#Bob marley ganja baby windows#

After being skeptical about ackee & salt fish, I quickly took a liking jerk and curry chicken, peas & rice, and sweet plantains. I remember attending one East Flatbush house party where I had eyes for the older of two sisters, but her younger sister ambushed me by the speakers and nearly ground my boney teenage body to dust. So even if my R&B trained ear often found dub monotonous, I found contentment in watching the Jamaicans bring a sensuous slow groove dance style to block parties and basement jams. If they loved you it was intense, but if you crossed them theyвЂ™d slap any man or woman, damn the consequences. They were thick hipped, luscious brown, and fiery with an edgy passion and humor. What made this sonic incursion tolerable for me was the welcome presence of Jamaican woman. Though all this music would fall under the banner of what IвЂ™d come to know as reggae, it was the heavy dub sound that first announced to Brooklyn that the Jamaicans had arrived and they were not going to be quiet about their presence. Often it was accompanied by the unintelligible doggerel of U-Roy, I-Roy and other вЂњtoastingвЂќ MCs.

#Bob marley ganja baby windows#

Using massive bass speakers that rattled the ice in paper cups and the windows of nearby homes, a new, booming, molecule-altering sound filled Brooklyn nights. But this new wave of immigrants didnвЂ™t just confine their sound to the intimacy of private parties or clubs. First it was calypso, which IвЂ™d been hearing coming from various house parties since I was small. I remember when their music began to infiltrate the city. In the tribal battleground that was NYC circa вЂ70s the Caribbean influx added a new twist in the city eternal jockeying for space and respect. Many of these вЂњscrew faceвЂќ cats hung in front of Tilden High wearing tams, Clark WallabeeвЂ™s, and kicking around a soccer ball, introducing me to a new sport I neither understood or liked. Next came working class Caribbean immigrants, folks whose rough and ready attitudes were as tough as any public housing young blood. Those first arrivals were upscale folks, often from Trinidad or Barbados. Plus, many of that first wave of kids acted like they were better than us, with haughty attitudes similar to bourgeois African-Americans and a pride in coming from an independent black country and owning property вЂњback homeвЂќ that few of us could match.

They didnвЂ™t eat what we ate, didnвЂ™t move like we moved, didnвЂ™t always dress like we dressed. They spoke English with accents that ranged from sing-song charming to incomprehensible. Their roots werenвЂ™t in the American south. When they started arriving there was both confusion and hostility from native-born black students, including yours truly. Not just to 1980, but to the mid-1970s in BrooklynвЂ™s East Flatbush neighborhood when the first Caribbean teenagers began attending BrooklynвЂ™s Samuel J. Seeing the Marley transcript sent me back in time. It had been so long ago that the paper IвЂ™d typed it on had yellowed, corrections had been made with вЂњwhite out,вЂќ and the first page had the address of my first post-college apartment in Queens. Finally, deep in a file cabinet, there it was. The name of the headliner, The Commodores, was printed on the ticket, but what made that show extraordinary were the opening acts вЂ“ rapper Kurtis Blow and the reggae superstar Bob Marley, who I interviewed earlier that very same week.Д«ut where was the transcript? Inspired by finding the ticket stub I started opening other file cabinets and looking in other corners of my back room, hoping the interview wasnвЂ™t the victim of several moves. The ticket price for an orchestra seat was $12.50, but mine had вЂњGuestвЂ™ stamped on it since it was complimentary. It was a ripped ticket from Madison Square Garden, Saturday September 20, 1980. Inside buried beneath some college newspaper clippings, promotional photos of old Stax stars (Isaac Hayes, Booker T & the MGs), and date books from 1980s, was a ticket stub I should have kept in a place of honor. In the back room corner of my old Fort Greene apartment was an old plastic file cabinet.