The Jamaican diaspora…
[Note from Steve: Occasionally an article I create is appropriate for both my writer’s blog and my political one. This article is one of them, and it will also appear at http://pubprogressive.com.]
The reader can consider this article an homage to Harry Belafonte, whose soft but raspy voice made calypso music famous. I was a fan of that man’s music and political activism in civil rights for decades. His inimitable 1956 LP “Calypso” that took the world by storm (only mono, not stereo!), if not the first, was one of the earliest in my music collection that I listened to over and over again (the Beatles’ “White Album” came much later!). He was the quiet man of peaceful yet significant activism who accompanied a grieving Mrs. King and her family during their most troubling time.
Calypso, reggae, and ska moved me; I’m not sure exactly why. While not really Jamaican (Harry was born in Harlem to West Indian immigrants), Harry was very much a representative of that Jamaican diaspora in the UK, US, and elsewhere; he became an icon for that cultural tradition—its suffering, effervescent spirit, food, the rithymic dance and movement, and the successes, from Harry Belafonte to Usain Bolt.
While developing background for my “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series, I discovered that Jamaican immigrants might have received better treatment in the US than the UK. After the war, they went to help in the reconstruction of Britain; Teresa May, before she became PM, then tried to score points with her conservative followers by sending them back to Jamaica. This datum led me to create a Jamaican in the Brookstone novels—like the real Harry, Esther’s Harry is a musician who moonlights with his band in a London club playing the music of the Caribbean and his homeland. Now I can consider that character not only an homage to some wonderful music that I love but also an homage to Harry Belafonte.
I’m probably guilty of trying to make the UK more of a “melting pot” than what it really is…or wants to be under Tory rule. Characters like Esther’s Harry; her friend and MI5 tech Ambreesh Singh; and the Brazilian artist Ricardo Silva and the three Chinese artists from Hong Kong, all four featured in her gallery, probably don’t go far enough, though. Steve Morgan’s Kenyan girlfriend Kanzi and his colleague DI Workman (from the “Inspector Steve Morgan” series) add a bit more. For all I know, though, UK readers might opine that I’ve gone too far in transferring my diverse California upbringing to the UK. Yet I still believe Harry Belafonte received love from the UK and many other countries besides that received from US progressives.
Mr. Belafonte passed on April 25 at the young age of 96. He will be missed. I will miss him. The world will miss him. And may he rest in peace while teaching the angels how to play and sing calypso instead of that damnable Gregorian chant!
