The Entertainment Economy

One Love: The Rastafari Encore

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 15 Feb 2024 22:00:00 +0000

The Bob Marley: One Love movie offers me a thread to tie together some ideas I’ve had for some time now. The late professor Rex Nettleford once remarked that every Jamaican is a rasta, and that quote has stuck with me since I heard it.

I watched the movie and I will say it was artfully done. I enjoyed it. There were definitely some emotional moments that tugged at your humanity, and I think this will become a classic. There were many moments of pride as a Jamaican, although at this point that shouldn’t be a thing, because Jamaica and Jamaicans have long had their share of the spotlight. I will not go here into the details of a film critique, but I will share this Deadline critique, ‘Bob Marley: One Love’ Review: Biopic Of The Reggae Icon Doesn’t Catch A Fire if you’re interested in a perspective. I find this critique harsh, but I share it because ultimately the writer latches on to a point worth mentioning. They write,

"The problem with One Love is that, just like the music industry, its makers still don’t quite know how to deal with Bob Marley, a genuine original, a true rebel poet, a Che Guevara on the downbeat. But his music still sounds amazing and his almost mythical stature has not diminished a jot in the last half century. One Love may not catch a fire, but if it keeps the flame alive, well, maybe that’ll be enough."

Truly, I think so many really have yet to understand Bob Marley, and can we really say we understand his commitment to rastafari and what motivated him? It is these things that we really do not know that ironically allow all who come to confidently profess what they know as their truth to be the one and only truth of Bob Marley and rastafari. At no point does this film profess to be an authoritative account of all the facts of Marley's life or his participation in the development of Jamaica's music industry. The film portrays to the audience some developments that took place in Bob's life between 1976 and 1978, with flashbacks and a few other liberties with time to capture relevant contextual moments outside this period of focus. I don't believe it is fair to ask that one film deal with matters not necessary for that film's story. For that, I'd advocate that other films be made. Therefore, on one level we do need to step back and accept this work as entertainment delivered within a cultural milieu that allows for audience empowerment and change. At the time of this writing the audience score on Rotten Tomatoes for this film is 95% positive which I imagine signifies something about how the film is being received by its audience.

Kingsley Ben-Adir and Lashana Lynch carried the story well so I have no complaints about them, and I think the Jamaican supporting cast represented, so I am pleased. I think this movie has raised the stakes again for Jamaica, and for rastafari. Rastafari’s message through Bob, the messenger, lives on. Rastafari, Marcus Garvey, and Africa were given their respect and prominence, and I expect that the world will become even more curious about the role of Jamaica in global music culture, entertainment, and African and African diaspora aesthetics and politics. This movie is no small development.

As I reflect deeper on the movie and its significance I am drawn closer to the conclusion that the film in effect positions Bob Marley as our muse, with rastafari being Bob’s own personal muse, thereby positioning rastafari as the actual star of the film, and the connecting thread - Ras Tafari is the father that welcomes all. I think this film will once more center rastafari and its ethos and force a new set of questions in this era that dig deeper into what is rastafari, what's its purpose, and how does it fit within the contemporary world of spirituality, hyper-capitalism, and the world of entertainment and commerce? And, what is its role going forward with the rise of Africa culturally and economically? This is one of the conversations that Bob Marley: One Love the movie will place us in, front and center. There will remain bickering about who was represented and who was not, as we saw before the film was even seen by those caught up in these arguments, but if you remain stuck in this noise, then you will have missed a larger message and the significance of this moment.

On the question of spirituality, when one delves into rastafari reasoning and philosophy which has as its core the defense of truth, human rights, and justice, and captured in the very Jamaican phrase “one love”, we discover a wealth of ancient knowledge paralleling the wisdom of older eastern civilizations. We now throw around terms such as “sustainable development”, but we shouldn’t fail to recognize that sustainable development was the base of rastafari before sustainable development was a thing. Jamaica’s 2003 culture policy noted in its preamble that Rastafari was the only new religion to emerge in the 20th century. One could argue over the use of the term religion, and I would not propose to defend it, but what I would defend is that as a developed spiritual system, it is one crafted in the crucible of modernity in Jamaica uniquely for our modern times. Rastafari is a Jamaican transcendental philosophy and spiritual system gifted to the world. I don’t think Jamaicans quite grasp what this means. Increasingly, as I learn more about scientific discoveries in our universe and those within the human body none other than the field of quantum physics shows up to confirm truths that I have heard rastafari intuitively utter again and again in my lifetime. Rastafari speaks to the (brain in our) heart and our common humanity, and it acknowledges that all creation is pure energy of which we as (physically manifested) beings are all a part. This is the direction of mankind’s understanding of what we call god, nature, and the spirit, and rastafari has always been there as a unique expression of humanity’s direction. There is little doubt in my mind that this is one of the major reasons for rastafari’s appeal to the heart of humanity.

On the question of hyper-capitalism, business, and commerce, I posited in 2020 in the post titled, Entertainment Demands a Bold Transformative Economic Agenda, that had Bob Marley been alive then he would likely be one of the wealthiest among us, sitting on a perch somewhere at the commanding heights of our local economy, because Bob had invested in his own studio, record manufacturing, and music distribution businesses well before the millionaire turned billionaire entertainer-entrepreneur of today was in vogue. Had Bob not died when he did, how differently would the world have looked at rastafari as a big business player and a real powerbroker? Being a participant in big business and commerce is not something we can simply dismiss, and the film forces you to consider what this means. In the film, this is no longer imagined, but we get to see glimpses of this. The film's message of not lamenting a lack of resources should not be lost on this generation, because as we saw when presented with an excuse about the lack of infrastructure to do what needs to be done, Bob's response was, let's build it. Excuses, therefore, are unacceptable. This is both agency and empowerment and a gift of the film's power.

One Love is not just a movie, it is a platform, a new platform presented to rastafari, Jamaica, and the Jamaican people yet again. On this platform can ride new initiatives for our spiritual culture, the Jamaican language, music, food, fashion, sound technology, our broad entertainment offerings, and their strands of Jamaican commercial offerings. What we choose to do with this platform at this time will depend upon our capacity to focus on what matters and our ability to have confidence in ourselves and our identity, and then to skillfully maneuver in the worlds of global commerce and politics. None but ourselves can or will save us.

Some years ago when branding became a buzz Jamaica adopted the notion of Brand Jamaica. If Brand Jamaica comprises all Jamaicans, and if as professor Nettleford suggested that every Jamaican is a rasta, perhaps one could argue that rastafari is a premier expression of Brand Jamaica, not its only representation lest I be misunderstood, but a premier representation.

Big respect and congratulations to the Marley family. Given the minefield of issues that surround this subject, I think they have pulled off something really remarkable. This should start a movement to tell all these globally impacting stories now buried in the Jamaican experience. They among others have a unique opportunity to demonstrate to the world that perhaps rastafari is necessary for the healing of the nations. The stone that the builder refuses will become the head cornerstone. As Mutabruka has been known to say, "wat a ting, iin!"

Creativity and Capital

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 05 Dec 2021 15:00:00 +0000

(First published in the Business section of the Jamaica Monitor November 28, 2021)

I recently made my way through the book Significant Zero: Heroes, Villains, and the Fight for Art and Soul in Video Games. It was published in 2017 by Walt Williams a video game writer and executive of over ten years. He is experienced in creating Triple A (AAA) games, which are multimillion-dollar blockbuster games. Williams is candid and hardly holds anything back in the book, sharing the good and the bad, while giving the reader an insight into his rise in this industry in the US. This book is helpful if you are trying to understand the business side of the industry. I found several of his introspective analyses throughout the book extremely insightful and thought-provoking. If you are like me and you maintain a broad interest in the expansion of the Jamaican entertainment industry, I recommend this book to help in thinking of possibilities.

Image Source: Getty Images

In the book, Walt makes the unequivocal declaration that video games are art, digital art, and I agree with him, few forms of art could be more contemporary. Tangentially, related to this digital field of art and entertainment is esports – another multimillion-dollar industry expression of digital culture – both of which are potentially available for exploration by us. Whereas video game development is not something that we have given emphasis to in Jamaica, I have very little doubt that we have the stories and the cultural material that could make entertaining brand Jamaica games. Having said this, the truth is, these fields are capital intensive, and so the reality is our ambitions for these sectors will of necessity be measured in the first instance until we can figure out our game for sourcing capital.

It is on one of the discussions about funding and capital in Williams’ book that I want to reflect. Walt outlines for us the relationship between a video game developer and a video game publisher. Typically, game developers rely on video game publishers for funding the north of US$10m game development budgets - the largest game development budget reported to date is for Cyberpunk 2077 (2020) at US$174m. In these instances, the publisher is the entity that pulls the purse strings because they front the cost of development and promotion in exchange for the financial returns on the back end. This is not an unusual arrangement across entertainment sectors, and so what this gives rise to is something that I have heard raised many times in my over twenty years of working with creatives – can art for money possibly be as good as art for art’s sake.

Significant Zero by Walt Willams

It is essentially an assumption that art and creativity on one hand are mutually exclusive to capital, and that those who possess capital cannot also possess genuine creativity and can contribute to good art. This I am sure will be an ongoing debate, but those who are up to learning how to employ their art in making money will be the winners of now. Of course, this means a willingness to share, if needs be, in the creative control, which I suspect is the challenge many artists have. But, sharing in the creative control does not automatically mean that your art will become bad art, unless the artist really thinks that those who possess money cannot possibly know what good art is, and that the financier does not wish for the artist to succeed. This is a sinister disposition, but in my experience it holds true. We somehow still believe that capital is creatively bereft, while artists are perfect stewards of their own talent.

If Jamaican creatives want to expand their reach and utilize their art across a wider range of entertainment sectors then there has to be a greater effort in moving them to greater levels of collaboration and trust for capital, because it is those with the capital who have the resources to empower the creatives to reach levels they usually won’t accomplish slogging away by themselves. Buying into this may require an ideological shift, to go corporate, and to aggressively pursue the goal of making money by making art. Williams assures us that there is nothing wrong with that, and uses words in reference to video game development which I think are useful to include here for their relevance. He writes, “Greed and artistic intent are not mutually exclusive, …we all have bills to pay, creating marketable games with broad appeal does not make you a greedy [capitalist]. The reverse is also true, creating pure vision-driven games does not exclude you from being a money-grubbing credit-hogging [detestable person]. If developers aren't necessarily pure of heart, then we can't assume publishers are devoid of it.” In other words, if artists and creatives aren’t necessarily pure of heart, then we can’t assume financiers and capitalists are lacking a well-meaning or a sincere heart.

My point, therefore, is we need to revisit some of the assumptions we have about capital and the nature of the relationships we should encourage creatives to cultivate with capital in the contemporary period. For us, Garveyite praxis was an early nudge in the modern era that capital would be essential to economic success, and our creatives cannot afford to ignore that message now. The nature of art has expanded beyond the traditional into the capital-intensive digital space where if brand Jamaica is to maintain a presence on Jamaica’s own terms then the way Jamaicans think about the business of art, culture, and entertainment will need an update.

Kam-Au Amen has several years of combined industry experience across the areas of business management, brand licensing, media production, and eCommerce. He is the conceptualizer and first coordinator of the pioneering BA in Entertainment and Cultural Enterprise Management at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona.

Entertainment and the Business of Race and Class

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 21 Nov 2021 15:00:00 +0000

(First published in the Business section of the Jamaica Monitor on November 14, 2021)

On 25 October 2021, former PM Bruce Golding on his program Jamaica Live on Bridge 99FM focused on the business of Jamaican music as his topic of discussion. I found his program very entertaining and informative. It was not new material as I have grown quite used to this topic. In my view, the arguments have not advanced much over the years, as I think the challenge is not knowing what to do, but rather how do we get what we know needs doing done. It is clear to me that creativity and product creation are not as challenging a set of problems to navigate for Jamaicans as are those of employing the tools of business strategy, management, marketing, and finance.

Image Source: Rene Asmussen, Jamaica Monitor

In tackling the challenge of the insufficient economic returns from Jamaica’s music, one of the points raised a few times by different guests, was our failure as a nation to deal effectively with the negative economic impacts of race and class. Each time this was raised the former PM’s reaction questioned whether this was indeed a factor in our inability to effectively monetize our music and its culture. To his credit, he alluded to the fact that the younger generation of capitalists does not necessarily harbor all those prejudices of old. As my reader, you should recognize that this is a back-handed admission of a prejudice problem. To say that the younger generation is not as prejudiced as that of the old is to acknowledge that the older generation, and the structures that they constructed, inhabited, and maintained contained some level of prejudice.

The dilemma of race and class, and its inherent prejudices, unfortunately, cannot be removed from a discussion of the past and the future of Jamaica’s entertainment business, and I believe some of the panelists illustrated this point. Whereas it is true that in Jamaica the African majority has managed to successfully overthrow the system of slavery that ruled, problems determined by the overarching issue of race persist, and it affects capital and access to it. It also affects access to training and appropriate knowledge, and of course, it impacts trust and the lack thereof.

Our Caribbean societies are reeling from the problems brought on by racism and anti-blackness as a phenomenon that emerged from the encounter with Western European powers and their culture. But, it appears to me that many of these effects seem invisible to a number of Jamaicans in Jamaica when compared to the level of visibility these microaggressions and expressions of racism get in the United States. I find it strange that Jamaicans looking on at the United States see these effects in the US, yet they seem blind to similar microaggressions and expressions in Jamaica. The question I have in this regard is, why? Why is it so difficult for Jamaicans to see the anti-Black racism within their space? Is there a question to be asked of the hegemony about the level of cultural accommodation and co-opting that have taken place that in effect blinds African Jamaicans to the ways in which the hegemony retains power and the ability to dictate anti-black values and attitudes among the ordinary masses without resistance?

I was intrigued by a few quotes I read in Carolyn McCalla’s 2010 thesis titled, “A We Dis?!: The Contestation of Jamaica’s Post-Independence Identity in the Jamaica Festival Song Competition”. Borrowing from the work of Deborah Thomas in her book, Modern Blackness, she pulls on an appropriate example to show how Jamaica displays its anti-Black values and attitudes, which are cloaked in the notion of respectability; values such as temperance, collective work, thrift, community uplift, respect for the leadership of the educated middle classes and Christian living. In contrast, those in the popular music culture, the not-so-respectable poor and working classes, value the accumulation of things, the celebration of the self, conspicuous consumption, public denunciation of political leadership while affirming alternative leadership figures, and the absence of religious ideology. This signifies the essence of our problem because if you are not respectable, and you do not have access to the training or knowledge accessible to polite society to make you respectable, you are likely not bankable, and therefore not investable as far as Jamaican capital is concerned.

