Season 7 Prologue: "Ghetto People Song"

At the end of January 2000, just as the new millennium was starting, I finished recording the last song for a project I had been producing at Gussie Clark's anchor Music in Kingston, Jamaica.

It was fitting that the singer was my friend, mentor and teacher Eddie Fitzroy, one of the first artists I produced when I moved to Kingston a decade earlier.

This final session was the culmination of an exhausting and turbulent two year recording process during which I simultaneously produced seven compilation albums featuring 80 individual songs recorded with 50 different artists.

A virtual who's who of reggae royalty toots and the Maitel's Gregory Isaacs, Sugar Minot, the Mighty Diamonds, the Heptones, the Gladiators, the Abyssinians.

Within the insulated studio walls.

As long as the music played, I was lost in a dream.

But the second that tape stopped, the silence gave way to what was lurking right outside those studio doors, what waded beyond Gussie Clark's guarded security gate.

Because righteousness govern the world.

Broadcasting live and direct from the rolling red hills on the outskirts of Kingston, Jamaica.

From a magical place at the intersection of words, sound and power, the red light is on.

Your dial is set the frequency in tune to the Rootsland podcast stories that are music to your ears.

Kingston was always hot.

By the new millennium, it was red hot.

An already record setting murder rate was on the rise, and no person or place was off limits.

Even the island's iconic recording studios, once considered hallowed ground, were being targeted by the city's vast underground criminal networks, stealing valuable equipment and robbing and brutalizing entertainers.

In response, the jamaican government was pressured into creating a special anti crime task force that had elite army units patrolling music venues and recording studios.

Anchor Music, where I worked, was located on Windsor Avenue, often the last stop of the night.

It was here the soldiers would park their jeeps, step inside the control room in tactical gear with loaded M 16s slung over their shoulders, and enjoy a cold Heineken, a temporary reprieve from the trenches and gullies, and violent horror show they confronted on a nightly basis inside Studio A.

We were all escaping something that night.

The soldiers on patrol were die hard Eddie Fitzroy fans love the man and his music.

They asked if I wanted an escort to take Eddie home and then follow me back to my place on Constant Spring Road.

And although these were the waning days of my trust in Kingston City, I politely declined their offer.

As always, my instinct told me that I was safer driving alone into the night than being led by heavily armed soldiers in combat jeeps, generally a good tip for surviving a place like Kingston is by not drawing any unnecessary attention to yourself.

Besides, Eddie and I weren't going straight home.

Our studio session was over by two amenity early by Kingston standards.

The sound system stone love would just be starting their first set at the weekly dance at their headquarters on Burlington Avenue.

If we arrived there soon, we could still have about an hour or so of roots and culture music.

Before the selectors shifted gears and kicked into the hardcore dance hall portion of the juggler.

Yes, my brother.

You soon gone off to foreign, right?

Yeah, I'm heading up early next week.

Let's grab two juice and take in some nice music before you leave Jamaica, okay?

Sure.

See in my.

You.

You're buying.

Tonight I'm broke low Eddie and I decided to grab a couple of beers and take in some music.

I'd be leaving Kingston in a few days, and although I didn't know it at the time, it would begin a long self imposed exile from my adopted island home.

It would be close to four years before I would return to Jamaica and to Kingston, the city that helped raise me and gave me so much, including a beautiful daughter.

Yet it was the very birth of my little girl that woke me up, made me aware of my surroundings.

When a deadly gang war erupted in grants pen, right across the gully from our apartment and the deafening sound of gunshots blazed well into the night, I decided it was time to send my daughter Asha and her mom sia up to the States to live once they were safe and the fog of war lifted, I asked myself, why am I staying behind in the battle zone?

As Eddie and I entered the dance, the dj had just started playing Everton Blender's 1998 breakout single, ghetto people song.

Recorded on the Lalabella rhythm, it was a big hit with the crowd.

Many themselves ghetto residents erupted in applause, screams, whistles.

