One of the most common questions you’ll encounter within a discussion of music is the inquiry of favourites, in one way or another. Be it as general as favourite artists or favourite albums, or as specific as favourite concert of a certain artist or favourite year of an artist, the subject will almost always arise within such a context. I find these types of questions, on some level at least, to be very fun and random, to an extent as the seemingly unavoidable ‘ritual’ of the pseudo argument between people of, “No. You’re crazy if you think ____ was better than ____”, begins. However, if you frame the question of favourites around SONGS, then . . . Well then you’re talking about something that isn’t quite so fun for me at all. Usually it is poised to me such as, “Hey Achis, I’m a reader of your blog and I always see how you mention that you’re a big fan of ____’s and I was wondering if you had to recommend one song by them what it would be?” In other words, ‘what is your favourite tune by the artist?’ I HAVE NO IDEA. Almost every time you ask the question, I will surely fit in the ending portion -right now- which is the only way I can normally answer it. I can easily tell you that my favourite Tarrus Riley song RIGHT NOW is King Selassie H.I.M., without a problem. It won’t take much thought at all to tell you that I’m really feeling Lead Me To Your Door from Lutan Fyah or that Sizzla has a song called Rat Race that is just DESTROYING me these days, but you say “of all time” and I have to pause.
Well maybe I don’t have to do that anymore. I struggled with starting this and I don’t know at this point when or even if I’ll do a next installment of it, but this is my latest brainchild. I present to you, songs, chants, lyrics, riddims, vibes and COLOURS! These are pieces I may not listen to very often. I may not keep them on the play list around my house and I may even go a full year or so without hearing them a single time and I don’t have to listen often because they stay in my head. They are with me at all times. This is Music That Changed My Life.
MALIKA MADREMANA
If you read me with any type of frequency you’ll definitely notice that I use certain words and try to make certain points. One of the most IMPORTANT, in my opinion, is the point I tend to stress, largely in relation to Roots Reggae which is far more spiritual, of the TANGIBLE aspect of the music. What I mean is that, if you listen to randomly chosen Roots tunes you’ll hear things like “Hail Jah”, “Bun di fyah red!” and “Stay firm in di Gideon”. These things don’t have much meaning if you leave them as they are because someone who doesn’t typically listen to the music is pretty much INCAPABLE of comprehending what they mean. And even if you do go on to explain them, in the spiritual sense, I am left wondering how you then suggest I should apply that to my everyday life. Slinging together choice and oft-used phrases is not a message and, when it comes to Roots music, I’m there for the message. I want to hear what you have to say. That’s why you’ll hear me criticizing the usage of these clichés so frequently because I find that they quite often are not just the result of someone who may not be fully developed as a lyricist or just not as ‘on point’ as they usually are, instead they are the result of the veiled ABSENCE of a message altogether. Now that isn’t, of course, to say that I can’t appreciate the flare of such a tune and take it for a song which simply entertains the ears, believe me, I wouldn’t do such a thing (as a Soca head, I don’t have the right to), because those type of tunes also serve a point, when done well such as simply making the listener feel good! However, when someone makes a song which can almost DIRECTLY address that situation AND, on top of that, give me something useful, which I can apply in my everyday life, I am grounded. I am infinitely grateful.
To Malika Madremana I am infinitely grateful.
If you were so fortunate to have been one of the lucky individuals who came across her debut album Healing then you also would know of a tune by the name of Just Jah. This song doesn’t have “featuring” attached to it. There are only two words in the title and nothing about it would inherently make it a focal point on paper, but I HAVE NEVER HEARD A SONG LIKE THIS IN MY ENTIRE LIFE! NOT ONE! The song is a literal ‘bridge’ between the spiritual world and the tangible world. The way Madremana chooses to make that crossing is in several ways, with the anchoring though being that the mistreatment and the ignoring of The Almighty has been the cause of so many of the troubles of the world, as she says on the tune’s chorus, “When the Earth starts to shake, know it’s Just Jah”. If you listen to the song straight through you’ll notice that she ties said mistreatment to all types of different catastrophes and downright horrible situations. And it would be one thing were Madremana to have simply made the tune in a way where she said this is something that angers His Majesty and left it so flatly but she doesn’t. If she were to have done that, imagine just how much the song changes. The message then becomes one which, again, falls into the clichés and overused clichés so present in the music and by simply saying that Jah does not like to ignored and does not like you to mistreat His planet, you don’t say too much. HOWEVER, when you point to earthquakes, and floods and death and destruction as EVIDENCE of His Majesty’s disapproval, then you have suddenly CHANGED THE GAME! People walk the planet and believe what they want to believe. They believe things that I do; they believe things that I don’t. We can discuss and argue over causes and we can discuss and argue over the source of disaster, but I have NEVER met a person who didn’t believe in an earthquake. I have never met a person who didn’t believe in torrential rainfall and the forests burning down. Now take that and compare it to “Chant down Babylon” and “Bun fyah bun!” It’s one thing for me to say that to you and you, not believing in it, or insisting that you have another explanation, rejecting it; and another with me saying “Bun fyah bun”, and then telling you to go and look outside of your damn window and you actually seeing the fire with the same eyes which ‘verified’ your ‘evidence’. Might your same scales and beakers come up with a formula which could prove that the fire doesn’t really exist either (and if you truly don’t believe, what’s really going to bother you is wondering whether or not those thousands upon thousands of voices chanting “bun fyah bun” actually had something to do with it). She gives a TANGIBLE response to the implied question of WHY to praise Jah also: if you don’t this is what will happen.