It was the late Professor Charles W. Mills in writing about race and class in the Caribbean who argued that the region is a “racially structured class society.” Mills suggests that class is the fundamental categorical determinant in our society. He wrote, “The legacy of slavery was a social structure where race and class were coterminous. Blacks were slaves, whites were slavemasters, while a brown-skinned mulatto group occupied an ambiguous intermediate position between them. Unsurprisingly, then, the dominant ideological framework the prism through which people understood the world was racial in character.” If we accept his analysis, then it is no small wonder that Caribbean societies have remained racially structured class societies since very little effort has been made to address the effects of slavery and institutionalized racism, except of course efforts of cultural accommodation and co-opting to keep the whites and brown-skinned mulatto groups at the top of the hierarchy of Caribbean society. So, whites and mulattoes speak Jamaican Patwa, but cannot bring themselves to formalize it as a language. Blacks can work in the homes and be nannies to their children, but access to serious capital for Black businesses might require half a limb, or simply not be up for consideration. So, structurally Blacks are shut out of advancing in certain areas of the economy, particularly those areas that give them access to real social and economic power.

Ultimately, then, the racist ideology that determined class at the beginnings of African enslavement over 500 years ago persists in form and in institutions that operate in modern-day Caribbean societies. This explains why African culture occupies the lowest level of the class hierarchy followed above by mulattos with Europeans and their culture occupying the highest level of our regional class hierarchy. I suggest that this explains to a large degree why we have failed to effectively monetize our music and our culture to date. I agree with Mr. Golding that the younger generation is not as steeped in prejudice as those of old, but to believe that the prejudices have vanished would be extremely naïve. One love!

Our Business Theory Matters

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 07 Nov 2021 15:00:00 +0000

(First published in the Business section of the Jamaica Monitor October 31, 2021)

I am writing this as a reflection on The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by tech investor and serial entrepreneur Eric Reis. The book was initially published in 2011, and it subsequently spawned what is known as the lean movement. Grounded in consumer feedback, the Lean Startup Method advocates an iterative experimental development of products and services to guard against the inefficient use of capital while it guides innovators and founders to a profitable business model. As The Wharton School associate professor of management Ethan Mollick wrote in a Harvard Business Review piece in 2019 “The Lean Startup approach was an instant hit in Silicon Valley, as startups embraced this new experimental ethos.” He also noted that it quickly became a mainstay of startup accelerators and entrepreneurship classes everywhere. As always, my thinking after encountering these books is what are the lessons and how can they apply to the current Jamaican business context, and how does it feed into what Prime Minister Mia Mottley calls the Atlantic Destiny. I see this, particularly in the broad span of entertainment - which includes media and technology - cultural and creative enterprises. Have we included any element of this operating in our business models?

Image Source: Rodnae Productions, Jamaica Monitor

The Lean Startup, as articulated by Reis, is meant to be a scientific approach to creating and managing startups. It takes its inspiration from the manufacturing methods pioneered by the Toyota Motor Company of Japan, which used those methods to rise to supremacy in the global auto market. Often referred to as the Toyota Production System, these methods have been studied by academics and entrepreneurs whose goals are to find ways of improving production, improving sales, and increasing profits. Lean Manufacturing, as we now know these innovations today, has given birth to the idea of lean thinking, and now Reis’s novel application to the context of the startup. Ideas, then, as Reis demonstrates, are adaptable, and it is for us to decide how we will adapt them.

The argument Reis makes in his book for the Lean Startup Method is compelling, and who knows if any Jamaican startups have in recent times entertained these ideas. The thrust of the method gives a lot of credence to engaging with your customer, finding out what they want, and giving it to them as they want it. Given the experience in the US and specific experiments in Italy on the application of the method, it appears that the Lean Startup Method does improve the rates of startup success. Not all is perfect, however, and Mollick in his piece titled, “What the Lean Startup Method Gets Right and Wrong” helps us by pointing out two potential weaknesses with the method. The first is that it may stymie truly novel innovations because customers often dislike truly innovative ideas at first, and the second is the method does not allow you to ask, “what is your hypothesis about the world based on your unique knowledge and beliefs?” What is it about your idea that makes you special? Mollick asks, therefore, how do we hold on to the good aspects of the method and let go of the bad?

Image Source: Luis Daniel Fonseca

This discussion is one on business strategy, and strategy is a key determinant in Jamaica’s success in the global marketplace. It is in this context therefore that Mollick’s second point crosses with a theme in some of my earlier writings in this medium where I argue for a theory that guides our own business practice. We ought to have the exploration of a set of ideas that guide how we navigate this global context. I am of the view that given our own historical circumstances that the evolution of a theory of business in our space should not be left to chance.

In his article, Mollick points us to a 2018 Harvard Business Review piece titled, “Strategy for Startups” by Joshua Gans, Erin L. Scott, and Scott Stern that draws on corporate strategy research to make the case that founders should start with a “strategy - a theory about why your company is going to win”, which then informs the choices the founders make in building their business. As Mollick suggests, this is an expansion upon the Lean Method, which he thinks has the potential to better the success rate of evidence-based startups. This I hope is our objective in Jamaica as well, to better the success rate of our new businesses. My question, therefore, is should we not also consider what is our theory around our own business practices?

As we seek to encourage the creation and expansion of innovative entertainment, cultural and creative businesses, what processes, or methods can we adapt to lead us along the route of successful commercialization? Do we just wing it - “just do it” as Nike says - or are we going to devise, or perhaps uncover given some of our entertainment business successes, a replicable and efficient method that works for us? The Lean Method has been taken on in many countries, and could it be that the method could be improved with our own insights and used in helping some of our newer entertainment, culture, and creative entrepreneurs succeed. I leave it to our academics, our think tanks, and business associations to engage these issues. One love!

The Entrepreneurial Legacy of the Marcus Garvey Movement

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 24 Oct 2021 14:00:00 +0000

(First published in the Business section of the Jamaica Monitor October 17, 2021)

As we reflect on our heroes, I wish to reflect on some of the ideas of The Right Excellent Marcus Mosiah Garvey. I feel that we have betrayed much of Garvey’s legacy to this nation and the African diaspora for which he so tirelessly advocated. Nevertheless, his work will live on, if only because it speaks truth to so many people outside of the island of Jamaica, and that he inspired so many leaders on the African continent itself, to the point of these ideas being foundational to nations and by extension the African Union. But, beyond this, Marcus Garvey shared with us some timeless thoughts on the philosophy of wealth and the role of enterprise within the modern nation state. It is those ideas to which I draw your attention.

Garvey’s ideas on entrepreneurship and cultural enterprise have relevance as tools of economic empowerment in the present, given the socio-cultural and economic history of Africa and its Diaspora. His approach was one that emphasized the importance of us participating at the highest levels in our own integration into a globally integrated capitalist economic structure on our own terms. Unfortunately, we have failed to direct the terms of our participation in this global structure. The price of this is high, and we see the laments daily, from as far back as 2010 The Jamaica Observer carried an article titled, “Jamaica losing its grip on Reggae – Culture Minister”. Talk about losing an industry. Garvey, alongside his program for social and political empowerment for the disenfranchised African people for whom he advocated was very clear that to address these needs, we, African people, would also need a consistent program of capital accumulation, because we exist in a capitalist economic structure.

Source: National Library of Jamaica Collection

Ken Jones, in his book Marcus Garvey Said..., shared with us some gems from several writings and speeches of Marcus Garvey. These are helpful to give greater insight into the thinking behind the business achievements of the movement.

In one 1919 speech to the African American community, Garvey said [I have changed Negro to African throughout], “If we are to rise as a great ... national force we must start business enterprises of our own; we must build ships and start trading with ourselves between America, the West Indies and Africa. We must put up factories in all great manufacturing centers of this country, to give employment to the thousands of men and women ... we must manufacture boots, clothing and those things that people need, not only our people in America, the West Indies and Africa, but the people of China ... India ... South and Central America, and even the white man. He has for hundreds of years made a market for his goods among Africans ... therefore, Africans have the same right to make a market among white people for his manufactured goods.”

These are visions of big business. I contend that small business and a hustle are good, it's often where you start, but growing to a big business is the power to make the world you want to see. This is Garvey’s legacy of how to achieve agency and power for ourselves. So, forgive my disappointment that a knackered Garvey bust sits on the premises of the Small Business Association of Jamaica, while I wonder if his ideas guide the associations for Jamaican big business.

Source: Sandra Crawford Photo, Google Maps

Garvey set his sights on addressing our lack of agency and power. At the peak of his movement, Garvey could boast the establishment of some economic institutions that served its membership and the wider community, namely: clothing factories, doll making factories, a hotel, a chain of grocery stores, their own trucking company, schools, restaurants, their own printing press, newspapers published in English, Spanish and French, a commercial shipping line, and office buildings and other real estate. These businesses employed thousands of people. Individual members were also among the business owing community or were inspired to start their own businesses because of this movement. From the perspective of the operation and encouragement of business enterprises therefore, there remains quite a bit of evidence to substantiate the economic emphasis of Garvey’s people-led development program.

Garvey was never opposed to wealth itself, but rather he was opposed to the injustices that some wealth was used to uphold. On the subject, he wrote, “All wealth is good. God created all wealth and never created poverty… The African must become wealthy; he must become a master of finance, a captain of industry, a director of science and art, an exponent of literature; he must develop a concrete philosophy, and with combination of all these he must impress himself... upon the civilization of the world.” And, I think the following quote still rings true, “Be assured of this, that in the African’s rise to wealth will come the adjustment of most of the wrongs inflicted upon him.” I think that some of these Asian economies could teach us some lessons on this.

Source: National Library of Jamaica Collection

I could be accused of reductionism here because it is true that Garvey was far more complicated than I have been able to detail, but I hope that I have communicated that it is undeniable that as a nation we must revisit some of the lessons of Garvey’s work and how we approach business and commerce. They are not just ends in themselves, but also a means to the end of establishing the nation’s global agency and power among nations and peoples.

Admittedly, I question if there is need to highlight this aspect of Garvey’s work for a newer generation, packaged as “neo-Garveyite” ideas on business, education, technology, and development. At the core, I do not anticipate a change in the objectives, but I do see where there is need for a body of work that speaks specifically to this approach to development for our people in this age. Marcus Garvey was about human advancement, and it is my observation that so, too, are many of us.

Kam-Au Amen has several years of combined industry experience across the areas of business management, brand licensing, media production, and eCommerce. He is a researcher of African and Caribbean entertainment and cultural enterprise management, and is a former Deputy Director of Culture in the Ministry of Culture, Jamaica. He has also served as a member of the Entertainment Advisory Board. He is the conceptualizer and first coordinator of the pioneering BA in Entertainment and Cultural Enterprise Management at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona.

Merchants of Hope: A Theory of Capital Accumulation

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 26 Sep 2021 14:00:00 +0000

(First published in the Business section of the Jamaica Monitor September 19, 2021).

I want to posit that at this conjuncture, as the world-renowned Jamaican-born cultural theorist, Stuart Hall, might have said, that music, sports, and entertainment are a means to an end, the end being political, economic, and social development. Really. What if our leaders were to decide that in this dispensation one of the primary roles our music, sports, and entertainment output will play in service to our development objectives was to be a key vehicle of capital accumulation? This would be awesome, but I can see this notion being dismissed as being vulgar, and perhaps exploitative. I can understand those positions, and I disagree.

Photo credit: Magda Ehlers, Jamaica Monitor

In my commentary titled, “Entertaining Business Champions”, which was published on this platform I spoke to the development of music entertainer Rihanna being officially recognized as a billionaire. I also deliberately referred to sporting legend Earvin “Magic” Johnson and his book 32 Ways to Be a Champion in Business. In some other writings, including my last, I have also referred to the financial accomplishments of Jamaica’s preeminent music entertainer, Bob Marley. While in other fora I have commented on the financial accomplishment of the American entertainer Jay Z. These references, each a case study in their own right, all serve to illustrate a further point that a beginning in music, sports or elsewhere along the entertainment spectrum does not need to be an end in and of itself, but rather a stepping stone to greater financial success. This should in no way negate the desires of those who choose these pursuits as ends in themselves, but what is evident in these fields of endeavor is that financial success, when it comes, may be fleeting and it requires more than the bare minimum preparation and acumen to sustain a talent at a multi-millionaire status as the years go by.

The common thread in the stories of these music artists and sports personalities that I have mentioned above is that they have taken whatever success and cache, not necessarily cash, that they have gained in their field of entertainment endeavor and parlayed/managed that success into other business endeavors that may, or may not, include entertainment or sports, that then generates for them wealth on a sustained basis. These entertainers turned entrepreneurs have built for themselves systems of capital accumulation that in many ways have utilized principles that give deference to their own cultures in ways that other systems of capital accumulation historically have not. It is this process, the practice of a cultural deference, that makes this interesting to me, and makes the thinking about this phenomenon and the pursuit of a theory of capital accumulation for our context that I think has some hope for our collective redemption, and ultimately political, economic, and social development. In a sense then I view these persons as merchants of hope for some of the marginalized.

In Jamaica, I find we are easily mesmerized by the shiny object of influence. And there is no shortage of commentary on the evidence that Jamaica’s music output remains influential in many international markets. Patricia Meschino does this brilliantly in her article “Check out the real situation: Charting reggae's vast influence” published in The Jamaica Observer on Sunday, April 18, 2021, where she traces the influence of Jamaican music in the popular music forms of rap/hip hop, reggaeton, EDM, afrobeats, and even some of what is classified as mainstream pop – as does Michael Veal’s 2007 classic book, titled Dub: Soundscapes and Shattered Songs in Jamaican Reggae. Interestingly, Meschino asks why despite this influence Jamaica and Jamaica’s music does not get the recognition it rightly deserves. This is a fair question. What much of the writings demonstrate is not that Jamaica’s entertainment output is of inferior quality, but that there are other structural issues, that include a lack, or perhaps more accurately, the misallocation of capital - because brand recognition and influence too represent capital - that surrounds Jamaica’s entertainment business, which precludes Jamaicans from gaining a greater share of the larger economic pie.

