I got to have a quick little Goonies adventure with Lenni I-Music and Ras Isachar. They took me to the lost Pirate city and English fort, Port Royal. The young tour guide Andrew Gordon was terrific.
His insights were aligned with the history I could recall from books I read before and after my first trip, like Empire of The Blue Sea and Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean. But the real folk and academic knowledge of a young man that was born and raised on the side of the island that did not sink into at ocean graveyard, can not be contained on a page or even a tome.
Stories have been passed generation to generation cross referenced by histories and archeological findings.
For me, getting to walk upon these forgotten streets and squeeze into the old jail imagining the captors smelling the sweet aromas of the fort’s kitchen inside the same stone building was like watching false memories painted with a real brush.
Rad Isachar said of the proximity of the kitchen to the cramped jail,
“A Wicked Judgement.”
This was Isachar’s first visit since he was a school boy and surely they did not speak to the children in detail of the rough medical instruments to battle syphilis with mercury and crude metallic methods of reaching unspoken corners of our anatomy.
We stood in the quarter of Horatio Nelson and gazed upon the time piece that stopped the moment of the quake, frozen by the nightmare of a catastrophe that led future generations of Jamaicans to chant Babylon and believe judgement for the Wicked was inevitable for the sufferer and swashbuckler alike.
The very population of Jamaica today is the product of piracy, written on millions of faces here and the diaspora abroad are the people of England and Pirates alike went mad like Tulip bulbs and bit coin importing as human cargo in a pyramid scheme that turned a Taino Indian paradise into an African port in just a few generations.
Legend here has it one Jamaican rebel went to Haiti and sparked a Revolution that whipped Napolean’s then invincible army twice and made England wonder how long they could hold onto Slavery with an illusion of power and psychological triangulation while outnumbered by men with machetes cutting the King’s Sugarcane.
The fall of Port Royal was a warning that England stood on shaky ground. For God may not have taken revenge on these smash & grab thieves with license from kings and queens. But the Bible warned fools not to build their castles upon sand. Cold logic. In Port Royal physically and with Jamaican slavery figuratively, that is precisely what the English did.
Still, even when the bodies fell, they made a killing. The legacy of which stands upon the tallest pedestal for a great company man, 4’9″ admiral Horatio Nelson in Trafalgar Square.
But this is where the English Empire was born and died as it sunk its sword into the heart of the Spanish Main.
The Biggest Guns in Kingston Have the Nicest Basslines
It’s nice to know I am working with some big guns in Kingston, JA. It’s a trip to have so many friends in Bellingham, Brighton, and Kingston, but those are great music towns where I cut records with various crews that are My People.
It’s so fun to watch these teams blend. It makes sense because are intention are good. We all want to work and to do what you love is to play. In music we literally play and there are rewards.
Only these borders are between us. By golly it is appropriate to say, “One Love”. In Jamaica so many words of Bob Marley came into play as we parlayed, which in Cornel West’s interpretation of Prophecy, Robert Nesta Marley seemed quite prophetic to me.
Tonight I sleep in Everett, this morning I woke up in Kingston and walked the lost city of Port Royal with my good friends Ras Isachar and Lenni I-Music to cap off another adventure for the ages you can review day by day in East Portland Blog.
But the videos I wasn’t able to post in Jamaica are what you need in your LIFE. Oh boy did I set my controls for the heart of the Sun.
My good fortune in Jam Rock is less a reflection of me, than the towering echo of what is means to have a Culture that has refused to be destroyed.
I asked Lenni I if he was as worried as me about a hurricane hitting the island. He looked me straight in the eye like an old gun fighter in a Hollywood Western and said in his patois, which I shall paraphrase here,
“No Hurricane can destroy Jamaica. We will come together, we are stronger than a Hurricane, and the Blue Mountains will protect us.”
His words evoked my feeling of our own Olympics protecting the Puget Sound from the Pacific and Poisoden. A hurricane did wreck a Port I was told in his hometown of Port Antonio, which i surmise was a factor that severely curtailed the town’s pipeline of tourists chasing the glimmer of Errol Flynn.
But Port Antonio still stand at attention for its revival.
Have You Ever Seen THE LOST Pirate City of Port Royal?
If you are a history buff you are going to love these videos from Port Royal with our young guide Andrew Gordon. It’s great to see a young man so versed and absorbed in the history of HIS town. The kid lives in a town that sank save a few acres in one of the most insane earthquakes and tsunamis in the human record.
…and at the end he mentioned he’s also a Sing-Jay (that Jamaican tradition of Singing DJs). I smiled and said he needs to hear my song about Port Royal Rum Kings that Lenni I-Music, Eric Struthers and a few others have a hand in.
I also mentioned that we needed to Collab because he knows this history better than any musician his age in Jamaica or anywhere.
This is the road to West Indian Rock.
Dude. The pilot on my American Airlines flight to Seattle took my guitar into the cockpit instead of checking it.
“Captain! Thank you. You can totally play it.”
He said “No, no” humbly chuckling as I recognized his good deed for those that rock.
I looked pointed at him and said, “there is a tuner in the case. Jam.”
Hats off to American. Tell the good stories and the bad. Good deeds rarely go viral. But they could. Buy more important, just do good.
High five to Randi Kellams.
Davin’s new song has been released and is fast becoming a dancehall hit. Listen here on Reggaeville: DAVIN MICHAEL STEDMAN & ANTHONY RED ROSE – FREE YOUR MIND FEAT. SLY & ROBBIE WITH LENKY MARSDEN
– Musician and writer Davin Michael Stedman has many musical ventures and is one of the driving forces behind the Staxx Brothers. He is networking and reporting from Kingston, Jamaica right now.
