Rex Nettleford: A Revolutionary SpiritAuthor(s): MICHAEL MANLEYSource: Caribbean Quarterly, Vol. 43, No. 1/2, THE PLENARIES: Conference On CaribbeanCulture In Honour Of Professor Rex Nettleford (March-June 1997), pp. 96-100Published by: University of the West Indies and Caribbean QuarterlyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40653989 .

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Rex Nettleford: A Revolutionary Spirit by

Rt. Hon. MICHAEL MANLEY

To be asked to write an article about Rex Nettleford is a great honour but it is also to be invited to undertake a daunting task. This is so for two reasons. How do you do justice to a man so multi-faceted, a man who had made seminal contributions to so many areas of our national life? Even worse, how do you find anything new to say? If, per chance, anything had been unsaid before this year, the omission would have been corrected during the remarkable Conference on Culture dedicated to his work.

The Conference itself was both significant and successful. It was significant because it came at a time when the cultural energy which preceded, adumbrated and helped to cause the independence movement in the English-speaking Caribbean, seemed in danger of losing both direction and momentum. Most of the members states of CARICOM are beset by economic crisis, and feel vaguely threatened by the impersonal forces which are creating a much discussed but little understood global marketplace. The people see the North American Free Trade Association (NAFTA) as the forerunner of a larger economic grouping which will embrace the entire region. It seems that hemispheric integration is upon them before they have come fully to terms with their own, more modest efforts in CARICOM and implying integration with one set of people, in Latin America about whom they know little; and another set of people, the United States, too powerful to understand as partners.

Then there is the all-pervasive culture ofthat same giant to the North with whom they are told they must soon enter into this partnership which they do not understand. It threatens to replace everything that we used to regard as our own with a set of persuasively presented illusions. Our expectations as a people may soon lose all contact with reality. In domestic politics there is the cynicism that attends an electoral practice which has tended to substitute the seduction of the promise for the reality of process.

It is against this background that historians, social scientists and practitioners in the various fields of cultural activity came together in sincere tribute to one of the greatest of their number; but also to take stock of the Caribbean condition. In an interesting way the Conference did more than pay tribute to Nettleford. The fact that it could happen at all was largely because of his work and because of both the quality and the unswerving character of his contribution.

To discuss Rex Nettleford with any hope of adequacy, one has to bear in mind that this is artist, historian, social analyst, explorer of the psychology of identity and, critically, a philosopher. It is also important to see Rex Nettleford in the context of an historical process. As late as 1930, Jamaica and the rest of the English-speaking Caribbean were still asleep, perhaps stifling, in the embrace of colonialism. However the sleep was becoming increas- ingly disturbed. Marcus Garvey had struck a profound chord. The 'mighty race' may not have been yet fully ready to arise, but deep forces had been stirred and now lay waiting for a new alchemy of circumstance and leadership to erupt.

As if on cue, and in that order, Edna Manley, Louise Bennett and Ivy Baxter were to emerge. The artistic life of Jamaica was never to be the same again. Popular culture had

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always been there, expressed in the Mento, Pocomania, Kumina, Stoiy-telling and John Canoe. But the middle class, with patronising disdain, saw these as the quaint attempts of 'those people' to amuse themselves. This could never have been accepted as a part of the artistic heritage of a nation! As far as the practitioners were concerned, each activity represented a response to social reality as it was perceived, but there was no sense of what being part of a nation implied, and therefore, no awareness of the wider implications of the art forms which they practised.

The middle and upper class practice of art which painted daffodils which had never been seen, or snow in which they had never shivered, is well documented. Nor did it end with these tiny minority groups. To many a working class child in elementary school these reflections of another people's experience defined 'art' as distinct from the songs which their parents sang and to which they danced.

So profound was this polarisation between the 'we-they' ratio of the sociologists' analysis, that M.G. Smith was to advance the view that Jamaica was, in reality, an example of a plural society as understood by anthropologists. Indeed, despite the claims of politicians and the assertions of our constitution and national symbols to the contrary, Smith may still be right. And it is here that we must begin our analysis of Rex Nettleford.

Suddenly Edna Manley was seeing the beauty that was Jamaica and its people and, in works like Negro Aroused, The Prophet and Strike, was acting as both prophet and chronicler to the revolution. George Campbell was exclaiming: "Say, is my skin beautiful". H.D. Carberry was reminding us that," it takes a mighty fire to make a great people". Carberry was in no doubt that the people in question were Jamaicans and that the historical fires had already been lit. Mirrors that reflected beauty and struggle were suddenly inviting Jamaicans to consider embarking upon an epic journey. As with Garvey before, it did not matter that not everyone was either listening or looking. What was important was that a process of self-awareness and self-discovery was irreversibly commenced.

