Marlon James - A Brief History of Seven Killings

O ne more thing, ostentatious gentlemens. Never turn your back ’pon a white bwoi. After a hot night with no moon all you can think of is that something out to betray you, maybe God, maybe man, but never turn your back ’pon a white bwoi. Turn your back ’pon a white bwoi who drink your mannish water and blush red from the spice and he go back to America and write about how the natives gave him goat’s head soup to drink, and the flavour come from blood. Turn your back ’pon a white bwoi when he say he come to the ghetto to look for the Rhythm and he go back to En gland with your 45s and him get rich while you stay poor. Turn you back ’pon a white bwoi and he will say that is he that shot the Sherrif, ennit? and make you the deputy then go onstage and say the black wogs and coons and Arabs and fucking Jamaicans and fucking blah blah blah don’t belong here, we don’t want them here. This is England, this is a white country, because he think naigger boy never going read the Melody Maker . The Singer learn this in peculiar fashion only a few weeks ago at the Hope Road house, when he rehearsing for the peace concert.

This was only few weeks ago. Maybe just two. The Singer and the band rehearsing from early morning right into the night. Judy just go call him aside to tell him that that line he singing, under heavy manners, is a slogan for the PNP and if he sing it that will mean he siding with the PNP, which too many people already suspect. They running through the song again when there is the white bwoi. He just appear out of nowhere like magic trick — poof!

— A where you come from, boss? say the drummer.

— Outside.

— You with Chris?

— No.

— You the boy from Rolling Stone ?

— No.

— Melody Maker ?

— No.

— New Music Express ?

— No.

— Old massa plantation?

— Huh? No.

— Keef Richards send you with weed? That man get better weed than anybody in Jamdown.

— No.

The Singer go to find out who this white bwoi be that just show up in the studio, not even out in the grounds where white people usually swarm like ants, usually with long hair in imitation dread and sunglasses and tiedie t-shirts and saying you reggae dudes are far out, man, got any gawn-ja? But this white man didn’t dress like he running from something or looking for something else. The Singer go to demand a name but the band didn’t wait and he go right back into rehearsal. The white bwoi fan away ganja smoke like it be a swarm of mosquito, he look like he was holding his breath. Every now and then he nod to the beat, but behind the beat, like most white people. He look like he was waiting for everybody to finish. The band ignore him, but when they finish the song the man gone.

About that time, the Singer go to the kitchen like he always do, to get himself an orange or a grapefruit, and there like he waiting is the white bwoi. He look up but not at the Singer and ask, What’s a Crazy Ballhead? Before he get an answer, he start to sing it, dem crazy, dem crazay, like he have to feel the words to know the words. You heard that stuff Eric Clapton said about you some months ago? Real piece of work, that man, so he gets onstage and says, Keep Britain white. Chase all the wogs out and all the Arabs and all the fucking Jamaicans, can you believe that? He actually said all the fucking Jamaicans! Wow. Didn’t he cover a song of yours? Just goes to show that you never know who your friends are, huh? The Singer tell him that he always know exactly who is friend and who is enemy, but the white bwoi continue like he talking to himself. Two of the band come into the kitchen and them stunned too that the man appear again, like magic. Yow, brethren, look like the tour bus leave you, one of them say, but he didn’t smile, he didn’t even do that out of breath heh-heh-heh-heh laugh that white people do when them don’t know for sure if you make a joke.

— God. God. God. You know what’s God’s problem, the man say. I mean, Jehovah, Jesus, Yahweh, Allah, Jah, whatever bullshit you want to call him—

— Don’t blaspheme against His Imperial Majesty.

— But the thing about God, is that he needs the fame, you know? Fine, the attention, the notice, the recognition. He said it himself, in all your ways acknowledge me. If you stop paying attention or call his name out he kinda ceases to exist.

— Brethren—

— Now the devil, he doesn’t need acknowledgment, in fact, the more hush-hush the better.

— Bossman, what you—

— Meaning he doesn’t need to be name-checked, identified, or even remembered. The way I see it, the devil could be anyone around you.

— Yow, the last tour bus leave so you going have to go find a taxi. Now.

— I can get around.

— But we rehearsing and… hold on. But no tour bus come here today. Where the fuck you come from?

All this time the Singer saying nothing. Is the band that asking questions. The man walking around the kitchen, looking out the window, at the stove, and pick up a grapefruit. He examine it, throw it up in the air two times, then put it back down.

— So what’s this Crazy Baldhead about?

— Brethren, Crazy Baldhead is about Crazy Baldhead. If the man have to explain him song him would’a write explanation, not song.

— Touché.

— What?

— And congo bongo I? “Natty Dread” congo bongo I. I mean, I get “I Shot the Sheriff,” that’s a metaphor, right? Ism and Schism? What I want to know is what happened to the man who sung sweet little songs like “Stir It Up.” Is it because the other two left you? What happened to the love everybody vibes? “Burning and Looting”? Is that like “Dancing in the Street”? You know, angry nigger music.

Black man who live in Jamaica all him life don’t see much trouble in the word nigger. Black man who come from America is a different story. One man say what the fuck, but it trail off into a mumble. It say something that the white bwoi strut like peacock in what is not him territory, without muscle or gun, like he still own it. Like of course nobody going touch him, he is a white bwoi. I know things. I know this come from slavery. Jamaicans love to talk ’bout how they was the most rebellious negroes in the world, but truth be that slave master would go off in the forest with six or twelve man slave, some of who he whip only a few day before, and not one nigger do a damn thing.

— New album looks like it’s heading to number one with a bullet. You’re all booked out, Sweden, Germany, Hammersmith Odeon, New York City. You listen to American radio at all? I mean, I personally got nothing against black people, you know, Jimi Hendrix, right? But you know what? Jimi’s dead and rock and roll right now is rock and roll, Deep Purple, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Brain Salad Surgery . They don’t need anybody coming on masquerading, pretending to be rock stars… “My Boy Lollipop,” that was a good song, good song, good beat, that’s what I like, she went in, got herself a hit, then got out. You make my heart giddyup, hah!

By now, the man stepping back ’cause he see they circling him. But he don’t look nervous, he only talking all over the place and nobody understand him. The Singer say nothing.

— America? We’re in a tough time. Really tough time. We have to pull things together. Last thing we need is a rabble-rouser setting off the wrong element. Rock and roll is rock and roll and it has its fans it doesn’t need… Look, I’m trying to tell you people this nicely. But rock, well, rock is for real Americans. And you all need to stop trying to cultivate an audience… Mainstream America doesn’t need your kind of message so think real hard about these tours… maybe you should stick to the coasts. Stop trying to reach mainstream America.