Sumfest: The Post Mortem

Highs

None of the imported acts outshone the best of the local ones. And the best of the local?

Tarrus Riley - composed, confident, tasteful, uplifting, effortless.

Damian Marley - his catalogue of hits did their work as did his great stage presence - Nas helped, but only a little. They gave a sample from the upcoming collaboration Distant Relatives. Let's see how that goes.

Queen Ifrica - authoritative, fluent, righteous, unapologetic and the best act of the entire festival hands down. She did a little preaching in her own down-to-earth rootsy way but carried the crowd with her sincere motherly yet masculine authority. She is Reggae royalty alright.

Elephant Man's MJ tribute - funny and it was supposed to be too!

Ishy

Ne-Yo - exactly what we should expect. Sounded as good as his recordings and even busted Ramping Shop - that was a surprise as was his throwing in 'puuuul uuup' and a 'seleeeeectaaaa'. Clearly he was coached well on impressing the Jamaican audience. Great stuff.

Toni Braxton - did surprisingly well. One was reminded that she really did have a slew of hits. Looked great too.

Lows

Band changes - as usual. Folks started to clap and boo at one point and it took the better part of 20 mins for Ifrica to get on stage. Surely we can do better.

Technical Stupidity - Ne-Yo was embarrassed  when arriving on stage to a non-working mic. Doddered on stage for 5 mins - mic still not working and eventually slinked off after about a total of 10 awkward minutes. Bet that never happened to him before. Folks up front couldn't hear Braxton for much of her performance and she lip synced MJ songs for around for 15 mins as they tried to fix it. Mind you Braxton's singing style obscures the clarity of her words too. Etana went on stage to accompany Braxton but her (Etana) mic didn't work. Had it worked it might have prevented Braxton from embarrassing Etana by refusing to offer her the working mic.

MJ tributes - the Intl Night 1 version had a MJ lookalike who crotch-grabbed during Man in the Mirror - he just didn't get it right. Then Mushette  interviewed him and his baritone never cut it either. Tito was what we expected: not Michael. But we had to get Ed Bartlett and Babsy on stage with others to give plaques and such. Ugh! All that was missing was a wood carving of Jamaica and the line 'thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule...'. Tackyville.

Braxton - 'I love Jamaica, it's my favourite city'. Heh!

Ron Mushette - unquestionably one of the most annoying MCs known to man. He succeeded in filling the gaps created by long band changes and a delayed Ifrica  with noise that made long band changes look good! In which case maybe he did his job. But one wanted nothing more than for him to shut it. So the relief of the following set was multiplied. Reverse psychology maybe?

Otherwise

Getting in and out was easy. Parking was iffy - on Dancehall night several vehicles parked on the sidewalk had their tires punctured. I surmise it was the makeshift parking attendants guaranteeing business for the following nights. Cheeky, if true. Ganja flowed free as the peddlers belted 'high grade!' into the night and their clients enjoyed the fare. The goodness or badness thereof depends on your preference. I don't smoke weed, but at Sumfest - it smokes you.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. - Back in Black

The first thing that came to mind was Dave Chappelle's skit featuring his drug dealing alter ego, Tron. Tron switches places with a white male corporate type who is roughed up and framed by the cops, while Tron is given a courteous and apologetic call and asked when it would be convenient to turn himself in.

Chappelle's incisive wit in this hypothetical exploration of race relations in America, is what convinced me that this was a case of racial profiling. If not for the the fact that a white Harvard professor with a very high national profile would never have been treated in this way, I could dismiss it as an over reaction on the part of Gates. But Gates, it turns out, is black and I think he was reminded of that in a most unpleasant way.

I don't blame Gate's white female  neighbour, she was looking out for his property after all, but I do wonder how long they were neighbours and why she couldn't figure out that is was Gates himself. I'm not advancing a conspiracy theory, just wondering again if she would have called the police had it been a white man of the same age  (apparently 58 years old). 58 year old men of any race aren't known for burglary.

That there is now a black American president adds weight to the issue and, if handled accordingly, could pull Obama's tongue on the simmering problems of racial equality, discrimination, segregation and prejudice. The recently featured segregated school proms not only revealed the still living spectre of racism in the US, but begs one to question what else is done in the name of prejudice that has gone unreported, and yet accepted in both black and white communities.

The real issue with both Gate's arrest and the segregated proms is that they are black problems - or blacks are the ones who have the grouse. Whites are merely spectators, busy being human, while blacks are trying to ascend the evolutionary ladder to humanity, a feat ever more possible with the ascent of Obama. To be sure, all men are equal, but reality offers another version of the truth with black people having had to justify their presence in a (white) man's world for generations. This is why many white folks can't comprehend Gate's stance.

Richard Dyer, in his book White, noted that whites very rarely ever acknowledge the implication that non-whites, in the Western World, are raced while whites are just human. This is played out in the media everyday from the many contemporary white blockbuster heroes (while blacks have only Will Smith, Jamie Foxx and Denzel Washington - Asian and Hispanic stars? Even  fewer), to references to 'black on black' violence and the fact that mainstream media is primarily white and niche media is inevitably ethnic or non-white - as if white isn't an ethnicity. Too often do minority characters have to justify their presence through their ethnicity. You get the point? Though whiteness is the standard it is essentially an invisible standard usually unmentioned and under-acknowledged by the white community, if anything excused as 'victim mentality' acted out in the non-white community.

Like these few thoughts Gate's arrest has the potential to take us far and wide within the issue of race and culture, and surely many will try to forward their own agenda on the springboard of this event. But we all know that legislation can't change mens hearts though it can guide their actions, and action may be more necessary than anything else right now. But the biggest concern is not what Obama is going to say or do - he will either be a disappointment to the black community or a black man with a bone to pick to the white community - but what the response will be within the white communities across America, because of the many invisible discriminatory standards that still obtain in a nation that is supposedly free, democratic and equal.

The time is fast approaching when it must be acknowledged that we have issues not just them, and working out these problems is not a gesture of good faith but an act of moral responsibility.

NOTE: It should be noted that many white commentators in the US media have sided with Gates and stated they believe if he were white the situation would have played out differently. Indeed, some have said if they were in his position an arrest would not have been made.

Fahrenheit 9/11 documentary-maker Michael Moore calls new film Capitalism: A Love Story | Film | guardian.co.uk

He's at it again! Yaaaay!

Fahrenheit 9/11 documentary-maker Michael Moore calls new film Capitalism: A Love Story | Film | guardian.co.uk .

TV gameshow offers atheists 'salvation' - CNN.com

This interesting - pretty topical and cutting edge I think.

What do you say?

TV gameshow offers atheists 'salvation' - CNN.com.