There were shouts and chants of the words promised, which is code for gunshots.

Actual gunfire is the traditional salute at ghetto dances for crowd favorites.

But here on Burlington Avenue, the gangsters kept a low profile, their guns on lock concealed for use only when needed.

So imitation gunshots would suffice.

For now, the music selector, Rory, had no choice but to abruptly stop the song before Blender reached his popular chorus and replay it back from the very top.

This was common in dances known as a pull up, a way to tease the crowd, delay the climax of the song as long as possible, and then slowly build back the energy and the vibes of the audience.

When Everton reaches the song's climatic hook, everyone in the audience joins along with the chorus, it's a ghetto people's song.

Only them can't sing this one.

A song for the poor, the ones facing sufferation.

I jokingly look at Eddie and say, I guess I can't sing along with this one.

Everton says it's for ghetto people only.

But Eddie shoots me a serious stare.

Yo, Henry, what do you mean you're a jew?

Of course I'm jewish, Eddie.

You know that.

Don't you know your history?

I do know my history.

The Jews are the original ghetto people.

Actually, my father did teach me that.

I think somewhere in Italy, right?

Make sure you know your roots.

My youth.

Eddie was a student of history.

And he was right.

The Jews were the first ghetto people.

The original ghetto people.

In fact, the word ghetto was invented for us.

Something we tend to ForGet.

And forgetting who you are and where you come from never ends well.

In the early 15 hundreds, a decade before the start of one of mankinds worst genocidal atrocities, the transatlantic slave trade, the self ordained princes and kings of EUroPeS old boy network were facing an urgent problem.

This one much closer to home.

Mainly a jewish problem.

Although these immigrants represented less than 1% of europes general population, the Jews just didnt fit in.

A ragtag group of foreign misfits.

They looked different coming from faraway lands like the Middle east and North Africa.

They had a different sabbath and prayed in this strange Hebrew language.

And then there was the smell.

These jews stunk.

Accusations, for the most part probably true.

Even the smell.

Remember, as poor immigrants and fleeing refugees, many came with little more than the Clothes on their backs.

The Jews held the lowest positions in Europe's society.

Cleaned the mess, swept the streets, tended to the lIvestock.

Every dirty job that was too degrading, too humiliating.

Beneath the dignity for real Europeans to hold.

They just gave to the Jews.

And packed into crowded, unsanitary, unhygienic living spaces.

I'm sure the odor was similar to a porta pottye at an outdoor, summertime ethnic food festival.

It was just as the Old Testament had prophesied thousands of years earlier.

The Hebrews would be hated and despised, become the object of horror, scorn and ridicule anywhere the Lord would send his people.

In 1516, that scorn and hate would reveal itself in Italy.

When a decree by the doge Leonardo Loredon and the venetian senate would officially establish the worlds first ghetto.

The ghetto nuovo in Venice.

This new law forcefully relocated the citys jewish population into an isolated and previously inhabitable area by the citys old metal foundries or ghetto in Italian once resettled into tight quarters, segregated from the rest of Venices respectable citizens, the Jews were kept under the watchful eyes of armed guards.

It turns out that being out of sight and out of mind became an effective method for dealing with society's poor and unwanted populations.

Jewish ghettos were soon established in Rome and spread to other european cities.

For the next 400 years, the Jews of Europe would be forced to look within for strength.

A people deep rooted in faith, trusted their lord, would not abandon them, would lift them out of the darkness and humiliation.

This nation of Israel, who God had angrily declared a stubborn and stiff necked people, would have to rely on that same grit and determination in order to survive the suffocating ghetto conditions.

They would have to learn to fight in order to preserve their dignity and their very religious identity.

So within the gated ghetto walls and forgotten slums of Europe's wealthiest cities, the Jews developed a thriving underground economy with banks, theater, food, music.

They took the scraps, the waste, the unwanted leftovers, and turned them into treasures and delicacies.

I mean, what do you think chicken soup is?

