At left Parliamentarians and other dignitaries greet Louise Bennett-Coverley on her arrival at the Norman Manley International Airport last Tuesday. She is guest of honour at this year's Emancipation and Independence celebrations. -Rudolph Brown photo. At right is Miss Lou -Norman Grindley photoIan Boyne
JAMAICA NEEDS a second Emancipation. May the presence of our pre-eminent folklorist and First Lady of Culture, Dr. the Hon. Louise Bennett-Coverley, heighten the process toward that end.
I cried on Tuesday as I watched the arrival of that indomitable spirit clothed in flesh; that quintessential Jamaican; that representation of the finest in our culture, the pinnacle of Jamaicanness; the fulcrum of decency and civility; that indescribable treasure whom we know simply as Miss Lou.
I cannot be detached, emotionally uninvolved and purely Aristotelian in the presence of Miss Lou. In her presence as potent through the electronic media as face to face all the trappings of my 'objective' Western philosophical influences melt away under the passionate heat of my ancestral roots.
For those of us who knew a Jamaica different from today's Jamaica, Miss Lou represents a bridge with the past, an inspiration for the present and a hope for the future.
She evokes in us the humour, optimism, resilience, creativity, defiance and boundless resourcefulness which our foreparents have used to survive the brutality, atrocity, treachery and dehumanisation of slavery and colonialism. Miss Lou used to be called the First Lady of Comedy.
It took us a number of years to realise that Miss Lou was no comedian. Don't be fooled. She was not joking.
She tackled some of the most serious and painful issues and used the cloak of humour brilliant strategist and communicator that she is to force this society to face certain unpleasant truths.
She 'tek serious tings mek joke', for she knew that in the oft-repeated phrase of that other cultural icon, Professor Rex Nettleford, "we can't take ourselves too seriously". If we did, not only would we court arrogance but also insanity.
For we have to learn to laugh at ourselves and, importantly, we have to learn how to 'tek kin teet kibber heart bun' how to maintain a sense of joy in the midst
of the most disheartening
circumstances.
Miss Lou is a folk philosopher, cultural anthropologist and community psychologist, digging into our rich and textured Jamaican culture to come up with the universals for daily living and coping.
She is a cultural archivist, preserving the treasures of our culture. She is indispensable to our second Emancipation.
DECLINING SCALE
Today, a cloud of pessimism hangs over Jamaica. Gloom and doom is proclaimed all over and many believe that 'Jamaica can't come back'.
There has never been a time when we seemed as listless, as directionless and as purposeless as today.
In the 'bad old days' of the 1970s when there were many shortages, frightening levels of political tensions, terrifying political violence, sharp political divisions and consternation over so-called 'creeping communism', there were at least significant numbers of people who had a sense of purpose, mission and vision and a commitment to the nation.
In the early 1980s, many found a new sense of hope, and began what they said was the rebuilding of their lives. But by the late 1980s, the disillusionment had set in and the then Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) Government was booted out.
Since then we have been on a declining scale of hope, despite what the objective economic statistics are saying. Economics cannot buoy our spirits and economics alone will not rebuild our hope. In this developing economy we will never have enough for trickle-down economics to work.
As I have been saying, our crisis is fundamentally cultural and philosophical and that is where we have to start in rebuilding hope. It is the cultural base which will give you the strength to build your economy. It is from the culture that you will be able to launch the thrust into our second Emancipation.
At a time when many would-be heroes have stumbled under the weight of their own corruption, deception or plain ineptitude, Miss Lou remains a true, unspoilt, undefiled hero.
She was and is a symbol of non-partisanship. Her grace and dignity would never lead anyone in his right mind to accuse her of playing politics. She is the Jamaican's Jamaican. Kevin O'Brien Chang, whom this country owes a debt of gratitude for highlighting Miss Lou's epic contributions to Jamaican culture, made the point in a Daily Observer column that Miss Lou is probably the most loved Jamaican of all time. He said she was above the political fray and does not have the number of detractors that other famous Jamaicans have. Marcus and Marley can't claim the same broad-based, unequivocal adoration.
Sure, there are people who believe that she was irresponsible for promoting 'bad talking', 'poor speech' and even 'crude and crass' communication with the patois; but there is something about Miss Lou's endearing, disarming grin, stunningly pleasant personality, charm and sweetly overpowering presence which make even critics warm to her. Miss Lou is a true icon, a symbol of the unity that this country desperately needs.
MESSIANIC
At a time when there are so many ways in which we divide ourselves; when the guns were only just recently barking near the airport where Miss Lou was so touchingly greeted (kudos to the organisers); and a time when it seems we have no one symbol to pull us all together, Miss Lou's presence among us take on almost Messianic proportions. If you say I exaggerate her importance, it is precisely because we suffer such an absence of heroes.
At a time when our people's minds are taken up with the success symbols of Western, particularly American, culture; when our leading deejays are simply reflective of a decadent American culture and its twisted values; when corruption reigns at all levels because people lack self-esteem and are in a mad rush to gain significance and 'smadditisation' (to use Nettleford's word), Louise Bennett-Coverley is a symbol of our hoped-for mental and cultural Emancipation.
