By Amina Blackwood Meeks, Contributor 
Blackwood-Meeks
"Isn't it strange how princesses and kings..."
I SAW duppies when Leroy Sibblies took the stage at the tribute to Miss Lou in Emancipation Park and began his contribution with the song that began with that line. I saw a horde of duppies when he got to the chorus:
"...that's why poor little people like you and me will be builders for eternity each is given a bag of tools, a shapeless mass and a book of rules..."
You know by now that I believe that duppies very often take the shapes of things we do not want to see and consequently do not see. Duppies also take the shape of questions some people judge to be "disrespectful", like my colleague Simon Crosskill just asking on Smile Jamaica one morning if a cultural icon supposed to live abroad or live in the culture in which such an icon is so deemed.
Well, behold the quality of duppies who would not be caught dead speaking "like Miss Lou" into dem best Hinglish pon talk show saying how Simon was disrespectful.
DISRESPECT
Quite frankly, I think I would like to hear some erudite persons expound on the matter of what makes a 'cultural icon'. Is Claude McKay, for example, a cultural icon? What about all those overnight sensations whose records, I gather, sell like hot bread, and who were revered enough to be placed on the entertainment line-up for the Independence Street Jam in New Kingston?
The performance was of such that it lead to the cancellation of the Jam in Montego Bay even though, in my foolish opinion, the jam cudda more than gwaan minus dem and de people of Montego Bay and its environs never had to suffer an independence deprivation.
Especially as dem did already live too far to attend any of the events put on for Miss Lou and can't even tell anybody how close they got her. But I have a way of raising issues, oops, duppies, for discussion which might not be beneficial to anybody or anything or any decision. So I'm going to raise another unholy ghost.
PAYING CULTURAL ICONS
Yu think if this country, and the powers that be were in the habit of paying cultural icons what they are worth for all they do with the bag of tools and the shapeless mass at their disposal, Miss Lou would have to take her husband to foreign in search of medical treatment that they could afford?
How much yu think Miss Lou was paid for doing Ring Ding or Miss Lou's Views? Take a bet as to whether the payments came in regularly or on time? Don't take my word for it, you cannot trust somebody who seeing duppies all the time. Get yourself a copy of that wonderful docu-drama, The Drums Keep Sounding, made by Sistren Theatre Collective on Miss Lou's life and contribution and hear it outta har owna mout.
And how much more would Miss Lou have contributed if she didn't have to go? If we did so love Ring Ding how come up until now no sponsorship or programme time can be found to even have something like that, since there is only one Miss Lou, on the air? Now tell me this how putting up Miss Lou's statue outside Emancipation Park is going to rectify that or speak to the fundamental issue of why we continue to expect our creative souls, the ones we say we love, the ones we dub ambassadors of the culture, the ones we call upon to endorse this or that national cause, to pay medical bills out of "thank you very much and commendations for your good works."
I was sitting with an eminent member of the present administration and a superb poet recently who, after years of perfecting her craft raised the issue of travelling abroad to "perform for Jamaican". You are not going to get any help for that was the final word spoken by this public official on the subject. People get help to sell fish and festival in international airports, to attend myriads of meetings that sometimes only show results when dem reaching for false teeth and walking stick. People do not get help to export the culture. They don't even get help to do a good job of it locally. But we expect them to batter overseas and abroad in search of the gigs that pay them, and perform lovely things about Jamaica such that tourists will want to follow back a dem as they come back home as patriots to spend de foreign currency.
ISSUES
Here is something else we don't expect we don't expect them to understand too much about the issues involved in protecting and earning from their creations. For who dem tink dem is anyway, to understand that writing a song or story or appearing in a video is like building a house? You don't collect one month's rent and then the tenant, having determined how much rent to pay also has the right to it for evermore, amen, at the same original one month's security deposit, no matter how the value of real estate escalates.
Maybe we expect our heroes to end up as paupers, like Marcus Garvey also a poet, playwright and promoter of cultural events, whose birth we honour today. Teachers, again like Garvey who put something inna we head so we can develop something called a worldview, philosophies and opinions which attract international following. Heroes, such as farmers who put something inna we belly so we can stand up tall an keep outta world record of starving nations and didn't Garvey also teach us about that?
Unless we expect to stop holding benefit concerts and dinners for musicians and playwrights who predate the Copyright Unit in the Office of the Prime Minister or whose doing it for the love of it gets shocked with the 2003 budget and globalisation, (that duppy the PM has told us not to fear), we have to behave in ways that practically honour the very existence of that unit. We can't compensate Miss Lou, by making her responsible in retrospect for Emancipation. Or meck har into anyting just so that Nanny have company. See the problem when people say things which are populist no matter how unthought-out and illogical we point to the fact dat de crowd did love it, 'dem rail up'. Wait till de same crowd rail up for something that we disagree with, we teck microphone and upbraid them for being "unthinking and disrespectful". Just like Miss Lou was deemed to be by a 53 per cent who still linger jacketed and tied to a notion that we would be better off as a colony, no matter how pauperised, or still hanging on to Missis Queen Privy Council. Till one day we awake to the nightmare of how to find ourselves by reclaiming the stones that the builders refused.
"And isn't it strange how princesses and kings ...?"
However, when we check the line up, we find "heroes" whom we have variously made into paupers, prisoners of conscience, refugees in foreign shores, fugitives from those who defend alien interests; people whom we hang or poke fun at or mix up with people whose mout just get whey wid dem in front of teevee camera and fire off some inappropriate utterances. By the time we find the criteria to separate sheep from goat or we conscience jook we to at least try, dem too frail fe hurt we anymore with speaking uncomfortable truths or it wudda look too bad if we doan do something.
If we believe any of the things we say we believe about Miss Lou and her contributions, we must not repeat the mistakes we made with her. We must give our artistes more than thanks and citations for their sterling contribution. We must also pay them the sterling and facilitate the mechanisms through which they can make greater contributions. Or shut down the various cultural festivals in favour of conferences of politicians and bureaucrats and see how much tourists come.
And no, money is not everything but everybody who have everything dat people who don't have nothing want, just seems to have lots of it. Or fringe benefits or connections that make up for it. My mother always seh encouragement sweetens labour. Government institutions whose mandate requires them to interface with artistes in pursuit of cultural industries must lead by example.
So who Amina tink she is to be saying all dese tings she tink she is Miss Lou? No, she knows she is Amina! Strike her name off de invitation lists. Starve har. Hungry belly smaddy kean have so much chat. Because we do that too. We find the way to make invisible, people who might raise duppies we do not wish to see.