Dub by Michael Veal

If my theory of capital accumulation is to be proven then it means that Jamaica’s participation must extend beyond elementary business activity in music, sports, and entertainment into wider realms and up the value chain of the entertainment, culture, and creative industries (events and festivals; radio; film, video and photography; television and cable; telecommunications; internet and online media; electronic gaming; publishing and printing; sport and recreation; fashion; cultural and heritage tourism; amusement and theme parks; gaming and wagering; toys and games; commercial art; cuisine and food culture), and any other industry a talent may choose for that matter, by using the recognition or income gained at one level and through better management and deal-making leverage those resources to get to the next level. This means recognizing your value as a culturally determined brand. But, secondly, giving deference to your culture of origin in ways that others cannot. This is important because the deference/respect for your own culture is a critical part of your long-term business success at this conjuncture.

Ajax, Bob Marley, Rastafari and Jamaica’s Apparel Business

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 05 Sep 2021 14:00:00 +0000

(First published in the Business section of the Jamaica Monitor August 29, 2021)

On August 20, 2021 BBC Sport carried a story headlined “Bob Marley and the Tailors – Ajax release Three Little Birds inspired kit”. The story is about one of the Dutch football club’s 2021-22 season jerseys. To quote the story, it says, “The shirt incorporates the colours of the Jamaican flag and features three little birds stitched onto the back - an obvious nod to the Marley track of the same name.”

Source: Ajax Football Club

If you have seen an image of this stitch we will not dwell on the fact that the colours used are actually red, gold and green, and not the black, green and gold that are the colours of the Jamaican flag. Notwithanding, I want to direct your attention to the association in the international mind. It is this association, and perception, that is the real space in which our outward looking businesses must function, and we can either use it to our advantage or lose such opportunities.

Source: Ajax Football Club

Jamaica’s popular Rastafari cultural expression has opened and shaped a world for us that we can either step into, or as we have seen in so many other instances, allow it to be taken over by devotees elsewhere who have advanced the message of one love, the faith in Jah, the ital food, the dress, the community, the commerce and the liviti in ways that marvel Jamaicans when they travel and encounter their own culture in these foreign lands.

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A post shared by AFC Ajax (@afcajax)

A question then is why can’t this same effect be realized at home, in Jamaica? Who are the people engaging with the elements of Jamaican culture abroad, and why can’t we have them engage in this way on the island where more Jamaicans could benefit? What are the mechanisms that are at play? How can we recreate them? In one sense, I know that there is not a shortage of people who are willing and able to help, but that a significant part of the challenge is figuring out how to get out of our own way. On the surface of it I can say that we are burdened with old racist and classist ideas that simply cannot serve us in this dispensation. More specifically, when considering this sporting example, I am asking with our sporting tradition, when will we have our own sporting brand?

Source: Adidas

We have served Nike, Adidas and Puma well, and they have helped us too, but it is time for our own, because there is a global market there that wants the apparel that we can organize to deliver. And, if we can organize the investors and a team to do it and the brand is not willing to embrace our Rastafari heritage, then I am willing to go out on a limb and say it will be dead on arrival, or soon thereafter.

The lukewarm embrace of our Jamaican identity has been the approach of corporate and monied Jamaica, because we have been schooled for decades to learn that everything about that identity, us and our person is wrong, beginning with our language and speech, our hair, our aesthetic, and our values. Nevertheless, it has been slowly changing because more and more Jamaican businesses are discovering that a measured embrace of Jamaicaness is a way to unlock value – money. I am optimistic, and I feel it will continue to shift along that trajectory as we begin to discover more and more where the real gold in our economy lays. If you ever wondered what the late Professor Rex Nettleford meant when he said that every Jamaican is a Rasta, mine is a new interpretation for you. It is in fact who we are, and it is the way the world sees us. The group Morgan Heritage sang for us, “yu doan affi dred to bi Rasta” so if you find that you don’t have locks then there is no need to worry, just learn to embrace it, because it is not going away.

One thing this whole episode says to me is we need to reimagine our athletic and sporting apparel and think differently about its role in our global involvement. In the same manner that we represent at the sporting table we should think differently about an involvement in the apparel businesses over the long-term. After all, the plan I expect is to be in this sporting spotlight for generations. Having established this then, Jamaica’s apparel must have life in the market before, during and after sporting events. The question that preoccupies me is not if this can be achieved, but how can this be achieved? Additionally, this Ajax football club development has raised in my mind questions about how we in Jamaica engage fans, both local and international. Are we actively cultivating them? Are we producing merchandise and content to satisfy their needs, both those they have and those they do not yet know that they have?

This brings me to the point that triggered me to write this commentary in the first place. BBC Sport’s Facebook account shared the link to their story saying, “It caused their website to crash [exploding head emoji] 🤯.” Do we appreciate what it means when demand for what you offer brings about a website crash? Jamaica’s Bob Marley, the Rastafarian, dead since 1981, and who still grosses an average income of USD$20m each year brought about a website crash of this “Dutch super-power” football team. Maybe we should think twice about what we have been doing since 1981. Let that sink in.

Entertaining Business Champions

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 29 Aug 2021 14:00:00 +0000

(First published in the Business section of the Jamaica Monitor August 22, 2021)

On August 4, 2021, Forbes magazine published that the Caribbean-born entertainer Rihanna is now officially a billionaire. How did that happen? Is there a management formula that is available to others to recreate that success? There is little doubt that advances in this direction by more of our citizens would be welcome, but I am mindful that progress along this path is constrained by the fact that such advances need the right skill sets, and substantial institutional and economic support. These are often dictated by politics, economics, and history, and the lingering institutions and agencies that continue to weigh on the arrangements of the present. Worse, this is perhaps not even the conversation to have during this COVID-19 pandemic, since when we layer the challenges of leadership on top of these constraints, we find ourselves in a dire state. But our history as formerly enslaved African people in the Caribbean has been one of hope, one of slow steady progress, even if many times we find that that progress is too slow, but it leaves us with the assurance that this, too, will pass; we are the survivors. So, we cannot afford to end necessary conversations, or not make plans for where we wish to be even amid tragedy.

Image: Illustration by Viktor Miller-Gausa for Forbes

The story on Rihanna by Madeline Berg in Forbes magazine intrigued me for the questions it raises for our engagement with the global entertainment business. The story used the subheading, “How the singer became the richest female musician on the planet. Hint: It wasn’t from performing.” And, perhaps, because it affirmed a model, I have written about since, at least, 2009, as a path that some of our more established figures, in both music and sports, should consider as a way to build their businesses. These writings are still accessible throughout this personal blog, where I wrote on figures like Bob Marley, Levi Roots, Usain Bolt, and a few other Jamaican brands. Not understanding that acquiring stardom leads in parallel to the creation of a brand is a cardinal oversight and, further, not assembling the right team to help the talent figure out how to extract value from the brand is almost criminal. The case of Rihanna speaks for itself.

One question that comes immediately to mind is, what are the implications of this news on business practice in the Caribbean? Depending on how you look at it, entertainment and sports can open up the world of business opportunities for those who are given to pursuing these paths. That much should at least be clear. It is not just a place for the ne’er-do-wells or school dropouts, but equally a place for some of our brightest formally educated minds. My hope is that more of us will move to take advantage of these opportunities when they arise. The article tells us that Rihanna has not “released a new album since 2016’s Anti.” And, that approximately only two percent (2%) of her estimated wealth is directly attributed to her music practice. In other words, ninety-eight percent (98%) of her now USD $1.7 billion wealth comes from the other businesses she has parlayed her fame and fortune into – Fenty Beauty (an estimated $1.4b) and Savage x Fenty ($270m). CR Fashion Book's writer Lauryn Jiles dives more into Rihanna's portfolio in her feature titled "Rihanna is Officially a Billionaire".

Photo: Caroline McCredie, Getty Images

This should be sobering and should give our entertainment and culture stars and entrepreneurs something to think about. It may mean that the emphasis should not only be on art, artist, and talent development (what mercifully little we currently support formally), but that we also need to look at the capacity to build out businesses from our art, artists, and talents as well. Scholar Christiaan De Balker reminds us that “culture is the core of the entertainment trades” and so if we are going to get serious about doing better in the global entertainment business, we are going to have to give more formal support to preparation and training to attain these levels of success for more of our own icons, which also means the financial training and exposure as well. These are entertainment business deals engineered by finance professionals. There is no doubt in my mind that this has business practice implications, but also government policy implications.

Rihanna is but the latest I hope can serve us. Earvin “Magic” Johnson in the book 32 Ways to Be a Champion in Business writes, “you have to know what is attainable before you can decide what it is you want”. He made the statement in the context of him attending a party on one of the boats of Micky Arison the then chairman and CEO of Carnival Cruise Lines. This was his way of pointing out the lack of sufficient examples of huge economic success within Black communities in the United States, but the example can also serve the wider African diaspora, and more specifically for the small audience for whom I write. It remains a challenge for many of us to envision alternative realities because many of us simply do not get close enough to huge wealth and opulence. Of course, there are those among us who would perhaps dismiss these levels of wealth as obscene, and not worthy of our aspirations, but that approach is tantamount to us looking away and doing nothing in the face of a fast-approaching relegation to irrelevance, squalor, and mediocrity if we fail to respond appropriately. It is either a welcoming of defeat or a surrender to individual comfort, which by any metric is a loss.

The Business of Tech and the Sound System

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 01 Aug 2021 14:00:00 +0000

(First published in the Business section of the Jamaica Monitor July 25, 2021)

A few days ago, we saw the conclusion of the seventh Sound System Outernational (SSO) academic conference, titled Sound Systems at the Crossroads. Owing to Covid-19 this staging of the conference ran for six days online. This is a project of the University of London’s Goldsmiths College, headed up by one of my former graduate work supervisors, Professor Julian Henriques. Imagine that though, a full-blown sound system conference with academic presentations, documentaries and film shorts, and sound system sessions with DJs and sounds from Brazil, Mexico, Columbia, South Africa, Italy, the UK, and more. Is there anyone missing? Jamaica was front and center for sure, but again it was about paying respects for its gifts, not about anything of economic or financial significance.

Image Source: Sound System Festival Instagram

Professor Carolyn Cooper did a very good write-up ahead of the conference in an article titled, "University of London promoting sound systems" in The Jamaica Gleaner that I recommend you read. Her argument sheds some light on why all this global respect, admiration, and imitation of the economic (for non-Jamaicans) and cultural force that is Jamaica fails to translate to more than big-ups. She pointed out that, "the Jamaican elite devalue the mother language of the majority of citizens in much the same way that they diss sound systems. I suppose we need a Jamaican Language Outernational project, supported by a foreign university, to force us to honour fi wi culture, fi wi knowledge an fi wi identity." In other words, we strongly dislike who and what a majority of us are, and we want to sanitize ourselves. "Elite" as referred to by prof Cooper should not be read to mean descendants of those who use to rule. Today, many of them look like those who were enslaved because it is not purely about color, rather it is a way of thinking.

One of the benefits of having lived outside of Jamaica is you develop a comparative lens through which you begin to examine your present and past lived experiences. It is an immensely valuable tool. I am a big advocate of traveling as a part of an overall education process. Not only is it about seeing how other people do things, but it is also about learning to appreciate what you have. Many life expressions from Jamaica, namely, reggae, dancehall, dub, ska, the sound system, Patwa, Garveyite and Rastafari philosophy, food, and so on have become the “luxury” good, the aspirational product or brand, the Gucci, the Louis Vuitton, the Range Rover, Mercedes Benz, etcetera of world popular culture. If only we truly understood this.

I see that this past week the government showcased some Jamaicans in the business of technology, which is a worthy project, but I couldn’t but wonder if we aren’t losing a massive opportunity to play to our own strengths in technology by launching from a base of our innovations in sound system technology. The sound system is a product of modern electronic technology, developed on the island of Jamaica. The study and mastery of sonic and related entertainment technology are not fields we would be woefully ill-equipped for. We have been unrivaled authorities to some extent, though we may be losing that authority.

Image Source: Sound System Addict Instagram

In my conversation with prof Cooper ahead of the keynote presentation that she delivered at the SSO conference I raised some points that she picked up on. I told her that I think one goal of Jamaican music entrepreneurs in this new era should be scaling the sound system segment of our culture as businesses beyond the individual or small group into streamlined manufacturing operations. These operators should be holding trademarks for sound system brands and marketing merchandise, and, also holding patents as pertains to the creation and manufacturing know-how of sound systems. We should aim to have a vibrant global operation to build and consult on building and operating sound systems as streamlined operations.

These are the demands of the modern world for which we must prepare physicists, sound engineers, industrial designers, marketing managers, and business leaders. Recall Patricia Meschino’s article "Check out the real situation: Charting reggae's vast influence", published in The Jamaica Observer on April 18, 2021, in which she argued that Jamaica should embrace technology and other sectors in the country to monetize Jamaica’s vast music influence, and I am in agreement with her. To date, we have been using an outlook that has not facilitated a more seamless integration into a globally integrated capitalist economic structure on our own terms and I fear we are now experiencing the consequences.

Unfortunately for us, it appears that we are blind to this world of our technological genius and are sadly consumed by what David Schwartz in his book, The Magic of Thinking Big, describes as a “greed that is blind to the how of making money.” To explain, it is a greed that is in the perpetual pursuit of money but lacks the higher understanding of how the system works, a lack of understanding that meaningful economic wealth comes from a full embrace of yourself, your identity, and your humanity. Learn to embrace your culture and what you have here at home and the wealth you so desperately seek will find its way to you naturally.

Kam-Au Amen has several years of combined industry experience across the areas of business management, brand licensing, media production, and eCommerce. He is a researcher of African and Caribbean entertainment and cultural enterprise management and is a former Deputy Director of Culture in the Ministry of Culture, Jamaica. He has also served as a member of the Entertainment Advisory Board. He is the conceptualizer and first coordinator of the pioneering BA in Entertainment and Cultural Enterprise Management at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona.

Jamaica the Cultural Superstate: In Search of Business Leaders

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 18 Jul 2021 14:00:00 +0000

(First published in the Business section of the Jamaica Monitor July 11, 2021)

The philosophical framework I take to my writing and my work is Garveyite philosophy, the ideas and ideals espoused by Marcus Garvey. I have challenged myself to demonstrate the relevance of this philosophical perspective to the contemporary business context. The breadth of Garvey’s own writings and the manifest achievements of his movement make his ideas a rich source upon which I can draw.

