Jesus DUB: Theology, Music And Social Change

Jesus Dub

Dub is an act of deconstruction, where a reggae musician takes apart the key elements of a music track, and repositions them, transforming the original, enabling new ways of hearing and understanding. Dub is not neutral, it enriches music with political, spiritual and cultural influences, challenging the establishment. Jesus Dub is Robert Beckford’s exploration of the dialogue between two central institutions in African Caribbean life: the church and the dancehall. Beckford shows how Dub, one of the central features of dancehall culture, can be mobilised as a framework for re-evaluating theology, taking apart doctrine and reconstructing it under the influence of a guiding theme. Engaging with the social and cultural heritage which informs Christian African Caribbean culture, including the influence of slavery, Revival Christianity and working class Jamaican life; Black theology; and music ranging from post-war Sound System to American Hip Hop, Jesus Dub is an exploration of how throughout history, music and faith have been transformed in response to racialised oppression. Finally, Beckford demonstrates that dub style appears in the teachings of Jesus, and that dub is a tool which can provide new ways of envisaging and practising spiritual gifts and financial giving, proposing a more inclusive theology for everyone. Robert Beckford teaches at the University of Birmingham, in the department of American and Canadian Studies. He has written several books in the field of Black theology and Black culture in Britain, including God and the Gangs (2004), God of the Rahtid (2003), Dread and the Pentecostal (2000) and Jesus is Dread (1998). As well as writing and teaching, Robert is a British Academy of Film and Television (BAFTA) award-winning documentary presenter, working with Channel 4 television.

Jesus Dub

Theology, Music and Social Change

Robert Beckford

First published 2006 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX4 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2006 Robert Beckford

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2006. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Beckford, Robert. Jesus dub : theology, music, and social change / Robert Beckford. p. cm. ISBN 0-415-31018-0 (hardback : alk. paper) – ISBN 0-415-31019-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) – ISBN 0-203-41339-3 (e-book) 1. Dub (Music)–Jamaica–Religious aspects. 2. Dub (Music)–Social aspects. 3. Blacks–Caribbean Area–Religion. 4. Pentecostalism –Caribbean Area. I. Title. ML3918.R44B43 2006 261.5’78—dc22 2006001787 ISBN10: 0–415–31018–0 ISBN10: 0–415–31019–9 ISBN10: 0–203–41339–3

ISBN13: 978–0–415–31018–5 (hbk) ISBN13: 978–0–415–31019–2 (pbk) ISBN13: 978–0–203–41339–5 (ebk)

For my sisters

Contents

Acknowledgements

ix

Introduction: sound clash: theology, culture and the Black Atlantic

1

PART 1

13

Church hall, dancehall and resistance 1

Theorising the politics of sound

15

2

Diasporic dialogue: the emergence of sound systems and Pentecostal churches

28

The set and the spirit: dancehall and church hall as cultural resistance

45

3

PART 2

63

Dub, interpretation and Christology 4

The gospel of dub: origins and development

65

5

Dub hermeneutics: form and content

81

6

Jesus dub

93

7

Echo chamber: dialogue with William (Lez) Henry

101

viii Contents PART 3

113

Dub, theology and social change 8

Spirit dub: towards heteroglossia

115

9

Prosperity dub: commonwealth economics

130

Conclusion: theology and culture dub

145

Notes Bibliography Index

151 166 176

Acknowledgements

There are several people who have enabled me to conduct this work. First of all, I must acknowledge the subliminal role of my friend David Barrett. Hours of conversation over the past three decades on reggae and dancehall themes have made it possible for me to live vicariously the experience of sound system culture from the context of the church. Also, I must thank my colleague Gordon Lynch, who has been a good sounding board for ideas, especially in discussions on theology and culture. Thanks to Yvette Hutchinson, Claire Hines, Caroline Redfern and Yaba Badoe for their supportive and encouraging comments. Finally, a big thanks to my wife Charlie who has allowed me the space and privilege to carry out this research. Scripture quotations taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Hodder & Stoughton Publishers, a member of the Hodder Headline Group. All rights reserved. ‘NIV’ is a registered trademark of International Bible Society. UK trademark number 1448790.

Introduction Sound clash: theology, culture and the Black Atlantic

African diasporan Christian traditions,1 particularly from the middle of the Twentieth Century, have a history of imitating musical styles from secular Black2 cultures. As a ‘child of the church’ I have experienced dozens of attempts by youthful musicians in church to sneak in rhythms and beats from reggae, R&B and jazz to accompany praise and worship songs. The aim is to embellish and contemporise church music. This process is reciprocal, as musical styles from hiphop to reggae also take inspiration, if not literal guidance, from the music and culture of African diasporan Christianity. British R&B artist Estelle praises the church for teaching her to sing in her creative and culturally conscious debut single entitled ‘1980’. My interest lies in the importation of secular music traditions into African Caribbean Christianity.3 My intent is not to study the stylistic embellishment of Christian theology: I am not interested in ‘dressing up’ Christian culture; rather, I wish to challenge and change it. To this end, this examination is concerned with transformation, how Black popular culture, from the context of the church, provides an opportunity to re-think and re-work aspects of African Caribbean Christian thought and practice. More precisely, the piece of Black culture that I want to make use of (integral to dancehall in the Caribbean and Britain) is dub, the instrumental version of reggae-dancehall music so central to the sound system performance. Dub is more than sound: it is the product of sophisticated signification and the raw material for a dynamic interplay between word, sound and power. The musical form of dub is the product of studio engineers who transform the original version of a record into an instrumental by remixing its key elements: the vocals, bass, horns, drums and treble guitar. In so doing, a new version or dub version is produced that carries the style and

2 Introduction

ideological signature of the engineer or studio. Dub is therefore a hermeneutical act involving deconstructive/reconstructive activity. By the late 1960s in Jamaica, dub had become the raw material for improvised lyrics by DJs or ‘toasters’ and underwent several metamorphoses, including the development of dub poets in Jamaica and Britain. Dub poets applied the hermeneutical focus of the studio engineer to orality, developing new ways of producing and hearing words and language within the highly charged political environments of Jamaica and inner city Britain. At this point dub becomes wordsounds, a transformation of words so as to alter and adjust meaning. Word-sounds are not passive, but assertive statements that engage with social realities and power relationships. For instance, Jamaicanborn dub poet, Linton Kwesi Johnson, produces poetry that speaks to the ideological battles being fought by Black people on the streets, in prisons and universities. This is the essence of word, sound and power. In this project my intent is to expose and apply the technical and cultural dynamics of dubbing in order to facilitate a political dubbing of African Caribbean Christian thought. In short, this dialogue between the cultural production of dancehall and theology of the church hall is an attempt to dub Jesus and to find new ways of hearing the message of the Gospel. By way of introduction, I want to place this exploration within two contexts: the first within theology and culture; and the second within African diasporan scholarship.

Black theology and Black culture This book is an investigation of theology and its relationship to culture. In talking about theology, I intend to utilise the understanding arising from Black liberation theologies of the Black Atlantic.4 Theology, as James H. Cone describes it, is: . . . a rational study of the being of God in the world in light of the existential situation of an oppressed community, relating the forces of liberation to the essence of the gospel which is Jesus Christ.5 For Cone, the content of Christian theology is liberation and as such theological expression must detail how God works in the world to free oppressed peoples, wherever they are found, from bondage. The Bible is the foundation on which Cone’s argument is based. Both

Introduction 3

Hebrew and Greek Scriptures identify a God of liberation who acts in the world on behalf of the oppressed. The high point of God’s action is the revelation of God in Jesus, and his liberating activity was witnessed in his work amongst the poor, outcast and needy. As liberation theologian Gustavo Gutierrez informs us, concern for the dispossessed and marginalised arises out of the recognition of the nature of God (a ‘preferential option’ for the oppressed) and is divorced from any attempt to romanticise poverty or marginality.6 Instead, this statement points to who God is; God’s preferential option for the poor tells of God’s love.7 Within this schema theology cannot be separated from context – the life and experience of people. So, the study of theology is never disconnected from an exploration of social context, material conditions or political relationships. Theology has historically been considered with reference to a variety of sources, including scripture, tradition, experience and culture. While respecting the relevance of all other sources, this exploration is primarily interested in culture. Raymond Williams provides us with a useful way of understanding the evolution of the concept of ‘culture’.8 He begins by identifying that the notion of ‘culture’ has undergone several transformations in meaning and is in no way a stable or static concept. The word was originally a way of describing the farming of land – that is, cultivation. But in recent years it has taken on additional meanings. It is, for instance, the product of a programme of improved behaviour and learning – that is, a process of intellectual, spiritual and aesthetic development. Also, some people view culture as inherited values, attitudes and ways of understanding. According to this perspective, culture is therefore the possession of a particular ethnic group or class of people. Hence the ubiquitous use of the phrase ‘Black culture’ to register the cultures of African and African Caribbean people in Britain.9 Cultural traditions are not static but dynamic, and Williams captures these activities in the concept of ‘structures of feeling’. These express the characteristic of the cultural forms that emerge from particular locations within each generation.10 These cultural products enable people to make sense of their lives, articulate identity and contest structural conditions that they nonetheless reproduce.11 What this means in practice is that culture is constantly changing, on the move and difficult to ‘police’. But dynamic culture does not exclude the retention of core elements that are reworked and transformed over time. African American cultural activist Amiri

4 Introduction

Baraka, in order to express the lived tension between Black cultural pasts (Africa) and presents (African diasporan), coined the concept of ‘changing-same’. While I side with Baraka’s theory of culture, it is important to note that not everyone is willing to privilege an African origin of Black culture. Post-modern perspectives on Black culture, for instance, stress its plurality. These anti-essentialist (pluralist) perspectives argue that the history of rupture, and subsequent displacement of African people, has resulted in constant rearticulations of culture as a result of collision and dialogue with other cultural traditions.12 Central to this study is the view of culture as a system of communication (signification) that informs, challenges and reproduces a social order.13 Here cultural production is related to economic and political practices and processes and cannot be examined outside of power relationships. Put simply, in this investigation, culture is understood as process, something we create; it is part of our everyday lives, with values and moralities expressed in and through it, and cannot be explored outside of relationships of power. What is important to note here is that cultural forms are part of a process of repression and challenge, and culture represents a site of struggle that is constantly negotiated. As Stuart Hall explains, the competition for cultural hegemony is never completely won but always ‘shifting the balance of power in relation to culture’.14 Culture gives meaning to theology and both are concerned with how meaning is created, challenged and reproduced – both signify. So what distinguishes the theological task? It is helpful to think of the theological task as being related to another belief system within a social order. In the case of Christian theology it is the ‘Kingdom of God’. This refers to a belief in divine activity that is both imminent and transcendent. The former – divine activity in the present – is motivated by the latter – the future hope. Consequently, theological signification is not an end in itself but is explicitly religious.15 I am interested in how theology, as the quest for liberation, can be enhanced and transformed through an encounter with cultural systems and practices – more precisely, the dialogue between the theology fermented in the African Caribbean church hall and specific cultures located in the leisure space of the dancehall. This encounter is rhizomorphic – particular connections are made in order to provide a new way of understanding the theological task. In order to explain how these new connections are made, it is useful to draw on the work of Deleuze and Guattari.

Introduction 5

In A Thousand Plateaus, these scholars embark on a groundbreaking analysis of social phenomena and offer new alternatives for philosophical and cultural thought to galvanise radical perspectives based on what they term ‘nomadic thought’. In considering ‘nomadology’ it is necessary to reject a root-and-tree image of the world – the classical approach based on historical relationships operating in logical sequence – in favour of a rootless wandering. In opposition, and continuing with the illustration from plant life, Deleuze and Guattari propose a radical system based on the development of the root tip. Where it is cut off ‘an immediate, indefinite multiplicity of secondary roots grafts on to it and undergoes a flourishing development’.16 This system they term a ‘rhizome’: Unlike trees or their roots, the rhizome connects any point to any other point . . . it brings into play very different regimes of signs, and even non-signs states. . . . It has neither a beginning or end, but always a middle from which it grows.17 Rhizomes assume very different forms but have several common characteristics. Any point of the rhizome can be connected to any other. In contrast, a root plots a point and fixes an order. Rhizomes are multiple, ceasing to have a relationship with just one subject. As such they have no points or positions such as those found in a tree or root structure. Instead there are only lines.18 Unlike roots that separate into segments and break, rhizomes rupture or shatter at any given point but will start up again at their old or new point, representing a process of ‘de-territorialisation’ and ‘re-territorialisation’. Rhizomes as a form of ‘nomadology’ offer a way of talking about the inter-being between theology and culture; they identify places where political and cultural connections can take place through the creation of a ‘throng of dialects, patois, slangs and specialized languages’.19 In relation to theology and culture, the aim of this connection is to provide a new theological vocabulary that facilitates an environment where all human life can thrive and develop. A meaningful discussion on dancehall from the location of the church hall is not an easy or uncontroversial task in the UK context, as African Caribbean Christianity has a troubled relationship with popular culture. The African Caribbean faith tradition in which I was raised, like so many other Christian traditions of West Indian migrants in Britain in the post-war period, held a negative view of popular culture. The polemic was shaped by the impact on Caribbean Christianity by conservative European

6 Introduction

and Euro-American missionaries of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Missionaries made a sharp distinction between the things of the ‘church’ and the ‘world’. Popular music fell into the latter category and the church discouraged the enjoyment of worldly pleasures. However, the recipients of this missionary practice were not completely convinced by their White spiritual masters and guardians. Their suspicion came, in part, from a holistic view of life embedded in the African cultures taken to the New World by slaves. Hence, while retaining a veneer of suspicion towards popular culture, African Caribbean Christians selectively appropriated aspects deemed central to enhancing worship and augmenting evangelism. As gospel music DJ and PhD student Dulcie Mackenzie suggests, African Caribbean ‘Christian music’ from the 1960s has consistently copied genres from the secular world as far-ranging as reggae and country music.20 What I am suggesting here is that a complex negotiation of popular culture persists in African Caribbean Christianity in Britain. While retaining a stinging critique towards a perceived materialism, profanity and sexual laxity, the church is still willing to copy styles, forms and traditions that embellish the worship and presentation of Jesus Christ. Using a concept appropriated from dancehall culture by Jamaican academic Carolyn Cooper, we may call this place of negotiation a border clash or a warring zone. This refers to a social location or cultural context where competition occurs for influence, meaning and power.21

African diasporan theological cultural criticism Located in the UK context, this exploration of theology and culture has Black Atlantic sensibilities. My work represents a diasporan perspective on theology and culture, and is part of a wider body of scholarship in this field. After all, as Paul Gilroy demonstrates, there is a long tradition of cultural and intellectual exchange between diasporan Africans in Europe, the Caribbean and North America.22 What was once a golden triangle for European economic exchange and slave trading has become a communication network for the descendants of slaves. Taking a lead from African American ethicist Victor Anderson and his reading of Michel Foucault’s notion of ‘genealogy’.23 I want to map the lines and influence of ideas that inform this study. I was inspired to view Black expressive culture in general and Black music in particular as a resource for theology through reading

Introduction 7

James Cone’s analysis of the spirituals in The Spiritual and the Blues.24 In this seminal study Cone, the patriarch of Black political theology, explores the encoding of socio-political and liberationist themes in classic ‘negro spirituals’ of North America. He continues by contrasting the spirituals with their secular counterpart, the blues. The blues is a ‘secular spiritual’ sharing a double-consciousness (spiritual/social) also found in the ‘negro spirituals’. Both genres articulate in their own way the Black struggle for freedom and justice in America and are not in opposition but a unity.25 Theoretically, Cone introduces the liberation motif as an ethic for cultural criticism26 and demonstrates one approach to cultural criticism, informed by Black political theology.27 Cone’s engagement with Black culture has been expanded in recent years through the work of second-generation Black theologians such as Anthony Pinn and Victor Anderson. Pinn, working from a Black humanist perspective, studies existential questions posed by late Twentieth Century popular culture (hip-hop) – in particular, what it means to be fully human. This quest for meaning, or what Pinn terms ‘nitty-gritty hermeneutics’, reveals how music cultures provide a framework for evaluating what is wholesome and valuable outside of a traditional Christian religious expression.28 Another important contribution to this discussion emerges in the work of Victor Anderson. He has deconstructed the construct of Blackness at work in Cone’s canon. In opposition to what he perceives to be a limiting homogeneous ‘ontological Blackness’ Anderson posits a post-modern Blackness.29 Here complex Black existences necessitate a theological reflection on Black culture that takes seriously the varied expressions of identity cut across axes of ethnicity, gender and sexuality. In sum, a Black theological cultural critic must engage with Black multiplicity and plurality in the study of religious expression and cultural agency. Whilst Black theology has provided the necessary inspiration for theological engagement with culture, the work of Black British cultural studies provides a contextual theoretical frame for understanding ‘culture’. These studies have their origins in the work of a collection of scholars in university departments in the 1970s. The founding academic is Stuart Hall. Influenced by neo-Marxist theory, Hall and the emerging discipline of critical race studies produced new ways of exploring the relationship between material culture, capital formation and post-colonial Britain. Of particular interest here is the notion of ‘resistance’ and the dangers of a narrow and

8 Introduction

fixed or essentialist reasoning. Paul Gilroy provided important insights into these two themes.30 As a leading protagonist within the Black British cultural studies collective, Gilroy sought to challenge racialised discourses by identifying the oppositional dimensions of Black expressive cultures.31 In some instances, expressive culture is politicised so as to offer sites of resistance to State oppression and ‘common sense racisms’ – when racist ideology is accepted and believed. Gilroy has also consistently critiqued Black essentialism.32 By lifting the ideological veil of cultural nationalism, he has identified escapist and a-historical tendencies within fixed and static notions of Blackness in Afrocentric scholarship. He nurtures a new task: to seek out and celebrate the political offerings within the diverse and hybrid Black identities and cultures.33 However, it is useful to balance Gilroy’s critique with a political argument from Michael Eric Dyson. This author has engaged in a sophisticated and critical exploration of the complex social, political and theological meanings within contemporary music cultures in North America. Like Gilroy, Dyson deploys a critical gaze on Black popular culture through a critical approach he terms ‘enabling solidarity’.34 This urges scholars to be aware of diverse meanings, identities and contexts in order to be open to a wider range of forces that affect and shape Black culture. However, Dyson’s post-modern Blackness does not exclude a strategic essentialism – the times when it is necessary to analyse and fight on the basis of communal interests and more fixed notions of identity and culture. As post-colonial theorist Gayatri Spivak puts it, we can’t escape essentialising so it is best to act strategically, looking at ‘essentialisms, not as descriptions of the way things are, but as something that one must adopt to produce a critique’.35 In Race Rules Dyson chastises scholars who celebrate Black diversity at the expense of a political unity. In other words, Dyson demands what Asian British cultural theorist Kenan Malik terms the need for analysis that holds in tension the right to be different (anti-essentialism) and the struggle to be equal (racial justice).36 Finally, my approach to theology and cultural criticism has been informed by Black Atlantic womanist scholarship. It was Alice Walker who first used the term ‘womanist’ to describe Black women’s experience in America.37 However, my introduction to womanism – that is, the theorising of Black women’s experience – came from engaging with the work of bell hooks. Hooks has refined a cultural criticism with a commitment to exploring race, class and gender

Introduction 9

analysis to reaffirm the inextricable link between difference and justice in the lives of Black women.38 African American theologian Jacquelyn Grant applied womanist principles to Black theology. She explores how the lives and experiences of Black women in the church facing the triple jeopardy of race, class and gender oppression, inform the theological perspective. Focusing on Christology – that is, who Jesus Christ is in the world today – Grant constructs a ‘womanist Jesus’ concerned with equalising, co-suffering and co-working with Black women.39 The distilling of Black women’s experience into a meaningful social theory appears in the work of Patricia Hill Collins. By foregrounding ‘experience as the criterion of meaning’, ‘the role of dialogue’ and ‘an ethic of caring’ Collins’ Black feminist epistemology provides a framework for a counter-hegemonic epistemology – a counter-historical and counter-cultural approach to collating and evaluating what is meaningful for Black women.40 In short, hooks, Grant and Collins not only demonstrate that ‘gender matters’ in cultural criticism, but they also construct womanist ways of knowing that must be taken seriously in cultural studies and religious reflections in ‘White supremacist, capitalist and patriarchal’ societies. Jamaican cultural critic Carolyn Cooper applies these womanist themes in a meaningful way to the study of reggae-dancehall culture. Of particular importance is Cooper’s analysis of metaphor, orality and gender in the Jamaican context. She details the unique role of expressive cultures as a playground for gender struggle, the contestation of masculinity and biblical imagery and language.41 Given the influence of Caribbean cultures on Black Atlantic musical forms, Cooper’s exploration of Jamaican popular culture is an important tool for assessing the migratory or outernational influence of Jamaican culture on its diaspora in Britain and America. In summary, Black Atlantic theological and cultural analysis provides a meaningful context for doing theology in response to popular culture. The liberation ethic in Black theology can be mobilised as the norm through which culture is explored, including religious cultures inside religious institutions. However, it is important to enable Black cultural traditions to ‘speak for themselves’ and express the existential realities imbedded within them. Cultural traditions are not neutral: they contest economic and political realities. Further, Black cultural traditions are diverse and hybrid, and by celebrating diversity we do not neglect the quest for justice articulated in and through culture. In addition, any meaningful

10 Introduction

theological-cultural exchange must be sensitive to gendered politics and must strive ultimately for what womanist theologian Kelly Brown Douglas terms socio-political and religious cultural wholeness.42