In due course Louise Bennett was to elevate the language, the poetry and the music of the people to the status of a universal currency of communication. Ivy Baxter was to strike out in new directions in dance movement in a field long polarised between the folk movements of 'them' and the ballet classes to which the daughters of the 'we' attended.

In terms of historical sequence, Nettleford first comes to light as a rising star at the young University of the West Indies and as a brilliant and charismatic dancer with Ivy Baxter. In due course he was to strike out in two directions, both seminal. He formed the National Dance Theatre Company (NDTC) originally with Eddy Thomas and later alone, began a relentless journey with three objectives. He was intent upon the creation of a Jamaican dance vocabulary, rooted in Jamaican experience. Secondly, he was determined to create a technical environment which would give to this dance idiom a universal artistic status, founded in excellence. Thirdly, he set out to make the NDTC financially self-sus- taining to ensure that both continuity and freedom of expression would be equally guaran- teed. He was later to set his artistic work in intellectual context with his book "Roots and Rhythms".

The success of the NDTC is the stuff of legend and a remarkable response to Norman Manley's challenge implied in his famous statement in 1 938 that, "Jamaicans have never lacked ideas. What they have lacked is fixity of purpose."

This leads us to Nettleford's second, seminal departure. This was the writing of, "Norman Manley and the New Jamaica". The reader will forgive the accident of my

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relationship to the subject of Nettleford's first excursion into the field of scholarly analysis of the political process. The work is revolutionary because Nettleford had crossed the boundary between artistic and political life. Having joined and commenced to help with the definition of a movement of cultural liberation, Nettleford was now daring to understand and to describe the historical significance of one of our own political leaders. This involved an act of intellectual liberation no less profound than we find embodied in the work of the first wave of artists in the various fields. By the writing ofthat book Nettleford was telling the world that Jamaica was the scene of a valid, historical process no less authentic than those which had produced an Abraham Lincoln or a Benjamin Disraeli.

It was to transpire that Nettleford was driven by a spirit too revolutionary to be content with activities which authenticated our contemporary experience, however vital that might be in the context of our colonial experience. Within the cradle of his mind, analysis and intuition were combining to suggest that awareness of and pride in ourselves as we are, is not a point of arrival but a point of departure. To be complete, we need to know whence we came.

Colonialism planted in the collective consciousness of the Caribbean people the notion that all virtue, all values of worth, could be traced to the centre of Empire. It was debilitating to the extent that it implied that nothing indigenous was significant because everything of value in politics, in art, in science, in philosophy, in law, had been taken care of by people who "really understood these things"! But, as it happens, colonialism had been associated with something far more destructive. The long horror of slavery had planted the notion that to be black was to be involved in an irreversible and historically demonstrated degradation. From degradation it is a short psychic leap to the suspicion of an inherent inferiority. But the majority of Jamaicans were black. White and brown Jamaicans were defined as falling within the positive portion of the social reality while the black majority were invited to accept that they constituted a negative, though larger, segment. It is this perceptional warp that explains, at least in part, the persistent unease, if not Smith's downright pluralism, which continues to underlie class relations in Jamaica. We have come a long way since the 1930's but the journey is not yet complete. Slavery may have been by now expunged as a conscious determinant of today's social dynamics. But there remains a block in how we perceive the relationship between our deepest ancestral roots and our sense of self today.

The middle passage and all that it represents in our history remains the symbol of a one-way traffic to degradation. Nettleford, like Garvey before him, realised that the search by the Jamaican people for a sense of identity and selfworth would never be complete until the middle passage had been crossed the other way to the discovery of all that part of our heritage which is African. Nettleford began to explore this imperative in "Race and Identity".

The Rastafarian retraces his spiritual steps through the middle passage to Africa, and more specifically, to Ethiopia and Haile Selassie. In one leap of faith Rastafarianism redefines the Christianity which is the common religious currency of the people in terms of a holy land and son of God which are equally compatible with racial reality and spiritual yearning. The true Rastafarian has no problem with his identity or his certainty of self-worth.

Bob Marley undertook this journey in his own way. Once spiritually located in Africa it was almost inevitable that an artist with his fiery sense of justice, gifted as a lyricist with an innate sense of music, would become more than a superstar. Marley has become an icon because his art is a rallying point for the revolutionary spirit of generations increasingly

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lost in a world of persistent injustice and insistent indifference. Revolutionaiy icons, Nettleford included, are people of transcendental self-assurance, almost by definition.

David Boxer has explored the issue in recent years. His series of painting called "Passages" are a brilliant, disturbing, indeed excruciating interpretation of the experience of the millions of slaves who crossed from East to West. The paintings depict, among other things, the bones of those who perished. Implied is the even more malignant process involving the destruction of the spirit.