On May 14, 2021, Smithsonian professor, Kenneth Bilby, delivered the sixth annual Faculty of Humanities and Education, University of the West Indies, Mona Distinguished Lecture titled “Jamaican Music at Home and Abroad: Keeping the Circuits Grounded.”

Source: Faculty of Humanities and Education, UWI, Mona, Jamaica

Professor Bilby underscored the global impact and reach of Jamaica’s music and culture. To hear him say that reggae was sung in over 200 languages was a shocking metric. Further, he shared that there are over 4,000 performers, excluding Jamaicans, for whom reggae is their primary genre or a major part of their repertoire.

Attending Rototom Reggae Festival in Spain in 2018 was a major eye-opener as in the near 250,000 crowd there were hardly any Black folks and scarcely any Jamaicans apart from the performers. Rototom’s media kit statistics touts this number, in addition to pointing out that for the eight days there were attendees from over 80 countries. So, in all this, it was a disappointment to me that no Jamaican government entity was represented. We should target these spaces to market Jamaica. My hope is that in short order our strategies will change in our approach to these avenues.

Source: Personal Collection, Rototom Sunsplash 2018

While the historical reality may be that our tourism did not begin with the objective of showcasing and integrating our people and our culture into the vacation experience, there is no reason for that ideological approach to be continued. Just visit one of these reggae festivals outside of Jamaica and you quickly realize where the real money earner lies in our tourism offering. I am among the first to admit to the beauty of the land, but the land is immaterial to the reggae festival goer in Europe, the Americas, Africa, Asia or Oceania. The Jamaican culture and the experience are all they are paying for, and Jamaica is benefitting next to nothing from those funds. Do we know those 200 languages in which reggae is sung? Do we care? How many of those 4,000 performers and their fans make it to Jamaica for a reggae experience? Do we even want them here? These are the questions to be answered.

The 2003 culture policy titled “Towards Jamaica the Cultural Superstate” might be described as hubris, bombastic, and perhaps even unrealistic, but it was attempting to communicate something to an establishment that desperately needed to hear of the opportunities that lay outside for Jamaica in the wider world. I am disappointed that the objectives of the policy failed to energize the Jamaican business and entrepreneurial community in a way that would encourage them to get involved in the production of events that would attract the kind of global reggae consumers willing to pay for the kinds of watered-down (“mimicked”) Jamaican experiences they get outside of Jamaica that they so desperately want from inside Jamaica.

My lament, and perhaps my mission, given that I see that those who have the resources and the power to enable that transformation at home just do not understand the wealth at their feet, is to share this perspective that what we have is enough, who we are is enough, to earn us what we need, if only we fully believed in ourselves. If it sounds familiar it is because you already know it, if you are Jamaican, you have heard words to this effect, “if you have no confidence in self you are twice defeated in the race of life, with confidence you have won before you have even begun”. These are the words of Marcus Garvey, whose ideas I maintain are seminal for contemporary globally impacting Jamaican businesses to follow in the footsteps of our music, food, and Rastafari cultural sensibilities. Garvey is also noted as saying, “the African must become wealthy; he must become a master of finance, a captain of industry, a director of science and art, an exponent of literature; he must develop a concrete philosophy, and with a combination of all these he must impress himself... upon the civilization of the world.” We have begun an enterprise-building process that new business and culture leaders, a new conscious capital understanding leadership, must emerge to complete.

Source: Personal Collection, Rototom Sunsplash 2018

I think Jamaica’s business and economic opportunities lay within Jamaica’s entertainment, culture, and creative sectors. My particular interest is to get conscious, preferably Garveyite entrepreneurs, engaged in the process of economic expansion and institution building within our polity that can facilitate this kind of economic expansion. It is possible that it will take less of a focus on government policy in the initial stages, and to, instead, focus on direct business building and matters of sustainability within the businesses themselves. It is the kind of expansion the studios never really did or managed to achieve.

VP Records stands as an exception. The company moved from Kingston to New York and remains a player in the distribution of our music. But even VP is a small player in relative terms. The truth is we should have had several more VPs, based in Jamaica with branches internationally. Jamaica should have been playing an active role in the emergence of afrobeats and other music and culture businesses out of Africa, but we never really embraced this Garveyite vision.

I think Bob Marley saw it; his business moves suggest this. He was beginning to understand what was emerging. Is this also a factor in the mystique that surrounds him? Philosophy and ideology do not earn you cash, but it is foolish to think you will successfully build or keep what you earn without one that guides you along that path.

Kam-Au Amen has several years of combined industry experience across the areas of business management, brand licensing, media production, and eCommerce. He is a researcher of African and Caribbean entertainment and cultural enterprise management, and is a former deputy director of culture in the Ministry of Culture, Jamaica. He has also served a member of the Entertainment Advisory Board. He is the conceptualizer and first coordinator of the pioneering BA in Entertainment and Cultural Enterprise Management at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona.

The J’ouvert Bacchanal

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 04 Jul 2021 14:00:00 +0000

(First published in the Business section of the Jamaica Monitor June 27, 2021)

This past week my social media timeline got hit a few times with the story coming out of Trinidad and Tobago of Michael B Jordan, of the Black Panther film fame, and his recent “ownership” of the trademark “J’Ouvert”, an ownership acquired, at least in the United States of America by virtue of its registration with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Jordan has been accused of cultural appropriation. I looked at the registration myself, and excluding attorney fees, ownership of the name in the single class for which he is said to apply in September 2020, it likely cost him $350 USD for a standard registration. Barring any objections that require further legal intervention, his financial obligations to the US government as far as acquiring and maintaining the name he hoped to build into an alcohol brand would have been negligible, possibly $525 USD payable in the next ten years. It doesn’t seem like a bad investment considering what he could earn from it. Isn’t it amazing how inexpensively one could lose “ownership” of a part of one’s heritage? Some of my Trinbagonian friends are upset, and I understand completely.

Source: Screenshot Michael B Jordan's Girlfriend, Instagram Stories

As a result of public outcry, not least of which from Nicky Minaj herself, the poor unlucky soul as I imagine one former colleague professor of mine saying, get ketch, and Jordan by Wednesday morning had issued an apology and stated that he will no longer be using this name in this fashion. Jordan is indeed unlucky, because from the information I have seen on the registration of “J’ouvert” on the website of the USPTO, there have been at least five such registrations for use in commerce, from as early as February 2006. The listings use the term “J’ouvert” or “Jouvert”. Perhaps to the pleasure of my Trinbagonian friends three of them are now listed as dead, meaning they were once in use in commerce but for some reason the owners have abandoned their use.

Of all the registrants only one was from the Caribbean, and that entity gives a Barbados address, and they used their registration to brand air fresheners. The other trademark registrants including Jordan’s registration hail from Florida, New York, California and Texas. Some of these owners may, in fact, have been from the Caribbean, I am not able to tell from the information given, but they represent an interesting business mix to apply the brand “J’ouvert”. Their businesses included an entertainment event, audiovisual recordings and digital media, and restaurant and bar services in addition to those I mentioned above. So, from all indications Jordan’s high profile meant that he was just the poor unlucky soul who would ketch hell for doing what others have done and got away with undetected. And, there is no question that him being an American is a factor for the claim of cultural appropriation.

Source: Michael B Jordan, Instagram

One might ask then, why are these types of trademark applications happening outside of the countries of origin? Why is it taking diaspora residents or foreigners to recognize and seize upon some of these commercial opportunities that our cultures in the Caribbean possess? This week it was Trinidad and Tobago, but those of us from Jamaica are also familiar with this story. I wonder how many of these trademark applications have been attempted in the Caribbean, and if the applications were made, would they have been granted? I won’t attempt to answer these questions here since I’m not a lawyer, and I do not wish to be seen as giving legal advice. I have a fair idea of where this discussion could go, and I think the whole situation opens the space for conversations we should be having about the future of our cultures, from a business perspective, here in the Caribbean.

In my view there are two fronts on which we could approach situations like these, on the offensive and on the defensive. I have no doubt that we ought to be putting out products and services branded with names that matter to us, while we also proactively protect against the exploitation of names and brands that are sacred to our cultural spaces. Entertainment and sport attorney, Carla Parris, executive producer of “The Business of Carnival”, offered us some sound insight that might be useful in helping to prevent another case of this kind of cultural exploitation, since Jordan has at this point promised that he will not go forward with the name “J’Ouvert”. First, she argues that we proactively object to these applications on the grounds of cultural appropriation and cites examples, and second, she argues for greater discussion on the area of “Traditional Cultural Expressions and Traditional Knowledge (TCEs)” within the Caribbean. No doubt these are discussions that cannot happen soon enough, we all need to know more.

Source: Carla Parris, Facebook

Carla Parris has some very good advice for businesses in the Caribbean that I would commend to business owners here in Jamaica. She suggests that before you market your goods and services you conduct an intellectual property (IP) audit and seek the services of a qualified IP attorney if you need the help. Take heed. When you compare the financial outlay I mentioned above to what you may be called to lay out in defense of a brand under challenge, you may be pleasantly surprised.

Kam-Au Amen has several years of combined industry experience across the areas of business management, brand licensing, media production, and eCommerce. He is a researcher of African and Caribbean entertainment and cultural enterprise management, and is a former Deputy Director of Culture in the Ministry of Culture, Jamaica. He has also served a member of the Entertainment Advisory Board. He is the conceptualizer and first coordinator of the pioneering BA in Entertainment and Cultural Enterprise Management at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona.

Overcoming Low Economic Expectations

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 20 Jun 2021 14:00:00 +0000

(First published in the Business section of the Jamaica Monitor June 13, 2021)

While some of us have high expectations, some simply do not, and are possibly even satisfied with low expectations. The book Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty, by economics professors Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo got me thinking about this. This is not a new book; it was originally published in 2011, and it won the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award, as well as being the Financial Times Business Book of the Year. In the book, they shared a story that is worth repeating.

Source: Bank of Jamaica

Banerjee and Duflo recount an attempt to reorganize the teaching in a Kenyan school, taking advantage of an extra teacher to divide the classes into two. Each class was separated by prior achievement to help each student learn what they did not yet know. Teachers were then randomly assigned to the top or the bottom track by a public lottery. The teachers who lost and were assigned to the bottom track got upset by their assignment, claiming that they would not get anything out of teaching, and that they would be blamed for their students' low scores. Not surprisingly, the teachers adjusted their behavior accordingly. The authors recount that in random visits, the teachers who were assigned to the bottom track were less likely to teach and were more likely to be having tea in the teacher’s room. If this sounds familiar to you, it probably is. Some of us don’t expect much from poor-performing children, and so we treat them accordingly. But is the problem the poor performing child/student, or is the problem the adult/teacher and their programmed expectations? This is a serious question. Maybe it is that those who are in charge have low expectations of the powerhouse each of their charges could become; it is possible that one of those struggling students could become the next magnate, scientist, or minister of government. No one wins here. Life is replete with examples that prove that humans are often wrong with our limiting expectations.

Source: PublicAffairs, a Member of the Perseus Books Group

As someone who has an enduring passion for the creation and growth of businesses across the entertainment, culture, and creative industry (ECCI) sectors I found myself turning the story around to ask what are the expeditions we have of ordinary Jamaicans, who have roots in the cane piece, to evoke the spirit of departed professor Rex Nettleford, and their ability to function at the highest levels of business? Do we have expectations that they will manage, and not only manage, but thrive? What level of trust does our society demonstrate? Given some of the processes we put our fellow citizens through to access a business loan, or a mortgage for that matter, it is probably a very low level of trust when measured. Are we asking if our business processes are unduly onerous? And, are some of our financial institutions looking into ways that we can make these processes more dignified (or even just “first world”) and suitable for robust commerce built on mutual trust? I am not saying that due process and caution should be thrown away, far from it, but many of us know that some of the processes need not be so demanding/demeaning in 2021.

In 2007, I was a part of a team that worked on a Creative Industries Development Plan for JAMPRO under the leadership of DPM International Limited. On the team we had economist Dr Kadamawe K’nIfe and at the time banker Beresford Grey, who later went on to co-found the Sygnus Group, in which Sygnus Credit Investments has been highly profitable (this past May they reported an 80% jump in net profits in that unit). One of the key points coming out of the plan was an examination of the linkages from the ECCIs with the traditional manufacturing, trading, and established service businesses. One of our challenges, it appears, was to treat the commercial possibilities of the ECCIs with the same level of seriousness as we treat traditional businesses like an ice cream manufacturer, a wholesaler, or a small hotel operator. Significantly, then, one of the calls of the development plan was facilitating financial options for ECCI enterprises. This is something we are still struggling with today. I include this to make the point that we have had some of the brilliant minds of my generation apply themselves to putting forward solutions that are workable, yet their ideas get shelved. What accounts for that? But the track record of the Sygnus Group and what they do now exists objectively for all to see. [When the opportunity presents itself, many among us are fully capable of surpassing any limiting expectations that had no place in the picture.]

Source: Private collection

My use of ECCI refers to businesses in the sectors of music; events and festivals; radio; film, video, and photography; television and cable; telecommunications; internet and online media; electronic gaming; publishing and printing; sport and recreation; fashion; cultural and heritage tourism; amusement and theme parks; gaming and wagering; toys and games; performing arts; commercial art; cuisine and food culture. All in some way rely on, or trade on, some aspect of the Jamaican culture or our intellectual property for its sustenance. They sectors are not in every way discreet; a few functions overlap, but this structure helps in outlining what businesses we are talking about and how we might begin to organize them, particularly as we begin to dive deeper into how we can finance them in this technologized and globalized context. In this context, finance needs to understand what entertainers, artists, and other creatives are going on about, and so whatever we can do to simplify and cut through the esoteric, the greater the chances of bridging the gap of understanding in order that we can build trust and defy the low expectations.

One love, and what I choose to call “One Love, Inc.,” is an unbelievable economic platform on which to reshape the economics of this country if we choose that path. Individual Jamaicans, world famous or not, have demonstrated that we are capable of greatness; it is within us. Let us expect more and reshape our institutions to deliver on those high economic expectations.

Kam-Au Amen has several years of combined industry experience across the areas of business management, brand licensing, media production, and eCommerce. He is a researcher of African and Caribbean entertainment and cultural enterprise management, and is a former Deputy Director of Culture in the Ministry of Culture, Jamaica. He has also served a member of the Entertainment Advisory Board. He is the conceptualizer and first coordinator of the pioneering BA in Entertainment and Cultural Enterprise Management at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona.