By the 20th century, life had finally seemed to improve for Europe's jewish community as they scraped and crawled and climbed their way out of the ghettos and tenements that they occupied for so many generations.

And while never fully accepted or integrated into formal society, many viewed Europe as home.

Prominent Jews began to stand out in their respective fields of medicine and science, business and commerce, arts and literature.

They began to feel welcome, comfortable, complacent.

A false sense of security that was shattered on Kristallnacht, a night of sheer terror when jewish shops, synagogues and residences were burned to the ground by nazi soldiers and their sympathizers.

Bonfires made with sacred hebrew scriptures and books were cheered on by frenzied german crowds in a tornado of hate filled rage.

And no matter how many times they clicked their heels and said, there's no place like home.

There's no place like home.

The Hebrews weren't in Canaan anymore.

The wicked witch of the west in this saga was the german leader Meinfuhrer, a charismatic demagogue who convinced his countrymen the only way to save their native Deutschland and all of humanity was to create a blonde haired, blue eyed, genetically superior race of Ken and barbie clones ready to repopulate the world.

And whoever didn't fit this tinder profile, well, theyd be swiped right off the planet.

Which meant that all the other mixed race vermin that could potentially pollute this future pure aryan bloodline needed to be exterminated.

Spoiler alert.

Starting with the Jews.

To the german people, sounded like a pretty good plan.

They were all in for this final solution, at least to the ones with the blonde hair and blue eyes, it made perfect sense.

And before their genocidal cult leader would lose his war, kill himself, destroy all of Germany and most of Europe, 38 million people would have to lose their lives, including 6 million Jews, three quarters of the entire european jewish population.

One of those lives, Henri Cario, my grandfather, my grandpare, the man I was named for.

Henri, was arrested by the Vichy police at a small french country, Inn Les Hermitage, where he and his family had been in hiding.

And there, on a bitter winter night, with his tearful wife Sonia, and little children watching, my grandpare would be taken prisoner, marched out into the snow with his brother and three cousins.

The very last words he whispered to his six year old boy, Maurice, his oldest son.

My father was Jethem.

Momo, I love you.

You're in charge now.

On January 20, 1945, my grandfather was packed into a crowded cattle car like an animal and deported to Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland on convoy number 66.

The story doesn't end there.

Miraculously, Henri survived ten months in hell, fending off disease, starvation and a frigid polish winter by working as slave labor at a nearby polish factory.

He would risk his life by smuggling out small scraps of metal that he could trade for food, which he gave to his brother and cousin.

Hed force them to eat by telling them that he was full.

Two weeks before the US army liberated the concentration camp in order to elude the advancing allied forces, my grandfather, uncle and cousin, and those strong enough to walk were taken by their nazi captors on what was known as the death march, hundreds of miles back to Germany, with his body severely malnourished and too weak to complete this tenuous journey, my grandfather, Henri Cariot, was shot and killed, his body left on the side of the road.

But thanks to his courage and sacrifice, his brother Andre and cousin David survived the war.

Live to tell a story that we will never forget.

And against all odds, my father managed to stay hidden for the remainder of the war.

He went back to Paris and eventually made his way to the United States, a country that embraced him and every man's right to religious freedom.

In America.

He was able to fall in love and start a new life.

My dad, Maurice, who lost so much at such a young age, had his father and childhood stolen somehow, with no paternal love or guidance or anyone to teach him about fatherhood in any way managed to be the most loving, caring, devoted father that any boy could hope.

He and my mom gave me everything I needed to go out in the world and become my own man, find my own voice.

As the son of a Holocaust survivor, the grandson of a Holocaust victim.

It's a miracle that I even have a voice.

And it would be the ultimate betrayal to my family, to my religion, to my God, if I didn't use it or my show to speak up for what I believe to be true and just and right.

Doctor Martin Luther King said, our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

Which takes us to October 7, 2023, the massacre in Israel, and a day that saw the greatest loss of jewish life since the Holocaust that took my grandfather.