Outline of the book This exploration of church hall and dancehall cultures has three sections. Section one of this book is an examination of the emergence and meaning of dub. Chapter 1 maps out the theoretical framework of this examination. I identify the common social and cultural heritage that informs church and dancehall cultures in Britain, namely the influence of slavery, Revival Christianity and workingclass Jamaican life. However these social and cultural traditions diverge on the politics of sound; while both signify, dancehall facilitates an explicit politicisation. The chapter ends by contouring the elements for a new way of listening to sound, based on the social conventions of acoustemology. Chapter 2 explores the emergence of sound systems and Pentecostalism43 in Jamaica. Sound systems were a means of getting imported R&B to the masses in post-war Jamaica. Central to the success of the sound was the acquisition of the best music, which led to the development of a sophisticated business culture. Sound systems competed with the church for the leisure time of the working-class people, but decades before the importation of American music, working-class Jamaicans were importing Black religion in the form of Pentecostalism. A Black Atlantic religious consciousness and social change facilitated a swift acceptance of this new form of Christianity amongst the urban and rural poor. Consequently, even before West Indian migration to Britain, sound systems and Pentecostal churches lived side by side in the Caribbean. Chapter 3 examines African Caribbean Christianity as a political counter-part to dancehall. With migration to Britain, Jamaican dancehall and church hall traditions found their way into Britain’s post-colonial metropolises. My interest lies in the ways in which, in response to new forms of racialised oppression, both music and faith were transformed into politicised space, providing language, aesthetics and rhetoric to survive and overcome disadvantage. Chapter 4 marks the beginning of the second section, focusing on dub as an interpretive process. Here I make a connection between ‘dub’ as a theory and the spoken word. The chapter begins by defining the social context out of which dub emerges: the working-class urban dancehalls and recording studios in Jamaica. Dub was developed

Introduction 11

by accident and has undergone several re-creations on its way to becoming a genre within reggae and other forms of popular music. However, this chapter explores dub as an interpretive process concerned with deconstructive and signifying practices. This chapter will also explore how dub was transformed into the spoken word through the emergence of dub poetry. Through a creative play on written and spoken words, dub poets introduce the dubbing of words so that they signify in new ways. Chapter 5 provides a theological form and content for dub. Beginning with a discussion on hermeneutics, dub as a hermeneutical concept is developed in relation to deconstructive methodology found in Black liberation theologies of North America. As a deconstructive practice, Black theology dismantles dominant theological narratives and reconstructs its own interpretation of Scripture and the world, based on a dialogue between Black experience and the Scriptures. This chapter explores how aspects of Caribbean emancipatory theology – that is, its socio-political and religiouscultural motifs – inform dub as an emancipatory interpretive scheme. Chapter 6 applies dub as an interpretive focus to the life and ministry of Jesus through a re-reading of Jesus’ encounters with two women in the book of St John. The chapter identifies the boundaries of the emancipation motif in the mission of Jesus. Chapter 7 is a dialogue between William (Lez) Henry and the author. As a sociologist, Rastafarian and sound system DJ, Henry provides an insider’s view of dub. The dialogue identifies the points of unity and contention between the church hall and dancehall in contemporary Britain. The final section comprises two chapters that apply the content and structure of dub to two pressing issues within African Caribbean Christianity. These are pneumatology and prosperity doctrine. Pneumatology, the study of the Holy Spirit, is dubbed in chapter 8. This chapter explores how we move from a personal, private and ecstatic experience of the Sprit to a communal and socially transforming one. Through a socio-political re-reading of the Azusa Street Revival of 1906 this chapter develops an emancipation ethic for the basis of a ‘Spirit dub’ in general and a ‘tongues dub’ in particular. Chapter 9, ‘Prosperity dub’, remixes this controversial doctrine. Beginning with an examination of the Word of Faith Movement, the chapter identifies the key elements of prosperity doctrine. When placed in relation to the complex poverty stalking African Caribbean communities, an emancipation ethic emerges that agitates for ‘commonwealth’. Prosperity doctrine is then dubbed in, and through, a socio-economic interpretation of commonwealth.

Part 1

Church hall, dancehall and resistance

Chapter 1

Theorising the politics of sound

In this chapter, I want to theorise the politics of sound in the dancehall and church hall. When I refer to sound, I mean the process of sensing acoustics as a way of living and being in the world. Sound is never merely noise; it is fecund with cultural values. Therefore to hear sound is to decode cultural meanings.1 My understanding of politics comes from African-centred thought. Maulana Karenga describes politics as, ‘the art and process of gaining, maintaining and using power’.2 Whether politics is personal or structural in analysis, the fundamental concern is with power. Power is not domination, but the ability to realise the full potential of all people. In this regard the quest for power is inter-related and inter-dependant. To pull these themes together, in relation to the task of this chapter, my aim is to construct a way of understanding sound in relation to the quest for gaining and maintaining power. I want to begin by reflecting on my personal experience of sound in a sound clash. This is to provide a comparison and contrast to the experience of sound in the church hall, or worshipping of the African Caribbean church. I will end by providing a theoretical framework for uniting these sounds through socio-linguistics and acustemology.

Dub and 1970s Black youth politics The very first time I heard a dub version of a record was at Sidney Stringer Comprehensive School in Coventry in the mid-1970s. I was no more than ten or eleven and was taken to hear the local sound system called ‘Conquering Lion’ by my two older sisters on a Friday night. Their reasons were not altruistic but subversive: I was ‘cover’ for them from my strict Christian parents who knew we were going to the youth club but not to engage in the kind of ‘sport’ my siblings

16 Theorising the politics of sound

had suggested. ‘Conquering Lion’ consisted of a crew of teenage boys who had built a sound system set of half a dozen or so speaker boxes and wired them up to two turntables, an amp and mixer. What immediately struck me when I entered the converted classroom masquerading as an urban dance floor was the sheer intensity of the event. It was corked full of young people and the events were conducted in pitch dark. It was also boiling hot due in part to the reggae dance floor chic of wearing winter coats with matching headwear. However, overpowering all of my senses was what Julian Henriques terms sonic dominance3 of the sound system. There was a throbbing, pulsing bass line ricocheting through the bricks, mortar, flesh and bones. The sonic power was tamed in part by the DJ’s improvised poetic narration or ‘toasting’ over the dub track. Playing on the turntable was a dub version of MPLA by a reggae artist called ‘Tappa Zukie’ (David Sinclair). As the DJ ‘toasted’, the silhouetted bodies moved in unison to the bass line: the heat, darkness and body sweat adding to the sheer pleasure of this Black teen spirit. ‘MPLA Dub’ was an instrumental reworking of a vocal track heralding the rise to power of an African socialist regime in Angola. Through an Afrocentric repatriation lens, Tappa Zukie humorously declares his intent to holiday in newly-liberated Angola: MPLA, natty going on a holiday, MPLA, natty going on a holiday A Natty fling away you sorrow Natty going on the Black Star Liner tomorrow4 Stuart Hall has exposed the processes by which encoding and decoding becomes an everyday part of cultural production.5 Decoding and transcoding were evident as the DJ in Coventry translated the religious (Rastafari) and political (MPLA) sentiments of Tappa Zukie’s original into a contextually specific critique of ‘race’ in Britain. Intriguingly, rather than contemplating a vacation to West Africa, these Black Coventonian lyrics focused on mobilising culture as an oppositional force: Conquering Lion from the tribe of Judah Conquering Lion no check fi di system Show dem you culture, down in a Babylon Show dem you culture, down a Babylon The crowd responded to the DJ’s explicit politicisation of sound – that is, the audible articulation of culture as a weapon in the

Theorising the politics of sound 17

struggle for justice and freedom in England – by occupying the dance floor. As the Black bodies in the crowd moulded together in celebration of the music, simultaneously Black Atlantic cultures and cultural identities collided and were recreated. In the words of Kobena Mercer, social and political identities do not appear overnight; instead they are ‘culturally and politically constructed through political antagonism and cultural struggle’.6 However, this occurrence in a small Midlands city was more than the working out of a contextual politics. These rituals of orality, physicality and communality were also acts of pleasure and healing: The sound system functions firstly as a conduit of the consciousness of Britain’s Black settlers into that mainstream world; it helps them . . . there’s a phrase the African Americans have ‘the night time is the right time’ – and that means that during that space when the world is asleep, those marginal spaces create a space of healing, of cultural play, a place where their broken and tired bodies can be reclaimed from the world of labour, where they can celebrate themselves, their vitality, their strength, their sexuality in the dark.7 Intoxicated by sonic dominance and the physicality of the sound clash, I felt at home with the music, sound and culture of the event. On reflection, this was because I had been sensitised to these oral and physical aspects of Black life through worship at church. In church, I had learned to recognise the dynamics of Black noise through the antiphonality of call and response, the narrativity of orality in song and preaching and the expressive physicality played out in the artistry of the sermon. Apart from the liturgy the only major difference between the church hall and the dancehall was that in church we credited the Holy Spirit with providing the dunamis, or energy, for church deportment. Even so, the Sidney Stringer school experience clearly directs us towards a common social and religiouscultural heritage shared by the church hall and dancehall.

Common heritage The social heritage is the result of geography. The dancehall and church hall emerge from the same working class social locations in Caribbean culture and more specifically the context of Jamaica. To understand the social relationship we need to revisit the economic dynamics of Caribbean slavery.

18 Theorising the politics of sound

The Caribbean migrants to Britain are the descendents of slaves who were transported by European powers from Africa. Hence, the people who came to inhabit islands such as Jamaica were not the original indigenous peoples of those lands. Regarding the specifics of British colonisation, this colonial regime created stratified societies built on the plantation system of inequitable economic relationship. Slave labour was exploited for the benefit and prosperity of the British overlords. After the abolition of slavery in the 1830s and the collapse of the slave-based economy, the descendents of slaves became peasant farmers, comprising the bulk of the island’s population. On most Caribbean islands, White planters, often less than one per cent of the population, continued to farm the best land. To ensure their economic and social domination they introduced cheap labour from India and China, which, over time, inadvertently formed a ‘Brown’ socio-economic buffer between the White elite and poor Blacks.8 By the middle of the Twentieth Century, urban industrialisation and tourist commercialism, lured armies of the poor to seek betterment in urban centres. The lack of real economic opportunities simply fuelled the spread of ghetto areas in the cities. It is out of the context of rural and urban poverty that modes of leisure associated with dancehall and religious devotion associated with Christianity develop, overlap and, eventually, travel with Caribbean immigrants to post-colonial Britain. What I am suggesting here is that dancehall and church hall are the product of working-class and working poor communities. Dancehall and church hall, in Jamaica at least, are social siblings, though somewhat estranged from each other. As Carolyn Cooper demonstrates, the close proximity between the dancehall and church hall cultures has always facilitated a dialogue and the sharing of religious and cultural symbols and practices, including music.9 However, I want to point to a common religious influence and heritage that infused the folk culture of the poor, and, indirectly, both dancehall and church hall cultures. While much has been said about the dynamics of African folk music and its influence on contemporary Jamaican music,10 little attention has been paid to the relationship between African musical forms and religious practice. We know that in slave society, music had a dynamic role. It was communal in that everyone was expected to participate in everyday musical events as well as the special songs and dances associated with festivals and feast days, such as the John Canoe dance at Christmas in Jamaica. Furthermore, music and dance were survival strategies of the first African slaves and also their descendents amongst the urban poor. Whether in the past in the form

Theorising the politics of sound 19

of the revolutionary call of the obeng (cow horn) by the ‘Maroons’ (anti-colonialist rebels), or the present-day passing on of historical memory through the teaching of drumming technique in tenement yards, music is mobilised to resist attempts to annihilate dignity as well as to pass on cultural memory. However, music was also integral to religious practices that had travelled with the slaves. For example, African religious systems such as the cumina tradition in Jamaica made use of complex drumming rhythms.11 The style and use of music in African religion also found their way into Christianity. Take for example the use of African musical forms in the development of indigenous Jamaican Christianity termed ‘Revival’. ‘Revival’ gained its name from the religious awakening that swept the island from 1860–1.12 I side with Leonard Barrett’s view of Revival as a ‘political’ return to African religions within a Christian framework.13 Central to Revival was the use of singing, dancing and drumming as part of the service to usher in the presence of the ‘spirits’.14 For some time it has been recognised that Revival styles of music were appropriated by Rastafarian religion and subsequently became a part of the music culture that shapes and influences reggaedancehall into the present.15 Therefore a genealogy of sound exists between African religious retentions (Revival) and dancehall music cultures of today. However, what has not been so widely reported is that Revival worship styles also found their way into twentieth century Christianity, particularly Pentecostalism. Revival ‘spirit possession techniques’, both oral and physical, were appropriated to evoke the power of God in the context of worship. This is why Jamaican religionist Dianne M. Stewart speaks of the foundational characteristics of African religion, including the beating of the drum and the recognition of the community of ‘spirits’, being absorbed into Christian traditions in Jamaica.16 This process of musical integration is given a Pentecostal specificity by Dianna Austin-Broos. Her description of the African mode of religious celebration, or ‘eudemonic’, within the worship of early Black Pentecostals in Jamaica identifies a seizure of Revival style – in particular the use of music, including drumming, within worship to provide a receptive environment for mediating the coming of the Holy Spirit.17 There is therefore a shared musical legacy between the dancehall and church hall rooted in Revivalism. Revival music and style found its way into Rastafarian music culture and also Pentecostalism in

20 Theorising the politics of sound

Jamaica. Thus, there are acoustic and performental qualities and sensibilities in both that predate any implicit dialogue between dancehall and church hall in the post-war period in the Caribbean or Britain. They share a religious-cultural legacy. These shared historical components expressed in social and cultural themes suggest that church hall and dancehall traditions are not as disparate as would initially appear. And it is because of these historical continuities that, as a young Pentecostal boy, I was able to feel at home with some of the sonic dominance, expressive physicality and the orality of performance in the dancehall from my location within the African Caribbean church. What was new to my young ears, though, was the DJ’s use of music and lyrics as social commentary.

Politicisation of sound The explicit politicisation of sound was not present in my church context. Political expression within the church in which I was raised, like most fledgling African Caribbean church traditions of the 1960s and 1970s, was at best subliminal and expressed within the framework of implicit theology. Historically, implicit theology was the product of the slave and colonial subject’s negotiation of faith in the light of continued social oppression. It was one way of making sense of the meaning of God in a context blighted by extreme physical and social bondage and structural oppression. Apart from rebellion or collusion, another way of negotiating faith was to internalise the concept of freedom, hope and the justice of God, while remaining obedient to the social order. This disjunction between outward profession and inner belief was a religious signification where what was really meaningful (inner) was hidden (outward). Within this theology, the scope of divine justice and liberation was individualised and spiritualised. Salvation was professed to be a personal journey without a communal, social or national equivalent. Therefore, the dangerous theological idea of God calling communities, ruling orders or nations to ‘do right’, was mostly sidestepped. At best, evil and injustice were encoded into talk of ‘demonic activity’, that could only be countered supernaturally. This way, one could engage in a struggle against all manifestations of evil in the social world, but under the veil of spiritual warfare, fighting with spiritual weaponry such as worship, song, prayer and fasting, and other acts of religious devotion.

Theorising the politics of sound 21

Implicit theology spiritualised the interpretation of Scripture. Individual spiritual needs were brought to the Bible to find ‘real life occurrences related in the Scriptures’.18 However, rarely were the real life structural and social needs engaged with the text. Instead, the focus was on the personal, emotional, financial and psychological needs, wants and concerns. As reader-response reading strategies have suggested, the questions posed to the biblical text determine the nature and scope of interpretation. Therefore, personal, spiritualised questions will not produce answers to broader social and cultural concerns faced. Despite its limitations, implicit theology should not be completely dismissed, as it does have some redeeming features: . . . rituals of reference reinforce a fixed identity as object; recognition of this status fosters a form of dread or terror; and religion manifested in black life is a response to or wrestling against this terror, understood in terms of liberation.19 Ethicist Anthony Pinn suggests that we place slave religion within the context of racial hostility. Within these contexts, White supremacy was enforced by brutality (or rituals of reference) in order to reinforce the inferiority of Blacks (fixed identity). In response, religious adherence, even in the form of individualisation and spiritualisation, is the pathway to a more liberative theological orientation. In this way, the relationship between survival and liberation strategies is understood as a continuum: survival laying the seeds for elevation and eventual liberation.20 In other words, even implicit theology represents a form of resistance. While the brutality of slavery had been replaced by other forms of racialised oppression in the post-colonial world, implicit theology remains a feature of African Caribbean Christianity in Britain. According to Black British womanist theologian Valentina Alexander, the disjunction at the heart of implicit theology remains in African Caribbean Christianity today. She designates the term ‘passive radicalism’ to describe this theological paradox: The contextual development of the Church means that it has most often been, however, essentially an implicit tool enabling believers to identify, challenge and overcome the various levels of their ideological and material oppression without necessarily seeking out its socio-historical source and without making an

22 Theorising the politics of sound

explicit theological alignment with that liberative process. To the extent that this manifestation of social analysis within the BLC [Black Led Church] would seem to represent yet another paradox, it has been identified in this study as passive radicalism.21 Passive radicalism denotes a commitment to transformation but an inability to adequately address the socio-historical sources that limit African Caribbean life. This disjunction at the heart of implicit theology was played out during my upbringing in relation to socio-political engagement. Explicit political engagement was discouraged by the limitations of implicit theology, and in addition our parent denomination, a White, middle-class American, right-wing church, forbade it.22 So the nearest we came to participating in meaningful social analysis was to signify – encoding sermons and testimonies. For instance, many believers spoke of ‘spiritual warfare’ in the workplace as a cryptic reference to racism there. But functioning on an implicit level, political engagement never travelled beyond the realm of personal responsibility and failed to directly challenge and change the ‘official’ theological ideas that prevented us from developing a meaningful social and political practice in the first place.23 Furthermore, Alexander’s research suggests that implicit theology remains a feature of contemporary African Caribbean church life. Returning to the central concern here – the relationship between dancehall and church hall – my fundamental argument is that: whilst sharing a common social and cultural heritage, the dancehall and the church hall of my upbringing were distinctly separated by the politics of sound. While some sound systems DJs were able explicitly to address the conflicts within the social world of African Caribbean people (‘chant down Babylon’), pastors felt the need to speak in code. In contrast to the explicit politicisation of sound in dancehall culture, both then and now, I continue to encounter in African Caribbean Christianity an implicit biopolitics of sound.24 That is to say, the orality, music and other sonic features nurtured freedom over the private spheres of our bodies, homes and church halls. The world has moved on. Three decades later, Black musical forms have developed and transformed urban music in Britain. Dub continues to inform and shape dancehall cultures but is not the exclusive proclivity of DJ culture. African Caribbean Christianity has also grown, with over 3000 churches with over 300,000 adherents

Theorising the politics of sound 23

in 2004.25 These churches are an established and central institution within Black urban culture, with a profound influence on the urban religious life of the nation. There is, I believe, real benefit to be gained from a meaningful exchange between these two cultures. To this end, in concluding this chapter, I want to develop a theoretical framework for understanding and interpreting sound.

Theological language and social change In my previous work on theology and culture, I have made metaphor the starting point. This decision was based on experience and context. As a child of Jamaican parents, I have learned that metaphor is an important socio-political device. In Caribbean cultures everyday languages, images and stories are fecund with meaning and used for social commentary. Within this linguistic field, metaphor is more than simplistic talk; instead, metaphors are central to a grounded philosophical tradition – engaging in deeper levels of reasoning.26 For this reason, Carolyn Cooper describes metaphor in Jamaica as a form of (h)ideology, representing a complex obscuring and also unmasking of reality.27 Elsewhere, I have theorised Jamaican metaphor by drawing on the socio-linguistic traditions of Ferdinand Saussure and the ontological symbolism of Paul Tillich to explain the metaphorical use of ‘Dread’ and ‘Rahtid’ as new theological terms.28 The practical theologian, Gordon Lynch is correct when he calls my earlier work ‘correlation’ and ‘praxis’ orientated (and this will be discussed in greater length in the conclusion).29 Within this schema, parallels are sought between theology and culture to provide new ways of exploring and expressing the meaning of the Gospel in relation to a particular context. Moreover, in my work metaphor has power: shaping a new theological praxis. For instance, I rethought and reworked the Rastafarian concept of ‘Dread,’ so that when I apply ‘Dread’ to the life and work of Jesus (‘Jesus is Dread’) it delineates a new vision of the locus of divine activity in which Christology is a ‘Dread Christology’, symbolically allying Jesus to the socio-political struggles of African Caribbean people in Britain.30 However, it is also useful to think of my previous work in relation to the discipline of vernacular hermeneutics. R.S. Sugirtharajah situates the vernacular within the attempts by the once colonised to regain a sense of the local over the national and international as part of a quest for self-actualisation and self-respect.31

24 Theorising the politics of sound

Hence, it is by definition an oppositional strategy that has come to challenge the very idea of Eurocentric perspectives on modernism and internationalism. In relation to biblical interpretation, Sugirtharajah identifies three modes of vernacular readings. These are conceptual correspondences, narrative enrichment and performantial parallels. The first seeks a conceptual parallel between the reader’s context and the biblical narrative. The second mode aims to enrich biblical passages with popular and folk sayings, tales and riddles. Finally, performantial parallels make use of rituals and practices in the reader’s culture to explain and expand the meaning of a text.32 In my case, I have made use of the conceptual and performential categories: I have used Jamaican linguistic concepts and practices to expand the meaning of Scripture. In this study, I aim to build on my previous work by continuing to create a theological language for African Caribbean Christians grounded in the Black vernacular. My use of the vernacular is paradigmatic rather than prescriptive. I am suggesting a general theological method, but not dictating the use of a particular set of words or themes. As mentioned in my first book, Jesus is Dread, I realise that my terms are ‘time locked’ and have limited cultural and social resonance. As a ‘child of the 1970s’, I am particularly keen to make use of cultural resources from this and other historical periods to rethink contemporary issues in Black experience in Britain. However, my hope is that scholars from current and future generations will mine their experience for similar tools rather than rely on my offerings as dogmatic tropes. One way of situating this work within systematic theology is to place it within the field of cultural-linguism, a discipline associated with the work of George Lindbeck.33 There is not enough space to define the complexities of Linbeck’s argument. Put simply, this theory proposes that Christian doctrines should be regarded as grammar constitutive of the reality of particular groups. Within this grammatical system, language precedes and interprets experience. Thus the theological task is to introduce new linguistic forms to influence and shape life and thought and make possible a new understanding of beliefs and experiences, because language shapes subjectivities. The transformative power of theological language identified by Lindbeck is refined in the work of African American biblical scholar Brian Blount. Within his theory of cultural interpretation, Blount focuses on the power of language to shape the meaning of Scripture.34

Theorising the politics of sound 25

According to Blount, the language we use influences the ‘meaning potential’ of a text. When applied to Christian theology we have to consider how the particular language used by a theologian shapes and alters interpretation of Scripture: this means we treat language as a form of behavior potential. Language is what the speaker ‘can mean.’ What the speaker can mean is related through the use of sentences, words, and phrases to what the speaker ‘can do.’ The intermediate step between these two ends is what the speaker ‘can say.’35 Hence, language influences action and politics, even within the context of church life.36

Hermeneutics of sound I want to add another dimension to my approach by discovering new tools for theological reflection from music culture. Language is more than written expression; language is also oral and audible, as presented in the form of spoken words. Here, I am interested in exploring the language of music to find new words and insights. Language as sound leads us to the study of sound or acoustemology. Acoustemology is the study of sound, an exploration of sonic sensibilities – how sound enables us to make sense of reality. Hearing is related to cognition because we have to make sense of what we hear. In other words, hearing is not limited to the ears, as perceiving is intimately connected to the body, requiring a physiological reaction involving our brains, heads and nervous system. Because sensing involves the body, particular sounds are often linked to particular spaces and locations, further enabling us to sense and locate that sound in time and space.37 However, my primary concerns in this analysis is with the ‘semiotics of sound’ – that is, how we interpret sound based on its structure and codes. Let me explain. It is argued that the experience of hearing sound is ruled by a number of codes.38 There are firstly general codes associated with mental processes related to our senses and perception of music, such as its spatial or kinetic form, that enable us to classify it as hard/ soft, warm/cold or high/low. Additionally, we also have to mentally categorise and identify the music as something new, similar, opposing or transforming. There are also social codes that relate to social practices. These practices are reflected in the structure of the music.

