Iron Balloons (2 page)

A great leap in earnings would be triggered in the early 1970s, when Chris Blackwell’s London-based Island Records re-entered the Jamaican market, where it had been founded in 1959.

There are many interesting facts about the label’s reentry, but what is most fascinating to me in the moment of this writing is how much the industry had changed in the intervening years, how much it had developed with almost no investment from overseas in barely more than ten years. Jamaican businesspeople, many of them owners of bars and liquor stores, had invested their own time and money to build retail outlets, wholesale distributors, pressing plants, mastering labs, and recording studios (often in the very same location); but almost none of this investment would have come—it would not have been justified—if the talent pool to produce a vast amount of good music wasn’t there.

By the time Island Records signed the Wailers in 1972, the Jamaican industry had produced the likes of Bob Andy, The Heptones, Delroy Wilson, Ken Boothe, and The Paragons, and it kept on producing acts of international note, some of whom joined Island Records as well. These include Third World, Inner Circle, Black Uhuru, Burning Spear, and Gregory Isaacs. In the early ’80s, Herb Alpert’s A&M Records signed perhaps the most influential reggae singer to date, Dennis Brown. The momentum has continued to the present day, as evidenced by the careers of home-based performers with international careers, such as Bounty Killer, Beenie Man, Junior Gong, Morgan Heritage, Elephant Man, and Sean Paul.

In contrast, there is almost no book publishing industry to speak of in Jamaica today, outside the specialized areas of education and law. Today, I cannot think of ten established, active, home-based novelists, memoirists, or poets below the age of sixty-five. Those who I can identify are the remnants of a small group that came of age before independence in 1962—more than forty years ago—yet Jamaican music is increasing its local and global relevance every single day. Dancehall reggae is hiphop’s only bona fide competition for the hearts and minds of urban youth around the world, and its global march seems to have increased its local pull.

What explains the difference in fates? There are several obvious reasons, most significantly the island’s history of illiteracy and poverty. This has limited the amount of people who can actually read, the popularity of reading for leisure, and the habit of reading beyond the world of the essentials (like newspapers).

But one of the key reasons for the differing fortunes of the two industries is fundamentally related to the architectural structures and related social models that defined the mode of development that each one pursued. Jamaican literature followed the structural model of the university, the salon, and the club, which worked very well in Britain—and is continuing to work for Jamaican writers living in the U.K., Canada, and the United States—while Jamaican music developed along the lines of the tenement yard. The more inclusive model won.

Most of the great Jamaican recording studios were based in converted houses with concrete or dirt yards where the lawns used to be, and although their gates were guarded by what are now legendary roughneck men, their owners understood that there was something to be gained by having lots of people with a love of music hanging out and milling round—that a vital energy could be created from the chemistry of a well-selected crowd.

The Jamaican industry exploded in the 1960s in part because the early studios allowed a lot of people with extraordinary talent to serve apprenticeships with established artists. Most of this apprenticeship took place out in the yard.

The yard was the garden where the talent grew. In one corner, you’d see some talent learning how to sing in three-part harmony. In another, some were learning how to play guitar. Underneath a guinep tree, dance moves were being rehearsed. Inside, another set were watching a session going down, wondering when they’d get their turn. But everyday, while all of this was going on, there’d be some
lyming
(hanging out)—and this is how the spirit of the music was absorbed, how apprentices both learned and caught on.

At Studio One, the most famous of them all, you never got a chance to cut a tune until a veteran said to owner and producer Clement Dodd, “Ah t’ink ’im ready, y’ know.”

When a veteran at Studio One declared that you were ready, it meant that you were in possession of a song worth singing, that you’d found and polished your voice, that enough people in the yard had heard you singing and thought you were good, and that people where you lived and in the yard had begun to greet you with the title “Singer” instead of your regular name. All of this together meant that you were ready to break out, or, as Jamaicans say, ready “fo’ bus’.” And things are pretty much the same today.

So, the last thing you want to be as a Jamaican singer is an
iron balloon
. Why? Because “iron balloon cyaah [can’t] bus’.”