Oh, really?

Not now.

I'm recording.

Sia.

Yeah, I'm recording.

You don't see the red light?

Sia, the red light's on.

Oh, I'm sorry I'm late anyways, I'm running late.

Late?

You're not even.

Sia.

You're not even in this episode.

You're not even in this season.

I told you.

Oh, I'm sorry.

You told me I could stop by any time you say I could come in on a bonus episode.

Bonus?

Yeah.

The bonus episode comes at the end of the season.

This is the prologue.

I haven't even started it yet.

That's the first chapter.

Did you ever get a chance to look at my notes?

Notes?

Sia, please.

Look, I know you're popular, and everybody likes you on the show, but when are you giving me.

When did you start giving me notes?

You know, I'm a listener, and I like to critique, too.

Listen, this is an important episode.

Yeah, but I just thought it was a little too long for the audience.

It means a lot.

I know it's long, but look, they can speed it up.

There's a vari speed.

If they want it to go quicker.

Maybe you can make it into two parts or break it up in the middle somehow.

Well, you know what?

Thanks to you, they have a little bit of break now, so give me a break, please.

Let me finish recording.

All right?

Thank you.

The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of a beautiful community.

The aftermath of nonviolence is redemption.

The aftermath of nonviolence is reconciliation.

The aftermath of violence is emptiness and bitterness.

That's another one of my favorite.

Martin Luther King quotes a man that spoke for a people that had endured 400 years of kidnapping and slavery, of torture and barbaric inhumanity, and still he believed the best way to move forward and secure better lives and equal rights for the black people was not by repeating this godless behavior inflicted upon them.

No, Doctor King believed the best way to respond to hate, to cruelty and violence, was with the most powerful weapon known to mankind, unconditional love.

And since I'm a lover, not a fighter, I obviously agree with this tactic of warfare.

And I believe that any nation or religion, political cause or social struggle, on any side that advocates, condones, applauds, or celebrates the killing or kidnapping of innocent people, women, children, babies in their strollers, has no legitimate place in our civilized society.

We cannot ever recognize or normalize this type of behavior or the criminals that commit these violent acts.

Regardless of the injustices or mistreatment that any one of us may face, theres always a better solution than destruction.

Like so many people, friends, family, I was horrified on October 7, heartbroken and disillusioned by the massacre and kidnappings that took place in Israel on mostly innocent civilians.

But was I surprised at this brutality?

No, I wasnt.

Was I shocked at the videos taken of that bloody carnage?

The answer is no.

And if you listen to this show, you understand why.

As much as I would love roots land to be a story that takes place in a bubble and transports everyone to this magical place in another time, thats not always the case.

This is a reality show.

And while the main character, our star, is reggae, the plot of our story is the what and the when and where the music comes from the ghettos of Kingston, Jamaica, Jungle Rima, Tivoli, Dunkirk, Payneland, Trench town, Denham Town, Waltham Park, Seaview Gardens.

The most bloody and violent garrisons anywhere on earth, with the highest murder rates per capita anywhere.

Year after year after bloody year, in these desperate pockets of emptiness and despair, miraculously, a flower managed to grow through the crack in the cement.

It was called reggae, and it became a global phenomena, ignited, uplifted, inspired tens of millions of people by giving them a guidebook on how to emancipate themselves from mental and physical slavery.

Yet for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

That same force that gave birth to such a vibrant, uplifting energy is also capable of manifesting darkness and evil, creating unrepentant, unremorseful, zombie like killers capable of committing the most heinous acts of cold blooded violence.

Every ghetto in the world is the same.

In the absence of any legitimate government, any meaningful social infrastructure or safety net, the vampires move in the worst.

Criminals, thugs, gangsters and extremists, parasites that take over an entire population through force and terror, they rob, extort, plunge a community into economic turmoil and disarray, then use the poverty and chaos as a perverted way to recruit and indoctrinate isolated young people into their killing cults.

