Chapter 8: "Legalize It, Don’t Criticize It"
Chapter 8 "Legalize it, Don't Criticize it" recounts host Henry K's adventurous road trip through Jamaica on his way to attend Reggae Sunsplash, a legendary music festival that serves as a meeting point for diverse groups of people united by their love for reggae. The narrative examines the complex relationship between the Jamaican authorities and the Rastafarian community, shedding light on the persecution faced by reggae artists and advocates of marijuana legalization. It explores the economic and cultural forces at play, illustrating how reggae music became a global phenomenon while navigating the challenges of legal and social barriers. The podcast provides a thoughtful analysis of the historical context, drawing connections between the music industry, tourism, and the evolving perception of marijuana in Jamaica.
Rootsland is produced by Henry K in association with Voice Boxx Studios Kingston, Jamaica.
Introduction by: Michelle "Kim" Yamaguchi
Guest Vocals by: Patrick "Curly Loxx" Gaynor
Featured song: Sugar Black and Lehbanchuleh - “Give Thanks” Produced by Henry K
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Transcript
Henry K.
Speaker A:Henry K.
Speaker A:Production because righteousness govern the world.
Speaker B:Broadcasting live and direct from the rolling Red Hills on the outskirts of Kingston, Jamaica.
Speaker B:From a magical place at the intersection of words, sound, and power, the red light is on.
Speaker B:Your dial is set the frequency in tune to the Rootsland podcast stories that are music to your ears.
Speaker A:Brother Henry, I don't like this.
Speaker A:I don't like this at all.
Speaker A:He's been there a while now.
Speaker B:I don't like it either.
Speaker B:But Tex can handle himself.
Speaker B:He's a pretty skilled negotiator.
Speaker A:But these jamaican police, they don't play.
Speaker A:I told you we should have went through Ocho Rios.
Speaker A:I don't know why Tex came this way.
Speaker B:Brownstone I agreed with Brother Nelson, but it was a little late to start second guessing strategies.
Speaker B:Tex wanted to take this route to Montego Bay for just this reason.
Speaker B:We all had our parts to play.
Speaker B:Nelson, the unaware cab driver taking a fare to Montego Bay from Kingston, I the innocent tourist on my way to see reggae sunsplash.
Speaker B:And Tex, well, he was Tex.
Speaker B:He didn't play.
Speaker B:But hopefully the officer he was talking to in the squad car, he did.
Speaker B:We were pulled over at a police checkpoint in Brownstown, a small town nestled in the jamaican countryside, blessed with lush farms and gentle rolling hills, and one main road with a bustling marketplace just north of 9 miles in St.
Speaker B:Anne's Bay, where Bob Marley was born and buried, and south of Discovery Bay, where Columbus first landed on the island.
Speaker B:So it was not out of place for a tourist to be driving around this area.
Speaker B:Two immaculately dressed, uniformed constables leaned up against their squad car with its sirens flashing, inspecting vehicles as they drove by, casually clutching their m 16 rifles.
Speaker B:They nonchalantly used them to wave by the less suspicious looking vehicles, and every once in a while, they would flag a car for a closer inspection.
Speaker B:I guess a beat up taxi from Kingston with a tourist in a grateful dead tie dye and a jewelry covered rude boy in the backseat was enough to warrant a closer look.
Speaker A:Listen, brother Henry, you don't have to say my car is beat up, you know.
Speaker A:You know how expensive it is to fix a car in Kingston.
Speaker A:Those mechanics are criminals, you know.
Speaker B:Sorry, brother Nelson, you're right.
Speaker B:No disrespect.
Speaker B:Tex was a master planner, so he was expecting this.
Speaker B:He said it was as predictable as the lions of the Serengeti, patiently waiting for the migration of unsuspecting wildebeest to pass through their territory.
Speaker B:At some point, they were gonna come.
Speaker B:Reggae's sunsplash took place in the summer, when the tourist season was at its slowest.
Speaker B:Originally, when they were seeking approval for the international Reggae Festival, the planners of the event set the show in August during the tourist drought as a way to entice skeptical conservative city officials.
Speaker B:As the event grew, it became a welcomed off season boom for the city of Mo Bay and its hungry hotel owners, restaurateurs, transportation companies, and, of course, police.
Speaker B:This was a short window of time to feast in between the seasonal migration of american and canadian tourists.
Speaker B:The question was how much food they wanted versus how much food Tex wanted to feed them.
Speaker B:Tex told us that small town police were more amicable to finding quick resolutions to these situations without having to involve other branches of the jamaican judicial system.
