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Caribbean Life, April 7-13, 2022
Things to say to your children
By Terri Schlichenmeyer
Your children never miss a
thing.
Nothing escapes their notice.
They watch below and overhead,
spotting objects you’ve passed by
a dozen times but never truly saw.
From birth and beyond, they’re
like sponges, observant and watchful
and, as in the new book, “The
Trayvon Generation” by Elizabeth
Alexander, you wish for them better
things to see.
Though it’s been a four-hundred
year struggle, the numberone
problem of this century, says
Alexander, is still “the color line.”
Generations have done “the race
work,” but it remains an issue
and she “both laments” and is
“enraged that… our young people
still have to wrestle with” it.
She grew up “in troves of blackness,”
but Alexander’s children
were raised in a neighborhood
where someone sent out a watch
message about two Black boys
riding around on bikes. As the
mother of those boys, now men,
she knows the worry, the dreams
about worrying, and the fear of
not being able to keep them safe.
As a Black mother, it’s impossible
to “fully protect our children,”
she believes.
Part of the problem is that we
don’t always see white supremacy
when it’s hidden right in front
of us. Alexander points at artwork
and paintings that hang in
esteemed places, but that feature
uncomfortable or even outrageous
backgrounds that often go
unnoticed, or that take decades to
change, once they’re seen.
And we go back to what’s seen:
Alexander calls her sons and
Black people under twenty-five
the “Trayvon Generation.” They’re
the youth whose names are called
when we talk about the police, and
the young people whose names we
don’t know. We see, and still wonder
how a mother can keep her
children from being “demonized,”
or teach them “to access the
sources of strength that transcend
this American nightmare
of racism and… violence.” How
can she protect them, when they,
themselves, are used to assuming
“responsibility for the horror they
could not prevent”?
“I wish,” she says, “… for our
young people rest from the unending
labor that is race work, and
from the spectral anxiety that is
part of what it is to be Black.”
How do you mark your pages
when you read a book? Whatever
you use, have a lot of them on
hand because nearly every other
paragraph of “The Trayvon Generation”
contains a sentence or
three that you’ll want to remember,
to re-read, or turn over in
your mind.
Author Elizabeth Alexander
uses personal stories, Black literature,
history, racial violence,
and current events to paint pain
inside the pages of this book.
There’s outrage here, too, but it’s
different than perhaps anything
you’ve read: it shows itself, then
it sits back and waits to see what
a reader will do before getting
another punch or gasp, another
George Floyd, another Angola,
another “shock of delayed comprehension.”
That’s what makes this book
so must-readable, so thoughtful
and compelling. It’s what makes
it something you’ll want to share
with your older teenager and your
friends, for discussion. Find “The
Trayvon Generation,” and you
won’t miss a thing.
“The Trayvon Generation”
by Elizabeth Alexander
c.2022, Grand Central
Publishing
$22.00
160 pages
Book cover of “The Trayvon Generation” by Elizabeth Alexander.
Trayvon Generation author,
Elizabeth Alexander. Djeneba
Aduayom
By Nelson A. King
“King Jammy Destroys The
Virus With Dub” finds Jamaican
producer, mixing engineer and reggae
icon King Jammy emerging
from his famed Waterhouse Studio
in Kingston, Jamaica with 12 new
dub mixes from his original master
recordings.
Born Lloyd James and initially
known as Prince Jammy, James
was an early associate of the late
Osbourne “King Tubby” Ruddock,
Jamaica’s greatest recording engineer
and soundman.
Given his name by Bunny Striker
Lee, Jammy took the throne as
king of reggae production when
digital production took over Jamaican
music in the mid-1980s, with
his production of Wayne Smith’s
“Under Mi Sleng Teng” serving as
the catalyst.
King Jammy’s influence on the
development of dub music and reggae
production in his five-decade
career is incalculable.
His impact was highlighted most
recently in SL2’s “Way In My Brain,”
the soundtrack used for Facebook’s
2021 rebranding as Meta.
King Jammy Destroys The Virus
With Dub is a reminder of the producer’s
enduring catalog and skill at
the mixing board.
“On King Jammy Destroys The
Virus With Dub,” Jammy went back
to his multi-track master recordings
from the 70s-90s and remixed new
dub versions of classic recordings,
a follow-up to Waterhouse Dub,
released by VP Records in 2017.
“To this day, I love mixing and
I love mixing dubs,” he told Caribbean
Life. “Getting back to the master
tapes is like going back in time
and really brings back memories of
all these great singers, musicians
who I’ve worked with.
“When you mix, you can highlight
different aspects of the recording
– whether it’s the singers or any
of the individual instruments,” he
added.
Cover of “King Jammy Destroys
The Virus with Dub.”
‘King Jammy destroys the Virus with Dub’
King Jammy outside his Kingston, Jamaica studio August 2000.
David Corio