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Fire burning (Jah know)

Fire blazing (Jah know)

Bun’ Dem, Black Stalin, 1987

Jah know I waited all year for last year to be over. I don’t know what I thought would be different, but I must have had some feeling of (or for) change, because as the new year rolled towards me, I know I had something that felt vaguely like hope.
Last year was a big year for dying. Seemed like everyone was doing it – globally and locally. I’m not trying to make light of death, it’s hardly a light thing. I am very seriously trying to lighten my grief. Again, not trying to make light of it.
I’m nowhere close to enlightenment about grief and I’m always going on about it. I refuse to say another word about grief. I’m going to focus on something that is not that.
But really, Carnival without Blaxx is like Carnival without brass. (The connection to Roy Cape is inevitable, but that’s really not where I’m going with this.) Is it still essential? Maybe not. But you’d miss it if it wasn’t there and you’d wonder what it was that you were missing, even while you were enjoying someone’s mother of all Carnivals.
I had to get off the maudlin track. What songs usually keep me sane? I started with my perpetual playlist of back-in-times 90s and 2000s songs from the US and UK charts. And that little trip made me wonder how we made it through those years.
Those were some deeply, deeply depressing songs. Nirvana, obviously. The Verve, Crash Test Dummies. And that’s just the pop list. REM’s Everybody Hurts has a lot to answer for. Even if the lyrics try to offer a sort of coping manual, I’m not sure anyone can hear the words over the sound of melancholy. Sure, Michael Stipe is saying to hold on, you have friends, don’t give up, and on and on, but it’s sounds like someone saying, “life is great, now be good and drink the Kool-Aid.”
Say what you want about millennials (and yes, people as old as I am often do) but a lot of their mainstream music is refreshingly feisty, self-loving and supportive of others. Well done, younger people. I have a healthy batch of very, very guilty-pleasure songs from them that I use to get me out of bed on the bad days; fight songs, including, literally, Rachael Platten’s Fight Song.
But I scroll past one song after another and I’m still trying to find things that really dull the blade of uncertainty, worry and blickness, and I inevitably land on my soca stage.
For ten years I’ve been spreading my hands and letting go, because Blaxx said I had waited all year to, and so I could. The exuberance of that song – why don’t we talk about it more?
This year people are talking about the old Machel and Destra tune, It’s Carnival, making a comeback. It should. Please, come back. That is delight turned into music. I don’t know how music works, only that it does.
Understand, I’m not talking about healing words like I know Rudder or Shadow can give me on any given Sunday. I’ll always be grateful that they are there. I need them for my general wellbeing. Like I need old Tambu and Johnny King songs. Like I need Super Blue all the time. They’ve all sung about pain and coming through the pain, but some do it with a kind of exhilaration that goes beyond what you can hear and think and all you’re aware of is feeling it on the withinside.
And sometimes a little tough love works. But I only accept mine from my therapist. And Bunji. Bunji whose Heart of the People in 2021, height of the pandemic, made me so proud that someone was doing actual thinking. When we think about our musicians who ponder and wonder and clarify and educate, we have an awful habit of thinking it ended at around Sparrow-o’-clock.
In Alive and Well, Voice says that “jealousy and grrrudge is a sin.” Too right. So, this time, this year, no matter what comes, I’m exorcising my demons with music. I started big with Bun’ Dem. If one song can help me deal with racism, institutional oppression, the vileness that is local politics, the horror that is world politics, corruption in general and very specific terrible decisions by leaders, then we can make it if we try.

Remember to talk to your doctor or therapist if you want to know more about what you read here. In many cases, there’s no single solution or diagnosis to a mental health concern. Many people suffer from more than one condition.
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