The Business of One Love

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 13 Jun 2021 14:00:00 +0000

(First published in the Business section of the Jamaica Monitor in two parts - May 30, 2021 and June 6, 2021)

The poet Mutabaruka would often say on his Cutting Edge radio show, “The only way to defeat the other culture is to live your culture”, and that stuck with me. If you understand this simple statement, then you understand much about the politics of Mutabaruka and the message he has spent his life communicating to African people, and Jamaicans in particular. The saying comes from a long tradition of resistance to any oppressive idea, the metaphoric Babylon, that what we have or who we are is not enough and not worthy of respect or value. This tradition of positive reaffirmation of our own African diaspora identity, the validation of self and self-worth, has given to us, the lucky ones, the wholesome tradition of “one love”.

Jamaica’s worldview, music, language, food, Rastafari politics, aesthetics, and iconography have become a chosen medium of cultural expression in several international spaces. Indeed, the Jamaican notion of “one love” was immortalized by The Wailers group in their 1965 One Love ska recording and later re-released as a reggae recording by the “one love” ambassador himself, “Bob” Marley, who included the song on his 1977 Exodus album, is the song that was in the year 2000 selected by the BBC as the song of the century, as by then it demonstrated in no uncertain terms the global impact of Jamaica’s liviti – Jamaica’s wholesome “one love” was then acknowledged as unquestionably universal.

Source: The Voice promotional video September 2020, NBC Universal

I tried, sometime in January 2021, to trace the origin of the use of the term “one love”, to ascertain at what point, and perhaps for what specific reason the term was coined. I was unsuccessful. But, regardless of its origins, there is no question that we Jamaicans have made it our own and, subsequently, gave it to the world. The popular Jamaican term was internationalized by Bob Marley, he did not create it. I came across sources that claim that it was actually used by Marcus Garvey, and there were some that suggested that it might have come from his movement’s motto “One God, One Aim, One Destiny”, but I have not seen anything authoritative that confirms any of this as its origin.

On this question, a colleague of mine, Dr. Jalani Niaah, highlighted that the Rasta brejrin who were in the circle of Rasta leader Mortimo Planno often used the signature term, “one perfect love”, and that this would have influenced songs in the 1960s. Bob Marley would have been one of those who would have been under Planno’s influence as Planno was to serve as Marley’s manager and spiritual guide for several years. One other brejrin, Ras Kaimoh, communicated to me that, when he “arrived in Jamaica in January of 1970, the terms “one love” and “one heart” were common sounds—sometimes used as a greeting—heard to affirm solidarity in various kinds of social exchanges among bredrin and sistren.” Professor Rupert Lewis did point me to a 1971 publication titled One Love by Audvil King, Althea Helps, Pam Wint, and Frank Hasfal which was a collection of prose literary writings by four Jamaican authors. The publication is now out of print, so I was not able to dig in and see what might have influenced them to go with that title. So, at this point then, I still do not know the origins of the term. Maybe it is that this writing will encourage someone to contact me with some information that may lead me closer to an answer.

Source: Bogle-L'Overture Publications (BLP)

Notwithstanding, what I wish to assert is that the phenomenon of “one love” sits at the core of an industry, in the technically productive commercial enterprise sense of the word. One in which Jamaica and its culture sit at the center if we can organize some of our key business enterprises to capitalize on the opportunity. Informally, I have used the expression “one love culture” among my peers as I seek to describe the essence of what the Jamaican resistance culture represents to the world. It is my attempt to describe the cultural and economic space that emerged from the liviti, the daily living of our culture, that is our own and is globally recognized as our own, even if we are reluctant to claim it. Bob Marley may have been the chief apostle, but it now rests with each Jamaican to make manifest the message of one love, this is indeed the world that Jamaica made. It comes from within us. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, the “one love” culture is informed by a Jamaican worldview, music, spirituality, food, language, lifestyle, history, and politics. And though each of these is a sacred aspect of our being, with its own existence despite the world of business and commerce, they also represent viable commercial opportunities that can help to sustain and perpetuate them on their own terms, the “live your culture” of Mutabaruka’s advice, if you will.

In my last reasoning, published 16 May 2021 here in the Jamaica Monitor, we questioned why after 40 years Bob Marley’s brand was able to command the kind of earnings it now does. The fact is that the Marley brand answers to a need that customers have. And it is not just Marley the individual who addresses the need, but also the message of the music of an era coming out of Jamaica, that spoke to struggles, triumphs, hopes, and dreams, not only along racial but also class lines, of which the latter was particularly important to white audiences who did not readily identify with some of the racial references. So, Marley’s music, therefore, served as an opening to the Jamaican worldview for whole sets of new audiences, its cultural practices, the Rastafari movement, and Jamaica’s economic arrangements.

Following Marley’s death on 11 May 1981, which we marked a few days ago, his estate has been able to capitalize on the awareness of his music and the messages to supply additional music, merchandise, and other commodities to a market wanting and willing to purchase products that have been shaped by this Jamaican worldview. Branding them as Marley therefore was a natural progression; but, I want to make clear that the culture is not unique to Marley, and that we, too, share in this cultural inheritance from our ancestors. There is nothing that says the Marley representation or expression (excluding the use of his image and name, of course) is the only way to brand Jamaican or Rastafari expressions of the Jamaican culture and liviti. But, having said this, I will say that it pays to understand and respect the branding canons and conventions until you are able to change them.

It must be understood therefore, that when I speak of the “one love” culture and speak of Jamaican music, and the economy that Jamaicans have forged that is our music entertainment industry, I see this as the gateway to a larger economic platform. By larger economic platform I mean the proper integration into the international capitalist structure of manufacturing, production, and exchange where we are not simply marginal consumers and producers, but that we take a greater share of the production of goods and services that purport to be expressions of Jamaican culture. So, a case in point is if some Clarks footwear are to be produced and branded as Jamaican, they could have been done under license from a prominent Jamaican artiste for argument’s sake, so that licensing revenue in the region of 5-10 percent could have been coming to a Jamaican who has a stake in the success of the brand. Then a portion of that 5-10 percent revenue then becomes available for investment in another business, filmmaking maybe, or a new hemp project.

Lest we think this is only about music, it is my hope that one of our top athletes, before the end of their career, begins to conceive of their own athletic line to rival Puma. After all, we also use sporting goods. Of course, these kinds of ambitions have implications for the kinds of contracts they can sign, but that is why we expect that they must also have smart management. There is no question in my mind that one such huge opportunity was missed before, but the future is unknown. What flavor could a Jamaican-themed athletic line add to the world of the Nikes, Adidas, and Pumas of this world? And who doubts that a pan-African brand positioning could not make a significant dent in any of their businesses?

Source: Jamaica Football Federation

You may have seen the story recently of the Bob Marley-inspired jersey leak to fans of the Dutch Ajax Football Club. Fans could not wait to purchase their jersey, and all they had seen were leaked Bob Marley and Rastafari-inspired designs. There are more of these stories, and our culture and our politics are at the center of it – but we are not. We need to figure it out. Hopefully, we have noticed that African music is here, and behind that will be the world of sports and entertainment, complete with a significant portion of fans who want anything Jamaican they can lay their hands on. But which Jamaican businesses and industries, traditional or entertainment-focused, are lining up to serve them?

The forward-thinking leadership at GraceKennedy made the bold leap into Ghana in 2012, distributing “Grace-branded beverages Tropical Rhythms, Mighty Malt, Ginger Beer, along with corned beef, as well as GraceKennedy's range of spices.” This kind of export too in my view falls within my widened scope of what is produced and exported within the realm of a “one love” culture, because of who is doing the branding. Our worldview matters because it impacts paths and outcomes, and so, too, does the language, food, aesthetics, and iconography we employ in deciding what makes the final packaging.

Source: Grace Kennedy & Co Advertising

GraceKennedy has had to adjust its business model since being in Ghana, downsizing its operations due to operational challenges, but they know better than to withdraw. Because they know that West Africa is a market that is coming, it is not in retreat. We and they are what we call emerging markets. And, in emerging markets like Jamaica and West Africa, investors can see far better returns on their investments over time, when compared to the often smaller return that investors would be satisfied within developed markets in the north as a tradeoff for less investment risk.

The “one love” culture of which Jamaica sits at the center is a phenomenal gift bequeathed to this nation by our ancestors. Owed to their struggles and their triumphs, we have a glorious opportunity to conceive and execute our vision of “one love” that lifts us emotionally, spiritually, and economically among mankind. Our investors, business leaders, and our creatives and sports personalities turned investors are being encouraged to help us live our culture in the modern dispensation, and it benefits us all if they share in the vision. One love. One perfect love!

Reasoning Dancehall and Entertainment’s Refusal

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 23 May 2021 14:00:00 +0000

(First published in the Diaspora section of the Jamaica Monitor May 16, 2021)

I was so moved by an article that appeared in the Jamaica Monitor on Sunday, May 5, 2021 that I felt I should chime in on what I think is an interesting start to a conversation. The article was titled, “Jamaican dancehall: The stone the builder refuse[s]”, by Richard Hugh Blackford. I’ll start where Richard ends, which is posing the question, “how can we capitalize on this resource developed largely by people that too many of us would want to identify with only for as long as some of the recordings they make spins on a turntable?” This is a searing indictment on the Jamaican society, and he demonstrates in the article how divided we are by along class lines, by recalling how for years Jamaican music was excluded by polite society and denied air play in the land of its creation.

Image Source: Graphic Artist Sean Iya Henry (Instagram)

There are many studies that have been done in academia, and by state and international agencies, that are aimed at devising development and export strategies that are supposed to help in catapulting Jamaica’s entertainment, culture, and creative output into the international arena, and return to us great economic rewards. Yet, the great economic returns have not materialized for us. But there is one individual who we know serves as an exception, Bob Marley, and that his estate at the very least sees some “great” economic returns. Since 2012, Marley has consistently been ranked by Forbes Magazine in the top six of the world’s highest-paid dead celebrities, grossing an average US$20M each year. This past May 11, 2021 my social media timeline was filled with tributes to his memory on the 40th year of his passing. No less than the BBC made a tribute to him. His legacy is what impact and relevance looks like. We could discuss how Bob Marley’s brand is able to command that kind of earning 40 years after his death, but in my view that would not address the question Blackford posed. Rather, I suggest that the answer to his question lies in politics, and I will show why.

In the book Why Nations Fail, authors Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson argue that nations fail because of politics, that it is the politics of states that determine the institutions that exist and survive within that polity. They explore the division of institutions, inclusive versus extractive institutions, that make up the modern community of states and demonstrate how they function to empower and enrich large majorities of citizens, or the opposite of weakening and keeping in poverty large majorities of citizens, ensuring that the wealth generated within the state benefits only a small elite. This happens, they argue, because of the nature of the institutions the state supports due to the power of various groups in the society, so then, inclusive political institutions will often lead to inclusive economic institutions, while extractive political institutions will generate extractive economic institutions, and relationships, in a vicious circle that perpetuates itself and ensures that those who labor under the extractive institutions will never get out, unless of course, the politics changes to eventually foster inclusive institutions, and its own virtuous circle. It is a simple theory that dismisses arguments that nations fail and economies like ours do badly and remain poor because of geography, culture, or ignorance of economic management.

Publisher: Crown Business, New York, 2012

Using the case of Britain and the circumstances that led to the Industrial Revolution, the authors show how beginning with the Magna Carta in 1215 that set in motion the process of gradually weakening the monarchy, and over time, granting more power to a plurality of groups within the society, that that plurality enabled the slow growth of inclusive (and measured in the first instances) political institutions that only grew in power on the basis of the creative destruction and innovation that they fostered, which are both necessary for the sustainability of inclusive institutions. All this is important to make the point that in Jamaica our institutions, both political and economic, are extractive in nature even if they act inclusive and representational, because real power, which rests with an economic elite, is not interested in the empowerment of these economically marginalized groups, the creators of reggae and dancehall, as Blackford points out in his article. And, why should they be? Acemoglu and Robinson will tell you that there is nothing surprising about this, that it is a fact of history that elites have always been concerned about their own power, and change that weakens their power is not something they readily embrace. Creative destruction and innovation, they show, are often resisted by elites. Elites have always been forced to change, and that is the example of Britain. The institutional changes that brought us this modern capitalist world were products of struggle.

Therefore, we who are members of the entertainment, creative and culture sectors in Jamaican society should not expect that Jamaica’s political and economic institutions will give entertainment what is demands. It is not going to happen. I am of the view that members in these sectors must think seriously about how they will build capital. In this context, capital accumulation is equally a political act, because one of your greatest levers is the wealth you control. So, musicians, filmmakers, performers, managers, event promoters, media owners, attractions and theme park operators, wagering and gaming services, and others, must seek to leverage wealth, and equally seek to have political representation from among themselves. An active role in political institution building is a prerequisite for economic institution building, and it is the state that provides the framework to ensure the viability of these institutions.

It is one of the saddest political miscalculations that the Rastafari movement in Jamaica separated itself from political representation, engaging from a distance. I reckon that if it had not separated itself from either of the two major political parties on its mission for political representation, it would have benefited from having institutions that actively engaged the state to force more inclusive institutions. It is not lost on me that Bob Marley, as an individual, as a Rasta, and as a musician, was aware of the immense political power he had, and attempted to use it to force change for more inclusivity via his peace concert, that too is political engagement, and it is important.

Video Source: Jab Jab Official (Instagram)

If we are serious about the business of entertainment and the economic development of Jamaica, then we will need to “bell the cat” so to speak. There are many numbers that are passed around as to what the entertainment, culture and creative sectors of Jamaica may be worth, and even Blackford includes a number in his article, but those numbers will remain in dispute for a while, because it depends on who is counting and what sectors they choose to include. Yet, there is no question in my mind that to attract the kinds of investment needed to produce the billions we claim to be possible that the state must be forced to incentivize these investments. And, it is going to be through the active political engagement of industry players who stand to profit from these developments who must contest those elites who now command the state to do their bidding to the exclusion of entertainment, culture and creative enterprises.

I am one of those Jamaicans who is saddened that Bob Marley passed when he did, because I strongly doubt that our economy would have been organized in the way it is presently. I am of the view that had he been alive today he would likely be one of the wealthiest among us, sitting on a perch somewhere at the commanding heights of our local economy, because, as we know, he had invested in his own studio, record manufacturing and music distribution businesses well before the millionaire turned billionaire entertainer-entrepreneur of today was in vogue. And he was acutely aware of the nexus between money, politics, and power, and he had the aptitude to navigate it.

