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Black Atlantic Culture, Migration and the ”Lovable Colonial Mother”
It needs to be emphasised that Kitchener as well as Aitken looked across the Atlantic, toward the happenings on the African continent. Aitken‘s ‘They got it‘ marks a significant moment in Black Atlantic culture especially as ”Ghana is the land that few may know”. While the song indicates the orientation of one of Jamaica‘s most popular singers at that time towards Africa, ”They got it” comes about although ”Ghana is the land that few may know”, a line by which Aitken hints at the possibility (and presumably reality) that despite intellectual and populist attempts to promote the relationship between Africa and its Diaspora in the New World, the majority of people in Jamaica lack the knowledge needed to make ‘origin‘ meaningful. They rather seem to lack any relation to the part of the world where the ancestors of over 90% of the Jamaican people came from. Yet, the appreciation of Ghana‘s independence must be a collective obligation. It‘s the self-chosen task of the popular vocalist to point to this necessity in order to heighten the awareness of an ”independence that we must share”.
‘They got it‘ stands out for more than one reason. Chapple has correctly pointed out that, as far as musical expression is concerned, the tune does not fit into accounts of the development of popular Jamaican music written so far (9). ”They got it” reveals features of the local Mento tradition (whose meaning for the evolution of later styles has not been grasped adequately yet)(10), for example the rhythm and swing of the song. The instruments typical for Mento recordings of the time - rumba box and banjo- however - are not audible on the recording. Instead, besides the vocalist, this recording features two saxophone players who produce an extraordinary ”soundscape” rarely heard in (as yet known) Jamaican recordings of this time.
The listening experience reveals, that Aitken‘s glance across the Atlantic is musically supported by the sounds of a new, diasporal Africa in Jamaica that had been in the making above all in the ghettos of Kingston for some decades. From present perspective this tune on Ghana‘s independence appears to be the first recording in Jamaican popular music that fuses popular dance/music styles with the emerging Rastafarian musical culture of the Rasta camps.(11) At hindsight, trying to assess this merger, it should not be overlooked, that the various Rastafari aggregations around Kingston were socially marginalised and shunned groups. Rastafari membership was synonymous with being social outcasts right through the 1960s. (12) According to Laurel Aitken himself, two Rasta-drummers from the Trench Town area joined the studio session and provided the particular drumming style that can be heard on the recording.(13) This musical encounter clearly indicates an early stage of the merger of two cultural realms - one only evolving at the social margins - which would change Jamaica‘s and the Black Atlantic‘s popular music culture in the next decades.
As pointed out already, it is not irrelevant to note that the history of Kitchener‘s ‘Birth of Ghana‘ is linked to the history of Caribbean migration to the ‘Mother Country‘, the centre of the former British Empire. The production of ‘Birth of Ghana‘, and more generally West Indian music in London, provides important insights into the transformation of the former imperial centre into a centre of production and dissemination of Black Atlantic culture from the 1950s. It could be argued that an emerging counterculture of a Black Atlantic was decisively energised by the help of a disintegrating centre providing on its own social and cultural margins the necessary economic and aesthetic capacities needed to push the circulation of cultural forms formerly considered as inferior/exotic ‘spaces‘ into White/European mainstream culture. Within this mechanism seems to occur a shift from a centre of English culture into a centre of African-Caribbean culture for which above all the production company and record label Melodisc mentioned above became a substantial catalyst.
