Speech by Mrs. Dorrett Campbell at the Rita Marley Foundation Essay Competition Presentation

Mrs. Dorrette Campbell

It is a pleasure to be associated with this, the Third Annual Rita Marley Foundation Essay Competition Awards Presentation Ceremony.

I bring you greetings from the Minister of Education, Youth and Information, Senator the Honourable Ruel Reid, who is currently overseas on the Ministry’s business and could not be here today.

The Ministry of Education, Youth and Information welcomes the continued partnership with the Rita Marley Foundation and its sponsors, particularly the Heart Institute of the Caribbean  which is the main sponsor of this competition.

I admire, approve and applaud your long term goal of eradicating poverty and hunger in specific selected communities using as its tools: empowerment of those communities through the creation of economic investments, improvement of education opportunities and the development of knowledge and proper practice in nutrition and health care.  This goal resonates so much with the goals of education that it is an imperative for us to sustain this partnership in all the ways we possibly can.

 [You know, ladies and gentlemen: we get a lot of things right in Jamaica through collaboration and partnerships. If we could just learn how to work together to build the kind of partnership that guarantees the safety and protection of our children – the kind of community partnership that erects walls of protection against the diabolic, hollow, heartless onslaught of bloody murderers of innocence - If we could just get that right, then that would be what’s right with Jamaica.]

I am especially proud of the schools and students who have participated in this competition and I commend all of you as winners this afternoon. You may not earn the coveted prize of first place but I know that your essay would have been at very high standard to have been considered in a competition that places a high premium on creativity, quality and excellence.

Not only that, but you benefited from honing your writing and communication skills, as is one of the objectives of the competition.  The results and outcomes from our national and external exams tell us that our language capacity is less than excellent; but this lack of excellence in language skills is not reflected or even measured by external exams only. It is painfully obvious in our daily interaction and communication with each other and cuts across all echelons of the society.

In fact I chuckle when I hear some blaming the Jamaican Creole for our inability or rather failure to master the standard English, because the good speaker of languages, particularly the English Language, is the one who is able to flow seamlessly and effortlessly on the language continuum – comfortably mastering and manipulating the Creole and comfortable with what it represents, yet firmly grasping the rudiments of the English Grammar [I am not talking about speaking nicely – the painful truth is that many of us who decry the Creole are neither good speakers of the Creole nor good speakers on the English Language. And I am not hurling stones at anyone; I am merely making an observation].

But that aside: I am absolutely sure that my teachers played a coaching role in the students’ final entries and I would like to recognise and thank them for their continued selfless service to this country. You are a major part of the landscape of national development; not only in the subjects – I prefer to call them disciplines - you teach but your commitment to ensuring that our students get their culture through the many co-curricular and cultural activities you lead in your schools. [… er and I don’t see that in your job description… and perhaps in the next round of negotiations, you should ask for an allowance for that as well…]

But you and I know that is what every called teacher does and what every teacher is called to do  – to harness the rich experiences of our students and channel them in such a way to helping them become ideal Jamaican citizens.

 Ladies and Gentlemen: Please help me applaud students and teachers of Papine High School; York Castle High; Wolmers High School for Boys; Wolmers High School for Girls; and William Knibb Memorial High School.

The Rita Marley Foundation is a front runner in promoting positive values and attitudes in this country through initiatives such as this annual Essay Competition. And what better organisation to do so, than one that has bragging rights for supporting the development of and propounding our culture across the globe.

One of the aims of this essay competition is to spread positive messages about the impact of Bob Marley’s music on the youth, Jamaica and the world.  In observing all that is taking place around us today, God knows we need the positive vibes and messages.

And if we are pessimists, we would conclude, like the late outstanding Guyanese poet, Martin Carter that:

    This is the dark time, my love,
    It is the season of oppression, dark metal, and tears.
    It is the festival of guns, the carnival of misery
    Everywhere the faces of men are strained and anxious.

Or like Richie Spice’s: earth a run red, ten year old a look dem owna bread; I hear a next yute dead, for that’s part of our reality too.

It is true that at the forefront of our consciousness is a world in turmoil and chaos, where efforts to make peace often end up in war and attempts to reduce poverty frequently produce dislocation and pain. We watch the “strained and anxious faces” of our people as we continue to experience what the late former Prime Minister of Jamaica, Michael Manley, expressed as our “struggle in the periphery”. We note the “carnival of misery” being experienced by some people and we must respond to their call to improve the conditions of their lives.

But I prefer the optimist’s perspective: It says, ‘the cup is half-full…’ and in the abundance of water the fool is thirsty: And why do I say this? Instead of lamenting what we are not and what we don’t have, what we ought to have and ought not to do; we ought to build on what we have and seize the opportunities that exist. It was the Governor General the most Honourable Patrick Allen who said, there is nothing wrong with Jamaica that cannot be fixed by what’s right with Jamaica.

We just need the right kind of wisdom in the right kind of leadership in the right kind of organisations to ‘run things;’ and it is this appreciative inquiry perspective that the Rita Marley Foundation has worked tirelessly to uphold.

