A Sound Legacy

IntroductionON 1 MAY 1880, A WOMAN BY THE name of Justina Ripoll (Sister Mary Claver) opened the Alpha Cottage in Kingston, Jamaica.1 Today, the Alpha Cottage - now known as the Alpha Boys' School and Home (Alpha) - serves as an industrial school, music academy, and children's home to approximately 150 boys between the ages of six and eighteen. Although Alpha has played a pivotal role in Jamaican society, social researchers dedicate very little attention to this small charity school founded by the Roman Catholic Order of the Sisters of Mercy. The few existing accounts of Alpha focus almost exclusively on the school's music programme. This emphasis comes as no surprise since the school has been a key player in Jamaica's popular music tradition. Yet, no studies to date have explored how and why music became a central feature at Alpha, given the school's early focus as an industrial school for orphaned, abandoned, and wayward boys.The purpose of this essay is to explore the school's emergence as a primary force behind Jamaica's musical legacy. Fifteen interviews with Alpha graduates were conducted to provide primary oral source material (see Appendix). In addition to oral interviews, this study utilises primary and secondary literature to fashion a nascent story of the development of music at Alpha. In the tradition of Africana critical theory, which seeks to simultaneously locate sites of domination and affirm the agency of diasporan Africans, this paper traces the story in two parallel veins, observing both the ways in which students and staff used music as a liberatory space and the ways in which music served to buttress prevailing colonial arrangements in society. Combined, these explorations offer a more holistic framework for understanding Alpha both as a relic of Britain's imperial legacy and as an influential force in Jamaica's cultural history.A short history of Jamaican popular musicAt its very heart, Jamaican music is the story of its people - its majority working-class poor, unemployed, and peasant populations.2 Its worldwide appeal, while found in the iconography of Rastafari and fame of Bob Marley, is more deeply entrenched in its message of protest, racial awareness and social justice. Indisputably, Jamaica's music has set the backdrop to social and political movements throughout the world, and locally has been used to convey the discontent of a nation's populace who, at the dawn of Jamaica's independence, witnessed the waning of promises for economic renewal, educational advancement, political power and racial justice.3As one of the world's few living folk music forms, reggae music - and its precursor ska - has provided a medium through which Jamaicans have asserted an African identity and claimed a psychic and cultural space of liberation. It is Jamaica's Rastafarians who introduced African rhythmic elements into reggae music, incorporating elements of drumming and chanting that go back to pre-slavery days.4 With an emphasis on African roots and traditions, reggae musicians turned to Rastafari for a musical identity that separated them from trivial pop imagery, to develop one that was more spiritual and socio-politically conscious than the popularly oriented rhythm and blues and jazz music imported from America.5The influence of American music was strongly felt in Jamaica during much of the 1950s. At that time, a new technology in Jamaica known as the sound system became the primary venue through which rhythm and blues music reached Jamaica's populace. These were large music systems or 'mobile discotheques' transported on trucks into the neighbourhoods of Kingston, where outdoor dances and all-night sessions would be operated by popular sound system owners such as Duke Reid and Sir Coxsone.6 The sound system was one of the few opportunities for the average Jamaican to hear American rhythm and blues, since most did not own radios or record players.7 Consequently, the sound system became instrumental in Jamaica's modern music scene and burgeoning recording industry

Art · Media studies · Musical · Sociology · Surprise · Visual arts · Caribbean history, culture, and politics · Gender Studies · History · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy · Urban and Rural Development Challenges

• Cut `n' Mix

  Dick Hebdige•Cut 'n' Mix•2003

  Add to list

• Slaves in Red Coats

  Roy Augier, Roger Norman Buckley•Hispanic American Historical Review•1980

  Add to list

• Wake the Town and Tell the People

  Open Access•Donald R Hill, Donald Hill•American Ethnologist•2001

  Add to list