26 Theorising the politics of sound

For instance, an instrumental track may ‘speak to us’, – that is, have the phrasing associated with verbal discourse. Social conventions also enable us to categorise the music in terms of genres and style. For instance, dub falls into at least three distinct forms: instrumentals, versions and all out dub. Finally, the codes that are the most important to this study, are the ones related to technique. In most cultures there are codes that are specifically ‘musical’ – that is, related distinctively to the use of instrumentation. In the case of the music technology associated with dubbing, these technical codes are a form of ‘language’ but in the form of signs embedded within the arrangement of the music. In this study, the art of dubbing, as a technical musical code, will be treated as a form of ‘musical language’ providing a vocabulary for theological reflection. Sound as a language is never neutral. As Mark Smith has demonstrated, the history of ‘Black noise’ in African American cultures is intimately linked to the quest for power. From the sound of slaves during the middle passage – the traumatic journey of slaves in slave ships from Africa to the New World – to the music of Civil Rights and on to contemporary digitalised rap music, Black people have used sound or the absence of sound to articulate existential concerns and engage with structural inequality.39 Contemporary Black British soundscapes are equally politicised. For example, Paul Gilroy’s historicisation of post-war Black British music in There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack identifies an intimate relationship between social context, political concerns and their articulation in sound – Black music.40 In this sense all music signifies a political orientation, even those identified by Kodwo Eshun in More Brilliant than the Sun as having non-redemptive or de-politicised practices and themes.41 The aesthetic politics of Black noise means that dubbing as a musical language can be critiqued as an act of encoding and full of signs that may be missed through casual listening. This is not a new idea in the case of dub, since one of its chief architects, Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, states that his music is ‘full of ghosts’.42 I believe that listening to music as encoded political language introduces a ‘hermeneutic of sound’ – that is, a particular way of listening and interpreting what is being heard. I will explore the language of dub in greater depth in chapter 4. Before then it is necessary to contextualise the emergence of dub in sound systems in Jamaica and Britain. In summary, in this chapter I have argued that dancehall and church hall emerge from the socio-economic context in Jamaican

Theorising the politics of sound 27

life. Furthermore, they share a common religious root: Jamaican Revival. Revival orality, physicality and spirituality influence both secular and sacred music cultures in Jamaica. However, despite these common roots, they take divergent routes on the subject of the politics of sound. Under Rastafarian and Afrocentric influence, dancehall, while retaining its aesthetic qualities, has continued to nurture a critical space for the explicit politicisation of sound – a theme that I will explore in more depth in dialogue with William Henry in chapter 7. By contrast, under the influence of implicit theology, the church hall indulged in an implicit bio-politics of sound, where orality and the sonic focus on a personal politics of salvation and redemption. In order to create a more meaningful dialogue between the church hall and dancehall, I have made metaphor my starting point. Metaphor as symbolic language has a theological function: it provides a way of describing the meaning of God. By making use of metaphors found in the Black vernacular in Britain, I have attempted to ground theological language in African Caribbean politics and culture. By interpreting the divine in and through ‘black-twang’ I have developed a vernacular hermeneutic. New theological language has the potential of creating new ways of thinking and doing in church life. Language has ‘meaning potential’ and to this end I want to further expand the use of metaphor by drawing on language embedded in musical culture. Music is language and listening can be guided by codes. As well as general and social conventions, listening is governed by technique. Musical technique is a language that conveys a structure and vocabulary. I want to examine dubbing and dub as a language that can provide a symbolic language for theological reflection. Before engaging in a more sustained exploration of dub, I want to revisit the notion of implicit theology. As mentioned above (page 21), Pinn suggests that implicit theology can be interpreted as an act of liberation in the context of racialised oppression. As my central aim is to politicise aspects of African Caribbean theology, it is necessary to provide a clearer picture of the politics of this Christian tradition. To this end, I want to explore how the emergence of dancehall and church hall can be interpreted from a political perspective.43

Chapter 2

Diasporic dialogue The emergence of sound systems and Pentecostal churches

As mentioned in the introduction, it is my intention to engage in a conversation between dancehall and church hall. Central to dancehall is the sound system and uppermost to African Caribbean Christianity is worship. One historical connection between these two traditions is audio culture. As explored previously, the music of the sound system and Christian worship share parts of sonic history in Jamaica. The rhizome that concerns me here is the relationship between dub and specific practices in African Caribbean Pentecostalism. To fully develop the intricacies of this linkage, it is my intention in the next two chapters to provide a historical context for this encounter. This chapter begins by locating the social and cultural origins of the dancehall and the church hall. I will identify the emergence of sound system and Pentecostalism in the Jamaican context and the transportation of these two traditions to Britain as a consequence of post-war Caribbean migration.

Dancehall Sound systems emerge from Jamaican dancehall cultures. Dancehall has been a part of Jamaican culture since slavery and takes on a distinctive character in the Twentieth Century: It [dancehall] is a field of active cultural production, a means by which Black lower class youth articulate and project a distinct identity in local, national and global contexts; through dancehall, ghetto youth also attempt to deal with the endemic problems of poverty, racism and violence. In this sense, dancehall is a multidimensional force, at once symbolic and material, that permeates and structures everyday life.1

Diasporic dialogue 29

Leisure space has always been highly stratified and this was the case for most of the Twentieth Century, with each social class having its own dancehall type and location. The urban middle classes, some of whom had ‘mulatto’ ethnic roots, frequented theatres in Kingston and other major cities. In contrast, the urban and rural poor, who tended to be of darker complexion and descended from the masses of unskilled or semi-skilled labourers that used to ‘slave’ in the sugar cane fields, set up booths and galas in marketplaces. Dancehall space was not static. From the outset, dancehall was a place of clashes including a clash of cultures where European and African musical styles and instrumentation merged to produce distinctive Jamaican musical forms including mento.2 Nor was dancehall socially passive or depoliticised. As part of the culture of ‘play’ that reaches back into slave leisure in Caribbean societies, dancehall culture articulates the social and political aspirations of oppressed peoples.3 In other words, dancehall is a social institution that over time has functioned as a central cultural matrix where political ideologies and affiliations are made and unmade. Sound systems Jamaican sound systems are a product of the ‘dun-tun’ (downtown) – the inner city culture of the urban poor in the post-war period.4 As would be the case with the emergence of Pentecostalism, a major catalyst was Black America. Before the Second World War, dancehall music was often ‘live’, performed by trained and self-trained musicians who would tour in bands across the island and play their version of big band music in theatres or fields. A transatlantic, Black musical consciousness5 developed due to the growing influence of Black American music. First, the presence of Black GIs stationed on the island during the Second World War increased Jamaicans’ awareness of their musical tastes and the equipment needed to assemble a sound system, such as public address systems, phonographs and records.6 Second, and as my father, who was a boy during the war years, informed me, the wider availability of radios on the island meant that people were able to tune into radio stations in Florida and the American South to listen to Black music. After the war, these new sensibilities augmented, with working class Jamaicans developing an insatiable appetite for African American music. However, only limited supplies of trained musicians

30 Diasporic dialogue

were able to replicate the US sound. With demand outstripping supply, the market was right for the next best thing – imported records.7 According to Dick Hebdige, sound systems were established in Jamaica and other Caribbean islands in the early 1950s to meet this need – to play imported tunes from the US. Sound systems caught on because they provided an entrepreneurial opportunity for working-class Blacks to enter the field of music promotion by pooling resources and establishing a sound system that gave affordable access to R&B from America. ‘Count Nicholas’ and ‘Count Goody’ were two of the first small systems playing in Kingston, Jamaica after the Second World War using record players and amplifiers, but within a few years, small time merchants and shopkeepers in Kingston joined this fledging working-class entertainment business. Sound systems began to make a huge impression after the 1951 hurricane that swept across the Caribbean leaving serious structural damage to the tourist industry. Many musicians who used to entertain tourists and the locals left the country in search of work, exacerbating the lack of live performances available to local people. In the Jamaican capital, Kingston, sound systems became synonymous with their celebrated owners and operators such as Duke Reid (1915–1975), Sir Coxone (1932–2004), and Prince Buster (1938–). These men used their humour and personality to win over patrons, promote their music and make money. With several competing sounds in operation, the size of the speakers and the exclusivity of the music became integral to gaining dominance. In order to defeat the competition, sound system owners sought to improve the quality of their equipment, employing men to build large speakers that would outperform competing sounds. Also, exclusive records or ‘specials’ were sought out from outlets in the US or from the few stores in Kingston that provided a steady stream of R&B records. Eventually, the soundmen would come to dominate the distribution of records and therefore control the best music on the island. By the late 1950s local artists became competent in rhythm and blues style and were the source of music for the sound systems and their DJ leaders. These early records mixed African American and Jamaican styles and rhythms to produce recordings know as ‘rudie blues’. The outcome of this fusion was the birth of the Jamaican music form known as ska.8 In due course, these indigenous forms became the bedrock of instrumental music, the first stage in the development of dub records.9

Diasporic dialogue 31

Church hall The Christian religion has been a feature of Jamaican life since its European colonisation. Even the discovery of the island by Christopher Columbus was interpreted as an ‘act of God’ – an opportunity to civilise the island’s inhabitants through Christian conversion. However, a tension soon emerged in European Christianity over the issue of economic necessity (slavery) and Christian freedom. The institution of slavery, while not outlawed in the Bible, was diametrically opposed to the vision of the Christian community as a place without distinction between ‘slave or free’. The tension was resolved by promoting an understanding of Christian freedom as an internal moral condition that did not automatically guarantee release from physical, legal or social bondage. This tension is a defining motif in the church hall. As was the case with dancehall space, church hall space is concerned with working-class cultural production. Unlike dancehall, church hall space is synonymous with the worship of God. Therefore, in this case, the church hall, like the dancehall, is not fixed, but is instead located wherever believers get together to pray, sing and proclaim their faith (Matthew 18:20). Like dancehall, church hall space is highly stratified. This is because Christianity in Jamaica, as part of the colonising process, was not a homogenous effort. European missionary activity did not begin in earnest in Jamaica until over a hundred years after the British took control of the island in the mid-Seventeenth Century. The first evangelicals arrived in 1774, in the form of the Moravian missionaries from Saxony, Germany, followed by the British Methodists. From 1783, freed Black Baptists from America arrived to promote a distinctive native Baptist tradition on the island.10 The ruling classes favoured the Church of England.11 But at the lower, and Blacker, end of the spectrum, syncretistic traditions with strong African religious retentions reigned. The conflation of class status and Christian affiliation has persisted into the present, with wealthier Jamaicans gravitating towards the old established missionary traditions, while the working class and poor are associated with Revival Christianity, within which the independent churches of Pentecostal and Charismatic persuasion thrive. Like dancehall, church hall culture is dynamic. Despite the complicity with colonialism that lay at the heart of European Christianity, slaves and colonial Blacks transformed it. As Iain MacRobert points

32 Diasporic dialogue

out, the very nature of African religious systems made them easy to transport. They needed no holy books, hymnals or ecclesiastical managers to be re-established away from home. It was this transportability that enabled African traditions to be retained and reworked to meet the needs of the slave communities.12 Previously we addressed the significance of Jamaican Revival as an adaptation of Christianity within African religious retention by Blacks on the island (see p. 33). However, what interests me here is the foundational base of African retention identified as a Myal-Obeah complex – an amalgam of religious beliefs and traditions woven together by slave communities and their descendents.

Religion and resistance There is no scholarly agreement on the origin or nature of Myalism. It has been defined variously as a Spirit and not a belief, the name of a Jamaican plant, and a practice originating in Akan, Ghana.13 Traditionally, historical records of its practice led scholars to make a sharp distinction between the exercise of Obeah and Myal. Myal emerged as a form of ‘good medicine’ and protection against oppressors as well as the opposing powers of Obeah14 – the antithesis of Myal. However, as Dianne M. Stewart has rightly observed, these two traditions were a composite and not in opposition. Because of the ‘African Jamaican’s’ belief in the neutrality and potentiality of the energy or spiritual power of the cosmos, the task of the priest, diviner or healer was to harness this power through specialised knowledge and training. Therefore, depending upon the circumstance of a situation, a particular response, working for good or bad, will be required.15 Intriguingly, African religious traditions were not restricted to those practising Myal-Obeah, as African retentions also shaped the slave’s reception and adaptation of Christianity. In chapters 3 and 4 I will explore the modalities through which the engagement of African retentions and Christianity are expressed, but for now it is important to note that there was a complex interplay between Myalism, Revival and Christian religion. For instance, the cosmology of Myalism – the centrality of negotiating the spirit world, its focus on dreams and the symbolism associated with water – found its way into the theology of one of the largest and most significant Black Jamaican churches, the Native Baptist tradition.16 Rooted in the experience of freed African American slaves in the latter part of

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the Eighteenth Century, this African-centred Baptist tradition was comfortable with appropriating and reworking African elements into their beliefs and practices: These Native Baptists practised baptism by immersion in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a practice similar to rites long known among traditionalists in Africa, who baptised in lakes and streams. The Native Baptists also connected the interpretation of dreams with the Holy Spirit. In fact, for them dreams and visions quickly became prerequisites for baptism rather than ‘right’ doctrine. . . . The Holy Spirit and possession by the Spirit also play major roles in the Native Baptist ritual, since it is the Spirit that gives life, knowledge, and healing.17 According to Gayraud Wilmore, it was African retentions that wrestled with and rejected the disjunction at the heart of missionary theology.18 However, for the sake of one’s survival in the colonial context it was necessary to signify: retain a holistic freedom, but rarely express it apart from through coded language or in secret meetings. Consequently, the Christianity of slaves and later Black Jamaicans internalised the dominant religious ideology – internalising divine freedom rather than expressing it as a social reality. Even so, we cannot dismiss the transforming power of internalised freedom. As Anthony Pinn informs us, we must remember that slave Christianity was forged in the face of a brutal, dehumanising social system, that viewed all slaves as having a subhuman status or ‘fixed identity’. Sub-human status was maintained through ‘rituals of reference’, or terror: beatings, rapes and torture.19 Consequently, the ‘conversion’ to Christianity by Africans and their descendents had to provide not only a spiritual empowerment to engender strength, but also a ‘complex subjectivity’, providing the slave with the language, behaviour and reasoning to oppose, resist and occasionally rebel against this dehumanisation.20 When I speak of ‘opposition’ and ‘resistance’ in Christianity, it is helpful to note the distinction between resistance and opposition in the work of Michel de Certeau. Resistance refers to the way a group might tackle or contest a given system from outside using tools developed outside of the system. Conversely, opposition works from within the system with tools fashioned from the inside.21 There is evidence that religion functioned as both resistance and opposition in Jamaican history.22 Whether in the form of explicit resistance

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expressed in Christian armed rebellion to the social order (for example, the Baptist Rebellion of 1831/2) or everyday acts of opposition represented in insubordination or what I have termed psychosocial acts,23 Christian religion was a mobilising ideology informing behaviour and social relations.24 All of which leads us to an understanding of church hall space. Church hall space is concerned with more than the worship of God; it is also a strategic ideological and political location in which ongoing struggles within the social world are contested in a particular way.25 I now want to further develop this understanding of church hall space by focusing on a particular Christian tradition in the Jamaican context. I am interested in the emergence of Pentecostalism in the Twentieth Century for two reasons. First, it is a denomination that thrives amongst the working classes and peasant communities. Second, while of lowly status, its theology has transcended all social strata within the Jamaican diaspora in Britain.

Western Pentecostalism Regarding the specific case of Pentecostalism, twenty years before the import of R&B records, the urban poor were already importing and adapting African American religion. Pentecostal Christianity was the work of missionaries; it arrived in Jamaica from North America. A new wave of global missionary activity was fuelled by the outbreak of glossolalia (speaking in tongues) at the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles in 1906. At Azusa, under the auspices of a Black preacher, William Seymour, a new multi-racial Christian tradition emerged from a fusion of African American Christian roots and a theology of glossolalia as a sign of the presence of the Holy Spirit.26 For five years it was the centre of what Allan Anderson calls ‘Western Pentecostalism’, and gave birth to a plethora of Pentecostal denominations that would eventually evangelise the Caribbean. 27 I will explore Seymour’s background and mission in more detail in my discussion on pneumatology (see page 118), but for now it is important to note the linkage between Azusa and the Caribbean. Many of the denominations that took root in the Caribbean were born out of the Azusa experience, including the two largest Black Trinitarian Pentecostal churches in Britain: the New Testament Church of God and the Church of God of Prophesy.28

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Race and racism Despite exposure to inclusive ministry at Azusa and the new potential for human transformation in and through the experience of the Holy Ghost, the dominant racist discourse within North America was not challenged despite acceptance by many White Christians of Seymour’s doctrine and practice. The first White exodus occurred when a White preacher, Elmer Fisher, established a successful rival congregation in 1911. Later, in 1913, the Assemblies of God (AOG) denomination was formed as a result of a controversy over the doctrine of the ‘finished work’, a belief that salvation and sanctification occurred simultaneously. As Roswith Gerloff reveals, the majority of the ‘finished work’ adherents were White, and the formation of AOG provided many Whites with an excuse for withdrawing from the multi-racial Azusa fellowship.29 However, when the movement spread to the Southern States, theological difference was not needed for Whites to adhere to the racialised boundaries of the South and to split denominations along racial lines. For instance, the Church of God (COG), which became Pentecostal in 1908, was separated racially and administratively until the mid-1960s. Probably the most important split that had implications for Caribbean evangelisation occurred in 1916. This time it was the Assemblies of God itself that imploded over another doctrinal controversy known as the ‘New Issue’. The division centred on what were the proper baptismal formulae; the triadic (Father, Son, Holy Ghost) or the simple (In the name of Jesus) formulae represented divergent views on the nature of the Godhead. Matters came to a head in 1915 when many preachers from the South embraced the simple formulae ‘Jesus name’. These Pentecostals rejected the term ‘Trinity’ in favour of the term ‘Oneness’. They were eventually expelled from the AOG in 1916. However, behind the doctrinal power struggle was an ongoing battle for White supremacy within the denomination. Gerloff informs us that many Whites were unsettled by the presence of Blacks in their fellowship and used the issue to drive a wedge between Whites and Blacks, as the latter were over-represented amongst the ‘Oneness’ advocates. Intriguingly, the Oneness ministers eventually formed in 1918 a rival denomination, the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World (POW), under the leadership of Black preacher, G.T. Haywood. However, the racial reconciliation did not last long, and by 1922 the POW had separated along racial lines.

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Hence, by the middle of the second decade of the Twentieth Century, Pentecostal denominations emerged with clear and competing ethnic and theological perimeters.30 Many of these denominations set about worldwide evangelisation including the sending of missionaries to the Caribbean.