Kitchener‘s ”Birth of Ghana” evokes memories of an African diasporic past. ”The national flag is a lovely scene” attracts all those who strive for the liberty associated with Ghana‘s new national flag flying in the wind, i.e. All those still dominated by colonial rule and not yet bearers of their own national fate. Kitchener‘s reference to the ”black star” in the new national symbol, ”representing the freedom of Africa”, bridges diasporic symbolism with that of the imagined African homeland. It also evokes memories of Nkrumah‘s inspiration by Garvey‘s philosophy itself. The flag bears the colours ”Red, Gold and Green”. It substantiates diasporic imagery with the (inversed) colours of the Ethiopian flag (if one counts gold for yellow), and hence (one version of) the adopted flag of the new African Caribbean movement of Jah people in Jamaica (and London). The decline of the symbolic force of the Black Star had been steady in African Caribbean popular consciousness since the decline of Garvey‘s populist UNIA, and the criminalization of repatriation associated with the alleged fraud of Garvey‘s Black Star Line. In ”Birth of Ghana” it is the black star that shines (again) on light golden skies transforming the imagery of the colonial period:
The national flag is a lovely scene with beautiful colours Red, Gold and Green and a black star in the centre, representing the freedom of Africa
If Aitkens ‘They got it‘ is taken as indicative of Jamaican popular consciousness, it deserves mention that there is no trace of a legacy related to the propagation of repatriation as coded in Jamaican Marcus Garvey and the UNIA‘s slogans ”Africa for the Africans” and ”Back to Africa”. Neither do other more symbolic devices resonate in the lyrics of Aitken‘s independence song. Somehow however, Aitken felt, he needed to connect to the ancestral homeland of African-Caribbean people. He did this non-verbally, here symbolised by the step to integrate those social outcasts of afro-centric Rastafari who were, in their own way, (re)defining a Caribbean relationship to Africa.
”They got it” seems to be a telling example of the ambiguity of the colonial psyche of this time. Aitken, who grew up in an area close to the headquarter of the UNIA in Kingston, and must have been exposed to black politics at an early age, strikes the listener with a remark that creates an almost idyllic image of the colonial past. It clearly counters today‘s expectations of approaching the struggle for liberation and ”post-colonial autonomy”. In his already quoted refrain, apart from praising Nkrumah, Aitken gives thanks for Ghana‘s independence to two of the central powers in Jamaican consciousness: the ”Almighty” and the (‘almighty‘) ”Mother Country”. While expressing the religious ubiquity in Jamaican culture, he simultaneously nourishes the image of the loving and caring ”colonial mother”, so important in legitimising the colonial enterprise and in shaping Britain‘s self-image during colonial rule.
Considering the potential impact of this trope on the collective psyche and Jamaican public consciousness (as represented by the discourse of the ‘loving colonial mother‘ running through Aitken’s tune) this concession seems to suggest that the colonial power promoted its role in the independence process as convincingly and altruistically as necessary to be considered a ”helping hand” as well as ”loveable mother”. Aitken‘s refrain also implies the futility of political efforts to create an anti-colonial, national(istic) consciousness. Compared to for instance the ”chains of ignorance” Roger Mais identified 13 years earlier as the legacy of colonial rule, in his anti-colonial and anti-British statement ”Now We Know”, Aitken‘s assessment must feel like a slap in the face.(14)
In Aitken‘s view, however, Jamaica needs to gain independence, too. For some decades a political and cultural movement associated with Jamaican ”nationalism” had been promoted, yet on the popular level it occurs to be Ghana‘s independence - the ‘Black Atlantic link‘ - not the efforts of the Manleys, Mais and others that conveys the need for freedom and liberty and deserves to be commented on in popular song (to the best of my knowledge there is no comment in popular song of this time on the ‘nationalistic‘ political and cultural efforts of Jamaica‘s elite). Five years from Aitken’s exhortation to ”an independence that we must share”, Great Britain‘s ”helping hand” would have done only the bare necessities to make independence come true - to ‘dismiss‘ its ”outside children” into the new era, how caring or not one might consider this.
End
Kitchener‘s ”Birth of Ghana” as well as Laurel Aitken‘s ”They got it” reveal in their orientation and artistic gestures significant enunciations of a Black Atlantic popular music culture in the making, at a time of substantial political and historical change. There are two more indications to be heard in the songs which I have not focused on yet, which however also seem to corroborate this view: Kitch’s consideration of Haile Selassie’s congratulations to Dr. Nkrumah, as a voice to be mentioned, and Aitken’s anticipation of a migration movement of people of African descent to Ghana in the years to come, making this a place to live. These are truly transatlantic ways of ending their respective songs.
Kitchener‘s ”Birth of Ghana” as well as Laurel Aitken‘s ”They got it” are recorded artistic statements from the time when Ghana became independent. Both songs are expressive of the contemporary euphoria and hope associated with this historic event. They link it to the Caribbean. They offer themselves as striking and important musical points of reference, and as popular Caribbean (re)presentations of Ghana’s independence they are meaningful sites of remembrance in Black Atlantic culture. As such they deserve to be revisited.
Institut für Ethnologie und Afrikastudien - Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz