"Resistance" The Tan Umbrella

The Christ Righteousness Governor broadcasting live and direct from the rolling red hills on the outskirts of Kingston, Jamaica, the Roots Land podcast.

Stories that are music to your ears.

Before there was Roots Land, before Kingston Knights and Red Hill's studio lights, before I even knew what life was going to become, there was this song, putting Up Resistance, sung by Berris Hammond.

Gravel in his voice, soul in his chest.

It was 1989, just a couple of years before I packed up and moved to Jamaica.

He dropped an anthem for every honest man fighting to keep his head above water.

No, I never can understand it the way the system plan.

There's no hope, no chance, no loophole, no escape for the suffering man.

Cause every time I lift my head above water and try to save myself from drown there's an overnight scheme all worked out designed to keep me down Still I'm putting up resistance I'm gonna work it out.

I'm putting up resistance I've gotta work it out.

That was my theme before I even had a theme.

And when Brian and I moved to Kingston, it was on heavy rotation on the Armor Heights tape deck.

There are no excuses.

Get up, roll out of bed, hit the road and work it out.

Although some days rolling out of bed was tougher than others, especially in Kingston, when the nights ran long and mornings came a little too soon.

You remember those days, Siya?

Tell me, what does putting up resistance mean to you?

To me, resistance is beating cancer.

It means stand up and don't back down.

Showing up for work every day, even though I know that I'm getting a fight at work, looking out for my children, my daughters, making sure they have a better life.

Showing up even when I don't have the strength to do it.

You know, as a cancer survivor, there are days when I'm fatigued and tired and to get up and show up every day, working 12 hours a day, that is me putting up resistance.

Well said, my dear co host.

And I can't think of a better reminder of what this show, what life is really about.

And let me just say, C is talking about her full time job, not her gig here at the Rootsland family, right?

We don't give you a fight.

No, Rootsland Family always treat me great.

Okay, Just, I'm talking about my full.

Time job, just clearing the air.

This is a labor of love.

Since we're back with a new season, or actually more like a new series, I figured I'd tell you and everyone listening about it.

Because you, Sia, are the definition of resistance and resilience.

And this next chapter of Roots Land isn't just about reflection.

It's actually a reckoning.

We've spent seasons remembering, honoring, tracing.

Where Rege came from, where we came from.

But now the fight has shifted.

Technology.

Babylon in a new disguise, Algorithms and AI.

They're rewriting our story in real time.

Your story, Sia, my story, our story.

So this series Resistance is about holding the line, protecting and preserving what is real, what is authentic.

And people have asked us to keep going.

The letters, the messages.

They say the show is like being part of a family.

And it is to us, too.

And thanks for all the comments and support.

Right.

See?

Yes.

Everyone, thank you so much for your support.

We appreciate every one of you.

So here we are, keeping the struggle and the triumph alive.

Sound good?

Sounds great.

See ya.

How about a little more energy?

Yeah, sounds great.

Yeah, that's it.

Come on.

We gotta keep the vibe up.

Like I always say, we have listeners all over the globe, including Asia, where reggae and Bob Marley are so beloved.

Pick up all the Roots Land crew from China and Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, Mongolia, South Korea, our Roots Land gang from the Far East.

And, Sia, I know you've always talked about traveling to Asia, seeing that part of the world.

Was that a dream you had since your childhood in Jamaica?

Absolutely.

Because it's one of the places that I find to be unique, you know, just by reading about it, seeing it.

On television, YouTube, and being around all those Chinese Jamaicans.

Absolutely.

But what I know about them really, is the food.

You know, I'm a foodie at heart.

Yeah.

Growing up in Jamaica, the Chinese food was the best.

Oh, yeah.

Amazing.

Also, the culture is beautiful.

I mean, the places I want to see different parts of the world.

I grew up around a lot of Chinese, Jamaican.

I just love the way they honor their traditions.

And now they're united.

They're always together.

You know, they stick together.

They're always bonded.

As slavery was ending, Chinese families arrived as indentured laborers.

And like you said, they kept their traditions.

And unlike the Africans who had been kidnapped, stripped of their language and names, the Chinese kept theirs.

Their food, their language, their ancestral memory.

They opened shops and became wholesalers and distributors of just about everything.

Eventually even Scott and reggae as pioneers in Jamaica's music industry.

My experience with the Chinese Jamaican community was that even though they had advantages and were financially successful, they were always more blue collar, working class than that old boy European Jamaican upper class.

Never afraid to get their hands dirty or do hard work.

I guess my fascination with the Far east in Asia came from my dad.

He would travel there for months at a time, visiting factories where his sporting goods were designed and manufactured.

Whenever he'd come back home, he'd bring my brother and I the coolest, most current toys, mostly from Japan.

Transformers, model cars, Sony Walkmans, long before they even hit the US shelves.

Anime comics, gadgets from a future we hadn't even seen.

The toys I brought to show and tell were the talk of all of no.

3 school.

Then one trip, he came back with something really incredible.

Or should I say, someone incredible.

Kazuko Yashida.

Katie.

To us, she was the niece of one of his Japanese business partners and close friends, Mr. Yato San.

Katie worked for Japan Airlines, and since we live near JFK Airport, our guest room became her home for years.

Imagine two teenage boys waking up one morning to find a beautiful, kind, 20 something Japanese woman living in the house, cooking tempura and yakitori.

Sometimes dressed in a traditional kimono.

Katie soon became part of the family.

The house just felt lighter when she was in it.

Like a window had opened to another world.

I'll never forget my brother's birthday dinner at the Japanese steakhouse in Atomic, out on Long Island.

Shrimp and vegetables sizzling on the grill, knives clanging, salt and pepper shakers flying through the air.

The manager of the restaurant, gin, sharp suit, nervous smile, asked my father for permission to take Katie out on a date.

Old school and respectful, my dad said yes.

The two of them fell in love and got married, and Katie disappeared into the American dream.

But she left me with an affection for Japan and Asian culture that never faded.

And whatever happened to Katie and Jim?

Well, they eventually opened up their own sushi restaurant and then retired.

And now living on a golf course in North Carolina.

Not bad, right?

Oh, my God, that's such a beautiful story.

Fast forward to the lockdown.

Beaches closed.

News toxic.

Then, buried in the back channels of my overpriced cable package, I found NHK World, Japan's public broadcaster, in English, with shows about samurai architecture, ancient castles, Japanese street food, and human stories that felt honest when everything else felt fake.

I even became a fan of sumo wrestling.

I can't believe you watched that.

It's so weird.

Hey, be careful what you say about sumu.

Well, I'll grab you by your moashi.

My what?

Your moashi.

What's a mowashi?

Look it up, please.

NHK became a lifeline, my daily ritual, along with long walks around a nearby golf course.

And in Florida, there are plenty of them.

That's where I met, or rather, silently, observed an older Asian couple I nicknamed Will and Grace.

Will walked with purpose, covered head to toe against the sun, long sleeves, floppy brimmed hat.

And Grace's wife.

She floated a few steps behind him in a long white dress, pale and serene, shielding herself from the hot Florida sun with a traditional bamboo handled tan umbrella.

At first I thought the distance she kept behind him was arrogance, maybe patriarchy.

But soon I realized she walked behind so she wouldn't poke him with the umbrella's sharp tips, her view obstructed by the umbrella.

So she watched his stride to know where to place her feet.

Their rhythm perfected over decades, a physical love story.

And when I got close enough, I could hear them.

Not silence, but gentle, endless conversation.

Two people who had likely crossed oceans in hardships, still finding joy in a simple morning walk a million miles from where they started, still curious about each other after a lifetime.

It gave me hope seeing them in a time when the world felt disconnected and cold.

They reminded me that love, real love, is a discipline, something you practice every day.

Then the beaches reopened, travel bans were lifted.

Life got loud and busy again.

Occasionally I would see Will and Grace over the years, still in lockstep, still the reminder that in all of life's chaos, some things don't change.

Love stays constant, but unfortunately, so too, does time.

And one humid morning, as I drove past the course, there was Will walking alone.

At first I wasn't even sure.

He seemed smaller, diminished, without grace.

Then, weeks later, I passed him on foot.

The man who once walked with quiet strength now moved like a shadow, each step heavy, automatic.

His face carried the kind of grief you recognize instantly if you've ever lost someone who is half your soul.

I'm not sure if he noticed me, if he ever really noticed me.

