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Music Reggae/Dancehall Tragedy if Festival ends
Music Reggae/Dancehall Tragedy if Festival ends
| Tragedy if Festival ends |
| Written by Rikard Rehnbergh |
| Friday, 14 August 2009 17:51 |
 Having missed the first day (regional day), the second day (first international day) at the Uppsala Reggae Festival (URF) started with a "bang!" Junior Kelly came on the main stage and gave a conscious blessing with his message of oneness (unity)! At the tête-a-tête talk after the show he told Urbanlife about his new project. Junior Kelly is still sweaty from his energetic show just a few minutes earlier, sweat drops are running like furrows in fertile soil over the bearded face. Kelly looks tired and weary, but he soon catches his breath and energy when he is told that we are from Urbanlife. Immediately he responds positively since he calls his project Urban World, a project supporting eight different schools in poor Jamaican communities outside the capital – towns in the outskirts of Kingston, like Spanish Town, Trench Town and Jones Town – with blocks, bricks, books, cement and computers, building and fixing out-houses, pit-toilets as they call them in Jamaican patois.  – I was born in Spanish Town, and I still live there. People tell me to go uptown, but why should I. I've never been to jail, but the crude facts are that out of my ten friends nine are dead already, eight due to police brutality.Which inevitably led the talk to the hot topic of the infamous police harassments at the URF, where the low water mark was reached last year when the famous reggae-pop-r'n'b artist Sean Paul and the old master producer Lee "Scratch" Perry were arrested for smoking marijuana backstage. Kelly says: – It's not good for the festival, and it's not good for the people, ca' dem fret (because they get afraid) of coming here, and it would be a serious tragedy if this festival goes under! There was a slight controversy regarding the camping this year, the camping taking place on the festival site, instead of outside the festival area as in the years before. Sveriges Lantbruksuniversitet (SLU) who rent the area to the festival didn't get it ready in time. So both the police and the festival rejected the site as being unsuitable for camping, actually, according to eye witnesses, it was looking more like a mud pit. The municipal office hastily arranged other camping sites, at exactly the same time the festival started, a bit late one would think. Meeting the highly dedicated arranger Adiam Kubrom who runs the festival, now in it’s 9th year, together with her personal and professional partner Yared Tekeste, they are continually unsure if there will be a festival the following year. – We're struggling with the municipal office each year, but I think there will be a festival at least next year, says Adiam. Seeing a few politicians eating the evening away by the Jamaican restaurant tent Back-a-yard, Urbanlife seizes the opportunity to ask a few questions regarding the matter. Jan Erik Wikström, local politician from Folkpartiet (FP): – This is a very nice festival. The municipality supports it in many ways, they have a strong assembly at the municipal office, especially during this time when there's a low season in town. And Leif Sanner, also a municipal politician for FP, added and ended with a political promise: – There will be a festival next year, and it will be possible for the festival to rent the old area again. The Friday evening hosted some really fiery performances by the Dutch singer, Ziggi & The Renaissance Band, born on the small Antillean island of St. Eustatius though, and the rock’n’reggae band Roots Underground, and it ended as it started, with a very conscious message. Ky-Mani Marley, son of legendary Robert Nesta Marley, performed a tribute to his father music with several covers during his set.  Ky-Mani resembles his father, no doubt, but with his gym-muscular and tattoo-covered arms he looks more like a biker than a reggae star, except when you look into his eyes, they have a very timid and tender tinge and touch, but they get all fiery when he starts talking, in another face-to-face with Urbanlife, about his project 'Love Over All Foundation', which contrary to Junior Kelly, supports the parishes instead of the shanty towns. On the homepage, one can read: ‘The Love Over All Foundation’ is an organization created by Ky-Mani Marley as a means of 'giving back'. This charitable organization supports and encourages children, Ky-Mani's number one priority, but Love Over All is also focused on restoring values, rebuilding schools and supplying the basic necessities needed in the classrooms, as well as the community. Marley also tells Urbanlife how he and the Marley family are working on a new tribute album to their late father, something like a new version of the 1999 cross-over success and ground breaking album 'Chant Down Babylon'. Due to the fact that the management changed the directions and the same people were not allowed inside the press area on the Saturday as on the Friday, yours truly was prevented from conducting further interviews. Final personal reflection:Uppsala Reggae Festival, Uppsala municipality and Uppsala police must ease it; simmer down people, until next year. This is not the way to go about the presumably coolest, most friendly, least crime-ridden festival in the country, when it comes to music and culture that attracts the youth. All in all: about 300 busted, among them several artists, a new breaking record from last year when Sean Paul, Lee Perry and Italian singer Alborosie (who made a tune about it, called Uppsala Upsetter) were arrested and taken to the station, and plenty more harassed by the police. Including the husband of an Urbanlife reporter who was intimidated by civil police at the car park sitting with the husband of another UL reporter in the car and chatting, just chatting, when two plain clothed policemen came up and started to harass the husband trying to provoke a crime that didn't exist. The Jamaican artists must wonder what's going on, first they suffer police harassment and brutality "back-a-yard" (home), as Junior Kelly is a living witness of, then they have to put up with it on tour in Europe, Sweden, Uppsala as well, which is nothing but a disgrace. And it makes you wonder: is this what we pay for, the tax money we pay, as Swedish citizens, for the police authorities to do? Police means order of the state -- via the Latin word for civil administration, politia, it is originally a Greek word meaning city, polis – and their main task is to prevent, not provoke crime. Has the fact that the husband and the reporter are both Afro-Swedish got anything to do with the harassment? We certainly hope not, but we sure aren’t sure!
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Comments
You\'re right there, brethren!
/RR
Love you all
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