Word: jamaican
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...true ghetto, a backwater of black alienation and crime. Cecil, 18, a slender youth with a black leather cap, leans against the doorway of the Brixton unemployment office on Coldharbour Lane and says, "I wouldn't work in this country. I'd rather be a crook." A Jamaican who left the island when he was three, Cecil has not held a job since he graduated from school last year. Unable to find anything paying more than $50 a week, he has had repeated brushes with the law, and plans to return to Jamaica when he has enough cash...
Those improbable lyrics, belted out by a Jamaican reggae-rock group called Boney M., are from the hottest pop tune in the Soviet Union. In restaurants and bars throughout the country last week, disc jockeys were spinning the group's recording of Rasputin, which has been issued by the government record company Melodiya. At the same time, curiously, the sellout novel of the year depicts Grigori Rasputin's sexual escapades, including boudoir frolics with Russia's last empress, the Tsarina Alexandra...
...Jamaican nationalists, however, believe the Rastas are lazy, drugged-out, and beguiled by illusions verging on mass hysteria. In fact, one Jamaican psychologist addressed an international psychology conference about the problem of the culture they find so bizarre. The Rastas are a national disgrace in the eyes of middle-class Jamaicans. They believe the Rastas are threatening their dream of a unified Jamaica. The Rastas, on the other hand, refuse to participate in politics. They believe that the Jamaican elites must repay them for 400 years of slavery, and send them back to Ethiopia. Harvard's Orlando Patterson, professor...
...conflicts continue. The Jamaican elite tells the Rastas they can get jobs if they cut their dreadlocks and quit smoking ganja. The Rastas refuse and, consequently, remain hungry. Even if they did cut their locks it is questionable whether there are enough jobs in Jamaica. Instead, the Rastas try to survive in communes. There they can smoke dope all day as long as they aren't caught by the police; they can sing beautiful songs; and occasionally riot over their squalor...
Marley is a Jamaican Rastafarian, a religious group that combines a kind of mystic spiritualism with left-wing politics. His songs reflect the emotions and attitudes of poor people in Jamaica. Some of his most popular songs include "You Belly Full, But We Hungry," "It Takes a Revolution," "Stand Up For Your Rights," and "Burnin' and Lootin...