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 Sister
Carol was one of several people I interviewed while preparing a radio
special on the theme "Expanding the Culture of Equal Rights and Justice."
I aired this show with DJ RJ on KAZI-Austin February 12, 2002 and with
Scottie McDonald on KTRU-Houston February 13, 2002. RJ and I planned to
focus on troublesome attitudes about gender in Jamaica, but to also cover
the themes of animal rights and environmental rights, which have also
been a part of Rasta Culture. (See for instance Bushman’s "Fire
Pon a Deadas," and a couple of tunes about environmental catastrophe
we included on the first part of our special, "What You Gonna Do"
by Yogie and Lenn Hammond, and "Rough Inna Town" by Cocoa Tea
with Luciano).
RJ and I had been talking for years about the absence of conscious women
artists in reggae, and Sister Carol was an obvious choice for commentary
on this. However, anti-gay rhetoric became so virulent in 2001 that it
became apparent we would have to devote most of the show to that theme.
We had first discussed Jamaica’s anti-gay obsession on-air in January
2001 in the "Fire Burn Controversy" special. But we still hoped
link the Chi Chi man obsession to broader Jamaican attitudes about gender.
In December 2001 I interviewed Julius Powell, a spokesman for the Jamaican
gay rights group J-FLAG. He drew explicit links between Jamaican machismo,
repressive attitudes towards the place of women, and virulent hatred of
homosexuals.
 When
I first told Sister Carol’s manager Dino what we had in mind, he
warned me explicitly not to bring up the topic of Chi Chi man tunes. Carol
only dealt with positivity, he said. Like most Jamaicans, he wanted absolutely
nothing to do with the Batty Boy business, directly or indirectly. I decided
to play it by ear, and see if we could establish enough rapport to delve
into what is still a taboo topic for most yardies.
Three things have impressed me about Sister Carol over the years: her
longevity (a good marker of artistic depth), the singularity of her style
(sometimes called "singjay," but uniquely her own), and the
consistent upfulness and consciousness of her lyrics. Aside from carrying
the torch for positive women in the culture, I might also add that Sister
Carol has embodied the internationalization of reggae music and dancehall.
She is Jamaican-born and reared, but has been New York-based since age
14. One cannot say she is either Jamaican or North American, because she
is both. Her three albums on the Heartbeat label, "Black Cinderella"
(1984), "Call Me Sister Carol" (1994), and the Grammy-nominated
"Lyrically Potent" (1996) all showcase her deep love for Jamaican
culture and creative use of classic riddims. (Check the Studio One remakes
she produced, "All I Have is Love" [Easy Star, 2001]). But these
works also make it clear that Sister Carol’s broad vision is a fruit
both of her Jamaican roots, and of her long residency in New York. Her
latest album of new material, "Isis: The Original Womb-Man"
reveals a further artistic maturity, and an even stronger commitment to
womanist themes. It was released on and largely recorded at Tuff Gong,
and is thoroughly suffused with the riddims of classic Jamaican music.
Yet it is also, lyrically, Carol’s most international album. Carol’s
self-advertisement itself is the most telling description:
"Black Cinderella has matriculated into Mother Culture/
Why you know Sister Carol is still a roots dawta." ("I-Sis
Apella")
I was surprised when Carol came on the line at how soft-spoken she was.
But the voice of reason was clear in her commentary about the need for
people to let go of the self-fulfilling prophecy, "it’s a man’s
world." She was idealistic, yet realistic about the problems women
still face in reggae music: there had been only a "slight change"
in attitudes. When the reasoning turned to the negativity that has dominated
dance hall and hip-hop in recent years (a link Carol made), I sensed her
disappointment that her message had not gotten through to a wider audience.
This made me go back and listen to her Tuff Gong album from a new perspective:
"Crowd of people I love to DJ for you/
If they would only allow me like they used to." ("Opportunity")
The reasoning turned on Carol’s response to the same question I’ve
been posing to everyone: what do you say to fans who feel they are not
a part of the culture, and therefore they don’t have a right to criticize
it? Carol argued that to the contrary, "what we’re doing is
we’re sharing culture." Furthermore, the audience, by participating
in the culture, has a responsibility to respond to the artists, to give
them not only praise but constructive criticism, when we don’t like
what they’re saying.
With that common ground established, I read her the brutal lyrics from
Ghetto Max’s "Elimination," and asked her to respond. In
contrast to the ease and eloquence with which Carol talked about women,
her comments about the anti-battymon craze were full of pauses and hesitations.
It was clear to me that this was a very difficult subject for her to discuss,
being Jamaican. But it was also clear that she had been "trying to
figure it out for myself." At one point she said something I found
sort of touching. She said: "I’m just as thoughtful and as considerate
as you are." It was this sense of being a part of a community in
which many considerate people were deeply troubled by anti-homosexual
prejudice, I think, that gave Sister Carol the courage to distance herself,
if only cautiously, from her fellow Jamaicans. She never really did criticize
anti-Chi Chi man lyrics directly. But she did go on record, with the repeated
qualifier that she only spoke for herself, that such hatred was distracting
us from the real issues. Respect due.
* * *
GS--I’d like to talk with you about the continuing absence of women
in conscious reggae music. I can tell you that we’ve done this show
for many years and we’re always looking for more women. You’ve
always been one of the women that we have included, but it’s been
hard to find more. I think we’ve seen some indications of a change
in music coming out of Jamaica over the last year or two, thinking of
"Just Friends" and "Virtuous Woman" and things like
that. But I just wanted to start by asking you to comment on why you think
there has been a relative absence of women in this field.
SC–Well I’d have to start by talking about people in the world
in general who keep on saying that it’s a man’s world. It’s
a constant fight for the woman to be heard, to be seen, to establish herself.
It’s a continuous fight. But personally for myself I stopped accepting
and believing that statement that "it’s a man’s world"
because God is not dumb. God is very smart. Him say that creation have
to be balanced with male and female. Couldn’t do it with man alone.
All my life, in doing what I’m doing, I hope to instill the confidence
in the woman that we can step to the plate and do what God has placed
them to do. There’s a lot of women with talent out there but they
[almost] always become dependent upon the man to do for them, to speak
for them, to make it happen for them. And sometimes if the man cannot
get intimately close with them then it just won’t happen.
Q–That’s an interesting point because male producers have written
roles for women over the years in which they have primarily defined them
as sexual objects. There are some conscious women writing new roles for
themselves, such as yourself. However, many women who begin writing their
own songs continue to follow that same role that men defined earlier.
Why do you think that is?
A–Some of them are not fully educated enough to think for themselves.
It’s very hard but I know it’s possible, because if I’m
doing it, that means it’s possible. And it’s not anything much
that I’ve been doing because I’ve never been signed by a major
label.
What I constantly keep in mind with the sisters is whatever you make in
terms of money you invest that money in yourself, keep recording yourself,
keep getting the music out.
Q–We want to look at the cultural roots of the attitude that places
man above woman. We know that the Creator is in Creation, and the Creator
doesn’t play favorites between male and female. Yet in the culture
there are strong beliefs about the place of woman in the home. Can you
compare the differences in your own life, between what you were taught
when you were growing up, and how you liberated yourself from some of
that cultural baggage of woman as a second-class citizen, or as a supporter
only of a man.
A–Well I grew up in Jamaica and that type of teaching was instilled
in our heads. I left Jamaica at a very early age, when I was about 14,
and moved here to America with my family. I know personally for myself,
I can credit it to having had the opportunity to go beyond the social
barrier of what we know; to educate myself as to how we are the people.
I’ve actually had to make some personal changes of my own in terms
of how I was brought up into what I know now.
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