Pentecostals in Jamaica The importation of religion was not new to Jamaica or the other English-speaking Caribbean countries. Significantly, contact was first made between Black Jamaicans and the White-led Church of God in 1910, when a ‘semi-literate’ man by the name of Muddle, a member of a Revival Zion congregation, contacted the US headquarters. Muddle, together with a worker called Hudson, began the grassroots work of evangelisation, and was superseded by J. Wilson Bell, who was responsible for seeking official affiliation to the COG in 1917. The following year, a White missionary from the US arrived in Kingston to organise a handful of fledging congregations. By 1920 there were seven congregations in the Kingston and Spanish Town areas. In 1935 the Jamaican E.E. Simmons became the first Black overseer of the New Testament Church of God in Jamaica. With continued help from American missionaries the church grew to 180 congregations and nearly 9000 members by 1959, and more than tripled in six years to a staggering 30,000. The Church of God of Prophesy (COGOP) established itself as a viable concern in 1931, when the American overseer, A.J. Tomlinson appointed a White missionary, James L. Kinder, to spearhead work in Jamaica. There is little record of Kinder’s activities, but it is clear that the denomination began to take off four years later when a Black Jamaican was appointed as National Overseer in Jamaica. By 1955 membership had grown to around one hundred congregations with 5000 members. By 1963 membership had increased by an additional 3000 and another sixty congregations. Hence, by the late 1920s and early 1930s indigenous Jamaican converts were spearheading the building of churches and the growth of evangelism, spreading the new doctrines of holiness and Holy Spirit possession across the island with considerable success amongst the urban and rural poor.31 The reasons for the success amongst this social class were twofold. First, Jamaican Pentecostalism, a dynamic mix of African and European theologies, affirmed, elevated and transformed the worldview of poorer Jamaicans:

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Pentecostalism’s uniqueness and significance in Jamaican religious evolution is that it offers the appealing features of both denomination and cult; it is a successful syncretism of two opposition religious traditions in Jamaican culture. It has emerged as a religion, which is neither foreign like the denominations nor indigenous like the Revival cultures, but both indigenous and international.32 Second, there were wider social forces and influences aiding the growth of the movement. As Allan Anderson has demonstrated, Pentecostalism works best amongst poor people faced with rapid social change.33 William Wedenoja has applied this theme to the Jamaican context to demonstrate how the transition from an agrarian peasant society to an urban industrial one was assisted by Pentecostal spirituality and ethics. This resulted in a changed psychological outlook amongst the new urban poor.34 A critical question is how much dialogue there would have been between these themes (dancehall and church hall) in working-class existence. Given the strong Christian influence on working-class Jamaican culture, with a high percentage of people going to church at this time, it is not unreasonable to surmise that the dancehall would have borrowed themes and noises from the church – the major institution in working-class life. Norman Stolzoff provides evidence for the close proximity of dancehall and church hall, and evidence of borrowing by the former from the latter, in the form of lyrics from one of the most popular hymnals in the Caribbean: By the late 1940s . . . if you started a musical tour of downtown Kingston on the North Parade with your back to the majestic Ward Theatre and began walking right down Heywood Street you would encounter the Afro-Christian music of the Revival Zion and Pocomania congregations. On this street you would also run into itinerant troubadours, like the famous Slim and Sam, chanting lyrics over tunes – much the way that DJs do now – usually taken from the widely-used Sankey Hymnal.35

Immigration Labour shortages in Britain and unemployment in the colonies (a post-colonial labour surplus as a result of slavery and capitalist exploitation in the Caribbean) resulted in the push and pull of

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colonial labour to Britain after the Second War.36 As Commonwealth citizens, Jamaicans were eligible for immigration to Britain, and many who made the first return journey on board the Empire Windrush in June of 1948 had lived and worked in Britain during the Second World War. Furthermore, the British Nationality Act of 1948 gave British Commonwealth citizens the opportunity to live and work in Britain. Post-war Britain was desperate for labour, particularly in the sectors working-class people were keen to avoid, such as public transport, nursing and sanitation. Travelling to England was not a surprising option. Black Jamaicans had been taught through colonial (mis)education to view Britain as the ‘mother country’ and in essence a natural homeland for all within the colonies. With the potential for better employment opportunities and improved standard of living tens of thousands left the Caribbean for Britain in the 1950s, with just under 98,000 entering the country until the first immigration controls were introduced in 1962. The first arrivals were the ‘cream of the crop’ – highly skilled, predominantly male immigrants seeking commensurate fields of employment. Later, women followed, and eventually children who had been left behind were sent for in the 1960s. Even towards the tail end of Caribbean migration at least half of those who entered were skilled people and only a small percentage had been unemployed in the Caribbean.37

End of Empire, beginning of new racisms The Britain Caribbean migrants encountered was a country at the end of its imperial tenure. For three centuries British colonial rule had extended over much of the Black world in Africa and the Caribbean. A ‘racial’ discourse on ‘the West’ and ‘the Rest’ – a particular way of representing the relationship between Britain and her colonies – espoused the innate superiority of Whites in maintaining social, cultural and economic hegemony over colonial subjects.38 However, the discourse on Black inferiority also served to maintain the elite position of the ruling classes. In previous historical periods, as Peter Fryer mentions, similar discourses had been constructed inside Britain to misrepresent the qualities of the white working class in order to maintain the superstructure of the ruling elites.39 Despite the creation of a Welfare State in the late 1940s that had begun the process of ameliorating disadvantages in health care and employment, Britain, nearing the end of its Empire, was still a highly-stratified class society,

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based on birth, status and education. Hence, for the West Indian immigrant entrance into colonial Britain at the end of Empire was blighted by the double jeopardy of ‘race’40 and class discrimination. The evidence of discrimination in housing and the workplace is well documented in post-war history.41 In housing, there was an acute shortage due to extensive war damage in large cities such as London, Manchester and Birmingham. To cope, new overspill areas were being built and many skilled workers and middle-class families were in the process of moving out of semi-derelict buildings and escaping to newly-created suburbs. Jamaicans and other Caribbean immigrants moved into these run-down areas and were often charged double rent by greedy, racist and unscrupulous landlords.42 Discrimination also took place in employment. As Winston James and Clive Harris have demonstrated, Black workers faced organised ‘underemployment’ and general hostility from White workers. For instance, orchestrated by central government, Black workers were placed in industries that avoided provoking potential unease in White workers.43 The net result was to further reduce the potential for skilled workers from Jamaica to find work commensurate with their abilities. Black settlers also faced open hostility in the streets. The far right Oswald Mosley’s fascist party, the British Union of Fascists, used an employment crisis in 1952 to scapegoat Black workers. In what would become a common feature of racist politics in Britain, right-wing agitators doorstepped White working-class communities to convince them that the newly-arrived West Indian migrants were to blame for the economic downturn. They also touted the age-old fear that Black workers were a threat to White womenfolk. Tensions reached a high point in 1958 with ‘race’ riots in London’s Notting Hill. Central to this exploration is the acknowledgement that racial hostility also extended into leisure space, including the dance clubs and churches. Black people were not always welcome in the social clubs, dancehalls and pubs that their White working class colleagues frequented: The same racism that operated in the job and housing markets also operated to bar Black workers from many White workingclass leisure institutions such as pubs, clubs, dance palais and bingo halls.44 Likewise, the experience of church going was also marred by racial hostility. Church going amongst Caribbean migrants was significantly

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higher than amongst their White counterparts; a shocking discovery for people who had been led to believe that Britain was a ‘Christian country’. Clifford Hill, one of the first to examine West Indian religious activity in Britain, states that many Jamaicans ‘speak of their shock and bewilderment upon discovering that England was not the Mecca of Christianity that they had always believed’.45 Worse still, many experienced rejection and open hostility from the White churches they attended, including those that they were affiliated to back home. John Wilkinson, writing from the context of Anglicanism in the West Midlands, notes that hostility and rejection was the rule rather than the exception.46 Barred from pubs and dancehalls and discouraged from entering the historic churches, many Black migrants took to establishing their own places of leisure and worship.

Counter-cultural space(s) Black-owned clubs were established in the late 1950s. They provided a space where Black music could be played, patois spoken and tobacco and rum consumed without threat of harassment or racial violence. These first establishments, commonly known as ‘blues dance’, and ‘shebeens’, were often glorified garages, basements and converted housing. They were by no means racially exclusive, as many Whites frequented them in order to explore, taste and consume Caribbean culture and to seek out Black sexual partners. According to Lloyd Bradley, it was Calypso, the music and lyrics associated with the Trinidad Carnival, that became the first soundtrack for Black immigrant life in the early 1950s and 1960s in Britain.47 Only later, with the emergence of the Jamaican musical form ‘ska’ in the mid-1960s, would Jamaican music, including the sound systems, be introduced to service the Caribbean community. Intriguingly, the remnants of this social apartheid are still evident in urban centres. Today, White ‘working men’s’ clubs and institutes with all-White memberships operate in close proximity to Black social clubs, bars and dancehalls. I remember my first trip to the West Indian social club in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire in 1970. I was only five and my father had taken me there after school. Not the best form of extracurricular education, but what I found inside the building has remained with me. Inside, first-generation migrants created a hybrid Caribbean-British space in the heart of the Midlands. Every action,

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whether laughter, the cussing of bad words, drinking, smoking or card playing, was accompanied in the background by loud reggae and blue beat records blasting out from a sound system strategically positioned in the corner of the main room. As the Jamaican diaspora grew in Britain, Jamaica’s music dominated West Indian parties and social events. To support the growing demand for ‘ska’ a number of speciality record shops began importing from the Caribbean.48 By the early 1960s 15,000 records a month were imported and sold almost exclusively in the West Indian community.49 The music retained an underground status until the White youth groups such as the ‘mods’ and ‘skinheads’ appropriated it in the mid-1960s.50 As the demand and interest in ‘ska’ travelled beyond the boundaries of the Caribbean community an opportunity arose for Jamaican DJs to ‘cross the colour line’ and play in White clubs. For instance, in London in the 1960s, Duke Vin, the first sound system operator in the capital, played at clubs in Carnaby Street and Soho and also presented evenings dedicated to ‘new’ Jamaican music such as ‘bluebeat,’ ‘ska’ and ‘rocksteady’. ‘Daddy’ Peckings, the owner of Peckings Studio One records in West London, supplied Vin with the latest music from Jamaica. When asked why he set up his sound system Vin states: When I spent my first Christmas here it was dead, dead, dead so I built a Sound in 1955. . . . They used to sell old turntables on Edgware Road so [I] buy one for three pounds and I attach it up and sound comes through. I was glad to hear the music . . . so my friend comes to my house and sees and I say we think it’s a sound system and I was keeping a dance in Brixton and he said I’m going to book you and I said yes I’ll come and play for you. And the first music I played was R&B and then Jamaican music used to come over.51 African Caribbean Christianity was also highly portable. Most newly-arrived migrants who were Christians sought out ‘parent’ churches of the same denominations they had attended back home. For most it was as negative an experience as the racism experienced at work and in their leisure spaces. However, the rejection that people experienced was not solely based on racism, although its significance cannot be overlooked. There were other contributing factors. As mentioned above (page 36), Christianity in Jamaica was the product of a complex mix of African religious retention with missionary

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Christianity. Therefore, African Caribbean Christianity, while socially stratified and diverse, was at the thicker and Blacker base culturally and theologically radically different to its contemporary British versions. The worship cultures of Black Methodists and Baptists from Jamaica were physically expressive, oral, participatory and communal.52 Hence, for many of those entering the physically cold and emotionally conservative environment of host churches in London and Birmingham it was a culturally alienating experience. There were also ‘unwritten’ differences in doctrine. Popular Caribbean Christianity had a high view of the authority of Scripture and a strong emphasis on holiness – that is, living a morally blameless life. These views were considered almost pre-scientific by a section of the educated British clergy, most of whom, owing to a half-century of biblical demythologisation, did not believe in the authority of Scripture, and adopted a relativistic view of ethics. The result was a decline in churchgoing amongst Caribbean migrants, and for some, the only viable alternative was to form their own churches. The desire for familiarity leads to Pentecostal Bishop Joe Aldred describing the missionary intent of many within the first generation of migrants.53 Many immigrants believed that they had been ‘called by God’ to establish churches in Britain. Thus, Black Christians began to meet amongst themselves to worship, to offer support and to seek direction from God. But the racialised barriers in the social and religious world restricted their activity to their fellow immigrants. In the early 1950s, African Caribbean Pentecostal churches were formed in the heart of London, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and Wolverhampton and were later established in buildings purchased by the late 1960s. The first analyses of the establishment of West Indian congregations are telling. For instance social anthropologist, Malcolm Calley argued that West Indian congregations represented a form of compensation for failure to adjust to social life in Britain.54 Worship in what he pejoratively termed ‘sects’ was ‘a human response to prevailing environmental forces, albeit economic or social’.55 Hence, ‘sect’ mobilisation was related to the West Indian’s inability to integrate into English society: But for a long time yet there will be a large residue of migrants unable to adjust, and these will seek refuge in small, worldrenouncing, uncompromising sects.56 Calley rejected the notion that racism played any structural role or facilitating the emergence of Black congregations. Their primary

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function was to satisfy the individual through a rejection of the social world with the benefits of a spiritual, or what Calley called a ‘magico-religious’, solution: Pentecostal sects (like many others) offer members a new set of values and a new self-respect. The meaningless drudgery of a life devoted to finding enough to eat becomes less in the service of God, or takes on a new significance as an apprenticeship for the hereafter. Members who lack [social and material status] . . . are persuaded that such things are unimportant. . . . In their devotion to him [God] members make a virtue out of necessity, rejecting the values of the world which anyway they could not hope to achieve.57 However, Calley’s interpretation lacks understanding of the complex motivations and traditions at the heart of African Caribbean religion. Let me explain. My parents were a part of this historic moment. I was ‘born in the church’ – my first memories of life are of sitting in chairs listening to preachers. The first church my mother attended was the Wesleyan Holiness Church in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, in the late 1960s.58 We met on Sunday mornings and evenings above the Co-op on the High Street. Our church was full of Caribbean migrants from Jamaica, Barbados and St Kitts. Most were from traditional churches ‘back home’ but were unable to find a fulfilling worshipping experience with Anglicans or Methodists in Britain. Outside of the church life was difficult. Unions were only just beginning to acknowledge Black workers, the government had mobilised against Black migrants with an immigration bill, and the late 1950s had witnessed rioting in London and Nottingham in response to racist attacks on West Indian communities. In response, church life in the late 1960s and 1970s was multivariate: spiritual, socio-economic and cultural. We met not only to worship God, but also to share hospitality, information and material resources and to provide ideological support in matters of domestic and social conflict. Church was Black space; there was no threat of racial terror or White oppression and we could clap our hands, move our bodies and cry out to God in our patois, creoles and other native tongues. Furthermore, we believed there was a divine reason for our presence in England; we were pilgrims in a strange land. All of which counters Calley’s narrow ‘satisfaction’ reading of early Black church life. Far from providing compensation,

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our worship experience was simultaneously a negotiation, engagement and overcoming of the social and cultural limitations placed on Black life outside of the church. Nicole Toulis captures a part of the transforming role of early African Caribbean Pentecostal experience by arguing that that these congregations equipped members to adapt to life in Britain and to integrate into the social, cultural and political world.59 In summary, the dancehall and church hall were central to the lives of working class Jamaicans. On the surface, they may appear diametrically opposed. The church hall stood for moral improvement and spiritual empowerment, and in contrast, the dancehall providing pleasure through the consumption of music, drink and carousing. However, in reality in Jamaica both were drawn together by the common social and cultural milieu of their patrons. Moreover, when transported to Britain, both became important countercultural spaces and healing communities seeking ways to heal minds and bodies, far away from home and in a hostile environment.

Chapter 3

The set and the Spirit Dancehall and church hall as cultural resistance

The previous chapter established dancehall and Pentecostal churches in Jamaica as cultural and religious activities of the urban and rural poor. Both reworked African and African American materials (music and religion) to produce distinctive Jamaican inflections in music and worship respectively. Consequently, the arrival of Jamaicans in Britain as part of post-war West Indian immigration provided a context for these cultural and religious traditions to be established and transformed. This was not the first time that the cultures of Black Jamaicans were present, since during and immediately after the Second World War, Caribbean men had performed at English music halls.1 Furthermore, Iain MacRobert states that there was a Black Pentecostal independent church in London from 1908.2 Also, some twenty years after the Azusa Street Revival, there were traces of Black Christianity in Hornsey in the 1930s.3 Large-scale immigration would present new opportunities for increased cultural and religious expression. The focus of this chapter is on how specific aspects of the cultures of the Jamaican dancehall and church hall were reconfigured amongst second- and third-generation African Caribbean British. I want to explore how we can ‘read’ both forms as types of ‘resistance’ to a hostile social climate. I begin by framing the context of secondgeneration African Caribbean lives in Britain. This is to provide a framework for analysing how sound systems and worship were mobilised to make sense of, and contest, life in Britain. I will end by contouring how the politics of sound provides a rhizomorphic connection between sound systems and worship.

46 The set and the Spirit

Disadvantage and resistance The connection between sound systems and church life came to prominence in the 1970s, a period of profound social and economic change, and unbridled politicisation of African Caribbean communities in Britain. What the 1960s exemplified in African American social struggle, the 1970s represented for African Caribbean youth in Britain. How do we interpret this new domestic situation faced by former colonial citizens and their children? While it is clear that racism(s) emerged with British imperial expansion,4 these ‘old racisms’ did not disappear but were transformed in the domestic context. This is the reason why Steven Small encourages us to understand domestic post-war racism(s) as historically specific: The changing economic and political climate of the 1970s and 1980s in England was also fruitful ground for the resurgence and consolidation of racialised ideologies and for their rearticulation as mechanisms for attaining political and economic ends.5 Two important studies from the 1980s shed light on the reconfiguration of ‘old racism’.6 These are the Scarman Report into the Brixton disorders and The Empire Strikes Back, a collection of essays collated by the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. The first, Lord Scarman’s unprecedented report into the Brixton disorders of 1980, provides an example of the way that ‘old’ racism was given a new expression. The report sought to locate the ‘riots’ in their social, economic and political context – namely, the acute deprivation in Brixton, London. Identifying the causes of the ‘riots’, Scarman turned to pathological images of Black youths: Without close parental support, with no job to go to, and with few recreational facilities available the young Black person makes his life the streets and the seedy, commercially-run clubs of Brixton. There he meets criminals, who appear to have no difficulty obtaining the benefits of a materialist society.7 The emphasis on black failings enabled a bypass of police responsibility. The Report failed to apportion any meaningful blame to the police: I totally and unequivocally reject the attack made upon the integrity and impartiality of the senior directives of the force

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. . . . The allegation that the police are the oppressive arm of a racist state not only displays a complete ignorance of the constitutional arrangements for controlling the police, it is an injustice to the senior officers of the force.8 Whilst admitting that the immediate cause of the riots in Brixton was due to some ‘ill considered, immature and racially prejudiced actions of some officers’, he was only willing to acknowledge what he termed ‘unwitting discrimination against Black people’. In contrast, the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) set out to capture the working of the new racialised forms, evident in Scarman. Using a neo-Marxist framework, these scholars reexamined the relationship between migration and political economy. In sum, the economic slump of the mid-1970s, caused in part by increased oil prices, rising costs and lower productivity, resulted in increased unemployment that proportionally disadvantaged workingclass Black youth. Radical economic restructuring in the late 1970s, the downsizing that characterised the shift to a post-industrial service economy, widened the gulf between working-class communities and the changing face of British industry. To justify high unemployment and cuts in welfare spending, a discourse was constructed that presented Black youth as a ‘problem’. The role of the police was to enforce the new authoritarianism of the State. The prevalence of this discourse made it difficult for institutions to engage with the African Caribbean community without pathologising them. Hence, rather than class being the focus of contention, CCCS identified ‘race’ as a distinctive feature.9 This new awakening to the role of ‘race’ in framing Black life in the post-colonial metropolis enabled subsequent scholars to identify new forms of racism.10 The relationships between ethnicity, authoritarianism and globalisation have remained a salient feature of the post-industrial, post-colonial landscape of Britain. According to social theorist Anwar Sivanandan, the present negative discourse on Islam and the integration of Muslims in Britain in the post-‘9/11’ world, is drawn from previous decades of State oppression of ethnic minorities.11 Central to this exploration is the fact that CCCR also revealed ‘resistance’ strategies. African Caribbean communities were not passive in the face of State oppression. Without access to television stations and printing presses, popular culture became the space for contesting inequality – ‘a strategic location for resistance to capitalist exploitation and State racism(s)’.12 Paul Gilroy identifies three

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characteristics of resistance in Black youth culture(s) that relate primarily, but not exclusively, to the secular cultures of the reggaedancehall, and it is through these modes that I want to examine core aspects of the dancehall and church hall.

The politics of redemption from racial subordination The first theme concerns the experience of work and labour. In response to the historic experience of economic exploitation (slavery, colonisation), African Caribbean cultures have developed particular critiques of productivism – ‘the ideology that sees the expansion of productive forces as an indispensable precondition of the attainment of freedom’.13 In short, the economic ‘psycho-history’ of African Caribbean people flags up a contradiction: economic growth does not automatically equate with Black freedom. Phrases such as ‘colour bar’, ‘last-in, first-out’ and ‘glass ceiling’ symbolise the struggle for economic inclusion and form the basis of a critique of productivism. This antipathy is still relevant in African Caribbean communities today and sometimes results in a hostility towards all forms of economic progress, even the so-called ‘success stories’ within Black communities. For instance, people might say that a successful Black person was ‘allowed to make it’, implying that the ‘system’ rather than individual ingenuity is responsible for their progress. Conversely, ‘real’ freedom is experienced in non-work time, where the Black body becomes an instrument of pleasure instead of labour: . . . when the world is asleep, those marginal spaces create a space of healing, of cultural play, a place where their broken and tired bodies can be reclaimed from the world of labour where they can celebrate themselves, their vitality, their strength, their sexuality in the dark.14 Gilroy’s reference relates to the dancehall, but I want to explore whether the church hall also offers a critique of productivism and functions as a recuperative and pleasurable space. The second theme focuses on law and order. The experience of Black deaths in custody, racial profiling and unequal sentencing produces a consciousness of the double standards of British justice. In response, youth culture has debunked the notion of ‘equality before the law’. From reggae to rap, cultures have nurtured a

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hermeneutic of suspicion towards the legal system because of its ideological function of serving the economic interests of the State. As we will see later, in opposition Black youth developed their own sense of popular justice based on religious motifs and popular consensus.15 Again, I want to demonstrate how these themes are also explored within the context of African Caribbean Christian worship. The final theme is a reflection on history. The act of remembering is meant not only to affirm Black life in the present but is also in opposition to the ‘temporal perception under capitalism’. That is to say, remembering provides a broader, more complex understanding of Black life which indirectly counters racist attempts to objectively fix and problematise it. Historical reflections also challenge White supremacist historiography. In the remainder of this chapter, I want to explore the ways in which both dancehall and church hall represent particular forms of resistance. I will explore the three Gilroyan modes through three aspects of church hall and dancehall. These are community, music and lyricism.