Speaker B:In other words, they were more open to bribes.
Speaker B:Plus, these smaller forces had less mouths to feed.
Speaker B:But the negotiating process would get a lot more complicated if the cops actually opened the trunk and smelled a compressed pound of freshly grown indica bud after it's been sitting in a hot car all day.
Speaker B:It was like we killed a skunk on the drive, and he let out one last super death revenge spray.
Speaker B:I was shocked the police didn't smell it earlier.
Speaker B:Because of the global impact of reggae and the rise of Rasta culture, the island of Jamaica and the plant of marijuana, or ganja, as it's called, are forever joined as one.
Speaker B:Not all Jamaicans have always been thrilled with this phenomena sense, Amelia and reggae have always been a major draw for the islands tourism industry.
Speaker B:And yet, at the time, it was still illegal to cultivate, possess, or smoke it.
Speaker B:In Jamaica, violating these laws brought stiff fines and mandatory prison sentences.
Speaker B:Starting in the seventies, fortunes were being made by politicians, police and business people in the burgeoning ganja trade.
Speaker B:And yet the high profile shot callers at the top of the food chain seemed to evade having to pay any significant price for their crimes.
Speaker B:Instead, it was the little guy on the street smoking a spliff that could get badly beaten or thrown in jail.
Speaker B:Ganja became an easy and convenient excuse for the police in Jamaica to harass and lock up people they deemed undesirable that they wanted off the streets.
Speaker B:Then the jamaican justice system would throw away the key, a pattern still practiced by police forces around the globe.
Speaker B:It was a time when ganja was labeled an evil drug by the system, a time when medical experts and doctors said marijuana could drive you insane, that it had no productive uses or positive benefits.
Speaker B:There was an aggressive crackdown in Jamaica, where it was made public enemy number one by the police and government looking to garner headlines and show the Internet national community.
Speaker B:They were doing their part in the war on drugs, but many of them were secretly profiting through backdoor deals off the same drug trade, the ones who paid the biggest price and suffered the most under these brutal police tactics.
Speaker B:Jamaica's Rastafari community I send greetings to all the Rastaman in the world, especially high profile reggae singers, musicians and activists.
Speaker B:These same Rastafarians advocated for decades that marijuana held medicinal properties that helped a list of ailments, from glaucoma to digestive issues, stress, depression, even sleeping disorders.
Speaker B:They proclaimed the herb as a spiritual sacrament created and given to man by their lord and creator, Haile Selassie I, the emperor of Ethiopia, Ja Rastafari.
Speaker B:The Rasta community put themselves in direct line of fire to defend this holy herb.
Speaker B:Artists like Peter Tosh were beaten for being so outspoken in promoting its use and legalization.
Speaker B:His song legalize it is now an anthem.
Speaker B:But when it was originally released, it was a radical statement, an affront to the political system of Jamaica that he so despised.
Speaker B:As a result, the police allegedly beat his hands to a bloody pulp so he could never play guitar or light a spliff again.
Speaker B:And still, that never stopped him.
Speaker A:Legalize it.
Speaker A:Don't criticize it.
Speaker A:Legalize it.
Speaker A:Then I will advertise it.
Speaker B:His former bandmate, Bunny Whaler, the Collie man, was another one of marijuana's strongest musical and cultural advocates.
Speaker B:And because of his courage to take a stand, he was set up and locked up for 18 months in Richmond Farm prison in St.
Speaker B:Mary during the peak of his musical career.
Speaker B:That was the mandatory sentence in Jamaica at the time for ganja.
Speaker B:It was also the same amount of time imposed on the man who actually invented the word reggae, the music's godfather, toots Hibbert from Toots and the May tells.
Speaker B: up, Toots wrote the smash hit: Speaker B:He used to say on the day he went into prison, he lost his identity, his humanity.
Speaker B:He was no longer a name, just a number.
Speaker B:These and other reggae crusaders had argued that the pharmaceutical companies didnt want the secret properties of CBD, or THC to get out there because it would dip into their profits, derived from prescribing unnecessary, unnatural drugs to treat the same ailments that can be cured completely naturally by an herb that can grow anywhere, by anyone, given to the world by a higher power, so it couldn't be regulated or controlled by man, or so they hoped.
Speaker A:It's the healing of the nation.
Speaker A:I will pray a prayer for the world of us and for your expression.