But as he passed this time, he looked me in the eye and then downward, like he wanted me to see something.

And there, in his right hand, gripped so tightly his knuckles blanched, was the tan umbrella.

He walked with it like oxygen, a relic, a memory, a promise.

Each step said, she's gone, but I'm still walking.

I'm carrying her with me.

Pain and devotion fused into a quiet, defiant act of love.

That image broke my heart and lifted it up at the same time.

We all have our tan umbrellas.

Memories of people, songs, teachers, ancestors that can either weigh us down or propel us forward.

The ones that shaped us don't disappear.

They become part of our stride.

Resistance isn't always a fist in the air.

Sometimes it's a man keeping a promise with Every lonely step.

Sometimes it's a woman who will never let a disease beat her.

A listener refusing to let algorithms rewrite culture.

A family reclaiming a place once filled with pain and turning it into joy.

Recently, Siya and I returned from the south of France from our daughter's wedding.

Beautiful, magical family, friends, perfect weather.

I officiated this ceremony.

Symbolic but deeply personal.

What do you think, Siya?

Magical.

It was simply magical.

And Sia, not only was our daughter and our son in law the stars of the show, but your sister, what a story.

Oh, yes.

Speaking about resistance, she had a stroke about a year ago.

Maybe a little bit over a year.

So she still walks with a limp.

And the hike up to the location of the wedding was so steep that I had anxiety thinking about her coming up.

I didn't think she could make it up there.

And because she was so persistent to not miss that wedding, she was up there before I even got into the wedding.

She was already seated and her husband carried the wheelchair all the way up.

I told her that I was so proud of her.

I was really, really impressed and proud.

And that showed a lot of resistance.

Strength and strength.

Being in France surprised me with emotion.

My father was born in Paris.

My parents spent some of their happiest days in the south of France.

But just hours from our celebration, my grandfather Henri, the man I was named after, sacrificed everything to save his wife and children from the Holocaust.

Evil knocked and took him away, tried to erase our family from existence.

Yet by some miracle, here I am.

And standing there watching our daughter exchange vows in the same sunlight my grandfather never got to see it, felt like we were rewriting history.

Pain becoming joy, memory becoming freedom.

Like I said during the ceremony, sometimes we pick places because they're exotic and photogenic.

But sometimes the place picks you.

For me, celebrating love and our daughter's new beginnings in a land once stained with my family's trauma felt like resistance itself.

If there's one thing I learned from all these stories, from Beris Hammond to Brian, from Colorado, from Katie and Jim to Will and Grace, to see a beating cancer, is that resistance isn't always loud.

It's steady.

It's showing up.

It's offering love that refuses to quit.

Because sometimes the revolution isn't a shout, it's a whisper.

It's in the way a man keeps walking long after his reason for walking is gone.

It's in a family turning a place of generational pain into a place of celebration.

It's in the way that reggae still rises from the dust.

Of the ghetto with real voices, real drums, real heart, Defying the machines and the markets, trying to imitate its soul.

That's what rootsland resistance is really about.

Not just music, not just memory.

It's about carrying what came before us.

Like Will with his tan umbrella.

Yet you can open it up wide when protection is needed, or keep it closed and hold on with a tight grip so you can use that bamboo handle to beat the blood clot out of Babylon.

No matter how the system plans it, no matter how Babylon reinvents itself, we'll always be putting up resistance.

Sam no, I never can understand it the way the system's planned.

There's no hope, no chance, no, no escape for a suffering man.

But every time I put my head above water I try to save myself from drowning.

There's an overnight schema designed to keep me down.

Still I am putting up a resistance I'm gonna work it out Lord, I am putting up a resistance I'm gonna work it out.

Said I am putting up a resistance I'm gonna work work it out.

You know that I am putting up a resistance I'm going to work it out.

Sam I want to stay home tonight.

I want to take care of my family.

But being home wouldn't make it right.

Sometimes the system makes me feel like holler when every sign says in the way Breaking my back to make an overnight dialer that just goes from hands to Still I am putting up a resistance I'm going to work it out Lord, I putting up a resistance I'm going to work it out.

You know that I am putting up resistance I'm going to work it out One more time but in other resistance I'm gonna work it out I'm gonna work it out.

Produced by Henry K. Sam.