If you’ve been going to the studio for a very long time without earning the chance fo’ bus’, or if you’ve gotten chance after chance but you just can’t bus’, then you’re a certified iron balloon.

The student writers in this book have all been working hard in relative isolation for a number of years without getting the chance fo’ bus’. But see—dem bus’ now. They’ve been published by one of planet’s most well-regarded independent publishers, and, on top of this, in the company of prize-winning authors like Elizabeth Nunez, Kwame Dawes, and Kaylie Jones.

I can’t prevent myself from wondering how the students’ lives would have been different if Jamaica were a different place, one where writing talent had the chance to prosper in a vital world of opportunity, like the one inherited by singers and musicians from their industrious, forward-thinking peers.

If this had happened, the world of literature would be a different place. According to the
Guinness Book of World Records,
the island of Jamaica produces the most records per capita in the world, a fact that isn’t contradicted by anything I’ve ever heard or seen.

This is fantastic. It says a lot about the lyrical ingenuity, entrepreneurial drive, and technical know-how of the island’s people. But it’s also tragic. For it means that hundreds, even thousands of Jamaican novels, plays, and poems have been kidnapped in the mind over the last forty-something years and pressed into service as three-minute songs.

It’s especially tragic when you consider that Jamaicans are the most gifted storytellers in the world.

Sure, people talk about the literary genius of the Irish. Their legacy is great. I’ll give them that. But I don’t think the Irish are as
naturally
gifted as Jamaicans. What the Irish have in addition to their talent is a longer history—specifically, a longer history of literacy, access to publishing, and freedom to express themselves with the printed word. So frankly speaking, if you’re going to judge both countries on achievement, the Irish win hands down. Joyce alone could take our crew with
Ulysses
alone. Just one lick—
boof
—and we all fall down.

But Joyce was not just gifted. He was born in a place where being a writer was not merely possible; it was valued. He was born into the kind of world that Jamaican singers and musicians have made for themselves. For Joyce, the possibility of becoming a successful, published writer was concrete. So the meaningful comparison isn’t between Vic Reid and James Joyce. If you want a meaningful comparison, you’d need to sit in at a whiskey bar in Ireland then come and visit a Jamaican ghetto “corner” when a yout’ with a name like Deebo or Drop Kick is about to “give a drama” … or simply drop by an East Kingston rum shop.

We established the Calabash Writer’s Workshop for a single reason: to help more Jamaican writers get published—by more presses, in more countries, more often. We also wanted them to be published in more forms and genres, from more points of view. We still do.

As such, to get into our workshops you must compete. You must send in a manuscript. It’s the only thing that counts. If your writing gets you in, you pay nothing. If it doesn’t get you in, we’re sorry—you can’t just buy your way.

The teachers lead the workshops for the love of it. None of us get paid. This point is even more remarkable when you consider that all but one of us come from overseas. When we come to Jamaica for our three-day intensives, we don’t stay in hotels. Calabash can’t afford it. We stay with family and friends and put the savings to good use. What would go to accommodation goes to things like putting out a daily spread in case we have some students with a lot of talent but not enough to eat. It’s a form of dignity insurance. Having food for everyone allows those in need to benefit in a selfrespecting way.

But another rationale is simple joy—the joy of working with the knowledge that a mango slice or melon wedge is just a step or two away, along with hot Blue Mountain coffee, frosty orange juice, and sticky almond buns; the joy of knowing that the cooler has a Red Stripe
and
a Heineken that bear your middle name.

We don’t have a lot of money. We don’t even have a proper office. But as an organization we believe in certain things. Although all our offerings are free and open to the public, we believe in affirming the personal dignity of everybody we serve. Although we operate in a Third World country, we believe in reaching for the highest global standards. We believe in truth and beauty, in having fun, in breaking rules, in taking chances … doing things with style.

The work in
Iron Balloons
and the art direction of the book itself are illustrations of the things that we believe. They also illustrate our commitment to going beyond developing more Jamaican writing talent, to actually getting more Jamaican writers into print.

