The FIYA BURN Controversy:
On the Uses of Fire in a Culture of Love and Rebellion

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Back in 1929, speaking on the anniversary of Emancipation in the English-speaking Caribbean, Marcus Garvey said: "We must create a second emancipation: an emancipation of our minds." It is a short leap from this to Bob Marley’s paraphrase: "Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery: none but ourselves can free our minds." Yet it is also a great evolution in consciousness. One of the central forms of mental slavery against which Marley did battle was the very notion of racialism itself. Marley was a Garveyite, and yet he did not call himself a black man, he called himself a Rasta. He said repeatedly that Europeans and Asians could also be Rastas, if they put the teachings of Selassie into practice, in particular the vision of a world of equal rights guaranteed to all, "without regard to race."

This is a historical evolution comparable to Christianity’s shift from a Jewish tribal religion, to an inclusive community that was "neither Jew nor Gentile, male nor female, slave nor free." Thus Rasta is no more just a "black man’s culture" than Christianity is a "Jewish religion." But this has been an incomplete revolution. "The problem with emancipation is the fact that the chains on the mind are often even more binding than the chains on the body," Carolyn Cooper has written. And the mental slavery of hateful opposition to those who do not look or think like us has turned out to be a form of bondage much more enduring than physical slavery.

The fire burn controversy has come at the right time. Because the time is riper than ever for those of us who love this music and culture to begin to re-define who we are. The youths have come up knowing much more clearly what they oppose, than what they stand for. All of us need to play a role, as my Idren Norman Bonner has said, to create an atmosphere in which "producers and artists will generate, and DJ’s will play, songs that celebrate diversity and understanding, and condemn bigotry and lethal prejudices."

Angela Davis

Regarding the fire burn white people mentality, I remember another piece of sage advice. This was from Angela Davis, who I once heard give some constructive criticism to a conference in which speaker after speaker was obsessively trashing white people. A workable multi-ethnic coalition, Davis said, would be one in which "white people are neither centered nor excluded." Those who claim to be creating alternatives to the history of Eurocentrism cannot do so if they continue to center on Europeans, even and especially through mere opposition.

There are two forms of subservience, the historian David Hackett Fischer once wrote: "slavish imitation and obsessive refutation." Either extreme is a form of "mental slavery." And surely the obsessive fire burning on enemies named as the battyman, the Vatican, or the white man, is a form of subservience. Again, I believe that the whole community needs to come together in a reasoning to obtain a clearer definition of what it really is we oppose, and what it is we hope to create as an alternative.

If we only know what we oppose, then we will be left with ashes. Which is the end game of fire burn, as I once heard a black woman sing one dawn in San Diego, to the tune of "Oh how I love Jesus":

"Oh how I love fire, oh how I love fire, oh how I love fire,

Cause everything turns black when it burns."

BURN BABYLON WITH NO REGRETS

I have written this essay primarily with a non-Jamaican roots audience in mind, particularly those of us who live in more privileged areas. I think that it is easy to lose sight of why so many youths are angry. And I think that in these times of crisis, we need to remember the need for anger, and rebellion.

Norman Stolzoff writes, "roots reggae had become something of an orthodoxy to these primarily white fans, and it blinded them to the larger musical culture." The larger culture of which he speaks still "mus ragamuffin to stay alive in this time." Youths in the Caribbean, like many urban youths elsewhere, face widespread underemployment. Many live in ghettos in which violent death is commonplace. They go to schools, if they go at all, that teach them out-of-date information. Leaders do not speak to them, and for the most part seem corrupt. The youths have contempt for institutions of all kinds, which all seem invested in the status quo.

Same as it ever was: "Babylon system is the vampire, sucking the blood of the sufferers."

Babylon has been described by Jack Johnson-Hill, in his book I-Sight: The World of Rastafari, as "an artificial affluent society of self-absorbed individuals who worship idols and live decadent lifestyles at the expense of the poor."

And I ask my readers: does that ring a bell? Isn’t that a pretty good description of the "rat race" in which most of us live?

So when I hear Prince Malachi sing "burn down Babylon with no regrets," I say "we don’t want no water, let the Babylon System burn." The youths of today have looked at the world they have inherited, and they have apparently agreed with Bob Marley’s worst-case scenario: "It seems like total destruction is the only solution."

I think we should be able to agree on the need to at least metaphorically "burn down" an unjust, unsustainable lifestyle that only serves the interests of the rich, and is destroying the earth. Our so-called leaders are in denial, or just don’t care, in their search for greater political and economic gain. We can’t even have a dialogue with the youth of today if we can’t affirm that there are many things about which all of us should be angry, those who want "betterment."