This essay competition therefore serves to remind us that our dark time is really a sliver of our reality – a subculture that threatens to subsume the positive culture, if we continue to accept the former as the norm. We cannot allow the noise of the negatives to drone out the bigger and more sustainable point that there is still good in Jamaica and that there are still those like the Rita Marley Foundation; like our teachers; like our essayists, who work daily to promote wholesome values and attitudes through their creative talents.

One of the most fundamental constructs of culture resides in the concept of “identity”. This relates to how we see ourselves, and the values we place on our lives, our environment and our realities, and on each other. Hence, there is a direct correlation between cultural identity and the values and attitudes that we display.

I believe our artistes, who are proponents of our culture must see as an imperative the need to give our young people a positive mirror in which to see themselves and the people with whom they interact. I posit that Marley Music does exactly that.

By using lyrics from Marley Music as the theme for the essay, the Rita Marley Foundation is constantly holding up to our young people and to the rest of Jamaica another alternative – a better alternative – another mirror through which they can see themselves instead of what they see in the distorted looking glass of lewd, violent and crass lyrics that are peddled on a daily basis in all our spaces.

In Marley music our young people see strong caring yet resilient families communities and who bend sometimes under the pressure of extenuating circumstances, but with sheer will they pick up themselves knowing that their feet – their will to live is sometimes their only carriage so they have got to ‘push on through.’

In Marley Music our young people will find positive ways of asserting themselves, advocating for their rights, pursuing their goals relentlessly without having to step on anyone’s neck to do so, for he tells us to get up and stand up for our rights; he tells us to wake up and live; to flee from hate, mischief and jealousy that invariably result in crass and violent behaviour; lotto scamming …and St James.

In Marley Music our young people are encouraged not to lose focus in spite the difficulties in spite of the craziness around us; not to let go of your dreams but to work hard to translate those dreams into positive actions: For Marley music tells them, Don't bury your thoughts; put your vision to reality, rise up from sleepless slumber; wake up and live.

In Marley Music, our children are taught to appreciate their indigenous culture and to appreciate and accept themselves the way the creator has made them – yes natural locs and all – and to use the talents they have to make something of themselves to help themselves to eat a bread: Children get your culture and don’t stay there and gesture; for the battle will be harder and you won’t get no supper

The music helps to build self-esteem and self-confidence and to encourage our youth to cultivate independent thought because ‘you have got a mind of your own…and we really shouldn’t mek nobody fool you or even try to school you…

And yes the music sermonises and shows us a better way to live among each other, to love ourselves and love our brother man, forgetting the bitterness the jealousy and the hate and just get together in one love and feel alright.

Marley Music teaches us to be reasoned and reasonable in our dealings with others; to be respectful, honest, truthful and to accept responsibility for our actions [so if you shot the sheriff, own up to it and accept the consequences of your action].

And ladies and gentlemen: these are the values that our school system is trying to teach our students; these are the soft skills that we would like them to have before we unleash them to society.

There are so much values and attitudes promoted in his music and so many lessons from which our students can learn that I have got to thinking that in the same way we teach Martin Carter and other Caribbean poets in our schools as an integral part of our curriculum; in the same way we now have a whole department at the UWI focusing on Reggae Studies,  we really should explore the possibility of formalising Marley Lyrics as poetry in our Caribbean Literature courses both at the secondary and tertiary institutions and lobby for CXC to include those lyrics in the syllabi of CSEC and CAPE. Now this is not Minister’s or my Ministry’s position as yet but this is something that I would like to work with people like Dr Hope and the Rita Marley Foundation to explore and propose to my Ministry.

I have to say this: I grew up on Shakespeare and Bob Marley. I got a steady diet of the former from my high school teachers, through college right up to the University and my grandfather concertedly countered Shakespeare with Marley lyrics. He used to tell me that there was nothing Shakespeare said that Marley didn’t say in his lyrics and said it more profoundly and simply, “and after all him is we own.”

My grandfather advised me that I didn’t need to retort with crass words in any conflict, I should just quote Marley and argument done; I didn’t need to reach for a Shakespearean quote to express how I might be feeling about a situation or to make a commentary about life, I could just draw for the poetry of Bob Marley. And he was right and at a critical juncture of my life I was toying with the idea of explore for my thesis a comparative analysis of Marley and Shakespeare as two timeless poet who had a firm grasp on the varies and vicissitudes of life: Marley and Shakespeare, they hab a word fi ebrybody.

Can I therefore, ask our young people present here today to choose to consume what is wholesome and positive and empowering over what is lewd and crass and violent?

You have the power of choice and you have the alternative, choose to listen to clean conscious music that can inspire you, build you up and not to thwart your sense of self and distort your value system.

Once again, thanks to the Foundation; Thanks to Dr Marley; thanks to Bob Marley for working so hard to help make Jamaica the place to live, grow, do business, raise families and yes… retire.