You have to remember you are dealing with the worst type of sociopaths.

Pure evil train child predators who can pinpoint exactly which innocent children are alienated and detached and groom them into unfeeling, maniacal killers.

Whether the drug lords who run the cartels or the warlords in Africa, the gangsters from Compton to Kingston, or the extremists in Gaza, ghettos make it easy to brainwash children into thinking they are fighting for some higher cause orlando purpose, when in fact its just to keep a small group of greedy sociopaths in power.

The saddest part of the story is that the jewish people should have known this better than anyone.

Having been the original ghetto people, having personally experienced the indignities of ghetto life, we did everything we could to rise out of those conditions, too.

Good, bad and ugly.

Some lied, cheated, killed.

Just a reminder, the slums of Brooklyn and the Lower east side gave rise to Bugsy Siegel and the jewish mob known as murder Incorporated, a ruthless gang responsible for a bloody rampage that brutalized and killed more jews than the Ku klux Klan.

The jewish people who prides itself on never forgetting.

Well, we forgot.

Im not talking about the prejudice, bigotry, or atrocities committed against us.

Im talking about our roots, where we come from as a collective.

We lost sight of the lessons that our parents and grandparents so desperately tried to instill in us.

They were the ones who marched alongside Martin Luther King, the ones who took water cannons and police beatings.

There were Jews who even gave their lives on those civil rights marches.

They understood what it was like to suffer, to be oppressed, to want freedom.

They believed that just because the jewish people were lucky enough to break free from our ghetto confinement, our job remained unfinished, that the struggle continues until all people are lifted out from every ghetto in the world.

But now more entitled, more privileged generations like mine risk losing this very knowledge, the history that is key to our survival as a people.

Theres an african proverb that says, when an elder dies, a library burns to the ground.

Hey, and I understand.

No one wants to remember the muck and the slime and the filth that we crawled out of.

And its easy to become callous with time and distance, especially to those who still remain in the struggle.

We feel satisfied by sending out a check to the NAACP or giving the nanny a few extra days off during Christmas.

I'm from the suburbs of Long island and probably wouldn't have taken much notice myself, except I moved to Kingston, Jamaica, to produce reggae music.

The artists and singers that I worked with who mentored me, well, they insisted if I was going to work in this music, then I better know for damn sure where it came from.

So they brought me to the ghettos and tenements where reggae was born.

Made me smell the rotten garbage that litters the trenches and gullies, feel the irritating sting of mosquitoes that breed in the stagnant waters, see those empty stares and hollow eyes of a generation that has all but given up on life and hear the gunshots that echo out into the night because a generation has all but given up on life.

Yes, and those were the same empty, unfeeling eyes that I saw on October 7 during the massacre in Israel.

You know, when I first moved to Kingston in the early 1990s, there was one artist that dominated reggae and dancehall.

I could not step into a taxi, drive down a street, turn on the radio, or walk into a dance without being pulverized by the bass heavy, gravelly monotone voice of Shaw Barranks, a jamaican emcee whose unfiltered x rated songs became a sensation in the local dance hall scene starting in the late eighties.

Born in St.

Anne's Bay, the same parish is Bob Marley, Rexton, Ralston, Fernando Gordon or Shabba.

Moved to the South Kingston ghetto of Seaview Gardens as a youth.

He went from a penniless teen collecting empty bottles on the side of the road for spare change to becoming a multi platinum selling recording artist, collecting grammys on the front of stage, winning back to back best reggae albums in 1992 and 93, a feat never duplicated in reggae.

I can tell you just from the sheer amount of airplay that Shaba ranks received during my early years in Kingston, his music is permanently imprinted in my DNA.

Shaba's meteoric rise was not without contention or controversy.

At the peak of his popularity, Shaba went on BBC TV in England and on a nationally televised interview defended fellow jamaican artist Bujoo Bantan's homophobic song Boom Bye Bye, which was a big hit in Jamaica.