Sound systems Sound system culture became an established part of African Caribbean youth culture in the late 1960s and early 1970s. According to Lloyd Bradley, British sound systems came into their own in the early to mid-1970s partly due to the emergence of domestic reggae artists who created music which was considered as good as that being produced in Jamaica (although sound system operators still considered the Jamaican cuts to be more authentic).16 Sound system technology in 1970s’ Britain was not a static, crude imitation of its Caribbean counterparts, since local sensibilities and linguistic particularity ensured a uniquely Black British inflection. A transition cemented in the move to a local style culminated in the emergence and acceptance of ‘Cockney Translation’ – the use of Black British vernacular by DJs.17 Today, local accents and inflections have almost completely displaced the once mandatory Jamaican accent. ‘Pirate’ radio has been integral to the spread and development of sound system culture.18 These illegal broadcasters offer an unexpected meeting point between dancehall and church hall. Pirate radio had a variety of functions, including acting as an unofficial ‘Black people’s network’ providing news, music reviews, chat, dates and venues of dances and sound clashes. Such was the communal

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significance of pirate radio that in many cities it was not uncommon for Christians to participate. It became acceptable for the Sunday morning broadcasting slot to be occupied by a gospel DJ or a local Pentecostal preacher. The African Caribbean Christian support of illegal broadcasting was one of the few occasions where sound systems and church halls united. While pirate radio provided an additional platform for sound system DJs to gain notoriety, the primary mode of operation is touring – playing-out at dancehalls, youth clubs and civic centres. As mentioned before, what I want to examine here are the resistance motifs that emerge from the processes involved in producing the sound – that is, the sound system set and role of the DJ. There are three areas of interest: (community) the division of labour, (music) technology and lyricism. Community: division of labour Sound systems consist of far more than just turntables and speakers. Such is their size and complexity that they require a crew of people to run them. As Les Back has demonstrated in his study of sound systems in 1980s’ London, there were specific tasks assigned to each member. Each sound system consists of operators, selectors and DJs. Operators are required to assemble the ‘set’ (equipment) and manage sound quality.19 Selectors organise the music, usually boxes of records and dub plates. In addition, a legion of helpers moves boxes and drives equipment to venues. ‘Saxon Sound System’, one of Britain’s leading sound systems, interprets the division of labour as a collective cooperative enterprise. This is why later in this book William ‘Lez’ Henry describes sound systems as a ‘family’ (see page 101). This is an important point of departure from the current trend in mainstream popular DJ culture where DJs travel with records and play on sets already pre-prepared and with which they have no relationship. As well as being a community, the sound system’s division of labour provides an opportunity for artistic development. As individuals ‘move through the ranks’ they take on more important and central roles in the sound, including the development of technical and artistic skills. Youths often disregarded as misfits or undesirables find a home in the sound system ‘family’. In this sense, the sound system has a mentoring role, enabling young people to develop technical and artistic skills.

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Music: technology As Les Back brilliantly demonstrates, the task of those operating the set is to develop a system that produces a unique mix or quality of music.19 Mixing is achieved through the ‘tweaking’ of the set – amplifiers, record decks, mixers and synthesisers. Amplifiers are used to increase the output of the sound; mixers enable the operator to switch between records or compact discs; synthesisers enable the operator to create sound gimmicks. In an interview, Gladwyn Wright, who has been in the sound system business for over thirty years in London and is leader of the ‘Gladdy Wax’ Sound System, informed me that many operators in London of his generation have never warmed to sound effects, believing them to ‘pollute’ the music.20 When music passes through the set, the aim of the operator is to produce an individual ‘mix’ through a vast and complex range of speakers. No serious operator likes to reveal too much information about how he/she arrives at a particular mix.21 Combined with DJ lyricism, the mix takes on a new meaning; the processes of cutting, mixing, starting, stopping, embellishing and transforming sound take on a social significance. Cultural critic Trish Rose gets to the heart of this matter in her analysis of turntable techniques in hip hop when she describes the process of flow and rupture essential to mixing as a blueprint for social action: DJs layer sounds literally one on top of the other, creating a dialogue between sound and words. What is the significance of the flow? . . . interpreting these concepts theoretically, one can argue that they create and sustain rhythmic motion, continuity and embellish this continuity through layering; and manage threats to these narratives by building in ruptures that highlight the continuity as it momentarily challenges it. Let us imagine these . . . principles as a blueprint for social resistance and affirmation: create sustaining narratives, accumulate them, layer, embellish and transform them. However, be also prepared for rupture, find pleasure in it, in fact, plan on social rupture. When these ruptures occur use them in creative ways that will prepare you for a future in which survival will demand a sudden shift in ground tactics.22 What Rose is suggesting here is that the turntable produces a social theory – a paradigm for interpreting and building social relations,

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dealing with change and remaking the social order. The historic and cultural links between sound systems and hip-hop facilitates an application of Rose’s analysis to sound systems. That is to say, the sound system mix can also be ‘read’ as a theory of social resistance.23 Lyricism The third theme that interests me is related to the aim of the sound. A central objective of a sound system is to outplay and outtalk their opponents at sound clashes – events where two or more sound systems compete for musical, technical and lyrical supremacy. A sound system will be rated according to its success in producing a unique version of a song and more importantly the number of ‘specials’ it has. Specials are one-off dub plates that are pre-recorded by top reggae artists, usually from Jamaica, who praise, boast and toast the quality and legacy of the sound system that has paid for the special. Of prime importance to the sound system is therefore seeking out specials and acquiring the best stable of DJs. Jamaican cultural critic Carolyn Cooper describes the sound clash as confrontational, but it is also a dialogue between DJs, selectors and operators at clashes and beyond.24 As well as musical weaponry on vinyl, the other major resource for the sound is its DJs. They provide lyrical accompaniment (chatting) to the mix. The DJ’s capacity to reason and articulate complex ideas and values has led to their role being described as that of organic intellectuals.25 This social role requires that they unsettle the existing order and provide opportunities for the subjugated histories, voices and values of the marginalised to be expressed. Lez Henry, who is both a DJ and a sociologist, suggests that as well as acknowledging British inflections, that we look to Africa to locate the origins of this craft: The DJ’s verbal art originates in an inclusivist neo-African folk aesthetic – a carnivalesque fusion of word, music and movement around the centre pole and the common ground of the dance floor.26 But it would be wrong to suggest that DJ-ing is a completely noble task or without contradiction. On the contrary, one of the continuing debates to emerge in DJ-ing in the African Caribbean community is crystallised in the debates surrounding ‘slackness’. Slackness

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refers to DJs with ‘crude and often insulting wordplay’ who are the antithesis of DJs committed to ‘culture’ – the political agenda of ‘roots and culture’.27 ‘Culture’ DJs represent what William ‘Lez’ Henry terms ‘hidden voices’ and perspectives that do not make it to the public arena. Furthermore, these hidden voices refuse to ‘accept the existing frameworks, and their concomitant knowledge’.28 Thus, these hidden voices stand in the African diasporan tradition of uniting music and lyric as weapons in the struggle for Black survival and liberation: The power of music in developing Black struggles by communicating information, organising consciousness, and testing out or deploying the forms of subjectivity which are required by political agency, whether individual or collective, defensive or transformational, demands attention. . . . In the simplest possible terms, but posing the world as it is against the world as the racially subordinated would like it to be, this musical culture supplies a great deal of courage required to go on living in the present.29 Historically, slackness has been a part of Jamaican music from its indigenisation of R&B in the early 1960s. It was only under Rastafarian hegemony in the 1970s that ‘culture DJs’ were able to foreground their ideological identification with Africa, Black Nationalist aesthetics and the quest for justice. Furthermore, a more detailed analysis shows that slackness is not simply the opposite of culture. As Carolyn Cooper has demonstrated, the culture–slackness dichotomy is false. She offers an alternative reading that focuses our attention on gender: I argue that slackness, though often conceived and critiqued as an exclusively sexually and politically conservative discourse, can be much more permissively theorised as a radical, underground confrontation with the patriarchal gender ideology and the duplicitous morality. . . . Slackness is not mere sexual looseness. . . . Slackness is a contestation of conventional definitions of law and order; and an undermining of consensual standards of decency. At large, slackness is the antithesis of restrictive uppercase Culture. It thus challenges the rigid status quo of social exclusivity and one-sided moral authority. . . . Slackness demarcates a space for alternative definitions of culture.30

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Under this rubric, slackness confronts existing norms, offers alternative modes of being and posits new understandings of ‘culture’. Additional support for the revision of ‘slackness’ comes from the UK context. Denise Noble has argued that the lyrics of the music and the context of the dancehall provided a space for Black British women to affirm their bodies and connect eroticism in the dancehall with social power.31 However, many African Caribbean Christian leaders have not been as appreciative as Cooper, Henry and Noble in their evaluation of sound systems and slackness. Traditionally, Black churches have represented DJs and sound systems culture in a similar way to the conservative ‘up-town’ critique of ‘down-town’ culture in Jamaica. The church has demonised DJs as purveyors of profane lyrics and sexual promiscuity. But, as is often the case, the church has found ways of inflecting dancehall culture and giving it a Christian expression. For instance, in the mid-1970s, leading gospel band Paradise produced a reggae track entitled ‘Light of the World’. The song’s lyrics were an early example of the ‘crossover’ genre in Britain – that is still very much a part of the construction of gospel music. The track makes no explicit mention of Christian symbols such as Jesus, God or Church. Instead, it conveys a popularist double meaning: it could be appreciated as a love song to God or a ‘lover’s rock’ song. Similarly, in recent years British Christian DJ Witness has utilised the dancehall DJ style and provided a Pentecostal content. By reconfiguring sound system acoustics in response to the Christian gospel, Christian artists affirm the potential within dancehall for educating and mobilising Black people, in and through music culture.

The Black Pentecostals By the early 1970s Black Pentecostal churches, many of which began in the front rooms and basements of houses, were now operating in every African Caribbean community, with thousands of congregations across the country. Their growth and development were due to the external factor of racial hostility and other internal factors, specifically the theological and cultural differences between Caribbean Christianity and church life in Britain. Their growth was also due to their capacity to organise, recruit and develop their congregations through family networks, all of which scholars Gerlach and Hine describe as a ‘movement organisation’.32 Like sound systems, Pentecostal churches developed their own ‘set’, although they place

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more of an emphasis on orality than technology. The Pentecostal set consisted of the pulpit, the altar and the choir or worship leaders. Integral to the performance of the Pentecostal set is the liturgy or pattern of worship. The structure of worship in Black Pentecostalism is diverse, with a variety of liturgies in operation.33 Worship is shaped by culture, even though most seek to base their worship traditions upon a creative engagement with the Spirit as found in the church in Corinth (1 Corinthians 12–14). Significantly, although the liturgy is not written down it is structured. Morning worship often begins with an individual from the congregation leading a Bible reading or a call to worship in the form of a hymn or prayer. Next, the worship leader will take over and there will be more singing and even testimonies from the congregation. The high point of the service is a sermon, which is often prefaced by a special song. Once the sermon is preached there is the altar call where the congregation are given the opportunity to respond to the preached message.34 Undergirding the liturgy is a radical commitment to the guidance of the Holy Spirit and a pastoral desire to respond to the needs of the people in worship. The resultant spontaneity of African Caribbean Pentecostal worship may appear chaotic by English Christian expectations, but in reality it is an organised trope for responding to the Holy Spirit. As was the case with sound systems, I want to explore the resistance motifs in worship through the prisms of community, music and lyricism. Community Communality is a feature of Pentecostal worship. African Caribbean congregations often describe themselves as a ‘body’ or and ‘family’ worshipping together. Wedded to a belief in ‘the priesthood of all believers’, everyone has a role to play as well as the potential and opportunity to lead singing, preach or offer prayers during the service. While communality has been retained, second- and thirdgeneration adherents have introduced a specialist approach to worship that involves a division of labour. Drawing from African American churches’ professionalising of particular roles in worship, they have introduced new responsibilities such as the ‘worship leader’, greeters and ushers. Worship leaders function as ‘Christian music selectors’, choosing the songs, hymns and style of music to usher the congregation into the presence of God.

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What I want to note here is that this communality, expressed in and through African Caribbean Christian culture, also provides a space for making and communicating a particular sense of Blackness. While not as explicit at the politics of sound in sound systems, implicitly, the use of language, gestures and physicality rooted in Caribbean cultures has enabled people to express themselves in the vernacular – shout and praise in a cultural mode. In this way, African Caribbean worship has functioned as a conduit and synthesis of Black Atlantic cultures. Music: the role of the Spirit Whereas the sound system set focuses on the technological quality of the set, for Pentecostals the central focus in worship is the ‘moving of the Spirit’. (I explore the specificities of Pentecostal spirituality such as pneumatic Christology and charismatic inclusivity later in this discussion (see page 115).) It is important to state that ‘good worship’ can be defined as a collective sense that the Spirit has moved and the worship is ‘alive’. Experiencing the Spirit, in a holistic way in mind and body through the singing of hymns, songs, or in testimony and sermon, validates true worship. A key factor is how the Spirit is experienced. Through an epistemology that values emotion, worship is appraised according to the level of passion and sentiment expressed. Furthermore, Christian writer Elaine Foster argues that the over-representation of Black women enables their values, concerns and perspectives to be represented in the life and running of the church.35 Therefore, while women appear in worship as song leaders and choir members, and males tend to pastor and govern, women’s influence is more keenly felt in the modalities through which the congregation experience and articulate their experience of the Spirit in worship. Integral to communal worship is singing and music. For the first generation particular hymnbooks, such as the ‘Moody and Sankey’, contained the worship hymns of choice. Today, a broad choice of songs and choruses are used, ranging from Eurocentric Christian ‘Songs of Praise’ to borrowed African American Christian anthems promoted in religious broadcasting via satellite television. Choruses are still sung from memory and passed down orally. The thematic range is not diverse, the theology of songs in these churches focusing on personal spiritual empowerment and righteous living. It is not uncommon for the music to ‘take on a life of its own’ and

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become the focus of a special ‘music ministry’ or spontaneous punctuations at particular moments in the service. In other words, the ‘instrumental’ in African Caribbean Christianity can be as moving and powerful as congregational singing. In order to provide good music ministry a high degree of professionalism and artistry has emerged in these churches. As gospel music producer Michael Grant states, ‘African Caribbean church music is an unofficial training ground for musicians and singers – many of whom go on to work in the secular music industry.’36 Grant is referring to chart-topping artists in the UK and more notably the US who have learned their craft as singers or musicians in the church, Intriguingly, good song selection by the musicians and music leaders is integral to engaging the worshippers – creating the right sense of the Spirit for the reception of the sermon. Lyricism: preaching While one aim of the sound system is combative lyricism, the primary aim of singing and worship is to set the stage for a transformative orality in the sermon. Preaching is the high point of the liturgy and central to the life of the church. Good preaching is like new and fresh DJ-ing in the sound system and is a sign of good quality and creates a following. As Carol Tomlin’s study of Black preaching in Britain demonstrates, it is a unique form of oration with African roots, utilising call and response and repetition techniques.37 The preacher, however, is more than a hired voice; he or she oversees the whole of worship, often intervening if things are not in order. Hence, the Pentecostal preacher is, to use sound system language, both DJ and part-time selector. Kinetic orality, central to the DJ, is also the key to Black Pentecostal preaching. Additionally, like the DJ, the preacher is an organic intellectual, synthesising Scripture with the experience of the community, to contextualise the meaning of God for the congregation. Intriguingly, preaching, like DJ-ing has tensions within the art form, often phrased colloquially as ‘ministry or minstrelsy’ – the differences between edification and entertainment. Ministry, I believe, can be understood as essentially content over form, the essence of the gospel over performance and showpersonship or packaging. Within this tradition real ministry is powerful because it is expected to transform the hearer and invite a response that ‘destroys yokes’ and ‘lifts burdens’. In other words, when the message and practice

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of the Scripture is made plain and accessible and is delivered with integrity, it is life transforming. In contrast, minstrelsy is form over content; it is the sugar coating of sermons and ministry so that it is made visually attractive and audibly exciting. The best example of minstrelsy is charismatic preachers who specialise in sensationalist and comedic preaching. Naturally, the critics of ministry as minstrelsy suggest that while it has a form of godliness, the gloss and packaging obscures its power. In reality, the dichotomy is false. Most Black Pentecostal preaching is a mixture of form and content – ministry and entertainment. Most ministers would place the emphasis on content over form, but we cannot escape the embellishment and dramatic enrichment that accompanies the best of African Caribbean preaching in Britain.

Politics of counter-hegemony and counterideology Returning to the question of expressive cultures as forms of resistance, a first glance would suggest that sound system culture rates highly against the three themes outlined above. For instance, it is clear that dancehall space is a counter-hegemonic space. That is to say, it is concerned with a direct confrontation of prevailing power structures. Here, Black identities are formed and reformed with reference to the socio-political realities of the world. DJs function as organic intellectuals, conscientising and challenging the morality, politics and values of the status quo. The affirmation of Blackness and Black history is unparalleled in Black urban space in Britain. This affirmation extends to women in Britain and Jamaica who have identified womanist spheres of celebration and transformation within dancehall culture. But as mentioned above, it would be unfair to completely valorise this space. I want to argue that the church hall is also resistance space. Central to my argument is the view of Black worship as counterideology. Counter-ideology describes how adherents were provided with alternative views of the world and their place within it based on the theology and practice of the dominant worshipping community. In this sense, worship negotiates the prevailing power structures, by promoting alternative identities full of Christian hope, optimism and potential. A good example of counter-ideology is found in the theology of respect, articulated by Bishop Joe Aldred. Aldred requests respect for the Black church in Britain in light of its accomplishments

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and benefit to the whole community. ‘Respect’ is a personal and communal ethic in that it reaches out beyond the boundaries of the church. Furthermore, it has the potential to be prophetic, offering a vision of how life should be. Speaking of the Black church he states: They have shown that it is possible to co-exist with adversity, yet thrive, and not be negatively defined by it. In the words of Aretha Franklin, what Caribbean British Christianity is asking for is a little respect! They may not have characterised it as respect per se; this is my own perception of what has been accomplished and what is needed as a way forward. I am here proposing that, based on Caribbean British Christianity’s history and current situation, a theology based on respect is the way forward that will bear productive fruit as theology translated into action.38 Finally, preaching cements counter-ideology, by inspiring believers to be a part of new nation where the bias, discrimination and wickedness of this world have no dominion. Returning to Anthony Pinn’s notion of liberative religion as a quest to counter the rituals of reference that inform fixed identity, it is clear that worship provides a broader, more complex and integrated view of the ‘Self’ in relation to complex systems of oppression that seek to limit life. Furthermore, if we accept Elaine Foster’s ‘inverted pyramid’, where a minority of men dominate the leadership positions whilst the female majority act as workers, then the African Caribbean church owes much of its ‘respect’ to the work of women.39 I want to end this chapter by taking a closer look at African Caribbean Christianity in response to the Gilroyian resistance motifs. African Caribbean Christianity and cultural resistance Regarding the first theme of productivism, the African Caribbean church has not developed an explicit critique of economics, including the ravages of globalisation. While preachers encourage business ethics and fair play in the social world, there is yet to arise meaningful, prophetic analyses of capitalism. However, the lack of comment does not mean lack of concern. The growth of ‘credit unions’ at home and development projects in the developing world, suggests that through counter-ideology, the church seeks to offer

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hope and meaning by providing practical support for those in need.40 Furthermore, a pre-millennial theology enables them to interpret global strife with signs of the last days. Therefore, all they can do in the present is cover over the cracks, but they know that ultimately, all victimisers will be judged at the end of time. Failing to confront economic inequality and the ideologies that lie behind it is to be complicit with this injustice. The second theme – the critique of State-sponsored justice – represents one space where dancehall and church hall share some common ground. In sympathy with Black Pentecostalism, Rastafari affirmed the presence of a biblical standard of justice – diametrically opposed to the racist standards on offer in British law courts. Divine justice in both dancehall DJ lyricism and church hall preaching recognises that State repression would not go unnoticed or unpunished by God, as judgement is taking place now and also at the end of time. However, church hall and dancehall differ over how Blacks should respond to State oppression. Christians were not to confront the authorities in the present but live with inner dignity and pride, the essence of redemptive suffering – that is, individual empowerment as the way of liberation, or what womanist theologian Valentina Alexander calls ‘passive radicalism’.41 This, as praxis, produces a welfare tradition as opposed to a social justice tradition.42 As demonstrated in the approach to globalisation, welfare mentality results in a willingness to clean up mess rather than assessing and challenging the sources of the mess.43 The third theme is the affirmation of Black history as a challenge to both the amnesia of Western history and its focus on the present, or ‘temporal perception under capitalism’. Within dancehall, particularly within the craft of culture, DJs musically and aesthetically articulate and celebrate Black history in song lyrics. This tradition is strongest in the politicised orality of DJs.44 In contrast, within the complex world of Pentecostalism, the affirmation of Black history and survival is mostly subliminal. There are two foci. First, the retelling of history is expressed in the affirmation of local church history. Take, for example, such momentous occasions as the purchase of a new building or a church anniversary. On these occasions the church’s history is placed with the context of immigrant history. For instance, at a church opening service in Birmingham in early 2000, I remember the pastor stating that, ‘we came here with no building or place to worship. Now we have our own key and can have church whenever we want.’ Second, the association with the

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Bible facilitates a collapsing of Black church history into biblical history. Consequently, Bible history is read as the continuing history of God’s people, of which African Caribbean Pentecostals are a part. Therefore, every reading of the Bible is an affirmation of their place in a broader, more complex universe that defies the limitations of this world. Adopting Christian identities grounded in the Bible facilitates adjustment and engagement because they know that this part of their journey is related to a broader, more complex and definite divine plan. This brief investigation into the crucible of dancehall and church hall cultures leads to two important conclusions. First, neither dancehall nor church hall cultures were passive in response to social change. What I want to suggest here is that dancehall and church hall represent particular modalities through which Black struggle is explored. Counter hegemony and counter ideology respectively. While today it is unfashionable to suggest that dancehall or church hall cultures represent a withdrawal politics,45 there is still only limited engagement (in contemporary Black British cultural studies) with the political motifs within African Caribbean Christian traditions.46 Second, this chapter highlights the centrality of sound in both church hall and dancehall music. In the next chapter, I want to explore the sound of music as a focus for challenging ideas. I want to suggest that the counter-hegemony of the dancehall, particularly the politics of sound, provides a rhizome for rethinking the counterideology and bio-politics of church life. As ethnomusicologists John Connell and Chris Gibson inform us, the fluid nature of music enables it to function as a platform for new alliances and dialogues.47 I want to propose a more explicit approach, whereby specific aspects of sound system culture flow towards Pentecostal churches in order to provide an interpretive scheme for reinvestigating aspects of church life. This perspective rests on two presuppositions. First, that sound, particularly music, has the capacity to connect the dancehall and church hall in a way that visual culture cannot. For instance, it is more acceptable for a song leader to use techniques found in dub to embellish religious lyrics than it is to dress in dancehall clothing while leading a song in church. In other words, it is easier for the church to adapt sound than the visual attributes of dancehall. Second, that sound has the capacity to transform. As demonstrated above, church hall has inflected aspects of the dancehall to transform

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music and worship. As I demonstrated in the use of the notion of ‘dread’ in Dread and Pentecostal, a more politicised engagement would provide the context for more radical engagement with political themes within African Caribbean church life.48

Part II

Dub, interpretation and Christology

Chapter 4

The gospel of dub Origins and development

The next two chapters represent a shift in focus to music theory and dub as a genre. In the previous chapter, I established that both church hall and dancehall cultures represent historically specific forms of resistance. The church hall produced a counter-ideology, which promotes self-respect, pride, family values and hard work as the best way of contesting prevailing regimes of domination. In contrast, the modes of resistance in dancehall cultures were more explicit. Counterhegemonic socio-political ideologies were articulated, sustained and transmitted through DJ lyricism and other cultural motifs. In sound system culture a space is always made to challenge economic exploitation, critique the notion of so called ‘British fair play’ and celebrate Black pride through a retelling of Black history. These marked differences are the basis of consideration in this chapter. My concern, however, is redemptive – namely, how we might bring together the implicit politics of the church hall and the explicit politics of the dancehall. Contact and two way conversations between the Church and dancehall, are not completely new features in Black urban life in Britain. This is because the church has a long tradition of selectively appropriating aspects of popular culture and vice versa: the dancehall has a history of borrowing style and language from the church. What is new here is my attempt to engage in a more upfront and transparent dialogue.