Speaker B:Because when the medical industry saw that there was no stopping this movement and these ideas professed by the Rastafarians and other naturalists were accurate, that marijuana's natural properties could cure a laundry list of physical and psychological issues, well, they wanted in, and they did what any corporation does to a local mom and pop's corner shop, buy them up or trample them out.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker B:And now that big pharma has their tentacles fully wrapped around the cannabis, a medical miracle is happening right before our eyes.
Speaker B:This harmful schedule, one narcotic that had been ostracized for decades as a dangerous drug by a system that sent millions to prison, cost countless people their jobs and lives, all of a sudden is now being held as this miracle cure all by the same companies, doctors and corrupt medical system that spent decades fighting against its legalization.
Speaker B:Greed works.
Speaker A:A baby lanyard.
Speaker A:But we bring the foreign currency.
Speaker A:Panda islands do baby la.
Speaker A:Nobody charge me, sir.
Speaker A: You see, it's almost: Speaker B:What Nelson was referring to was what Tex told us earlier, that we needed to be in Montego Bay before five.
Speaker B:What happens Friday at five?
Speaker B: ost bail to Monday morning at: Speaker B:Instead of spending the weekend sipping pina coladas and jamming to reggae music, id be locked up in a jail cell in Brownstown, something that was not on my bucket list, and I was not looking forward to calling my mother from a jamaican jail cell.
Speaker B:Geez, Tex, man, you scared me.
Speaker B:What's up?
Speaker A:Hand me the backstage passes for the show.
Speaker B:Why?
Speaker B:Why, Tex?
Speaker A:Just get me the Ross Clark badges, bro.
Speaker B:Tex, why do you need those?
Speaker A:Get me them now.
Speaker B:Oh, man, don't tell me you're gonna give the police our passes.
Speaker B:It took me forever to get them.
Speaker A:If you don't, you're going to spend the weekend sleeping, standing up in a crowded jail cell and shitting in a Ross cloth bucket.
Speaker A:So get the passes.
Speaker B:Well, tech, since you put it that way, here you go.
Speaker B:Tell the police to enjoy the show.
Speaker B: In: Speaker B:The name was optimistic, but we already know.
Speaker B:For the Arawak tribe that greeted him on the shore, the story does not end well.
Speaker B:Located on the north coast, Mo Bay has a history as a port city, an agricultural community which at one point became the center of the island's sugarcane industry.
Speaker B:Beautiful natural beaches carved in and out of a rugged coastline are surrounded by fertile valleys and mountains in the distance that at the right time of day, blend as one with the clouds on the horizon.
Speaker B:When an airstrip was built by the us air force in the second World War and then converted into an international airport, Montego Bay became a tourism mecca that attracted major hotel chains, cruise lines and restaurants.
Speaker B:The hipstrip, Montego Bay's shopping district, is lined with trendy eateries and has all the prerequisite t shirt jewelry and souvenir shops.
Speaker B:But if you step off the main, you can get a taste of the real Jamaica, both in the savory street cuisine and their spicy attitudes.
Speaker B:Because outside the boutique hotels and luxury all inclusive resorts, there's a world of hard working, fast moving, big dreaming residents.
Speaker B:Many that come from depressed and impoverished communities around the city, yet spend their days and nights rubbing shoulders with some of the wealthiest and most influential people in the world, serving them in restaurants, checking them into their flights and hotels, washing their clothes and cleaning their rooms.
Speaker B:Unlike the ghettos in Kingston, where the classes seldom mix and mingle, in a tourist city like Montego Bay, its residents get to see firsthand the life theyre missing out on.
Speaker B:Imagine serving daiquiris all day at an opulent beach bar in a hotel that cost more for one night than you make in a month.
Speaker B:Your job is to make your guests feel warm and welcome and act like you dont have a worry in the world.
Speaker B:Then after work, you board a crowded bus back to a slum on a gully where you have no privacy for yourself, no security for your children.
Speaker B:Imagine the strength it would take to pull that off for one day, let alone every day for the rest of your life.
Speaker B:And you're considered one of the lucky ones in many ways.
Speaker B:This illusion of Montego Bay and the way it collides with the real Montego Bay and the ashes that fall to the ground in the collision, is what makes this city the perfect home for sunsplash.
Speaker B:And what makes reggae sunsplash the most real and authentic music festival in the world.
Speaker B:Because those ashes that descend from the sky, they make the soil rich with the nutrients that make reggae grow.
Speaker B:This captivating sound that brings tens of thousands of fans from all over the globe for a week in the August heat every year to experience the one love, one heart that is sunsplash in Jamaica.