She accepted our language, our stories, our ways of seeing the world, our indigenous forms of culture, when 'polite society' deemed them scornful and inferior. She never craved authentication and validation from the middle and upper classes. She stood her ground, nurtured excellence in all she did and the middle and upper classes had to 'bow' to her and rise to her heights.
At a time when too many of us are willing to sell our souls for the almighty dollar; when integrity is regularly sacrificed on the altar of greed and social climbing, Miss Lou stands in prophetic defiance of this cowardice and cultural sell-out.
A NEW SLAVERY
We are a great people, with our traditional sense of community, family and caring. The runaway individualism and acquisitiveness which characterise so many of us today is not our authentic cultural history. This is something imported in the culture, something alien. We were very concerned about the 'alien ideology' of communism which was supposedly upon us in the 1970s, but we now enthusiastically welcome the alien hedonistic and materialistic ideology of self-gratification which is causing havoc in the society.
Today we are free from the plantations of the ruling class but we are slaves to their ideology of consumerism and commodification. Miss Lou calls us back to the abundance that we have in our culture; the wealth that we possess; a wealth not confined to physical things. This is no 'romanticising of underdevelopment' but an open rejection of the view that development is the same as Westernisation.
Since we don't listen to our own and always seek validation from outside let me quote the father of Western capitalism, Adam Smith, in that less well-known book The Theory of Moral Sentiments.
He rejected the notion that happiness and fulfilment in life is synonymous with material possessions, 'bling bling' and the trappings of Western opulence. Hear him, if you don't want to hear Miss Lou: "In the ordinary situations of human life, a well-disposed mind may be equally calm, equally cheerful and equally contented... in the most glittering and exalted situation that our ideal fancy can hold out to us, the pleasures from which we propose our real happiness are almost always the same with those which in our actual, though humble situation we have at all times in our hand and in our power... The pleasures of vanity and superiority are seldom consistent with perfect tranquillity, the principle and foundation of all real and satisfactory enjoyment."
That is Louise Bennett-Coverley in Old English! Miss Lou never glorified poverty or belittled ambition, quite the contrary. But her work is stubbornly opposed to the view that the Western notion of success and 'making it' is the only way, and that without it we are necessarily wretched and miserable. Miss Lou made us understand that our foreparents were not just discontented souls before the Gospel of greed was introduced. The woman who popularised 'Tun you hand and mek fashion' knows the relentless creativity and improvisation skills of our people.
Hear Adam Smith, whose book The Wealth of Nations is synonymous with the capitalist revolution: "All the members of the human society stand in need of each other's assistance... where the necessary assistance is reciprocally afforded from love, from gratitude, from friendship and esteem, the society flourishes and is happy."
DESCENT INTO DECADENCE
Miss Lou's work shows us the things which really make us happy community, human solidarity, caring, love, sharing, humour. We have forgot a lot of that in our mental and cultural enslavement to hedonism. We have become trapped in a rat race not of our own making. We have been manipulated psychologically. So our women bleach their skin, our inner-city men run after 'bling bling' and the latest gadgets from 'foreign' and we have freely traded our indigenous cultural values for those of a decadent United States. No wonder our newspaper headlines follow the trends in America.
Says U.S. Professor Stanley Rothman in his fascinating paper, The Decline of Bourgeois America: "An ever larger number of children are initiated into sexual activity before they are ready for it; even as increasing numbers of children are born with AIDS or brain-damaged because of their mothers' sexual activity, drug abuse or both. More and more children, especially of the poor, are abused by stepparents or by their mothers' boyfriends who have no biological investment in the children of the woman with whom they are associating. Power replaces achievement as an ideal goal and with that comes heightened mutual suspiciousness, even as the number of narcissistic personality types increase."
He could be writing about Jamaica but, by extension, he is for Jamaica has swapped its indigenous values for those of a culturally decadent America. Our dancehall artistes, our professional and political elite and now many of our churches have all sold out. This is why Jamaica needs Louise Bennett-Coverley desperately and urgently.
CULTURE VS 'SKIN OUT'
There will be those who will seek to validate their vulgarity and cultural perversion by appealing to Miss Lou, noting the resistance she received from 'society people' when she started with the dialect.
But don't involve Miss Lou inna unno nastiness. Miss Lou was never vulgar. Everyone who knows her knows she hated profanity with a passion. Lady Saw is no modern-day Miss Lou! Vulgarity and the 'skin out, bruk out' thing is not our 'culture'. It is imported from abroad.
We are a regal people, a dignified people, Marcus Garvey people. Miss Lou is sustainable because she is authentic. She is not 'commercial'.
Miss Lou never bowed to the dominant values just to get ahead, to make it overseas or to be acceptable to audiences who love vulgarity. She never catered to the 'nah no head', 'head no good' crew. When you 'tek off the head', anybody can lead you.
Miss Lou is far more significant to this country in what she represents than we will ever know. The Prime Minister might not officially declare it, but she is Jamaica's only living National Hero.
Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist. You can e-mail your comments to ianboyne@yahoo.com.