Image Source: Sound System Festival (Instagram)

If you are a member of the entertainment, culture and creative sector who is serious about generating wealth and development in a democratic and inclusive society that fosters inclusive economic institutions it would be a smart move to encourage more entertainers turned investors like Marley, particularly as Jamaica struggles to source foreign capital for growth and investment. A vibrant entertainment, culture and creative industry needs a broad coalition of “industrialists”, to borrow an old term, that is, traders, manufacturers, businesspersons, investors, and commercially minded activists to make an industry; an industry that demands and forces change in our political and economic intuitions. But this will not be an easy feat or quick event, rather, it is a process that takes years, and perhaps generations, and hopefully the contingency of history bestows some luck along the way.

Acemoglu and Robinson tell us that extractive institutions do not generate sustained economic growth for two reasons, first, the lack of an economic incentive to do so, and second, the resistance by the elites who will not tolerate creative destruction, that they think will undermine their power within the state. Both of those political factors will have to be overcome if a transformation to inclusive political institutions is to happen, local and international strategy papers notwithstanding. The answer to Blackford’s question of “how” is political engagement.

Kam-Au Amen has several years of combined industry experience across the areas of business management, brand licensing, media production, and eCommerce. He is a researcher of African and Caribbean entertainment and cultural enterprise management, and is a former Deputy Director of Culture in the Ministry of Culture, Jamaica. He has also served a member of the Entertainment Advisory Board. He is the conceptualizer and first coordinator of the pioneering BA in Entertainment and Cultural Enterprise Management at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona.

Dread and Alive: The Patwa Edition

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 03 Mar 2021 23:00:00 +0000

There's a patwa (Jamaican language) edition of this comic in the works, and yours truly is named on the cover. It's a great feeling to be able to join in this effort to promote the empowering strands of Jamaican culture, something I wholeheartedly believe in. Below is a preview of the upcoming comic book cover.

Upcoming Comic Book Cover

Years ago I came across the amazing artwork being done by ZOOLOOK creator Nicholas Da Silva, who used the backdrop of Jamaican culture and heritage to create his comic series Dread & Alive. I first wrote about it in the post "The Dread & Alive Jamaican Comics". Soon after, the creator allowed me to share our first exchange in the post “In the World that Jamaica Made: The Nicholas Da Silva Story”. Since then, I have followed the development of ZOOLOOK’s work.

Fast forward a few years to a few weeks back and I was invited to come onboard to help with the Jamaican patwa that would appear in the February 6, 2021 issue that was in development. I agreed, and I completed the patwa translations for the issue titled Dread & Alive: Duppy Conqueror which was a one-shot comic book issue, check it out here.

February 6, 2021 Comic Book Cover

The comic comes with its own music as well that you should definitely check out. Use your smartphone camera to scan the QR code in the image below, press the link that pops up and it will take you to the special dub mix. And ZOOLOOK is on Spotify with some other work if you want to check out what else he has going on in the music domain.

Special Dub Mix Invite (Scan Me :)

So, we've come full circle, and based on this last gig I’m pleased to share that ZOOLOOK and I will be collaborating to develop a special patwa edition of the series titled Dread & Alive: Nine Night for Jamaica. Click through the links here in my post and visit the websites they take you to if you want to learn more, and check out the faces of the Dread & Alive team while you're at it.

February 6, 2021 Patwa Dialog Sample

Waak gud!

Entertainment Demands A Bold Transformative Economic Agenda

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 31 May 2020 20:30:00 +0000

Jamaica has a lot to be proud of and to celebrate. Let's celebrate ourselves with confidence.

Source: JAMPRO Sounds of Jamaica

I am still filled with great pride for my culture following the Beenie Man and Bounty Killer clash that took place on Friday, May 23, 2020, not unlike many Jamaicans at home and abroad that watched live, or later online. We were left in awe of the life that our culture brings. Every now and again something from Jamaica raises its head and steals the attention of the world. It may be our music, sports, food, politics, our religion or even our high homicide statistics. In my view, these are all testament to the fact that when Jamaicans play, we play to win. Friday night’s clash was just that, and Jamaica won.

Source: Verzuz TV Promotional Graphic

Jamaica has a culture policy titled, “Towards Jamaica The Cultural Superstate”, a title that if nothing more is a call to action for all areas of the state and private sector to work towards the goal of Jamaica’s culture, through the business vehicles aligned with the broader entertainment industry, becoming a global force to be reckoned with. Global entertainment sectors that Jamaica can program for include: events, festivals, music, radio, film, television and cable, internet and online media, electronic gaming, publishing, sports, tourism and travel, amusement and theme parks, gaming and wagering, toys and games, and the visual and performing arts. It could be true that the policy reeks of outsized economic and political ambitions of international leadership that our politicians, bureaucrats, and some of our private citizens, just don’t care for. But, day by day the glorious reality that presents itself is that this kind of calling is being demanded of us, a seemingly reluctant set of players in this Jamaican culture drama.

We are the envy of many in this world, and we simply cannot understand why some seemingly better-off Americans, Europeans and Asians want to be like us. From all corners of the globe the demands hit the Jamaican shore for more: Give us more! Give me more! Even pop superstar Rhianna was seen on Friday asking for more. What is wrong with us? Something is wrong with us! There are more reggae festivals outside of Jamaica than are in it. Several of Jamaica’s music genres (ska, dub, reggae), the many we’ve influenced (ambient, house, techno, jungle/drum & bass, trip-hop, hip-hop), and our sound system culture, have lives completely independent of Jamaica and Jamaicans in the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa.

Michael Veal's Dub: Soundscapes and Shattered Song in Jamaica Reggae that speaks of Jamaica's influence on a number of international music forms

These admirers, yaad-o-philes, want to speak like us, whatever it is that we speak. They want to eat like us. They want to pray like us, and they all, and I mean all, want to party like us. So, what do we do with those Jamaicans the world wants more of? We laugh at their natural speech and English malapropisms, we declare them uneducated wid dem bugu-yaga talk, and call some of them dutty rasta, deriding one of our most valuable assets in the most brutish of ways. We still do it. We have debated the question of making Miss Lou and Bob Marley our newest national heroes for a very long time, and it is costing us dearly, both in terms of our declared identity of who we are as a Jamaican people, and also economically. It matters not if Jamaica should end up with 10, 15, or 20 national heroes as long as those heroes reflect our values as a people, because the most valuable part of the process is the defining message from their lives that we want to endure throughout the generations.

Rototom Reggae Sunsplash, Benicassim, Spain

There is more money being earned outside of Jamaica from Jamaican culture than that which is earned in it. Since 2012, Bob Marley has consistently been ranked by Forbes Magazine in the top six of the world’s highest-paid dead celebrities, grossing an average US$20M each year. Those sales are generated by fans who are buying into Bob’s estate, and who hopefully represent people who would also buy into a Jamaica that identifies with Bob. I reason, and I think Beenie Man demonstrated a reason, that if Christians go to Jerusalem, and Muslims go to Mecca, then the followers of Rastafari should be taking their annual pilgrimage to the sacred sites of the Rastafari in Jamaica. But, this doesn’t happen, because we have fought bitterly to make it not happen, and, if nothing else, Jamaicans are masters of putting up all kinds of resistance. If Bob represents Jamaica, the message must surely be that there is more where Bob came from, but, I suppose the real question is, do we really want to be seen like Bob - the uneducated, “bugu-yaga talking dutty rasta”?

Source: Bob Marley Archive

Never mind that had Bob Marley been alive today he would likely be one of the wealthiest among us, sitting on a perch somewhere at the commanding heights of our local economy, because, as we know, Mr. Marley had invested in his own studio, record manufacturing and music distribution businesses well before the millionaire turned billionaire entertainer-entrepreneur of today was in vogue. It would be a smart national strategy to want to create more entertainers turned investors like Bob, particularly as we struggle to source foreign capital for growth and investment. Had our entertainers been pitched as we often do other potential investors why wouldn’t some of them respond with investments? After all, they are people too. Our collective minds need shifting as Marley himself sung, echoing the words of Marcus Garvey’s 1937 speech, “None but ourselves can free our minds.”

Source: Bob Marley Legend Album Cover

But the larger question, and the one that drove me to write this piece is, who do we really want to be, because, even if we don’t all identify ideologically and culturally with our rastafari brethren among us, we are all from an even larger and more pervasive cultural fabric. To put it another way, every Jamaican may not be rastafari, but every rastafari is Jamaican (I’m not referring to the international community of rastafari here, just Jamaica). And there is nothing that makes us all Jamaican more than that this glorious Jamaican language called Patwa, you are either in, or you’re out, and boy we do know how to use it to put others on the outside. But, like the maturity of these two legends that we watched grow over the years, we too must move beyond this petty role that we have for too long relegated our Jamaican language because it now reflects badly.

Louise Bennett's Jamaica Labrish, a book of Jamaica poems captured in the Jamaican lingua franca

It is now an urgent economic necessity that the government of Jamaica acts to give official status to the Jamaican language and open up the doors for further income generation potential. Inaction is now a stumbling block to progress and prosperity, both culturally and economically. It is no longer cute to make any argument against legislation to give Patwa, the first language of the vast majority of ordinary Jamaicans official status. Arguments against this official status are either misguided or steeped in prejudice, class prejudice specifically, that have no scientific basis in fact, the practice of which leads to discrimination, state-sanctioned discrimination, against the very essence of the Jamaican being. What kind of dissonance are we living in? How does anyone who experienced the clash of Beenie and Bounty, and saw the international response, deny the vehicle of communication that made this possible? It was our own vehicle of language that carried on its back the Jamaican culture that moved the world in a uniquely Jamaican way that night.

Mind you, the most puzzling observation for any Jamaican is how do we keep the attention of our audiences with a significant portion of them not understanding at times huge chunks of what is being said. There were several comments that came through in the live feeds asking for translations and subtitles. The Instagram video by Wimatch posted below serves as an illustration of what the non-Jamaican community experiences when hearing our language and our music:

The need for Jamaican translators is real, this is not the figment of the imagination of a UWI linguist. I’ve been paid to work on a few international film projects producing subtitles for features whose subjects are Jamaican, but whose audience is international. So too I’ve had to help locate Jamaican interpreters for civil court cases in the US, most of whom have not been formally trained in translation, but for whose Jamaican-English and English-Jamaican translation services there’s increasing demand. I am aware that some Japanese, Germans, and Africans want you to teach them how to write and speak Jamaican, much more than the expletives they know and love. So, in my view, it is a terrible neglect of our resources to not guide the provision of meaningful solutions to the market demands.

Chart Illustrating the Jamaican Alphabet

Ideally, it should be private individuals who will seize upon these opportunities to make some of these language solutions a reality, but the state does have a major role to play in creating the environment in which these small businesses can grow into larger companies and employ hundreds of trained Jamaicans locally and internationally. The inescapable fact is that government has a responsibility, and those of us who want to see more viable entertainment and cultural enterprises cannot allow the government to shift this responsibility.

I know there are Jamaicans who would like to have the environment that can enable them to confidently establish businesses that offer these services, but how far can they go if government cannot perform its role in facilitating and stimulating a market upon which they can build? Governments can create markets, and here is a case in which ours must. There is money to be made and people who can be employed, but it is the political indecision that is the obstacle to their prosperity and our progress. If the government is serious about wealth creation, and if in fact it believes in the people whom they govern, more than mere political rhetoric, then they now have an urgent responsibility to allow the Jamaican language to do it’s part in positively impacting the economic and cultural lives of the people who speak it.

Reggae Themed Merchandise on Sale at Rototom Sunsplash in Spain

If Jamaica is to maintain its international presence as a cultural superpower in relation to its size, and if the call to action of its 2003 culture policy is not to be a mockery, then the Jamaican leadership must take bold action and demonstrate its faith in the Jamaican culture. By virtue of the unapologetically high-quality entertainment and culture output Jamaicans have given the world for more than 60 years these artists and businessmen have long ago declared to the rest of the world that we Jamaicans walk on our feet and not on their knees, except that our leadership class have failed to take note. It is now time for the government to rise to its feet and match the mettle of the ordinary folk whose international acceptance should be sign enough that we are worthy, our unvarnished culture is worthy, and who we are is enough. It would be incredibly transformative for Jamaica economically and politically if any administration were to make that declaration and act upon it with bold confidence.

Reggae Themed Merchandise on Sale at Rototom Sunsplash in Spain

Our leadership should, acknowledge the Jamaican language, facilitate its commercialization perhaps by expanding the role of the JCDC to handle marketing and branding (including licensing) of related aspects of entertainment and culture, abandon its cynical disposition and declare heroes of Miss Lou and Bob Marley, and lead us to greater victory in the global culture business battle, after all, some do believe that business is like war, and Jamaica’s entertainment and culture is wanting those opportunities to do battle, because we are confident in our victory, not unlike Friday’s demonstration.

Jamaican popular culture has never been calculating or politically correct, but it’s been perpetually victorious and often on the right side of history leading on the issues of equal treatment, fairness and justice for all. I believe that it is high time that the Jamaican leadership comes over to the right side of history and reciprocate to the culture of the people, equal treatment, fairness and justice that looks like the official acknowledgement of the vehicle that we have used to make us, including Prime Minister Holness, be able to claim that “Jamaica’s culture is global”, and that we are in fact a cultural superpower, or, at the very least, we’ve set a course there.

The Worth of Jamaica's Entertainment Industry

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 31 May 2020 19:30:00 +0000

On May 5, 2020 I was asked by a journalist to answer some questions regarding the entertainment industry in Jamaica, his interest was getting some idea of the value of the industry, and my view on the impact COVID-19 may have across the industry.

Source: The Sunday Gleaner

It's a very interesting question, one that concerns many people, and it was definitely worth working through. He presented me with four questions to which I provided the answers below:

1. How important would you say the entertainment industry is to the economy?

I think the entertainment industry is important to the Jamaican economy, and by entertainment industry I mean sectors such as the visual and performing arts, music, events and festivals, audio-visual (radio, film and television), Internet and online gaming, publishing, sports, tourism and travel, amusement and theme parks, gaming and wagering, and toys and games. So when you take these sectors combined they contribute a significant amount of revenue to the Jamaican economy. I know these are very different from what Jamaicans narrowly conceive as entertainment - radio, tv, film, music, dances and parties, carnival, or maybe a traditional cultural event. The reality is that in the global context the entertainment is considered way more that how we see it locally.