Although Shaba would later apologize that he wished no violence on homosexuals, or anybody else for that matter, his label, Sony Records, dropped him and his career would never recover.

Shaba, who was initially hailed as a hero in Jamaica for his outspoken defense of Buju, was later ostracized and called Estelle out for his apology to the gay community.

And just to point out the hypocrisy of the music industry.

Buju Banten, who sang the original song that cost Shaba his career, was just nominated for a Grammy award this year for best reggae album.

Let me just say those early days in Kingstone during Shabas come up, his shows were legendary.

There was no other dance hall dj who could work a crowd into a frenzy like the great Shaba ranks.

I remember his performances.

Homegrown from the Kingston streets.

He went out and conquered the world, always came home, never forgot where he was from.

And when he took the mic, he proudly this is dirty stinkin shaba ranks.

People went wild.

Everyone knew Shaba really wasnt dirty.

He wore custom tailored suits and jewelry that cost more than most Jamaicans earned in a year.

And he certainly didnt stink.

He wore name brand Cologne, had his hair styled and his nails neatly manicured.

But Shabba ranks understood one thing.

No matter how much money or jewels hit songs or Grammys, to proper society, uptown Jamaica and most of the world, he would always be dirty, stinking Shabba ranks from the ghetto.

He came from the place that decent people didnt go, the areas that respectable people dont even want to think about.

But rather than be ashamed or deny his roots, Shaba ranks owned it.

And people loved him for his authenticity.

Even the name Shaba, given to him by classmates as a derogatory slightest, aimed at his dark complexion and africanesque features, he turned into a superpower, a constant reminder of who he was.

A ghetto superstar.

If nothing else, the recent events of the world have reminded me more than ever of who I am and where I come from.

And to steal a phrase from Shaba's playbook, I am dirty, stinking Henry K.

Descendant of slaves.

I come from the dirt of the muck, the mire.

My ancestors are the Ogs of the ghetto, the original ghetto people.

I'm friggin proud of that.

We should all be.

I've been to the ghetto.

I've seen the resilience and creativity, the resourcefulness and perseverance.

And it's a thing to behold.

I don't care who you are or where you come from.

At some point, we were all slaves, immigrants, refugees, outcasts, all looking for a place just to call home.

You know, this chosen people thing, it's not all.

It's cracked up to be way overrated.

First of all, the Jews are not the chosen people.

We're a chosen people.

One little word, but a big difference.

And the truth is, we weren't even God's first choice.

The biblical scholars say the Lord tried all the nations of the earth before the Jews, but no one wanted his laws or commandments.

They were too stringent, required too much discipline.

Moses and the Hebrews were actually God's last choice and the only people that accepted his Torah.

So the bar wasn't that high to start off with.

And the Hebrews did have their backs up against the pyramids.

But once we accepted Hashem and his commandments, it became our obligation to obey his words, love them with all our hearts and souls, and make them a light for all nations of the world.

That means we gotta be more than just good, we gotta be great.

The goat of religion, greatest of all time.

Grammy, Oscar, Academy Award, Tony, Grammy, Oscar, Emmy, Tony, whatever the acronym, we have to be the ones that shine the brightest light in the darkest places, in the ghettos and tenements, in the favelas and barrios, in the slums and projects.

Any place that light is needed.

I wont pretend that I know how to solve the war in the Middle east any more than I know how to stop the rampant gun violence here in the US.

But I have seen what hope and opportunity, art and education can accomplish in some of the most deprived and neglected places on earth.

And in my experience, books are infinitely more effective than bullets in stopping violence and building lasting peace.

And speaking of shining lights, to my friend Eddie Fitzroy.

Looking down from above.

I promise you anytime I hear ghetto people's song, I will sing along with it.

Ghetto people's song only then can sing this world hope that wasn't too long and we'll be back in two weeks with our next episode.

Some only them can sing this world.

It's a song for the foreign space in separation why you only terrorize the time for you to get stronger why don't we.