Iron Balloons
is not the debut publication of the Calabash International Literary Festival Trust. In 2005, with the support of the Reed Foundation, we inaugurated the Calabash Chapbook Series, six volumes by student poets: Mbala, Nikki Johnson, Andrew Stone, Saffron, Ishion Hutchinson, and Blakka Ellis. The series editor was Kwame Dawes.

In 2005, we also worked with Peepal Tree Press to copublish a special Calabash fiftieth-anniversary edition of John Hearne’s novel,
Voices under the Window
. And in 2004, we worked with Macmillan Publishing to bring out a fiftieth-anniversary edition of Roger Mais’s
Brotherman
. Like
Voices, Brotherman
is one of the most important novels in the Jamaican (and wider Caribbean) literary canon, and had fallen out of print. Yet even though
Iron Balloons
is not our first publication, it still holds a special place for us, for many reasons; but the one I’d like to talk about is our collective admiration for its publisher, Akashic Books.

Our emotional involvement with Akashic began in 2002, when I read an article on Cuban writer Daniel Chavarría in the
New York Times.
He sounded really interesting—and believe me, he is. But what really got me hooked was that his publisher was based in Brooklyn.

I’d never heard of Chavarría’s publisher although I’d lived in Brooklyn for ten years. So I googled it—Akashic—found it online, tried to call the office just to talk, but there was no phone number on its website.

To me the name
Akashic
sounded slightly cultish, conjured mental images of Satanists who liked to dress up like Hasidic Jews and publish clever books encoded with demonic messages that only showed themselves beneath a special purple light.

So time passed, a year. I forgot about Chavarría and Akashic and went on tour to promote my second novel,
Satisfy My Soul
. Then, in 2003, I met the man I’d thought of as the King of Brooklyn Satanists at Medgar Evers College on a balmy Brooklyn afternoon.

I’d just finished listening to a panel discussion at the National Black Writers Conference and was walking down a crowded passage when I saw a table full of books that had the most compelling titles and designs I’d ever seen. I stopped to look and saw copies of Chavarría’s
Adios Muchachos
and
The Eye of Cybele.
I began talking to the guy selling the books and the story in the
New York Times
came up. I mentioned the freaky business about the website with no phone number, and during a casual conversation it came out somehow that the guy was not who I’d suspected—a clerk or intern sent to babysit the books—but Father Akashic Himself.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Oh. Johnny.”

He had one leg crossed over the other and he was smiling, both to me and to himself.

“Johnny what?”

“Johnny Temple.”

My first thoughts, in order, were:

1. That’s the coolest
effing
name I’ve heard in a very long time.

2. Why is this white man selling books by mostly non-black writers at the National Black Writers Conference? Doesn’t he believe in profits?

3. If what I see here on this table is any indication of what this guy thinks about and champions and values, then the soul of Island Records lives on in Akashic Books.

So we got to talking. He lived in Brooklyn, and I lived in Brooklyn too. He lived in Fort Greene, and I lived in Fort Greene too. He lived on South Oxford Street, and I lived on South Oxford too. Between Atlantic and Hanson Place … and I did too.

Oh yes, he lived across the street from me. I know a good thing when I see it, so I made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.

“I run this little literary festival in Jamaica by the name of Calabash. Little thing. I think you and Akashic should come next year. Here’s what I want you to do. Choose four authors—you don’t have to do it now—and tell me who they are and which airport they’d fly out of, and Calabash will pay the bill … airfare, accommodation, transfers, a little per diem for expenses.”

He said, “You’re kidding me.”

I said, “No. It’s like how we do it in the recording studios down in Jamaica. When you ask a guitarist that you have a feel fo’ to come in and give you some licks, what the man does is his t’ing. But that’s why you ask him. You want his t’ing.”

With animation now, we began to bat ideas back and forth, and somehow it came out that he was into music. Well, more than that. He was a musician in the rock band Girls Against Boys. What instrument? Bass.