2. Are you aware of any research done that would give some indication of the industry’s worth?

So the trouble with ascribing value to the entertainment industry in Jamaica is that this sectors that I mentioned above are not measured in that context by the Jamaican statistical institute, STATIN. So if you really want to get accurate numbers you will have to go do some primary research. Nevertheless, a few economists such as Vanus James, and Michael Witter have been able to give us some estimates for some segments of the entertainment industry, for example, Witter argued some years ago that Jamaica’s music was worth US$2.5billion, which doesn’t necessarily mean that that is what it is worth to Jamaica itself, since the truth is that most of Jamaica’s, music forms, ska, dub, reggae, dancehall and our sound system culture, have taken on a life of their own outside of Jamaica, living very vibrant lives, devoid of any Jamaican involvement in many cases, so none of us is earning from those Jamaican music related activities.

Source: Vanus James, Mona School of Business

Vanus James in his 2007 study, The Economic Contribution of Copyright-Based Industries in Jamaica, using data from STATIN found that the copyright based industries, which sectors parallel the entertainment industry, contributed an estimated 4.8 percent (in the neighborhood of US$464.7 million) to the GDP of Jamaica back in 2005. James noted then that these estimates essentially represent just the floor and that the actual numbers are likely to be higher when more data can be gathered. James points out that these numbers are also reflecting a context where there is far from adequate enabling environment, where it has been shown that greater success and greater profits can be had with the right policy support from government, including direct government investment, targeted education and training, and other types of preferential tax benefits.

3. If you were to put a dollar value on the entertainment industry, what are some of the things to take into consideration and what would that figure look like?

These are the sectors I’d take into account if I’m trying to measure what entertainment contributes to the Jamaica economy - the visual and performing arts, music, events and festivals, audio-visual (radio, film and television), Internet and online gaming, publishing, sports, tourism and travel, amusement and theme parks, gaming and wagering, and toys and games. The dollar value I’d assign here would probably be conservatively at least one and a half times the numbers Vanus James arrived at, but it could easily be double. There are a number of entertainment sectors that were out of the scope of Vanus James’ work and so were not counted. It is my view that any act of figuring out what Jamaica’s entertainment industry is worth to us should also account for the opportunities we have not been able to capitalize on because of our unpreparedness from the perspective of business.

4. How do you see the sector recovering from COVID-19?

My guess is that all these sectors will recover from Covid-19, I can’t say how well, but I expect like all other sectors they will remain profitable. There is no question in my mind that the growth of online and media based experiences will grow in response to people’s need to have their entertainment but also be distant. To the extent that suppliers of Jamaica entertainment can capitalize on these opportunities I think they should go for it.

Source: The Jamaica Star

The journalist's article was published on May 15 titled, How much is entertainment worth? - Industry insiders believe figure is still not known. Perhaps the fact that figures aren't truly known in detail are an indictment, and it speaks to a big gap that hinders growth, since investors will favor conditions where more of the variables that impact success are known rather than not. However, this fact could also be representative of big opportunities for those who want to come in early and go big fast.

Source: The Jamaica Star

Since the publication of my article two other newspaper publications have touched on this. The first contained an interview with Howard McIntosh, chairman of the Entertainment Advisory Board (EAB), titled, Data Is King, published on May 17, 2020. In it McIntosh argues a similar point to that which I have made:

"There is some reluctance, among practitioners in Jamaica, to share their real numbers... But think about it, how can policy and regulations be made to protect the industries if there is no base information? That is, if we don’t know how many, how much, as well as the what’s, where’s, and whens of their economic activity, how can protections be crafted?

Critical is the need for the Statistical Institute of Jamaica, the Planning Institute of Jamaica, the Bank of Jamaica and central government to properly understand the value of entertainment in terms of direct contribution and indirect impact."

On the journey towards Jamaica the cultural superstate what gets named and measured is what gets investment and support, so we've got to name and measure them all, going much wider that the traditional sectors Jamaicans consider the entertainment sector.

Source: The Sunday Gleaner

In the second article, Entertainment suffers $26-billion COVID hit, where the newspaper reports reduced earnings due to COVID-19 Minister Grange of the Ministry of Culture, Gender, Entertainment and Sport shared some estimate figures:

“When extrapolated to the relative size of the industry, this represents loss to the arts and entertainment sector as, conservatively, J$19.2 billion for micro and small creative businesses and individuals. Coupled with losses from medium and large events such as Calabash Literary Arts Festival, Carnival in Jamaica, Dream, and Reggae Sumfest, the lost revenue increases to in excess of $26.182 billion,” [the Minister] said.

There is little doubt from all these points of view that the Jamaican entertainment sectors are worth more than Vanus James's 4.8% of GDP, but it doesn't mean that's the value we have for it. If we think it is valued more, we're going to have to do more to show it.

Nollywood Animation - Malika: Warrior Queen

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 21 Oct 2019 22:00:00 +0000

Today I came across this thrilling Nollywood animation tiled Malika: Warrior Queen. It rings special for me because way back in the days when I was writing my thesis on Jamaican film I was then asking questions about the production of animated features that were informed by traditional African cultural themes that informed our childhood, and in particular my African-Jamaican childhood. So to come across a production such as this that anchors itself in African mythology is particularly thrilling.

I have in the past written about Jamaica themed comics as in the Dread and Alive series which was inspired by the Jamaica Maroons, and where the writer takes the creative license to mix in some fact with fiction to create a uniquely Jamaican superhero, but still the space remains open in Africa and the diaspora for more creators to come forward and fill us with some unique experiences that we have probably contemplated in folk culture, but never really made it beyond that.

Well, some of us may be in for a visual treat we always believed exists, but that we had not yet seen. As this Quartz Africa story titled, Nollywood is one step closer to its first major animated cinema production tells us from an interview with Roye Okupe, a comics publisher and founder of YouNeek Studios,

After years of publishing Malika: Warrior Queen as a graphic novel with its central character inspired by Queen Amina, a 16th century queen who ruled in parts of Nigeria’s northwest, Okupe has stepped things up with an animated 15-minute short film which he expects to be the precursor to a full length feature."

Have a look at the thrilling short film below:

I think the imagery is beautiful and very empowering for us as Africans who want to celebrate our culture. As the article tells us the short will be making the rounds at various film festivals and also shown to those who may be interested in producing a full length feature film. As Roye says, “There’s no reason why our children [and adults] shouldn’t be able to turn on their TVs and see characters like this rooted in Africa.” I agree and I certainly wish this production well.

You may check out the company's website at YouNeek Studios where you can get some free comics or follow them on Facebook using this link. Please feel free to share and also ask your kids what they think about this.

Jamaica's Intellectual Property Challenge

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 21 Oct 2019 21:00:00 +0000

On Friday October 18, 2019 Jamaica's Emancipation Park played home to a free Christian concert named Sunday Service hosted by Kanye West, which was the first of the international leg of his proselytising series, and with its own hashtag #SundayServiceJA.

Photo courtesy of Garfield Robinson, Jamaica Observer

The concert was not without controversy, as Kanye is known to attract, and as this Jamaica Gleaner article about "Upstaging Heroes Weekend" outlines, but the issue that elicited my response was the issue surrounding Kanye’s use of Jamaican intellectual property, specifically official national symbols and emblems, to produce and sell merchandise off and online for the event.

Image courtesy of www.shop.kanyewest.com

The most recent controversy caused me to go back into my blogs for a post made on September 26, 2010 titled, Licensing Brand Jamaica, that suggested how Jamaica could handle these matters, that I anticipated back then. The controversial merchandise could have been licensed and the government would have been collecting some kind of revenue in theory. Unfortunately however, seemingly nothing was ever put in place to handle scenarios where persons or entities could be marketed the idea of obtaining licenses to use certain Jamaican symbols or iconography for commercial purposes.

Image courtesy of www.shop.kanyewest.com

Below is a paragraph from that 2010 post that contemplated an approach to handling these matters for Jamaica:

I have often wondered if the government, perhaps through the Jamaica Intellectual Property Office, has examined licensing Jamaican properties in a similar fashion to how the city of New York has established NYC & Company Licensing to handle the business of licensing the City’s intellectual property. As a result, all official merchandise from the New York City police, taxi, fire department, parks and recreation, and the transport department benefit the city. We know that there is merchandise sold with the Ocho Rios, Montego Bay, Negril and Kingston city/town names and replicas of other property. Then there is Jamaica Tourist Board’s signature 'JAMAICA' trademark and related property that serve tourism... I wonder to what extent local business, and by extension the state, could benefit from greater sales of products around these properties? This is certainly a business opportunity.

Since the outcry on social media for clearly what was an oversight (or more accurately a matter that was not even contemplated in the least) by the relevant authorities, the minister of culture was forced to act as the Jamaica Observer newspaper reports in this story, Pull the merch, Kanye, "government requests that West removes items with national symbols from online store." Of course, nobody really wins here, when the outcome could have been very different.

This is a sad outcome, because if there was a sales trend it is likely broken for the moment. In fact, a visit to the website (https://shop.kanyewest.com) today asks that I sign up for further updates. The newspaper goes further to say that the minister will "re-establish a committee to devise a strategy to deal with the proper use of our emblems and symbols, as she is aware that other vendors are selling Jamaica-branded products." I wonder just how this will be tackled because not all Jamaica-branded products can be claimed to belong to the state, so in one sense all this may become an academic exercise bearing very little fruit.

The good thing is that licensing opportunities in which the government or its entities can participate still abound for some Jamaican merchandise, but as with everything, having the right partners, execution and knowing what you're doing makes all the difference.

The minister has my best wishes, and I certainly hope they are able to create something meaningful that will redound to the benefit of the good Jamaican people.

Zouzoukwa African Emojis For You

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 21 Oct 2019 19:18:00 +0000

I came across a story today that I think is really cool and I want to make the quick share. There are so many positives that are happening for African entertainment and cultural enterprises and sometimes it is hard to keep up, but I think this one is worth the pause to acknowledge how good it is.

The story is about Zouzuokwa, an African emoji app that contains more than 350 downloadable emojis with West African cultural references, that also resonate in the African diaspora. This was created by the 21-year old O’Plerou Felix Grebet (linked to his Instagram) from Côte d'Ivoire.

Here's a short BBC video interview of the creator...

Having grown up in Jamaica the icon of the app is immediately recognizable as what we call 'suck suck', a lovable childhood treat. It is basically any flavored drink, bagged and frozen, and when ready for consumption you suck the contents from one end of the bag.

Needless to say I've downloaded that app and looked through the emojis and I love them. My contacts can expect that I'll be using them.

You can download the app by clicking the link for your respective store, the Apple store or the Google Play store. Get it and share it with your family and friends. This is indeed a moment that's better with family and friends.

My Views on Jay-Z, Kaepernick and the NFL

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 22 Aug 2019 22:00:00 +0000

I've taken a few days to formulate my opinion on this matter. Snoop Dogg in an interview on the Breakfast Club published on August 21, 2019 gave a perspective that speaks to me, and Charlemange Tha God was also of a similar view, that the question is why do we need to pit one (Colin Kaepernick) against the other (Jay-Z)?

This Is Not A Contest, It's Not An Either Or
For our sake, and the cause of addressing injustice, we should want both these individuals to succeed because both have a role to play in keeping the attention on the unwarranted killing of African Americans at the hands of law enforcement - this is presumably the objective and not some other agenda that keeps us distracted. Take a listen to Snoop's comments here:

I have seen that many who have commented are more concerned about their own agendas and pushing ideological positions that are more distractions than adding clarity to an understanding of what we are witnessing. I think we should be careful we don't get carried away with these ideological labels.

Economic Activism and Social Activism
Dr. Boyce Watkins made an interesting commentary on August 20, 2019 about ultra left socialists who he describes as idealists. To paraphrase, he said that they tend to be so blinded by their ideology that they harbor very little understanding of the value and power of money in helping their own struggles. I’m in agreement. I would like to point out that economic activism is just as legitimate as social activism, who is to say one has more legitimacy than the other? Below is the video of Dr Watkins' commentary:

Capitalism and Socialism

Further, I read one critique titled, Jay-Z has crossed the picket line with his NFL deal, where the writer tore into Jay-Z’s move and concluded that corporations and billionaires will not help the poor and the oppressed, but rather the solution is socialism. My question was what kind of socialism are they referring to? For example, Bernie Sanders, whose policy proposals I support for the most part, refers to himself as a democratic socialist, but I’ve never heard him claim himself to be anti-capitalist, for one because he recognizes fully well that profits are needed to fund social agendas. (Speaking of which, the converse is also true, what does it mean to be capitalist, because this too is not a single-version concept or system?) In fact, I have read literature from some socialist groups denouncing Sanders and his proposals as not in fact being socialist enough, so what are we really talking about here when the article ends with saying socialism is the answer? This is a point that needs unpacking, because in my view the answer is not one or the other, each has some merit.

All About The Money

I’ve read others articles like, Jay-Z Isn’t a Sellout, He’s a Capitalist, as well as heard commentary that Jay-Z is all about himself, as if he is the only party that includes self-interest as an element of their agenda. Yes, any deal made must be perceived to be mutually beneficial to all parties. Have we forgotten that Kaepernick settled with the NFL - for money, presumably on an amount that was satisfactory to him? Have we also forgotten that if Kaepernick were to be given a job it would be for money? So I think we should be very careful not to paint ourselves into a corner. Kaepernick is as much about the money as is Jay-Z and it’s the reason his tongue is tied. So many have called for him to speak and to offer leadership beyond tweets, but, unfortunately for him, he is missing in action. From all indications if he were offered a job playing he would have taken it, and then what about 'the cause'? Nothing. We would still need to be activists the following day because the fundamental factors that give rise to the injustice being protested would still have not changed. Are any of the NFL players playing for free? Including Eric Reid and others who don the cause of social justice in a seemingly ultra righteous fashion? Let’s be real, money is at the center of it all. And, by the tone of some of the commentary on this matter, the money itself and the ownership it can buy you is a bad thing, so the virtue remains in being a worker indefinitely. This is problematic because it does not allow for any other view or approach, and that is flawed.