Speaker B:At least thats why I was here for Tex.
Speaker B:This trip had a different purpose.
Speaker B:And although he loved music just as much as me, there was something he loved more.
Speaker B:Making money.
Speaker B:Not short, quick hustle money.
Speaker B:Long game, hard earned money.
Speaker B:Where do you see yourself ten years from now?
Speaker A:Well, easy.
Speaker B:Tex was a visionary, and he had drive.
Speaker B:He wanted a way out of this rude boy lifestyle and figured out that meant taking his Persona and turning it into a brand.
Speaker B:There was Tex, the person who I don't think anyone knew, and Texdae, the brand.
Speaker B:It was the brand he came here to Montego Bay to promote.
Speaker B:In a way, Tex was a gangster.
Speaker B:Donny Deutsch Holborn Road in New Kingston was a small street, but it opened up a world of possibilities for an honest hustler like Tex.
Speaker B:A chance to meet and befriend music industry people from all over the globe.
Speaker B:They came to Kingston for work or for vacation, or just to soak up some jamaican vibes.
Speaker B:Tex was right there to soak it up with them, a clientele that included musicians, singers, journalists, record executives, many that would be in Montego Bay to attend the show.
Speaker B:There is no way that Tex would let one of his clients or friends travel all the way to his country to a musical performance of this magnitude and let them buy overpriced, subpar product from a stranger on the street, much less have them risk arrest or police harassment.
Speaker B:No, not text the businessman.
Speaker B:For him, attending Sunsplash was like a CEO attending a trade show to wine and dine the reps and buyers and then exhibit his upcoming product for the new season.
Speaker B:The Seawind hotel is a sprawling, all inclusive resort surrounded by the glistening caribbean sea.
Speaker B:The peninsula where it's located is also the home of the reggae Sunsplash festival grounds, which allows you to walk from the hotel to the show.
Speaker B:During the festivities, the ordinarily family friendly, g rated resort transforms into a red, golden green reggae wonderland where righteous Rastas burn their spliff's poolside next to topless, dreadlocked german groupies.
Speaker B:Because of its proximity to the venue, theirs are the most sought after rooms during Sunsplash week and book up years in advance.
Speaker B:It's where the entertainers, press and special guests are all comped rooms and meals by the show's promoters, synergy productions, in lieu of actually having to pay anybody money.
Speaker B:The hotel is also where the production team coordinates the events, although coordinate would be a word that is used generously because nothing about reggae sunsplash was coordinated from the late performances to the endless set breaks, missing singers and general confusion.
Speaker B:But that's the charm that made the show so special.
Speaker B:The seawind was also the place Tex picked to set up his pop up weed shop in a small suite overlooking the pool in the north tower.
Speaker B:And like a Clive Davis Grammy party, everyone showed up to pay tribute to Tex.
Speaker B:The french posse came.
Speaker B:They were always looking stylish in their bohemian chic, even after days of all night reggae shows and limited showers.
Speaker B:I guess the French are used to that.
Speaker A:Bonjour, mais amis.
Speaker B:The Swedes and Germans with their blonde dreadlocks and birkenstocks for miles go ten.
Speaker A:Talk to the german posse in Hamburg.
Speaker B:Father the japanese crew gangster to the core Kanicho Japan crew reggae lovers from the holy land of Israel, Shalom Israel in Jaos Black Americans from Philly, old hippies from Cali, hardcore bikers from the Canadian Rockies.
Speaker B:They all shared a love for Jamaica and its music.
Speaker B:And later that night, under the tropical stars and when they rocked the reggae one drop, they all share a love for something else.
Speaker B:The high grade from Texas.
Speaker B:When I first opened the door, I thought the guy was German or Dutch.
Speaker B:He was a little short for that.
Speaker B:He had long, straight blond hair like Kurt Cobain, and he was dressed kind of like a jewish grandfather from Boca Raton on his way to the card room, complete with bowling shirt and sandals.
Speaker B:A strange look for a young dude, but he pulled it off.
Speaker B:Just imagine my surprise when I found out who it was.
Speaker B:Tex, did you just say Brian from Colorado?
Speaker A:On Damascend, see me on damascendency and I'm a send me on damn a sensei.
Speaker A:Whoa.
Speaker A:Rootland podcast is produced by Henry Kane, association with Vicebox Studios.
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Speaker A:So join the Roots young and Roots land.
Speaker A:Yes, Rasta.
Speaker A:Don't worry about that thing because every little thing is going to be all right.
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