Sound knowledge As mentioned in chapter 1, the central theoretical framework that guides this encounter is acoustemology. I tied acoustemology (the

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study of sound) to epistemology (the way of knowing), and the study of sound to cognition – making sense of reality.1 I also suggested that acustemology is guided by codes and conventions, including musical technique. Musical technique, whether in the form of a guitar riff, a sample or a vocal arrangement, is a language. This is why, when we hear a beat, a riff or a sample we say that the music ‘speaks to us’. Hearing is always an act of interpretation. So when we hear sound, including musical sounds, they take us to a point in time and space. For instance, when I hear the introductory acoustic guitar chords to Bob Marley’s ‘Redemption Song’, I remember the time when someone dared to sing this reggae song in a church concert, inadvertently connecting the struggle of Rastafari with Pentecostal Christianity. I recollect how the audience was stunned, then swayed by the spirituality of the lyrics and their contemporaneous meaning for working-class Black Christians. So, ‘acoustic knowing’ is more than listening to a song; it is also about how we interpret it.2 In addition to epistemology, ideology also influences acoustic knowing. I became aware of the relationship between hearing and the dynamics of power of the church. In church, I was indirectly taught to interpret sound in relation to ongoing struggles both inside and outside the worshipping community. Sound, whether music, praise, prayer or glossolalia, was used to contest and challenge the way things were. For instance, take the use of the phrase ‘can somebody raise a chorus?’ This call for a song to be sung is used not only to fill spare time, but also change the atmosphere amongst those gathered. I have witnessed the call for a chorus from the flock as a means of drowning out a renegade voice, and, most importantly, giving expression to feelings and longings that we were too afraid or unable to speak. What I am suggesting here is that the use and interpretation of sound is an ideological process. Sound must always be placed in relation to issues of power. Again, this is not a new idea in African diasporan traditions, since there is a long history of using sound to resist oppression. Whether it be the wailing of captives aboard a slave ship, or the singing of spirituals with their subliminal ‘double-meaning’, Black noise has been a central resource in the quest for freedom.3 As Connell and Gibson put it, sound as an act of communication is a symbolic representation, with the capacity to reinforce or challenge social relationships.4

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The epistemology and ideology of sound inform this chapter, which is an exploration of the development and use of the musical technique of dubbing. I will begin by placing dub within the social and cultural context of post-emancipation Jamaica. The second task will be to use theory from deconstruction and signification to explain the art of dubbing. I will then explore how dub technique has been utilised in dub poetry. I want to see what can be learned when a musical language influences vocabulary, orality and performance, or what dub poets call ‘word-sounds’ – the fusion of words and sounds to produce a new and dynamic meaning. I want to capture and transcode this a musical technique into the church hall. I will end by interfacing my understanding of dub with the acoustic culture of African Caribbean Christianity.

Definition Dub is one example of Black Atlantic futurism, the interface of the African diaspora with technology. Afrocentric historian Ivan Van Sertima reminds us that this distinguished history reaches back into antiquity and projects into the contemporary space programmes in the USA.5 Regarding dub, the significance of Black people ‘playing’ with music technology in the late Twentieth Century has major social and economic consequences. None more impressive than the claim made by hip-hop historian Nelson George. George, in allconquering mood, proclaims that what began with mixing equipment in Jamaica and America has, within twenty-five years, given Black youth culture a cultural hegemony within the global music industry.6 Hip-hop mogul P. Diddy was wrong when he claimed in a 2005 radio documentary that he invented the remix.7 Long before the ‘remix’ became a prominent feature of the Black music scene there was dub. So what is dub? The Oxford Dictionary definition adequately describes the technical aspect of the process when it states that the aim of dub is ‘to provide an alternative sound track . . . to mix (various tracks) into a single track . . . to impose additional sounds on to an existing recording’.8 However, according to one of its architects, King Jammy, dub is more than a musical technique: it is also a quest for meaning. This is why he says dub is ‘Raw riddim, Dub jus music, nuttin’ water-down.’9 Jammy not only captures the deconstructive aspects of the technique, but also adds a cultural dimension: a quest

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for the real and authentic. Social theorist Paul Gilroy combines a balance between the technical and cultural aspects of dub. The best way to define dub, he writes, is as technique informed by cultural meaning: ‘a process of enrichment in which music is deconstructed and the meaning of its lyrics transformed and expanded’.10

Social origins The historical origins of dub can be interpreted in one of two ways: as an act of individual genius or as the coalescence of multifarious social, economic and cultural forces. The genius tradition suggests that one single architect is responsible for musical innovation. Applied to the context of dub, we would cite as the inventors a small group of studio engineers who experimented with the form in the late 1960s. One of these innovators was King Tubby. Closer examination of his discovery reveals the level of experimentation involved in him reaching his eureka moment: He began fading out the instrumental track, to make sure that the vocals sounded right. And he was so excited by the effect produced, when he brought the music back in. So instead of mixing the specials in the usual way, he cut back and forth between the vocal and instrumental tracks and played with the bass and treble knobs until he changed the original tapes into something else entirely.11 In contrast, the social history approach to musical innovation moves the critical focus away from individual ingenuity and instead foregrounds the social world that permits individual genius to flourish. So in this case we would consider the development of music culture – that is sound systems and their relationship to recording studios – in the post-colonial world of Jamaica. We must pay particular attention to the unsettling social currents that, as sociologist Ann Swidler reminds us, create a space for new ideas and strategies.12 Jamaica in 1962 was a highly stratified society split along caste lines, a hangover from colonial governance. The attempts by the newly-independent nation to restructure the economy from an agricultural to an industrial economic base was a slow process, one that was less likely to redistribute wealth and more likely to maintain pre-existing social and economic inequalities. As Norman Stolzoff informs us, dancehall culture was equally divided, with the downtown

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music of the Black urban poor marginalised from the uptown social gatherings of the Brown and White elite.13 Within the cultural space of 1950s’ downtown dancehall, sound systems caught on because they were a cheap and efficient means of getting music to the Black masses; much cheaper than hiring a band, which was the preferred choice of the rich. An entrepreneurial culture emerged amongst working-class merchants and shopkeepers to develop sound system sets to entertain the people, giving them a sense of being at a live band performance, even though they were listening to pre-recorded music. As mentioned in chapter 2, leisure space in Jamaica has always had a particular relationship to capitalist exploitation. Because ‘play’ is politicised, dancehall play can be read as a struggle for power, and two themes provide insight into dancehall’s critical role in social change. First, the lower-class status of sound system culture made it subject to the negative dominant discourse on working-class leisure as immodest and crime-ridden. Despite this class-based criticism, by the early 1960s downtown dancehall was bringing young people of different social classes together, thereby challenging the social divisiveness of the dominant Brown and White elite. Second, the emergence of Rastafari as a religious-political theme in Jamaican music in the early 1960s began a new wave of repoliticisation. Obika Gray argues that under Rastafarian influence dancehall became a highly charged political space.14 The two major political parties seized upon its politicisation and made the dancehall a recruiting ground for party politics. The volatile mix of competing party affiliations, combative music and expressive youth often resulted in violence and tension at sound clashes. The ‘Rude Boy’ genre captured the changing religious and social climate, and by 1964 was trading off the mood of social revolution and emerging Rastafarian prophecy. Rejected by mainstream radio in Jamaica, it was only at working-class sound system dances that songs exploring poor urban life and struggle were played – ‘further enhancing the function of the dancehall as the only place to deal with “hardcore realities” of urban life’.15 By the late 1960s, the leading sounds were less likely to tour and were generally fixed to specific nightclubs, often paralleling the party political space. The creative energy of dancehall also shifted. The live set was moved to the recording studio as studio engineers tried to capture on vinyl the feel of live performances. It was the innovation in the studio that would lead to stylistic changes in the music.

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To recap, the social history of the emergence of sound systems locates the musical development of dub in working-class leisure. Sound system entrepreneurialism creates opportunities for both social division and amelioration. Intriguingly, out of this fractious context, personified in the struggles of the poor, emerges a musical technique concerned with taking things apart and putting them back together in a new way. As mentioned previously, social change always provides an opportunity for new strategies to bargain with and transform the social world.

Phases of development I want to end this part of my historical exploration by moving the focus of attention towards the evolution of dub as a distinct genre within Jamaican popular music. By the mid-1960s, recording studios were able to produce indigenous versions of American R&B. They also developed intimate reciprocal economic relationships with particular sound systems, providing DJs with a steady stream of exclusive tracks that were played at dances. The rationale behind this relationship was that the more exclusive the track by well-known or up-and-coming artists, the greater the success of the sound system and the eventual sales of the single. Recording studios made use of new technology and techniques to improve the quality of their sound and stay ahead of the competition. Initially, in the era of one-track recording equipment, band and vocalist were recorded in a studio simultaneously. A good example of the one-track set up is portrayed in the film The Harder They Come. The leading character, Ivan Martin (Jimmy Cliff), records one-off singles at a studio using the one-track set. One-track production provided little space for technological innovation. But the arrival of two- and four-track recording equipment in the late 1960s enabled recording engineers to add and remove vocal tracks from the instrumental track, producing the first instrumentals. It was this new technology that made dub possible.16 There are at least three phases of dub’s evolution.17 In the first phase, dub was one-off acetates with the vocals taken out, created around 1967. These instrumental singles were not produced for mass consumption but for sound systems to play at dances. Ruddy Redwood’s sound system in Spanish Town is recognised as being the first to introduce instrumentals. The story goes that Duke Reid, a

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leading studio engineer in Kingston, supplied Redwood with exclusives.18 Redwood introduced versions as an experiment, and was inspired by the audiences singing along to his first effort, an instrumental version of The Paragons’ ‘On the Beach’. Realising its commercial viability, he convinced Duke Reid to produce versions of other well-known tracks.19 Instrumentals also laid the foundations for ‘toasting’, or improvised lyrics, from DJs performed over the track. Before instrumentals, DJs were limited to a few words in between songs during their performances, as they could not talk over a song with lyrics. The second phase of dub emerges in the latter part of 1968 in the form of ‘versions’. At this juncture, studio engineers became ‘musicians’, actively creating a new music by remixing the ‘A’ side of a record. These versions became the ‘B’ side, replacing the old idea of having two singles on a record. The remixed version enabled particular instruments such as the organ or bass to dominate the rhythm track and also allowed punchy sayings or chants to punctuate the mix. Early reggae singers such as John Holt and Clancy Eccless scored big hits in 1970 with versions of ‘A’ sides.20 Although he was not the first DJ to appear on a record, the pioneering U-Roy (Ewart Beckford) became the first DJ to score massive hits by recording ‘toasting’ over an instrumental version created by Duke Reid in 1969.21 The greatest success came in 1970 when Reid produced the classic ‘Wake The Town’, an instrumental version of Alton Elli’s ‘Girl I got a Date’. It became a number one hit in Jamaica. U-Roy was also one of the first to mainstream radical religious lyrics, celebrating Rastafari, all of which demonstrates the Rastafarian influence on this fledging form.22 The third phase of dub arrived in 1972 in the form of sophisticated stand-alone mixes. With the experimentation of producers, such as Errol Thompson, Overton ‘Scientist’ Brown, Lloyd ‘Jammy’ James, and the legendary Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, dub rose to become a highly technical form. Allegedly, the first dub album of the third phase was Blackboard Jungle Dub, released by Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry towards the end of 1973.23 Blackboard Jungle Dub contained Perry’s remixing of 14 tracks from the Upsetter label, in stereo, with great use of reverb, echo and tape effects, and with the occasional improvised vocal introduction. What I find most interesting at this juncture in the development of the genre is that Brown, who made his name at the Randy’s studio,

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used the self-description ‘scientist’. Those familiar with Caribbean religious cultures will know that this is designation for an indigenous healer or Obeah-Myal practitioners. Foreshadowing my attempts in this book to connect the language of dub with theological language, Brown infers that dubbing, in this culture at least, is a holistic enterprise involving mind, body and spirit. Because dub is more than technique, it must be theorised in a way that enables us to treat it holistically. I turn now to dub as a form of deconstruction and signification.

Dub theory Central to dubbing is the role of studio engineer, whose function is essentially interpretive. Through the mixing and reworking of a track, the studio engineer re-interprets the sound and composition of the original. There are two related aspects of dubbing that are important to my understanding of this process. These are (1) the deconstruction of a track, and (2) its signification. Dub as an act of deconstruction In the dub version of a song a re-working of both lyrics and music occurs. The basic elements of dub riddim (rhythm) are the drum and bass. The bass, which in recent times is synthesised, defines the riddim around which the other elements are structured. However, bass, guitar, drums, horns and vocals are deconstructed – that is, separated from each other and then reconstructed: cut and remixed, repositioned and recast so as to embellish and enrich. By describing dub as an act of deconstruction I am in no way aligning it to the post-modern, post-structural critique in Western scholarship. The philosophy of deconstructionism is a complex tradition of thought and action and is too multifaceted to review in its entirety here. Black cultural critics suggest that, at its best, it seeks to challenge and decentre dominant narratives to expose tyranny and provide opportunities for marginal perspectives. I am using it in a different way. Deconstruction for the dubbist aims to redeem by restructuring the narrative, in this case the music track, rather than destroying it. Dub as a process of restructuring is achieved by enabling the hearer to listen to isolated passages of parts that normally interlock with others.

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Take for instance the dub version of Bob Marley and the Wailers’ ‘Kaya’, remixed by Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry in the early 1970s. In the dub version, ‘Sin Semilia Kaya Dub’, the bass becomes the rhythm reverberating the central riddim of the song. The bass is brought in and out of the mix alongside the drumbeat that remains almost constant. The Spanish guitar effect so prominent in the Wailers’ original is brought in and out of the mix in the dub version. By taking out and bringing in elements of the song, Perry achieves a rawer version of the original. Deconstruction and folk religion As well as understanding dub as a deconstructive activity in a redemptive and coded way, I also want to comprehend it as an expression of folk religiosity. ‘Folk religiosity’ describes the journeying of religious themes into wider culture. Removed from their original religious moorings, religious themes are often transformed into sayings and practices associated with having wisdom. In this form, religious survivals continue to influence consciousness and behaviour. For instance, Caribbean people have thousands of folkreligious practices, originally descended from African religions, which continue to frame rituals associated with birth, marriage, sickness and death – ‘Nine-nite’, before a funeral being one of the most common practices in the UK.24 I want to understand the process of ‘taking out and bringing in’ as a survival from healing practices in Jamaican folk culture. As mentioned in chapter 2, one African religious survival to influence early indigenous Jamaican Christianity was the ObeahMyal complex. Obeah involved the deployment of malignant spirits on adversaries through a variety of tactics and techniques. To combat Obeah, Myal, the good medicine, was sought. Myal medicine provided protection against the bad spirits and returned the individual and community to equilibrium. For reggae historian Lloyd Bradley, the pattern of Obeah-Myal practice influences dubbing technique. I quote Bradley’s assessment of dub at length: To take each element of the tune as separate – the bass, the drums, the horns, the bongos, the keyboards and so on – then set out to refocus the whole piece of work by adjusting, tweaking, bringing forward or pushing back each of them individually until the whole is satisfactorily rebalanced is to reach back to

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Africa and the practices that came over to Jamaica as Obeah [Myal]. Behind the smoke and mirrors . . . the far less-photogenic healing ways: homeopathy, herbalism. . . . It’s an ancient African medicine that splits the body up into seven centres or ‘selves’ – sexual, digestive, heart, brain etc. – and by prescribing various herbs and potions would, as practitioners always describe it, ‘bring forward or push back’ different centres: remixing, as it were, a person’s physical or mental state into something very different. . . . In the same way by adjusting the controls at the mixing desk, a tune . . . can be reinvented.25 Bradley’s analysis informs us that the ‘science’ of the studio engineer can be interpreted in and through a holistic African cosmology. In this sense, dub deconstruction is always related to a deep and complex quest for freedom and well-being. Later, I will provide a more concrete theological structure for making sense of dub than is given by the vague category of folk religiosity. Dub, signification and the trickster motif The second theoretical lens for understanding dub is signification. Signification is a term used in cultural criticism to describe how signs function. Signs are sounds, words, objects or images and consist of two parts: a signifier – the sound, word, object or image – and the signified – the concepts the sound, word, object or image represent. ‘Signifying’, therefore, describes the act of producing and projecting signs. However, signifying is not always a clear-cut process because the relationship between signifier and signified is not at all times transparent and we must rely on context, association and other codes to help us make sense of a sign.26 Signifying is an important aspect of Black cultures. A groundbreaking study in this field is Henry Louis Gates’s Signifying Monkey. This text examines the coded language of African American writers and their meanings in a highly racialised society. Drawing on West African traditions of the double voice, Gates concluded from his study of African American literature that Black signification in literary theory is arriving at ‘direction through indirection’.27 The best way of explaining signification in Caribbean cultures is to refer to the mythic spider Anancy. Anancy, the spider-trickster, is prominent in the folklore of the Akan group of Twi-speaking people, including the Ashanti. Akan

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peoples were transported in large numbers as slaves to Jamaica (1730–90) and their numerical superiority enabled their stories and language to endure and leave an imprint. The Jamaican Anancy tales were reshaped in their slave context, but the aim remained the same: to ‘gain direction through indirection’ – that is, enabling the weak to outwit the power structures by a host of tactics such as evasion and manipulation. The genius of the Anancy story is not only in its content but also how it is told; both aspects signify: Anancy’s realm is the realm of the polymorphous perverse, of endless deviation, deflection, and switching of roles, and the storyteller’s art is likewise one of subterfuge and multiple meanings, so that any Anancy story operates polysemetically, with one meaning, say for children, another for adults ‘in the know,’ and another still for outsiders, particularly outsiders who are White.28 To succeed, in every story Anancy breaches rules, inverts conventions and demonstrates the ‘re-creative power’ in social life.29 Put simply, Anancy accomplishes his ends by playing the trickster. He uses the double-voice – that is, saying one thing and meaning another.30 What I want to suggest here is that in addition to understanding dub as deconstruction with its incumbent folk-religious sensibilities, we also view the actions of the studio engineer, reworking, remixing and recoding a track, as a process of signification. The engineer is on one level a trickster character that mixes and plays with the rules of sound and recreates so that each dub has many voices or many levels of meaning. After all, dub’s aesthetic power lies in this playing of tricks on the listener’s memory: Because it’s often applied to an already-familiar song or rhythm track, dub has a uniquely poignant quality: memories are revived, but rather than being simply duplicated (as when we hear a ‘golden oldie’ from our youth on the radio) they are given subtle twists. Memory is teased rather than dragged up, and is thereby heightened.31 Let me restate the argument thus far. The origins of dub emerged from a sound system culture in Jamaica. It was the creation of studio engineers and the product of experimentation with new recording technology. Dub went through various stages of development before

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evolving into a distinct genre. I have theorised dub as a form of deconstruction and signification. The penultimate task of this chapter is to connect dub in a more meaningful way to the spoken word. The connection between dub and the spoken word is organic, as DJ lyricism relies heavily upon dub tracks as background material. But it is with the emergence of ‘dub poetry’, that we have a more intimate connection between the dub technique on vinyl and the spoken word.