The majority of Jamaicans are rooted in the traditional symbols and conventions of Christianity and with no grounding in African history nor knowledge of African art. Consequently, that crossing of the middle passage which is a pre-condition of their liberation is no easy journey to undertake. Certainly, they cannot accept it as part of a redirection of their religious beliefs. Nonetheless, the journey must be undertaken. Jamaicans of mixed heritage may not admit it, but they place a greater value on the part of themselves which they deem to be European. Many Jamaicans of pure African descent, on the other hand, may be equally unwilling to admit their secret doubt of the worth of their ethnic heritage. This is not to say that they are incapacitated by that doubt. But it is to say that human beings are more likely to be at peace with themselves where their sense of self rests as securely in their perception of the past as in their experience of the present. Nettleford knows the truth of this. He discusses it in dance works like The Crossing. He continues to write about it, most recently in 'Inward Stretch Outward Reach".

Edna Manley was the seminal figure in that first process of self- discovery. She was also, incidentally, a deep admirer of Airican art. But having established her vocabulary as Jamaican in root and form, her art thereafter consisted of the interpretation of Jamaican experience or the use of the Jamaican form to explore the universal truths of human experience or the use of the Jamaican form to explore the universal truths of human experience or the cosmic processes involved in the seasons, the cycles of birth and death, of decline and renewal. In the twinkling of an eye the forces which she helped to liberate were to produce painters like Albert Huie, Ralph Campbell, Carl Parboosingh, and writers like Roger Mais and Vic Reid. The flood gates were now open.

Much of Nettleford's artistic statement is similar to that of Edna Manley's though expressed in the idiom of the dance. However, Nettleford joins the process at the second stage of the trajectory of revolutionary self-discovery. Hence, he seeks to take us even further along the path which leads to those roots in our history which we must one day incorporate within our assumptions about ourselves and our innate worth. Furthermore, he knows the cultural treasure that awaits those who have the courage to join him in that part of the journey in which we re-trace our steps across the middle passage. He well realises that it is not for nothing that some of the greatest artists of our times, Picasso, Heniy Moore, Giacometti and a host of other European sculptors and painters, absorbed so much of African art into their own creative vocabulary.

So much for the artistic celebrant of Jamaican culture, the historian, the analyst of identity and the explorer of our society dynamics. There remains the no less important philosopher.

Perhaps the most profound insight which Nettleford provides for colleagues and public alike concerns the nature of process itself which he discusses in his capacity as a philosopher. To most people the process leading to change is seen as involving a journey from a predetermined point of departure to a projected point of arrival. Nettleford insists

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that life and history are dialectical in a primaiy, Hegelian sense. To him, therefore, process is an unending dynamic and change a permanent condition. In short, we are invited to extend Jimmy Cliff s vision by knowing that there will always be "many rivers to cross"! Ironically, it is the failure to understand this which has led to the intellectual paralysis which overcame the progressive political forces of much of the world following the "success" of the radical right in the 1980's. Many are only now coming to terms with the fact that the world is changing and that their own approach to a political agenda, no matter how idealistic, must seek to marry enduring social principles with new realities. Artists must equally open their minds to the great pulse beats of change which are the response of the people to new experiences born of the challenge of new pressures and new opportunities.

At the same time, in a critical departure from typical, reflexive political perceptions, Néttleford argues that the removal of systemic injustice liberates oppressor and oppressed alike. This is the reverse side of the coin which Roger Mais makes central to the prison scenes in "The Hills were Joyful Together'1. As Mais reminded us from bitter personal experience prison warder and prisoner are both brutalised by the experience which they are both condemned to share.

Nettleford suggests that the removal of palpable causes of injustice opens up new dialectical processes which lead to positive change. The argument is not founded in some unrealistic assumption that either oppressor or victim can be transformed instantly and magically to a state of perfection. This will not follow immediately upon any single act of liberation, not even monumental acts such as Emancipation or the defeat of apartheid. Rather, it is to suggest that all parties to an equation of institutionalised injustice become involved in a new dialectical experience at the moment of change. The experience may be positive for everyone.

Nettleford, despite his immense scholarship, elegance of language, international recognition, charisma and, let us admit it, uncompromisingly aristocratic bearing, is also quintessential^ Jamaican. He prefers Jamaican food. He is entirely at ease with people from all walks of Jamaican life, like the members of the trade union movement who pass through the Trade Union Education Institute, which he heads, or the old men in the rural villages who are the story-tellers of our history, much of it outside the history books.

It is this most Jamaican of men who invites us to complete an important part of the search for identity by widening the net of our sense of heritage to include Africa no less than Europe, along with India, China and all other parts of the world from which we spring. But he also reminds us that even that journey is only an element in an unending process. In all of this he is the true heir to the social dynamics which those first pioneers helped to precipitate and a brilliant exponent of the journey which we must have the courage to take if the process itself is to continue to unfold.

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