Maybe from that starting point, we can begin to talk about learning to channel anger in more constructive directions. Maybe then the verbal arsonists will grasp the truth of what Gandhi once said, that "an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind." The battyman, the Bible, and the Buckra are not the enemy—in fact they all have something important to contribute to our collective emancipation.

"Judge not that you be not judged," is a teaching that one finds in all world religions. And it’s still timely. Regarding the fire burners, Mikey General told JahWorks.org editor Laura Gardner: "some of them are casting judgement and not purging their own self. That can’t be right."

In an interview with Carter Van Pelt, Luciano affirmed the need for rhetorical burning of certain things. He noted that he had "burned fire" on a cigarette advertisement he found along the stage at one of his performances. But to "just burn without a reason or without control, without knowledge, is dangerous to I & I also," said Luciano. "They say love without knowledge is no love at all. We cyan afford fe spill more blood for the spilling of that blood."

Rasta-influenced reggae music, says my friend Andrej Grubacic in Serbia, is "a culture of love and rebellion." He and thousands of allies used reggae music as an organizing tool to rebel against the dictatorship of Milosevic. But Rasta Reggae gave them a model of not only what they opposed but also the more attractive alternative they wanted to build. Andrej and Luciano are both part of the culture in which I live. And they both overstand that fire and rebellion can be used either for purification, or for destruction. Ultimately the way they are used depends on our consciousness. Getting more conscious in our time means that we must learn how to engage in controlled rebellion, and not just opposition. Because if we only know what we oppose, then we become like what we hate. To create a more attractive alternative to the Babylon system, our rebellion must be guided by love. Love of justice, and ultimately, love and respect for all life.

"Those who say, ‘I Love Jah,’ and hate their brothers and sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love their Creator whom they have not seen" (I John 4, adapted)

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Gregory Stephens is the author of On Racial Frontiers: The New Culture of Frederick Douglass, Ralph Ellison, and Bob Marley (Cambridge UP). As a journalist Stephens has published in forums including the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle and Village Voice. An interview about this book can be read here. His essay "The Fiya Burn Controversy: On the Uses of Fire in a Culture of Love and Rebellion" can be read here and the companion radio special can be heard here. A former Lecturer at the University of California and a Rockefeller Fellow at the University of North Carolina, he is currently a Bilingual Teacher in Oklahoma City Public Schools. Stephens’ radio shows, interviews, and writing are on-line at http://www.gregorystephens.com. Contact gstephen@email.unc.edu

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Preliminary Comments About "The Fiya Burn Controversy" by Gregory Stephens

1. Excellent article.
   - Clinton Fearon
   

2. Very informative and inspiring. I sense this as an important contribution towards the complete r-evolution and solution. The replication of this vibration is necessary for the emancipation of all nations.
   Peace...
   - Kwayko Blandella
   
   

3. A fantastic, timely, and crucial article! I am glad somebody comprehensively addressed so many things that have been on my mind…
   Peace and RASpect to all those who keep up the fight for love and against evil in all forms! Here’s looking to a day when all Rastafar-I can unite and trust one another without question or judgement!
   - DJ Firewater, NYC

4. Excellent article, very interesting and informative. At the end, I was reminded of something that Lee Perry told me in an interview when I was asking him for details about the song "Public Jestering": "You mean the people who want to have a crowd, a big crowd, and because they don't really want you to know the word about Rastafari, about God. They want to create a big thing, and people say "yes, he is the man now!" People like Mutabaruka, who was public jestering on the radio in Jamaica. Mutabaruka is one of the public jesterers. And he jester very much on the radio in Jamaica, and people believe him. He jester about the white man taking away from the black man, but this is because the black man was stupid! To let the white man take away what is yours. If you have something and they want, leave them take it, because they won't have it for long. So instead we should be creating love between the black and white so we can have a better nation. Because when black is working together, we are too greedy, and when white is working together, them are too greedy. But when we have black and white mix, then we all understand and have control and say "look, you are being too greedy, you are taking too much of mine, let's talk about it before we have a fight". So we can create a black and white nation in unity - one God, one aim, one destiny - instead of the black want it all and the white want it all, and create a tug of war, and cause public jestering."
   -Mick

5. i enjoyed the article and radio program on fire burn. listening to gregory's show, it sounded like he read my vibe column about sizzla bunning white people in jamaica at sumfest a few years ago. i'll never forget seeing him tell that older european lady "don't be afraid of the fire".
   - respect, rob kenner
   Vibe Magazine

6. Loved the "Love and Rebellion" cds. And the elucidation on "fire burn" brought me up to speed in one swell foop - I like the idea of the fire as purification - iron sharpening iron as it were.
   - One Heart, Roger Steffens
   Bob Marley Archivist

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