Dub poetry As outlined in the previous chapter, running concurrently with the new forms of racialised oppression within post-war Britain is cultural resistance. As sociologist David Brain explains, cultural production enables us not only to make sense of our lives, but also to resist structural oppression.32 In a similar vein, successive generations of African Caribbean youth have utilised cultural production as a political weapon, and this is also the case with the dub poets. Dub poetry in Britain and the Caribbean emerges from the toasting scene inspired by dub. It was a politically ghettocentric art form,33 influenced by Black Nationalism, Rastafari and Leftist political struggles. The first ‘dub poets’ appeared in the latter part of the 1970s, and the Jamaican dub poet Oku Onuora coined the term in 1978. Arguably, the pioneer of dub poetry was Linton Kwesi Johnson. His debut album, Dread Beat and Blood (1978), introduced a unique style of poetry performed in Jamaican patois to a one-drop reggae beat. Johnson opened the door for a new generation of artists, and Onuora further developed the genre through the establishment of the ‘Prugresiv Aatis Muvmant’ in 1979. Dub poetry gained notoriety not only because of its musical innovation but also because of its social and political subject matter. Even today, dub poetry is still associated with political consciousness and social criticism. While no longer the dominant form of performance poetry in Black communities, dub poetry laid the foundation for the ‘slam’ and ‘conscious poets’ of the present age. Three performential qualities of dub poetry are important to this exploration: making words into riddim, building in rhythm and the ideological subtext. In dub poetry there is the interplay between word and sound. Dub poetry makes words into the ‘riddim’ driving the sound and structure of the poem. So hearing dub poets in a cappella, the rhythm of the

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music is structured into the sound and arrangement of the spoken poem.34 Building in rhythm from the beginning is a creative process, ensuring that the new and original backing tracks are created for the performance, rather than simply utilising already existing vinyl. Acoustemologically, in dub poetry ‘dub’ takes on a new life; it signifies a playful deconstruction of words guided by a particular ideological framework, so that these ‘word-sounds’ are ‘infused with cultural values’.35 Word dub What I want to propose is that dub poetry introduces ‘word dub’, where words are deconstructed and signify. As a result, word-sounds contest reality, and have a combative power. For instance, in the dub poem ‘Liesense fi kill’, Linton Kwesi Johnson ‘plays’ with the word ‘licence’. Removing the letter ‘c’ and adding ‘s’ after the first ‘e’ he communicates a sense of corruption and disreputable activity in the police. It now means to ‘cover-up’ – that is ‘lie-sense’. Similarly, Birmingham-based dub poet Kukumo plays with the word ‘diaspora’, re-interpreting the word in the light of the Caribbean economic struggle in Britain to coin the term ‘die-as-poor-ya’. Word-sound-power provides us with a model of how dub signifies. The act of deconstruction is influenced and informed by sociopolitical aspirations and concerns, and these concerns guide the reworking of words and their meanings. The signifying that occurs in dub poetry builds on the trickster motif of the studio engineer. While the engineer mixes the music to create a new encoded narrative, so the dub poet reconstructs words so that they portray political realities. I want to end this chapter by making a connection between dub as word-sound-power and Pentecostal faith in Britain. I made clear earlier my intention to engage in a more transparent appropriation of dancehall culture. I have focused on the concept of dub. Dub is a form of deconstruction. So it is my intention here to bring this understanding of dub to the context of the church. As stated in the title of this chapter, dub is a gospel – that is, ‘good news’. So how is dub good news in the context of African Caribbean Christianity?

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Word-sound-power and Black Pentecostal faith Its important to begin this section by noting that word and sound have always been important in the church. African Caribbean Christians believe in the creative power of God’s word. God creates with words (Genesis 1:2ff) and human beings, made in the image of God, have the capacity to transform their lives and the world around them with words (Proverbs 12:19). Thus, the spiritual power of words, whether in testimony, sermon or song is never underestimated. (This is one of the reasons why the oneness or Apostolic Pentecostal tradition places a high emphasis on the power of the ‘name of Jesus’ in their baptismal formulae and theological orientation.) What I am stating is that in these congregations believers participate in the on-going creative work of God in-and-through the use of words and sounds. Therefore, they too, as believers, have the ability to use words creatively and with spiritual force. For instance, during worship in African Caribbean churches there is a belief that as believers praise, God ‘inhabits their praises’; in other words, there is a sense of the divine or spirituality in the sonic field. This is why so often in churches a sharp distinction is made between ministry (singing and praising in sync with the Spirit of God) and minstrelsy (singing and praising out of sync with the Spirit and therefore a promotion of the individual rather than God). I believe that the ‘word dub’ practice of the dub poets offers the church a method for an explicit politicisation of sound. Specifically, the word-sound-power tradition in dub and dub poetry provides a model for encoding and transforming the word-sound-spirituality of the church. A way of explaining the nature of this proposal is through the literary device of collocation. A collocation is the process by which words influence other words that are part of a sequence: The term collocation . . . refers to sequences of lexical items which habitually co-occur, but which are nonetheless fully transparent in the sense that each lexical constituent is also a semantic constituent. Such expressions as . . . fine weather, torrential rain . . . are examples of collocations. . . . The semantic integrity or cohesion of a collocation is the more marked if the meaning carried by one of its constituent elements is highly restricted contextually, and different from its meaning in more neutral contexts.36

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So, in my case, the pairing of the word ‘dub’ with Christian terms such ‘Jesus’ or ‘Holy Spirit’, can produce a new way of understanding how these Christian terms function and what they mean. Therefore, to ‘Dub Jesus’ or the ‘Spirit’, once transparent, provides a new approach to the study of Jesus and the Spirit respectively.37 Likewise, to imply a ‘Jesus Dub’ or ‘Sprit Dub’, is to speak of the work of Jesus and the Spirit as deconstructive work with an active socio-political agenda. It is this latter reading that is the focus of this book. Introducing dub as a collocation into the vocabulary of church life offers new theological opportunities. As mentioned in the introduction, language produces new possibilities for Christian action. This is the reason why African American New Testament Scholar Brian Blount suggests that by scrutinising language in the church one identifies theological orientation and action.38 By introducing the concept and word ‘dub’ into African Caribbean Christian vocabulary new ways of hearing, feeling and interpreting aspects of church life are provided. This is the good news of dub! The critical question that confronts us now is, what can dub transform in order to produce new action in the church? In the next chapter, I want to infuse the meaning of dub with particular theological sensibilities that parallel the politicisation of wordsounds in dub poetry. Dub deconstruction will be allied to African Caribbean emancipatory theology. In conclusion, let me recap my central arguments. I have explored the social context in Jamaica from which the concept and practice of dub emerged. Dub, developed by studio engineers, has undergone several recreations on its way to becoming a genre within reggae and other forms of popular music. Dub is more than musical backdrop; it is a perspective. It concerns the taking apart and reconstruction of reality from a particular vantage point. Consequently, to ‘dub’, something is to recreate the way it is heard, understood or practised. It is in dub poetry that dub is recreated in word. Through a creative play of written and spoken words, dub poets introduce the dubbing of words so that they signify in new ways. The central focus of this book is to take the word ‘dub’ and imbue it with particular theological meanings so that when it is attached to words, ideas and practices in the church, these words, ideas and practices take on a whole new meaning. Given the harsh realities of black urban life in Britain, there is a need for a theological method that takes things apart, and puts them

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back together. This method, arising out of popular culture, is not afraid of the political world, but instead embraces it. Rapper Kanye West tells us that ‘Jesus walks’ with those on the margins of society. The phrase describes God’s omnipresence amongst the socially marginalised. In this study, I want to go further than Mr West. When ‘Jesus dubs’, those on the margins are enabled to tear down the walls that exclude and rebuild and refashion things so that all people are free from the ravages of oppression.

Chapter 5

Dub hermeneutics Form and content

So far, we have looked at the origins of dub, as a production technique emerging from studio engineers in the late 1960s. While originating in Black Atlantic technology, dub practice has resonance with antiquity – African religious retentions in Jamaican Revivalism. As part of Jamaican working-class leisure, dub was politicised first by studio engineers and musicians, and later gained a sustained political focus in the 1970s and beyond in Britain under the auspices of Rastafari and political urban poetry. I have explored dub as a social theory but not made clear its theological utility. To this end, in this chapter I will explore what it means to ‘dub’ as a hermeneutical paradigm. Before getting into dub hermeneutics, it is important to reflect, in brief, on the nature of this appropriation of dancehall culture.

Theologically responsible syncretism This appropriation is based on what Pentecostal theologian Walter Hollenweger calls a theologically responsible syncretism.1 Responsible syncretism acknowledges that the theological enterprise is always in dialogue with culture. Whether in the production of Scripture or in the development of systematic theology, Christians have used their cultural context to explain and interpret their faith. Accepting these historical realities, theologically responsible syncretism demands that researchers reflect on their practice, rather than hide behind a false objectivity or cultural neutrality. To this end, I want to place my engagement with and appropriation of dub within a long African diasporan tradition of adapting culture for the sake of enabling social transformation. Let me explain.

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From the moment Africans arrived in Jamaica as slaves they learned to adapt the cultural traditions they encountered to ensure their survival. The art of adaptation was guided by their desire for survival and freedom, providing a particular motivation or edge to their acts of survival, syncretism and re-interpretations.2 Within this context, European traditions, both secular and religious, were not adopted uncritically but instead were selectively appropriated in response to African retentions and also the prevailing terror inherent within the social milieu. These adaptations did not disappear with the advent of emancipation. A process of adaptation occurs, for example, within the history of Pentecostalism on the island. In her study of Pentecostalism in Jamaica, Dianne Austin-Broos reveals how the Pentecostal traditions from North America were adapted and interpreted so that they found a new resonance for those who believed in religion as a holistic transformation through divine encounter.3 Elsewhere I have identified the continuation of these acts of re-interpretation by African Caribbean Christians in contemporary Britain.4 In summary, I am placing myself within a tradition of appropriation and adaptation, which finds points of connection between two entities to further formulate, make sense of and radically transform the social location. The benefit of this approach is that it affirms critical engagement with culture and rejects the negative dichotomy between church and world so often peddled by sections of African Caribbean Pentecostalism. Having identified the nature and basis of my engagement with dub, I now want to provide the theological content to dub in order to make it applicable to the context at hand.

Hermeneutics The main task of this chapter is to provide content to dub so that it can function as a coherent interpretive scheme. To this end, it is necessary to begin by framing my use of dub as a ‘hermeneutic’. To structure my understanding of the term, I draw upon three shifts in academic discussion of interpretation. These are the post-modern shift in theological hermeneutics, the pneumatology of African Caribbean Pentecostalism and the general hermeneutical analysis found within socio-historic interpretation. But let me begin with a basic definition.

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Definition The etymology (origin of the word) of hermeneutics is located within classical Greek mythology. The god Hermes is said to have carried the messages of the gods to humans and this role involved the act of translation. This classical European perspective has continued to shape the nature and meaning of hermeneutics today, where it is considered to be the overall process of interpreting meaning of events and ‘texts’ – literary, audio and visual. Interpretation of texts has always been a considerable part of biblical studies and Christian apologetics, with hermeneutics becoming an intellectual discipline during the Reformation. In modern Western theological thought, Rudolf Bultmann and Hans-Georg Gadamer further developed hermeneutics into a science, and today in Western academic theology hermeneutics consists of exploring the interplay between the ‘meaning’ of a text and the attempt to extrapolate its ‘significance’ for today. Scholars disagree, however, about whether ‘meaning’ and ‘significance’ are two separate categories.5 The post-modern shift describes the challenge to the scientific approach to texts in general, and the biblical text in particular. Put simply, integral to the ‘Enlightenment’ was the scientific method as a dominant mode for explaining the world. Biblical scholars followed this model by viewing Scripture in the same way as the scientific view of the world – that is, as something stable and objective, whose details, if examined correctly, would reveal meaning to an ‘unbiased’ observer. It was Thomas Kuhn who began to question of the notion of the ‘objective observer’ central to the scientific method, and to show that far from being free from bias the observer is ‘paradigative’; that is, buoyed with pre-existing values and ideas that shape what they see and discover.6 Consequently, the claims of the science of neutrality were quashed, and replaced with suspicion towards the observer, who is very much bound up with the process of evaluating knowledge claims. Post-modernity had a profound effect on biblical scholarship because it provided a framework for a critique of the notion of theological inquiry as an objective or scientific pursuit and truth as being fixed and objective. Theologians were no longer able to represent their craft as ‘value free’ or state that there was one stable unambiguous interpretation of a text. All of which challenged the belief in one stable, unfaltering objective ‘truth’. These shifts were also important for marginalised groups who have been subject to

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European hegemony in biblical interpretation. As post-colonial biblical scholar R.S. Sugirtharajah has demonstrated, minorities, women and Third World theologians were now encouraged to reflect on theology from their own location, fully aware that the acknowledgement of bias was part of the process of arriving at a contextual interpretation.7 For instance, in the early 1970s Caribbean theologians acknowledged the colonial legacy on their biblical interpretation and set about developing interpretive strategies that were contextual and revolutionary.8 They recognised that their stories (experiences and cultures) had been lost by their adoption of the European missionary language and scholarship. These new reading strategies, amongst formerly subjugated peoples, were crystallised in post-colonial hermeneutics: It [post-colonialism] challenges the context, contours and normal procedures of biblical scholarship. . . . What post-colonialism does is to enable us to question the totalising tendencies of European reading practices and interpretation of the texts on our own terms and read from our own specific locations.9 Post-colonial readings of the text are diverse, varied and not without criticism. While there are some scholars who wish to challenge the ‘authority’ of the text, others are happy to explore how postmodern readings facilitate new interpretations of the text. In other words, the post-modern engagement has not resulted in everyone giving up on the authority of the Bible! Another important theme in this discourse is the interpreting of the interpreters. Writing from the context of the Black African struggle against apartheid in the 1980s, biblical scholar Itumeleng Mosala warns Black liberation theologians of the danger of failing to examine how issues of power in the lives of Black academics are transcoded into their examination of the ideologies within the biblical text. In short, even liberation theologians must consider their class location when engaged in an act of interpretation.10 This politicisation of interpretation also appeared in African American theology. It is witnessed in the earnest call from Victor Anderson for a post-modern Black theology that takes seriously the variety of class, gender and sexual locations from which Black theologians interpret.11 I want to embrace the Caribbean theological engagement with post-modernity, in particular the decentring of White Western readings of Scripture alongside the politicising imperative.

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However, these shifts have not influenced every sector of Black Christendom, which leads to my second source: interpretation in African Caribbean Christianity. Within the African Caribbean church tradition, interpretation is still based on guidance from the Spirit rather than intellectual capitulation to scholarship. Let me explain. Working within African diasporan traditions of reading sacred texts, African Caribbean Pentecostal hermeneutics has tended to operate within a ‘concordist’ and a ‘pneumatological’ practice. Within this scheme, the Bible is to be read as a guidebook containing all the necessary spiritual and ethical content for successful living. Consequently, there is no difference between theology and the Bible.12 What happens in practice is that the pre-understanding of the reader meets the life of the Bible – a dynamic process where the Holy Spirit acts as the catalyst and guide. Serverino Croatto reminds us that at this point the act of interpretation involves an enlargement of the meaning of the text by the interpreter13 and this is the case here: the Spirit enables the meaning of the text to be understood, enlarged and applied to a real-life situation. A good example of this hermeneutic is found in preaching, where the preacher aims to make the Bible come alive by applying it to real-life concerns such as unemployment or children or overcoming illness. As Allan Anderson notes, while taking the Bible seriously, African Caribbean Pentecostal hermeneutics are not fundamentalist – that is, consistently literalistic.14 The strength of African Caribbean Pentecostal hermeneutics lies in the fact that the dynamic events of biblical narratives are taken seriously and considered directly applicable to today, in a pneumatic rather than a literalistic way. That is to say, Pentecostals expect the Holy Spirit to ‘speak to them’ and enable them to act out their faith in their lives. This approach is not without its difficulties. For instance, sometimes the conflation of the horizons results in sensational and extrovert interpretations and practices. Furthermore, it lends itself to an avoidance of biblical historicity and the complex levels of meanings of Scriptures. I want to take seriously the centrality of Scripture within this tradition and also the transformative pneumatology – belief in the power of the Spirit. The third source that informs my understanding of interpretation comes from social studies. Because this examination is not only concerned with interpreting written texts but also examining social texts, it is helpful here to think of hermeneutics beyond biblical interpretation and to locate it within the world of social and cultural

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analysis. Within the social sciences, hermeneutics is understood as a general theory or method of interpreting texts, discourse and the social world.15 It connotes a range of interpretive schemas that aim to understand, interpret or re-interpret social phenomena.16 While there are a variety of approaches, the basic structure is exemplified in the general hermeneutical approach outlined by British sociologist John B. Thompson. This method has three phases. The first is a socio-historical analysis that explores the context of social phenomenon – the historical and social backdrop.17 The second phase is an analysis of the subject or form in order to examine its structure and thus understand what it represents. This synchronic analysis examines the internal organisation of the subject matter: what it represents and its potential multiple meanings in the present.18 The final phase is ‘interpretation’: a ‘creative explanation of what is said or represented by a symbolic form’.19 This third phase builds on the two previous phases, but moves beyond them by a process of ‘synthetic construction’ – that is it aims to interpret or reinterpret, as a result of in-depth analysis. This three-part approach is central to the understanding of hermeneutics in this exploration. To summarise hermeneutics here, I am drawing from the postmodern practice concerned with disrupting norms and fragmenting perspectives (de-centring and de-essentialising motifs). However, I want to affirm the centralising of the pneumatic interpretation within African Caribbean Pentecostalism. Pneumatic interpretation is dynamic – an expectation that the Spirit will enlarge and transform meaning. Finally, socio-historical analysis provides a broader historical and social outlook: interpretation is more than looking at written texts, but instead is an attempt to understand the multifarious texts that constitute the social world. I now want to return to the task of providing content to dub as a ‘hermeneutic’.

Dub as deconstruction (form) Deconstruction as a critical theory has many forms. However, one common feature is the attempt to dismantle the metaphysical base of Western philosophy through scepticism towards philosophy’s claims on ultimate reality. In deconstruction, every act of dismantling also involves rebuilding: Deconstructive criticism moves back and forth between the poles of these pairs, proving in its own activity, for example, that there

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is no deconstruction which is not at the same time constructive, affirmative. The word says this in juxtaposing ‘de’ and ‘con’.20 As African American Black feminist bell hooks has argued, Black people have for generations learned to deconstruct and reconstruct the multifarious texts of the social world and reconstruct them in order to survive and thrive in White supremacist capitalist societies in the West.21 Therefore, it should be no surprise that African American theologian James Evans has identified inherent deconstructive traditions in contemporary Black theological discourse. He is concerned with dismantling the ideological origins of EuropeanAmerican theologies and society and offering a new theological knowledge based on Black experience and history. Evans presents deconstruction as a two-fold process: iconoclastic and constructive. The former explains deconstruction as a process or practice of dismantling ideas, traditions or values, and the latter as exposing new possibilities of thought as a consequence of the dismantling. In this regard deconstruction mirrors the best of Black theology: Nascent Black theology embodied this dual character to the extent that it employed a hermeneutics of suspicion [iconoclastic] and a hermeneutics of restoration [constructive]. In short it was both a project of iconoclasm and a project of retrieval.22 For Evans, deconstruction in Black theology seeks to understand the social location in which theological texts are produced; in other words, evaluate the social location of all theological ideas.23 Worthy of particular attention are the oppressive situations: the raced, classed, and gendered contexts in which theological ideas are formed. To identify oppressive forces within the social location of theological development, deconstruction must deploy a hermeneutic of suspicion and a hermeneutic of trust. A hermeneutic of suspicion must take seriously the multivalent locations from which issues of power and marginalisation emerge. A hermeneutic of trust focuses on ‘recognising . . . that we can only trust ourselves to a conversation with significant texts if we admit that the conversation itself is deeply affected by ambiguity and plurality that touch all. There is no innocent interpreter, no innocent text.’24 In short, every act of deconstruction is not neutral but influenced by the concerns of the interpreter.

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The second interlocking component of dub is the reconstructive aspect, which emerges out of the new possibilities inherent in the act of deconstruction. Deconstruction creates a space for ways of reflecting on a subject from a new location or vantage point. In the case of Black theology, the experiences of Black people become the source for a constructive theological inquiry. ‘Experience’, as a text engages in a dialogue with Scripture to produce a new understanding of theology. The guiding principal for this dialogue is liberation – the content of Black theology. Intriguingly, in this case, rather than leading to scepticism towards faith, from the location of the oppressed deconstruction is certain of faith: it desires to identify God’s role in the liberation struggle.25 To recap: the format of deconstruction as a hermeneutic involves a hermeneutic of suspicion and trust guiding the interrogation of a particular theological ‘text’. This process reveals new options and possibilities for rethinking and acting. The second movement involves an insurrection – lost narratives and discourses from experience – which when engaged with Scripture provide a new way of understanding the subject at hand. This process takes place under the auspices of a guiding tradition – liberation. I now want to locate a guiding principle or norm that embodies what it means to dub.