Of course that’s just my opinion, so, in order to see how closely my thoughts of the intent of Just Jah ran with the actual intent, I contacted Malika Madremana, herself, and she honoured me by saying exactly how the tune came about. On one of the most poignant and applicable portions of her response, Madremana says:
“. . . So years later, after I had been singin backgrounds for years and it was time to write my own music, I would check my journal for the inspirations that quided me in my early years on my trod...Psalms 71 stood out and I still remember the day I wrote it in my book... I was livin back in NY at the time and I was feelin alone and a bit vulnerable...a young Rasta in Queens...tryin to find my way...and to write the verses down it gave me a strength, u know? As if physically writing the words on paper would manifest the protection...it made me feel safe on those streets…”
“As if physically writing the words on paper would manifest the protection… it made me feel safe on those streets”, she says which is absolutely FULL of material in those few words. It seems to me as if Madremana, herself, would also regard the tune as a BRIDGE between the spiritual and the physical world. She later went on to paint this bridge and put up a nice sign and rails and everything by saying:
“I saw people all around trippin off of these natural disasters and global warming and events as if it's a horrible coincidence that they had to transpire...in total disregard to the fact that The Most High MIGHT be A LITTLE bit pissed off at what a disgrace mankind has been to one another...and to His beautiful Earth...a sheer terror to each other...
like an experiment gone wrong...the simple truth is that mankind is not livin right...and naughty children get punished...by a caring Father still...He watches our every move...to check who's with Him...so easy to ovastand...it would seem…”
It was the analogy she used of mankind to The Creator, as naughty children to caring Father, that so much resonated with me, as she still, in the seemingly most mi-nute moments (after having already made what I think was her primary point in the passage of mankind triggering these catastrophes ourselves), went back to very simple and very easy to overstand and TANGIBLE, worldly terms. I was a naughty child sometimes. I was punished by my caring Father. If you have/had a caring Father, I would all but guarantee that you were too. She essentially closed her explanation of Just Jah by saying:
“Just Jah was a result of my need to honor the source of all creation and destruction alike...And to make it painfully clear to whom I align myself in faith and trust... “
Which, on top of what she says in regard to the naughty child and the Father, is absolute brilliance. Malika Madremana’s allegiance is to her Father. That’s obvious. And while yours may or may not be, she points to chaos and destruction of why, if it isn’t going to be to the same ’Father’ to whom she gives praise and honours, then MAYBE it should be to someone or something higher than yourself, lest you be THE ONE getting caught in an earthquake, confident and convinced that it doesn’t really exist.
And lastly, to answer a question of my own: How did Malika Madremana’s song Just Jah change my life? Not to get all sappedified and downright corny, but I’m an inquisitive type of person. I was a child who asked “Why”, in the face of just about every command (even when I wasn’t supposed to) and sometimes I still do that. It was 2000 when I began to come to sight up Rastafari. Quite a few members of my Mother’s family (ALL of her brothers) also walk that path in life, so it was all around me from very early, but I never really made the connection, even though I observed and observed and observed it. So when it finally began to reach me (and should I make a volume two of this series someday, that would DEFINITELY be an interesting story to write for the first time I believe, because, again, it was a song that helped me there (and my HARDCORE readers probably even know which song) to complete it) I, of course, need direct and literal explanations. The first bit of that came when an ‘elder’ rather frankly told me that His Majesty was LITERALLY the feeling that separated me seeing MY Grandmother as my Grandmother and not just some old woman. I’m not quite the idiot shaking all about, convinced that the earthquake doesn’t exist, but I’m probably not very far from him either. I simply have to know WHY I’m shaking. Just Jah offered and continues to offer me my explanation. It does it in ways that my plumber would tell me that the pipes of my house are rusted and clogged and the way my mechanic might explain to me how driving in a pit of nails probably wasn’t the greatest thing for my tires. For me, Just Jah is personal affirmation of the highest order. The song made it clear to me that I walk the ‘right’ road in my life for me and it COMPLETELY answers the awkward four year old in me who is steadily tugging away at Malika Madremana’s (and simultaneously, His Majesty’s) pant leg, asking “why?“
Taken from the album Healing by Malika Madremana
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