For Posterity

My guest for this episode is the one and only poet-professor-Portlander, Ishion Hutchinson.  We recorded this conversation via video conferencing as we each lazed in our yards, feeling tethered by the hammock of history and comforted by thoughts of home. Hear macaws and other birds endemic to Jamaica, sing meaningfully as a kind of soundtrack to our chat. Hear how our audio sometimes sizzles...

Borrowing its title from "Seasons of Love," the signature score of the musical Rent, this episode is blessed with the creative energy of Shanique Marie, a Jamaican singer, songwriter, and lover of words. We discuss the curious (sometimes frustrating) ways that Jamaican music is heard as alien at home, yet welcomed as familiar in foreign lands. We discuss her trip to West Africa, being stuck in Eur...

With many music writers always seeking to classify and categorize Jamaican music, I am happy to share this on-time conversation with Alanna Stuart. Alanna is one half of the musical duo Bonjay. She is an amazingly talented singer, songwriter, and producer who recognizes her roots as a third Jamaican, a third Grenadian, and perhaps, a third complicated by the great white North that is the Canada of...

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is it that we see?  With public debate booming about a young girl's right to wear her hair in dreadlocks at school, one wonders if any of us are ready to take a long look at ourselves in the mirror of history. Are we yet ready to be independent? My guest for episode two is my friend LA Wanliss. She is a poet, writer, editor, teacher, and dramaturg here in Kings...

Welcome to Season Two ! This first episode looks at being Black in educational settings, not just in the U.S., but also in Jamaica, a predominantly African-descent nation, but a country that subscribes to and abides by a white, British colonial system of inequality. My esteemed guest is someone who's been schooling me since birth: my big sis Njeri Semaj. As an expert Black woman and as an expert e...

This episode is about the collision of past and future and the making of an uncomfortable present.  In this conversation with my friends John and Valerie, they talked to me about 1970s Jamaica. During the Manley years, the country was sent into a kind of lockdown, but this was also a time of innovative opportunity and identity building. Together we discussed how race and access impact everyth...

Contrary to popular belief, there is a reading culture in Jamaica and this episode proves it. So listen up, because this episode is embedded with a book list. Yay! With Gavin “Dutty Bookman” Hutchinson in the studio, we talked about the revolutionary power of printed words to motivate us to be better, stronger, and wiser. We bigged up all the word generators that continue to spark minds. Love to W...

Home is that place we are either running to or running away from. This conversation is with the esteemed, multi-award winning Jamaican novelist Nicole Dennis-Benn. Nicole is the multi-award winning author of Here Comes the Sun (2016) and Patsy (2019). We met-up in a cafe in Kingston, Jamaica to discuss life and the role of home in shaping each of our identities as well as the identities of her cap...

Stitched together under self-isolation, this episode of For Posterity sits curiously between science and science fiction, somewhere between literary escape and writing reality.  As I consider the possibility that we are living in a kind of "end of days", I realize that it's all about the word and how words will, ultimately, save us all.  Well, words and washing our hands.  In the fa...

Jah9 is a Jamaican woman, a yogi, and a social scientist. It is also a fact that she writes, sings, produces, and dubs music. We sat down to talk about names, family, strength, weakness, and the word "should". But where else did the conversation go? Well, we wound up speaking quite “highly”* of black men. As you listen, you’ll hear a powerful story that reveals a deep racial need to learn to make...

When Protoje gathered four recording artistes and asked each one to sing a powerful song on a single vibesy riddim, reggae music fans were gifted with "Peace of Mind," "Haul & Pull," "Inspiration," and a fourth single that borrows its title from the riddim itself, "Rock & Groove."  But, when FOR POSTERITY gathered those same recording artistes -- Naomi Cowan, Sevana, Lila Iké, and Jaz Elise -- to...

We record everything - videos/ voices/ this podcast... So what does loss mean in this age of big data and even bigger memory? What is palimpsest in an ever-changing urban environment like Kingston, Jamaica?  These are some of the topics that Equiknoxx's Gavsborg discusses with me on this inaugural episode. In a tech world full of sights and sounds, we explore what this genius producer wants record...

Welcome to FOR POSTERITY. I'm your host the Riddim Writer. Through conversations with guests each episode will critically engage life, art, and the unexpected. Join me regularly to take an active listen to what's happening in Jamaica now.  FOR POSTERITY is here to be a digital record for future generations to tease apart later.