which has come to shape the creative context for much of the writing that has emerged out of the Caribbean in the last two decades. I come to this book as I come to Marley's work: with a combination of personal investment and emotional engagement, and a strong critical and academic consciousness. Natural Mysticism will appear to be an eclectic work that shifts in style and intent from moment to moments as I struggle to reconcile these inclinations. I make no apologies for this because i found that my efforts to "read' reggae and to write about its aesthetic forced me to use a range of discursive modes. In some places the writing is driven towards personal, memoir-like narration, while elsewhere it necessarily shifts into more formal language registers as it accounts for the evolution of reggae and the literature I am examining. Yes, this is a memoir of sorts, and intimate journey into the making of my imaginative impulses. I hope this does not sound unwholesomley self-indulgent. If the book manages to celebrate the energy and intellectual power of reggae music this will be my justification. I suggest that you read this book with a CD or record player at hand. It will all make sense once some reggae is pulsing in the background. To begin, I suggest you slip in Burning Spear's "Slavery Days"... ( Natural Mysticism:Towards a New Reggae Aesthetic , 7-9) |