It is naive to not recognize the value and power of money in a capitalist society. In case we forgot, it was Marcus Garvey who pointed out very early in the 20th century to black folks that, “wealth is strength, wealth is power, wealth is influence, wealth is justice, is liberty, is real human rights. The system of our world politics suggests such, and as a fact it is.” Nearly a hundred years later today we still see this manifest as reality. The challenge today in my view is those who may be conscious, but who are not Jay-Z have not quite figured out how to use money to their advantage, beyond the flashy displays. Jay-Z is going places and making moves very few black men have gone and can go while learning as he goes along, and that makes many black folks uncomfortable because it is not something we're used to seeing. It’s his hustle and it is just as good as anyone else’s, and we might want to muster up the courage to support him as he goes into uncharted territory. It not an either or, both Kaepernick and Jay-Z would like similar outcomes, so why are we offering those who have no interest in fairness and justice fodder by pitting them one against the other? Both strategies have merit. We can offer to support them equally.

Challenge Our Thinking: Ownership and Employment

A few days ago I came across the article, Colin Kaepernick Posts New Workout Video to Prove NFL Readiness Amid Jay-Z’s Partnership with the Organization. I found it disappointing because it conflicted with a point that is at the core of my beliefs - business and enterprise are a critical source of empowerment (NB. not the critical source of empowerment).

I thought the article was a travesty and felt that Colin Kaepernick should stop hurting his legacy by his incessant begging for work even at this stage. I feel he is now at a point where he can use his network to create workout videos, for example, and release them now that he has the ability to parlay his persona into so many things that can earn him way more than he will make in the NFL over time. So I felt then that he was missing Jay-Z’s point. In my view he should now be thinking how he and his friends can own NFL teams so that they can truly prevent future blackballing of other players. In one report Jay-Z is quoted when asked about Kaepernick's involvement as saying, “I’m not his boss. I can’t just bring him into something. That’s for him to say.” Which suggests to me the door is open for Colin. So in my view they should both be talking at this point.

Kaepernick seems to be playing checkers while Jay-Z is playing chess in my view, which means that one has a longer term goal in mind, which may not be immediately apparent to the onlooker. However, I don't wish to unfairly blame Kaepernick since as individuals we ultimately have to play where we're comfortable. Jay’s move is a call for us to challenge our thinking. Has any of those who are voicing disagreement about this given thought to the fact that Kaepernick’s kneeling opened the door and has given rise to a movement that could result with more black folks moving to own more of the NFL teams? It could. It’s the what’s next, because protest is not an end in itself, but rather a means to an end. Hopefully, those highly paid sports stars and celebrities come to recognize that there are more uses for their money than showing off. Jay-Z has been on this message for years, and he evidently not only makes music about it, but he also does it. What a concept, take action, act in spite of fear even as you venture into the unknown.

Instead of it being about a job, it has to become about owning the jobs that employ your people; become a decision-maker within the NFL. I wonder how many of the disenfranchised and oppressed can visualize a day when people who look like the players own more than half of the teams in the league with some of their companies also supplying the support services. It is helpful to remember that integration should work both ways, we first integrated as subordinates to white ownership, now it is high time to integrate as equal owners and decision makers. We’ve got a lot of learning to do among ourselves and we can see that the road won't be easy.

Find the Points of Unity and Celebrate Our Wins

Increasingly, black celebrities and investors are by now seized upon the importance of ownership in sports and other arena, and some recognize that each small step is a move that can in some small way help the overall African American community. So, if Jay-Z is successful at opening the door for other black owners to follow, would we not celebrate that victory? My hope is that as a community we would support him for making that breakthrough even while we work for breakthroughs at the level at which we operate.

Steve Biko once said, “the most potent weapon is the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed,” and we should be more careful we are not sowing the seeds of our own destruction by fueling unwarranted divisions.

Emancipation Day 2019: Out Of Many Africans We Are One People

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 01 Aug 2019 16:00:00 +0000

Best wishes on this Emancipation Day my fellow Jamaicans. I hope this Emancipation Day is one that is filled with deep reflection and meaning. I trust the significance of the day empowers.

I remain a proud Jamaican descendant of Africans who were primarily from the Yoruba and Fulani peoples of West Africa, but who today have united with the many other Africans (the Akan and Igbo, among others) who were taken to the island and enslaved. The common goal of our people became the doing of what is necessary to move forward in freedom, unity and prosperity.

From the cross-section of Africans who were taken to the shores of this incredibly beautiful island we have in a very remarkable way become one - we are admired by many. Our circumstances produced the Right Excellent Marcus Mosiah Garvey, one of the greatest early exponents of Pan Africanism and global African unity, whose legacy lives on today in the lives of so many Africans on the continent and outside of it.

We now have a nascent African Union slowly coming into its own as a manifestation of the vision of Marcus Garvey and others then and now. So, for this reality, Jamaicans have even more reasons to celebrate because in some small way our tumultuous Jamaican struggles have helped to shape this reality the world now sees and lives today. Out of many Africans, we are one people.

Nuff respek Jamaica 🇯🇲.

Independence Day Reflections 2019

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 04 Jul 2019 19:00:00 +0000

One of my social media handles reminded me of this July 4, 2010 post:

Someone put it this way, "Independence Day is also a celebration of entrepreneurship! ... The freedom to launch and grow our companies. The freedom to see our ideas become reality. The freedom to live outrageously successful lives." I'll add, the freedom/obligation to do so responsibly. Happy Independence!

I came across an article this morning that speaks about an African American community named Seneca Village in what was in the now Central Park of New York City. The writer tells us, "the community, called Seneca Village, began in 1825 and eventually spanned from 82nd Street to 89th Street along what is now the western edge of Central Park. By the time it was finally razed in 1857, it had become a refuge for African Americans."

I have no recollection of ever hearing about this community before so I found the story intriguing. The story was originally published in February 2017 and is titled, An entire Manhattan village owned by black people was destroyed to build Central Park.

Prominent abolitionist Albro Lyons and Mary Joseph Lyons were residents of Seneca Village. (NY Public Library)

What I found fascinating in this story was the independence of the African community in New York, a community that was probably also a stop on the Underground Railroad. Reading about Epiphany Davis and Andrew Williams, two prominent members of the The New York African Society for Mutual Relief, and then apparently another organization named the African Society (or maybe it’s the same organization with the name shortened for convenience), whose purpose was in part to build black communities, and also the AME Zion Church who collectively bought land was definitely empowering.

So my question then became, what happened to these organizations?

The article states that “more than three-fourths of the children who lived in Seneca Village attended Colored School №3 in the church basement. Half of the African Americans who lived there owned their own property, a rate five times higher than the city average.” Imagine that for the 1850s.

The article leaves very little doubt that some Africans in New York had actively taken charge of lifting their community. It points out that, "owning land in Seneca Village meant more than finding a refuge from the slums and violence of Manhattan proper. Buying property meant voting rights (at least for men), as laws in New York at the time required that all voters own at least $250 worth of real estate." This paints a very unpopular picture of Africans in the early development of the city, and perhaps we should be learning more about some of these individuals because stories like these go a long way in changing the narratives we have been fed.

I definitely would like to know more about The New York African Society for Mutual Relief and The African Society. These are clear demonstrations that Africans would like to claim responsibility to be in charge of matters that are important to them, to the extent that they can. Being left alone to develop independently is not at all a bad idea for Africans when examples such as these come to light. If only all people could be left to enjoy unbridled freedom -- the freedom to live outrageously successful lives."

In Memory of Lady Liberty

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 27 May 2019 15:50:00 +0000

On this Memorial Day, May 27, 2019, I find myself reflecting on a recent article that I read in the Washington Post, published on May 23, 2019, about America's Lady Liberty. The article is titled, The Statue of Liberty was created to celebrate freed slaves, not immigrants, its new museum recounts.

Left to right: The bust of the Statue of Liberty on display in Paris in 1884 before it was shipped to the United States. The statue towers over Paris rooftops in 1884. The right arm of the statue on display in Philadelphia in 1876. (AP)

This was a shocking revelation to me, because from all we’ve been told to this point, the story of Lady Liberty had been all about immigrants. So evidently, the propaganda to sell this story has indeed been successful, and that story may indeed remain the version of the story that will be forever popular across the world, regardless of the facts behind its origins.

You may use this link to check out the full article if you wish, and I even encourage doing further research and reading some of the books mentioned. Some lines from the article read:

Lady Liberty was originally designed to celebrate the end of slavery, not the arrival of immigrants.

One of the first meanings [of the statue] had to do with abolition, but it’s a meaning that didn’t stick,” Edward Berenson, a history professor at New York University and author of the book “The Statue of Liberty: A Transatlantic Story,” said in an interview with The Washington Post.

The monument, which draws 4.5 million visitors a year, was first imagined by a man named Édouard de Laboulaye. In France, he was an expert on the U.S. Constitution and, at the close of the American Civil War, the president of a committee that raised and disbursed funds to newly freed slaves, according to Yasmin Sabina Khan, author of the book “Enlightening the World: The Creation of the Statue of Liberty.”

Laboulaye loved America — often giving speeches described by a New York Times correspondent in 1867 as “feasts of liberty which move the souls of men to their deepest depths” — and he loved it even more when slavery was abolished.

... An early model, circa 1870, shows Lady Liberty with her right arm in the position we are familiar with, raised and illuminating the world with a torch. But in her left hand she holds broken shackles, an homage to the end of slavery.

(A terra cotta model still survives at the Museum of the City of New York.)

Makes you think, doesn’t it? With all of its opportunities and the best of intentions, America does have limits to the kind of progress she can stomach.

Africa: The Next 1,000 Years

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 21 Mar 2019 08:37:00 +0000

I have been bouncing an idea around my head for a number of months now. And, as I sit here in Accra, Ghana I feel I should commit the essence of the idea to writing. The shaping of Africa’s next 1,000 years rests with us, and if we are to shape it, then we must begin to effectively change the current narrative around Africa.

Africa In Space
- Source: Selamta Magazine (Jan/Feb 2019)

Before the Common Era (BCE)

African civilizations have been documented to date back as far as 5,000 years Before the Common Era (BCE) by modern archaeologist and historians. This may not be widely known, but these are facts that have been verified by science, and the evidence confirms that a number of these civilizations have been along the Nile, a river that is approximately 6,650 km (4,132 miles) in length, and is the longest river in Africa and in the world, of which only 22% of the Nile's course runs through Egypt. While Egyptian civilizations may be the more known, and because of racism, disputed as being African in origin, the facts substantiate that the early culture of Egypt came down the Nile and not up the Nile. Prof Ivan Van Sertima was one of many scholars who made every effort to share this fact and he speaks to this in the video below:

It is documented that there are more pyramids to be found in the territories of modern day Sudan among the Nubians than there are in all of Egypt, and it is also documented that the massive stone monoliths that ancient Egyptians would have called tekhen or tekhenu, that we now call obelisks, that have become so familiar in cities across the world, were first to be found among the people further up the Nile (Nubia, Eritrea and modern day northern Ethiopia).

Nile Valley Obelisks

Unlike the current demographic of 21st century Cairo, there is hardly any room for an honest dispute that the people further up the Nile and over into the nation of modern day Sudan are connected by culture to the people and cultures in other parts of the African continent. It remains unfortunate that the word about the accomplishments of these peoples in history does not quite make it on to become common knowledge. My purpose in recalling these facts is to illustrate that Africans are not new to the concept of civilization. For a comprehensive overview of this history I think the UNESCO General History of Africa gives a good survey of Africa’s history throughout the centuries.

The Common Era (CE)

In the period of the Common Era (CE) there also existed many African civilizations and empires across the continent, from the commonly called Moors in the north, Aksum in the east, to the Akan in the west, and the Zulus in the south. This short post naming 7 Influential African Empires gives a quick summary of a few of these kingdoms.

African Empires Before 1884

The arrival of the slave traders and colonists interrupted African history, and we are better off dealing with our current context if we understand their arrival as such. At the 1884-85 Berlin Conference, that was a meeting between European nations to create rules on how to peacefully divide Africa among them for colonization, the European nations executed the division of Africa among themselves - with no Africans present. The result in effect is the division of Africa as we have today.

Africa Before and After Partition

By 1957, led by Ghana a new independence movement began with more African nations, using the same borders established by the Europeans as their borders for their newly independent states. By 1980 a majority of African nations had become independent of Europe, at least in form, if not in substance. Using this broad sweep therefore, one could argue that the continent effectively endured direct European rule from 1885-1980, a period of 95 years. I don’t want to be held hard to this estimate, but it serves my larger point, and the contention of this post, that, for peoples who have had at the very least 4,000 years of history (3,000 BCE + 2,000 CE) in some form or fashion, how can we rationally fix our identities around a period of 95 years of European colonization? For how much longer can this be justified? I do not believe that this can reasonably stand to scrutiny as we move forward.

Literal Translation of Country Names

Africa's Next 1,000 Years

Therefore, it is in the context of this background that I support positions that seek to peacefully rid the African continent of these very arbitrary and artificial borders imposed by the colonizers. Like Marcus Garvey, Kwame Nkrumah and HIM Emperor Haile Selassie, I also support positions that encourage the formation unions among the African peoples who currently inhabit the space, and who are often family and tribesmen and women across borders. Julius Malema makes some very good points in the video below when he speaks of African unity with a borderless continent that facilitates business and trade, with a single currency, and a united leadership:

I support the pan-African vision. I support intra-continental trade and most importantly, I support a policy that seeks to have some of the more widely spoken African languages become the common language across the African continent. If you believe it is possible then it can be done. There ought to be a policy to contain the use of European languages to limited spheres and give the African languages primacy when conducting the business of Africa in the African continent, if only because at its most basic it is a justifiable human right to celebrate one's culture and heritage.

If we are to make these hopes and visions realties for the next 1,000 years then we need to act boldly and decisively to bring these into being. The good thing is that the change we seek is still within reach.

Useful African Statistics

To make this change, I challenge each African that for each negative story he or she posts about Africa, they should google and find at least two positive stories to repost on their timeline. Even after natural disasters Africans have always picked themselves up and moved on with their lives. The narrative of the hapless natives is played out. This is not a story we need to keep repeating, and we certainly don’t need to keep sharing them, because we are more than suffering. There are many positive stories and we are better off helping our people by share those.

Africa Moves Closer to Becoming a Free Trade Zone
- Source: Selamta Magazine (Mar/Apr 2019)

The story of Africa for the next 1,000 years is for us ordinary Africans to write. I will end this post with this 5-minute video clip that was a part of the Great African Leadership Series by Prof P.L.O. Lumumba who speaks to how we can make the immediate vision of the United States of Africa real.

Walk good.