Modern Blackness

Abstract

introduction ''out of many, one (black) people''During a rehearsal for a dance performance in Kingston, Jamaica, I was stretching and talking with members of one of the country's premiere concert dance companies.I noticed a fair-skinned woman with long, dark, slightly wavy hair who was warming up with some of the other dancers in the opposite corner of the studio.She looked familiar to me, so I asked the artistic director whether she was the British woman who had performed with the Company some years before.''Who?She?!'' the director responded.''No, she is very, very Jamaican!''When I asked what it meant to be ''very, very Jamaican,'' the director replied, ''You know, very, very Jamaican.You eat plenty ackee and saltfish.You love reggae music.You talk patois.''I probed further, asking whether one had to do those things all the time to be ''very, very Jamaican.''''Jamaica very broad you know,'' she answered.''Very cosmopolitan.Plenty Jamaicans even eat lasagna, but them don't love it more than them ackee and saltfish.And there are plenty Jamaicans in America who are more Jamaican than Jamaicans here.Some high class Jamaicans don't act very, very Jamaican at all.''By this time, another dancer had joined the conversation.''Let me tell you,'' she o√ered, ''I am so into my culture, the least thing will bring tears to my eyes'':Going to a craft fair, seeing the women selling dukoonoo and wearing them traditional headwrap.Going to a dance, jooksing in a corner, reasoning with a Rastaman while him smoke him herb, watching the dancehall girls skinning out on the floor.We are very brash, brash and colorful.It's the way the dancehall girls dress, the way them leave them belly out, the way them walk, the way them wear them big earrings, the way them color their hair.It's a true and natural expression of how we are deep inside.A third dancer ultimately had the last word.''In Jamaica,'' she said, ''we are a culture of tricksters, we are a culture of loud mouth people, we are a culture of expressive people.If I had to use words to describe Jamaican ''out of many, one (black) people'' 3

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