Jamaican Artistes Remember 9/11: Jamaica Observer
NORMAN MUNROE, Entertainment
Editor
Wednesday, September 11,
2002
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com
IN the aftermath of the attack on and subsequent destruction of the twin towers
of the World Trade Centre last year, artistes the world over were moved to add
their artistic voices to the general reactions to the disaster, and to seek to
find some meaning in what had
happened.
At least three creations by Jamaican singers were a part of this
effort.
Veteran singer/songwriter Ernie Smith, was sufficiently moved by the tragedy to
pen the song Lady Liberty 9/11. In an interview with the Observer yesterday,
Smith recalled that he had been inspired to write the song while, like much of
the rest of the world, he watched the events unfold on television. He was
further moved when he eventually learnt of the number of Jamaicans who were
killed.
For Smith personally, the tragedy also struck close to home, as his stepson had,
just two days before the tragedy, turned down a job offered to him by a firm of
investment bankers whose offices were in the World Trade Centre. That firm lost
every member of its staff when the towers collapsed. Smith's stepson, who worked
with investment bankers, Morgan Stanley, which also had an office in the World
Trade Centre, also knew 20 people who died in the
disaster.
"So it was something that hit close to home, yuh know, for a lot of people ...
and I really felt like, with all that - you know, they say that America is no
saint but nobody should do that to nobody, yuh know - with the loss of so many
innocent people," Smith
recalled.
According to Smith, the song was "very hard" to write and he recalled that it
took him a few days to complete but he persevered, for, as he puts it "something
needed to be said." The first verse of the song, he mused, was based on a vivid
image that he saw the day after the event. The lines, in part,
are:
"...I
couldn't see Lady Liberty but I know that day she
cried
'Cause we
couldn't see her torch and the smoke was in her
eyes..."
Of the image that prompted the inspiration for the lines, he
recalled:
"The day after there was a cartoon...where all you could see from around the
Statue (of Liberty) was the torch, showing over the smoke," Smith said, adding
with a chuckle that "anything I see triggers some kind of inspiration. So that's
where the inspiration (for the song) really came
from."
Produced by the experienced trio of Grub Cooper, Mikey Chung and Mikey Bennett,
in the year since the song, which also features Toots Hibbert, was written,
however, not a lot has happened with it. Smith said that he has performed it a
few times at various gigs, including one at a club close to Ground Zero, but
beyond that not much has
happened.
"...We got good response everywhere we went but the whole thing of getting into
the marketplace, never really [happened]," he
said.
"We
actually presented it to Bill Clinton's organisation, offering the proceeds (of
sales) to the education fund that they were working on. But we never got any
help with that
either."
On this the first anniversary of the event, Smith said he was not expecting to
perform the song anywhere but noted that radio stations, including local ones,
have copies of the
track.
Another artiste, Valton "VC" Craigie, also made a contribution, with a "special"
adapted from his song Gwaan. Craigie told the Observer that he was asked by a
sound system operator in New York, within a week of the event, to create a song
to mark the occasion. This request resulted in a reworking of the first verse of
the song, with the following lines being
substituted:
"New York City nuh feel nuh
way
I just don't
know what to say
So many people lose them
life
to this
anti-Christ
Jah
know that nuh
right
So many
friends in NYC
see the dying, watch them
bleed
feeling
hurt but no, not
weak
This is
NYC, we don't know
defeat.."
This
verse dovetailed well into the chorus of the song which
goes:
"So gwaan
and hold yuh strength now,
natty
Yuh bound
fi face some times when the road well
rocky.
Gwaan and
hold a
meditation
Seek
yuh power an yuh guidance from the Almighty
One"
The
singer said that he performed the reworked song, "quite a few times", in New
York as well as in a number of other places, including at a relief show held in
Miami, in the aftermath of the tragedy. Craigie said that the song usually "went
over well" and noted too, that, while it received little attention in Jamaica,
it received much rotation on ethnic radio stations in New York, including WLIB
and HOT 97
FM.
In
perhaps the most publicised effort, on December 4, last year, a CD entitled Pray
For Love, the proceeds from which are supposed to go to the families of the
victims of the World Trade Centre tragedy, was launched at the Hilton Kingston
Hotel. Cowriter of the track Alva Fearon, along with a number of the artistes
who contributed their talents to the single were on hand for the event. That
function was also supposed to be a precursor for a telethon which was to have
been held at the hotel on December 13, the proceeds from which was to have been
for the relatives of the Caribbean nationals who perished in the attack on the
Twin
Towers.
The song was recorded in Miami in late September and featured the likes of
singers Freddie McGregor, Tinga Stewart, Mikey Spice, Glen Washington and Lenn
Hammond, as well as deejay Screwdriver. While the lyrics are original the music
is borrowed from US singer Christopher Cross' 1982 hit Arthur's Theme (Best That
You Can Do), the theme song from the movie and its sequel starring the late
Dudley
Moore.
The
song, for which a music video was shot and other promotional measures were
carried out, received some amount of airplay locally; however it is unclear just
how much momentum the initial effort was able to
maintain.
Fearon told the press at the December launch that a full album was to have been
released by January this year while a live show with acts who contributed to the
set, was to have been held in February this year. However, as far as the
Observer has been able to ascertain, these efforts did not
materialize.
And outside of the world of music, acclaimed Jamaican-born choreographer Garth
Fagan, last year dedicated one of his dances to the victims of the
tragedy.
Performances of In Memorian The Innocent, The Brave, The Hands, The Minds ...
All Mankind were made possible with sponsorship from the Eastman Kodak
Company.
The dance is the rework of a section of one of Fagan's most loved recent dances,
Two Pieces of One: Green, and is set to the music of the Officium Defunctorum (A
Consecration for the Dead) by 16th century Spanish composer, Cristobal de
Morales.
Posted: Fri - December
12, 2003 at 01:52 PM