Emancipation as content of dub deconstruction (content) Emancipation, the art and quest for full freedom, has been a central theme in African Caribbean religious culture from the time of slavery to the present. Whether it be the desire for physical freedom or mental freedom from imperial powers, the notion of a holistic freedom has been a guiding motif.26 The motivation for focusing on emancipation is twofold. First, emancipation is an important theme because as a term it has greater resonance for African Caribbean and African people in the UK than the term ‘liberation’, which is used in Black political theologies in the US to describe similar concerns with Black freedom from oppression. The term ‘emancipation’ has contemporary meaning because of its use in popular culture to denote freedom from physical or intellectual bondage. Take, for example, Bob Marley’s classic ‘Redemption Song’ where the phrase ‘emancipate yourselves from mental slavery’, in the context of the song, is a call for both structural and psychological liberation. In many second generation

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African Caribbean church circles such as my own this phrase is as well known as John 3:16! All of which demonstrates the awareness of the popular treatment of this term. Nor has the notion of emancipation bypassed the first generation of African Caribbean Christians, the first migrants from the West Indies; as its meaning has a particular resonance for them. Popularised in hymnody, ‘emancipation’ is a spiritualised metaphor. For instance, my parents used to sing a hymn called ‘Glorious Freedom’ in which one line stated ‘Jesus the glorious emancipator, now and forever he shall be mine.’ Put simply, in this song salvation from God through Jesus meant freedom from the bondage of sin in this world and resurrection after death. This is why in the old Caribbean chorus it states: He set me free one day He set me free He broke the bars of prison for me One day in glory his face I shall see Glory be to God he set me free. The fourth line points to the eschatological dimension of the spiritual emancipation – namely, that despite the contemporary struggles, failures and setbacks the ultimate victory will be won by God at the end of time. The second motivation is biblical. The belief in and practice of ‘emancipation’ is related to the concept and practice of freedom and justice in Scripture. Whether in the social and economic freedom expressed in the Exodus narrative (Exodus 15) or the theocratic requirement that Israel have special provision for the welfare of the stranger, the widow or orphan (Deut 26:12), there is a clear mandate in Scripture to obtain freedom/emancipation for the marginalised. Liberation theologians call this theological ideal God’s ‘preferential option for the poor’.27 Similarly, the references in the Greek Scriptures to Jesus’s emancipation of people on the margins of society (Matthew 25; Luke 4) are profound examples of God’s desire to ‘set free’ from any prisons that inhibit the life of the believer. However, emancipation is contested space. For instance, womanist theologian Delores Williams suggests that there are examples in the biblical text where full freedom does not take place. Instead, God provides a quality in life or survival for the oppressed.28 Within Black theological literature, survival strategies are often read as the soil out of which emancipation grows.29 So the presence of survival does

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not negate the quest for freedom. To rely only on survival, I believe, is to run the risk of condoning oppression and not resisting it. So what does the quest for emancipation entail in this exploration? Caribbean theologian Kortright Davis points out that emancipation must consider its inherent social and political character, which calls for an eventual criticism of theology itself: Emancipation . . . is a lifelong encounter that has to be fleshed out in structures, refined, reinforced and fleshed out again for more restructuring. It is an ongoing response to an authentic divine-human encounter, for no-one can truly meet with God and still feel enslaved. Emancipation is therefore both a divine promise and a human project and the theological initiatives mandated by the call to human freedom render it necessary for theology itself to be emancipated.30 Emancipation for Davis is multi-faceted and worked out in the sociopolitical and religious cultural spheres. Socio-political emancipation refers to freedom from oppressive structures, forces and institutions within this world. It is predicated on the belief that divine freedom is at the heart of the Gospel. An alternative interpretation of ‘divine freedom’ is the intrinsic right to select one’s own place of residence and lifestyle, enabling self-destiny. For African Caribbean people in Britain the desire for physical emancipation has real resonance because of the ‘bodily bondage’ associated with the respective social histories of slavery, colonialism and domestic neo-colonialism in Britain. Never has there been a greater time in our modern history than now for the struggle for authentic freedom. As African American philosopher Cornel West notes, social and political notions of freedom in Black popular culture have been replaced with narrow, simplistic and nihilistic ideas expressed in ‘a self-destructive disposition towards the world’.31 While recognising that the struggle for physical emancipation is far from over within African Caribbean Christianity, faith has always been a matter of balancing freedom with responsibility. I want to take this idea seriously when thinking about emancipation because in every freedom struggle there is always the potential of one person’s freedom being another’s oppression. In other words, to struggle for social-political emancipation means that we must engage in dialogue and form alliances to remain reflexive and critical of our praxis.

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Finally, divine emancipation has a religious-cultural expression. To speak of religious-cultural emancipation in this case is to explore and take seriously the pharmacosm – the potential for healing and harming within culture(s) – both inside and outside of the church. This task is brilliantly summarised by Kelly Brown Douglas when she states: . . . a religio-cultural analysis challenges any aspect of Black faith that perpetuates the discrimination of particular segments of the Black community. For instance, the ways in which the Black church uses the Bible in the oppression of women, gays and lesbians will be confronted. While a religio-cultural analysis recognises that there are enslaving and divisive aspects of Black religion and culture that must be repudiated, it also recognises that there are sustaining and liberating aspects that must be confirmed.32 A religious-cultural quest as part of the process of emancipation is a religious-cultural criticism. But to arrive at emancipation requires us to move beyond criticism to action. In dub, the quest for emancipation is bound up with prophetic action. It is an ethical quest to restore human dignity and accountability and is always aligned to justice. It is the acting out of divine will that makes the prophetic active. The model of the biblical prophet inspires prophetic action, which is fundamentally an expression of the will of God to reveal how things should be. After all, when prophecy is delivered, people are able to choose whether to act on it or ignore it. Action is premised on the theological presupposition that the Christian faith must be salt (preserve goodness) as well as light (illuminate) in order to be the good news of the Gospel in the world today. In this case, dub denotes a way of interpreting so that the commitment to transforming the way things are is central. In conclusion, in this chapter I have provided an understanding of dub as a hermeneutical principle. ‘To dub’ is to deconstruct. Deconstruction is a transformative process involving dismantling and reconstructing. Deconstructive activity involves taking things apart. However, rather than ending up with nothing, deconstruction seeks to rebuild. Rebuilding is guided by an emancipation ethic, which seeks out redemptive themes in history, culture and society that can be the focus for transforming the original thesis. However, emancipation calls for action; therefore, ‘to dub’ is to engage with

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the social world through prophetic action. In short, dub is a threepart process: deconstruction guided by the emancipation ethic to produce a dub or a new praxis. Hence, when referring to dub in the final section, these three movements are addressed. The next task is to ground dub in the Bible. While it is clear the word ‘dub’ will not be found in any concordance, the structure, taking apart and putting together framed by a particular motif, is an ancient practice that has resonance in Scripture and in the ministry of Jesus.

Chapter 6

Jesus dub

Given the centrality of Jesus in African Caribbean Pentecostalism,1 any meaningful hermeneutic aimed at transformation should be in dialogue with Christology – who Jesus Christ is for us today. Christology is not a homogeneous discipline, and Pentecostal traditions have their own theological peculiarities; for instance, scholarly attention in Britain has at times focused on idiosyncratic themes such as the division over Trinitarian formulae. Despite theological divisions, however, what unites African Caribbean traditions is their ‘Jesus-centricity’. To ‘have faith’ in African Caribbean Pentecostalism begins with an experience of Jesus through a pneumatic encounter with the Spirit of God. To accept God is, on one level, to practise the ethics and values of Jesus, thrashed-out through a life-long relationship with the second person of the Trinity. He is ever-present and metaphorically ‘walks and talks’ with the believer. Therefore, when Black Pentecostals sing the chorus, ‘God is not dead, He’s still alive . . . I can feel Him in my hands . . .’, it is an affirmation of the divine presence in their bodies and lives.

Political christologies In recent years Black political theologians in North America have encouraged churches to re-politicise Jesus’s ministry in order to highlight the emancipatory features of his work and its meaning for today. There are two perspectives on the politics of the Gospels. The first school argue that the Gospel is political, and that we know enough about the historical Jesus and his message to construct a coherent political message – a message that was sufficiently dangerous to require his death at the hands of the religious establishment.2

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Albert Cleage and James Cone are examples from this school of Black theology. Cleage goes as far as to argue that Jesus was a Black political leader who came to destroy the White Roman establishment.3 A more symbolic opinion is held by Cone. For Cone, Jesus was political in the sense that his message empowers the poor and outcast, both then and now. He was crucified because this message challenged the established religious and political order, and is similarly dangerous today.4 In the second school, what is important is how communities of believers interpret the message of Jesus today. Here, Jesus’s message of hope is translated and adapted to inspire socio-political change here and now.5 Within this second school are placed womanist theologians such as Kelly Brown Douglas and Jacquelyn Grant. For example, Kelly Brown Douglas states that a ‘womanist Christology’ seeks to focus on how Christ is understood within the existential context of Black people in struggle.6 Therefore, the starting point for Christology must be ‘who is Jesus Christ for us today’.7 This second school assumes that all ‘readings’ (interpretations) of Jesus are ideological – they express power relationships in the social world. In this analysis, I want to take a both/and rather than an either/or position, taking both of these perspectives seriously. In my assessment we can base the political message of Jesus today on solid socio-political themes that emerge from the Gospel of Jesus. In this chapter, cognisant of Jesus-centricity and also the politicised Christology of Black theology, I approach the subject of Jesus dub. I want to set out how Jesus in Scripture acts like a dubbist in the sense that he deconstructs and provides a new direction in the lives of those he encounters under the influence of the emancipation ethic of salvation.

Dub in the Gospels (John) There is evidence of general deconstructive work by Jesus in the Gospels. Jesus challenges and dismantles the prevailing order, symbolised in the ‘tearing’ of the temple curtains in Mark (15:38). He disrupts and overturns the status quo by offering alternative understandings of wealth, family and the law;8 a message sufficiently dangerous to require his death at the hands of the religious establishment. Jesus’s disruption includes reordering the centre and locus of divine activity. For instance, he, as the Son of God, travels with a band of followers from the lower classes; he mingles and lives with

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those considered unclean and outcast. However, as well as challenging the religious hierarchy, his ministry was also constructive – that is, his deconstruction provided new opportunities and options for those he encountered, providing physical healing, spiritual salvation and social, economic and political freedom. In short, the core content of dub, as outlined in the previous chapter, finds resonance within the life and teaching of Jesus. Interpretation involves enlarging the meaning of a text, and this is also the case with Jesus dub. I want to explore the boundaries and parameters of dub that takes place in the Gospels in order to further examine the concept of ‘emancipation’. There are two specific examples that I would like to use from the Gospel of John. These are the stories of the woman at the well and the woman caught in adultery. I have chosen these examples because they are encounters with women, and given the centrality of Black women’s experience in church life it is crucial to explore Jesus dub in dialogue with gender. Background to John’s Gospel The book of John represents an intriguing portrayal of the life and ministry of Jesus. Unlike the Synoptic Gospels, John reconfigures the traditions of Jesus to produce a unique re-reading of his life. Hence, on one level, John’s Gospel is a dub version of the life of Jesus – the tradition has been remixed to present a different perspective. Furthermore, John’s Gospel is full of codes, signifiers and signs, all of which point to Jesus as the Messiah.9 The Gospel was written between 90 and 110 CE and is understood to be a tradition that was developed and circulated amongst Jewish Christians who had been expelled from the synagogue, possibly in Ephesus, because of their faith in Jesus.10 The tension between exclusion/inclusion is also evident within the Gospel as this tension parallels the disenfranchised community of Jewish Christians and their search for emancipation.11 Hence, the Johannine text is, on a structural level, a reworking of the traditions of Jesus for the sake of meeting the needs of the disenfranchised in the present context.12 A central theological motif within the gospel is that of revelation. Jesus’s self-revelation in the Gospel is an invitation for others to engage and to be transformed.13 In other words, Jesus’s selfrevelation can be interpreted as a dub activity. I want to cite two examples of self-revelation. The first example is his encounter with the woman at the well in chapter 4.

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Woman at the Well dub 1 Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard, ‘Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John’ 2 – although it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized – 3 he left Judea and started back to Galilee. 4 But he had to go through Samaria. 5 So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. 7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink.’ 8 (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?’ 10 Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, “Give me a drink”, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.’ 11 The woman said to him, ‘Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?’ 13 Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.’ 15 The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.’ 16 Jesus said to her, ‘Go, call your husband, and come back.’ 17 The woman answered him, ‘I have no husband.’ Jesus said to her, ‘You are right in saying, “I have no husband”; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!’ 19 The woman said to him, ‘Sir, I see that you are a prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.’ 21 Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship

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in spirit and truth.’ 25 The woman said to him, ‘I know that the Messiah is coming’ (who is called Christ). ‘When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.’ 26 Jesus said to her, ‘I am he, the one who is speaking to you.’ 27 Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, ‘What do you want?’ or, ‘Why are you speaking with her?’ 28 Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, 29 ‘Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?’ (New Revised Standard Version) Elsewhere, I have laid out my ‘reading strategy’ for biblical interpretation. What I term ‘urban socio-political reading strategy’ consists of a politically conscious reader-response interpretation and also an ideological criticism of the Scripture.14 The task is to interpret the text from the location of Black urban life with the intention of making the text resonate with the socio-political struggles of everyday life.15 The social background to the story is the antipathy between Jews and Samaritans. The source of the conflict lay with Samaria being annexed from Israel by the Assyrian Empire – leading to limited contact and increased distrust and hatred as a result of disputes on ethnic purity and the authenticity of religious adherence. Hence, Jesus’s entry into the Samaritan area in this chapter is potentially problematic. So this story begins with a crossing of borders. The woman is alone, possibly due to her lowly status as a disreputable person. Even so, she is central to what Afrocentric Hebrew scholar Randall Bailey provocatively calls the ‘outing of Jesus as the Messiah’ in this narrative.16 Jesus begins this dub encounter with the focus of a studio engineer contemplating the task ahead, by asking for a drink from a Samaritan woman. The statements, ‘Give me a drink’, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again’, and ‘Go, call your husband’, are all designed to rupture ethnic and gender conventions. They introduce new options and perspectives on how ‘thirst’ for more of life can be quenched (9–15). The deconstruction is guided by an emancipation ethic – Jesus’s offering of new life and new opportunities that will truly satisfy. The woman is integral to the dub exercise and more than just a passive recipient; she participates in the dub, which also results in

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the deconstruction of Jesus. Let me explain. She poses questions that facilitate the general rupturing. Through reflective questions reflecting conflict and salvation, ‘How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink?’ and ‘Where do you get that living water?’ she participates in the deconstruction already at work. Most importantly, it is the woman who reconstructs Jesus in the narrative, when she queries his messianic status, leading to Jesus declaring himself as the Messiah (v. 26). We may consider her query both aspirational and provocative. The former suggests hope, the latter Anancy-style wisdom that solicits the desired response. As well as the woman being transformed by the encounter, Jesus is also transformed; he acknowledges himself as Messiah. Presupposing that the narrative presents Jesus as a person growing into his messianic role, the encounter in this chapter represents a major turning point. In addition, the use of the ‘I am’ formula has powerful Christological significance – causing the woman to leave what she was doing and go and tell her villagers what she has discovered.17 We are given no evidence that her social status is improved and that she is no longer an outcast. But she is not challenged or demeaned by Jesus’s disciples, who are astonished to see him conversing with a woman (27). And we may presume that the fact that those who were once her detractors embrace her testimony suggests a change in her prospects. Jesus then goes on to share his message with people in Samaria (v. 40) ensuring that this dub goes outernational – is spread from town to town like a prestigious ‘yard tape’ (sound system recording) of a sound clash. ‘Caught in adultery’ dub The second example concerns the woman caught in adultery in John 8. Whereas in the John 4 narrative Jesus operates like a studio engineer, here I want to present him as a DJ controlling the set of a sound system engaged in a border clash. In this case ‘Jesus sound system’ clashes with what we might aptly call the ‘self-righteous crowd sound system’. Deconstruction is evident, and the woman caught in adultery is not passive, but, like the woman at the well, central to the narrative. 1 while Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. 2 Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him and he sat down and began to teach them. 3 The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in

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adultery; and making her stand before all of them, 4 they said to him, ‘Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. 5 Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?’ 6 They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. 7 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, ‘Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.’ 8 And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground. 9 When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. 10 Jesus straightened up and said to her, ‘Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?’ 11 She said, ‘No one, sir.’ And Jesus said, ‘Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.’ (New Revised Standard Version) On this occasion, a challenge is set, a border-clash, ‘Jesus’s sound system’ against the ‘self-righteous crowd sound-system’ (v. 3). Their sound (the Law) is traditional, which condemns the woman to death (5). Hence, again, a woman on the margins of society, threatened by patriarchy, is integral to Jesus fulfilling his mission. She is the focus of his attention as she presents an opportunity for Jesus to usher in a new order from God. Her silence is not to be taken as passivity. The woman’s silence is full of meaning; after all, she knows her clients, many of whom were probably now standing in judgement. By remaining silent, she provides a space for Jesus to ‘step up’ and proclaim the Good News of the Gospel. Jesus, like an old-fashioned selector searching for the right record to play, stoops down and writes on the ground and contemplates before ‘playing the perfect track in response’ (vv. 7, 8). He offers a dub version of the law and reworks it so that its core elements are restructured. In this ‘Jesus adultery dub’, self-righteous judgement and hypocrisy are faded out and replaced by compassion and forgiveness – an implicit challenge to male violence against women, both then and now (7). The crowd have to reflect upon hearing the new version that does not support the law but places the focus on the individuals involved. They realise that they can’t compete; they go home convicted, their sexism and hypocrisy having been exposed (9). Having won the clash, Jesus’s status is enhanced, but he knows that he has not won this battle by himself and he acknowledges the role the woman has played in his

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victory by providing space for the promise of God’s salvation to break through (11). This woman, like the woman at the well, after playing her part in his transformation leaves this dub encounter liberated and empowered to live a new life. In this second encounter Jesus not only answers his rivals like a DJ, but is also a dubbist involved in taking apart and reconstructing a human life and transforming unjust social structures and practices. Furthermore, this Jesus dub is not an individual effort, but instead a team effort, empowered by the presence and participation of a woman. However, no mention is made of the man who was caught in adultery with her. So while it is clear that the woman is dubbed, the dub does not extend to both parties – there are boundaries. In summary, in this chapter, I have demonstrated how dub as a hermeneutic of emancipation is illustrated in two examples from the life of Jesus. What I want to note here is that, first, Jesus dub is inspired by emancipation. The core message is the liberating power of God to save and restore that which appears lost. But, within the adultery narrative the guilty male is not addressed, so that one aspect of patriarchy within the story remains unchecked. Even so, it is clear that this dub seeks inclusion for what womanist Jacquelyn Grant calls ‘little people’: the socially excluded and marginalised.18 Finally, in Jesus dub, the dubbist is not separate from the creative/ transformative process; in the first story he reveals himself as the Messiah. All of which means that to engage in this process the dubbist must always be open to the prospect of transformation. In the next chapter I want to explore the dynamics of Jesus Dub by engaging the ideas explored so far with sociologist and sound system DJ William (Lez) Henry. As mentioned previously, personal experience is an important epistemic tool in African diasporan cultures. Therefore, this dialogue teases out hidden narratives and themes in relation to the engagement and exchange of church hall and dancehall.

Chapter 7

Echo chamber Dialogue with William (Lez) Henry

William (Lez) Henry is a sociologist at Goldsmiths College, University of London, and is uniquely placed to discuss sound system cultures as both DJ and scholar. Lez, I am interested in connections between the dancehall and the church hall. I have discovered that from the location of the church there was always a ‘secret’ borrowing of dancehall styles – the music, dress and even language at times. Was there a similar process at work in dancehall – borrowing from the church? WILLIAM HENRY: I would say there was always a dialogue between the Black church and the dancehall and in fact I believe that the way the sound systems were set-up was akin to being part of a congregation. The DJ was there to uplift with the spoken word, ‘like a pastor ah preach’, often conducting the ‘crowdah people’ in a dubwise version of the most popular hymns and praise songs. I remember when I first played my parents some of my dancehall performances in 1982; my mother said to me that there is no difference between a preacher, a singer or a DJ, as they must move the people with the word. For instance, on one occasion in 1983, in a ‘Ghetto-tone Sound System’ dance in south-east London, ‘Saxon’s’ Papa Levi had the whole place rocking with ‘Oh when the saints go marching in’ with nuff ‘haul an pull-ups’ and a little reggaemattical twist. This was not an unusual occurrence, as one of my favourite yard-tapes, from 1980, featured ‘Stereophonic Sound System’, dedicating about 30 minutes of ‘raving time’ to various church songs. What makes this cassette a classic is that the congregation was led by General Echo, AKA Ranking Slackness (this is why I challenge the simplistic idea that DJs are either/or, ‘slackness’ or ‘culture’) and featured Brigadier Jerry, Sugar Minnot, Barrington Levi, ROBERT BECKFORD:

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Sister Nancy, Madoo, Barry Brown and Scorcher the God Father to name but a few. That is why reggae-dancehall culture is replete with examples of DJs identifying themselves as preachers, doing God’s work and drawing heavily on Rastafari and other forms of Christian values. And as I argue in my writings, I do not know any reggae performer – and I include dancehall in this – who does not acknowledge the presence of the Divine, via the church or otherwise, in their works. ROBERT BECKFORD: I like the fact that dancehall pays homage to African Caribbean church life because the church engages in similar practices but they are deeply encoded like the ‘worship leaders’, borrowing dancehall styles. I remember hearing raggastyle drum-beats and keyboard rifts backing choruses at Sunday morning Pentecostal services when the genre emerged in African Caribbean communities in Birmingham. But the politics of what was taking place was rarely acknowledged; it was always implicit, rarely explicit. Although I can remember one occasion in the mid-90s when a dancehall DJ, who was a recent convert to Christianity, inserted dancehall style lyrics into a church song. The congregation ‘loved it’ and from that moment, at that church anyway, the merger was ‘sanctified’. Today the borrowing is most clearly seen in the craft of international Christian DJs like Lieutenant Stitchie and local Brummies like Witness. Given the similarities in structure, how do you account for the general antipathy that exists between the two traditions? I mean, no one in the church is going to stand up and say, ‘I heard this at the dancehall last night and wanted to play it for you this morning.’ WILLIAM HENRY: The Stitchie case is interesting as he performed at my mother’s church in Blackheath, south-east London in May 2004. When I asked her what she thought of his performance she suggested he sounded the same as he always did, just different lyrics. She was familiar with ‘Young Gal Wear You Size’ as it was hot when we were in Jamaica when it was a number one and I think this speaks to the ‘tension’ between the church and the dancehall. You see, many people I know, who frequent the dancehalls, also go to church, but comfortably manage these aspects of their religious and social lives. I think the way this works is that they accept the different customs and ways to behave in each sphere and act accordingly. Yet ironically their Christian sensibilities will guide what they expose themselves to in the dancehalls and in this sense the songs they are gener-

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ally exposed to, could be sung in church but perhaps to a more ‘acceptable’ beat. I am thinking particularly of tunes like Garnett Silk’s ‘Christ in His Kingly Character’, Lady Saw’s ‘Glory Be To God’ or Sanchez D’s ‘Praise Him’. For those I have in mind, much like myself, will not go to see a ‘slackness’ performer or listen to a ‘slackness’ sound system. Just the same way as you wouldn’t expect to hear ‘slackness’ played at a wedding or a christening. That is why I am not sure if it is an antipathy per se, but perhaps it is rather the unspoken recognition of the necessary boundaries between the ‘worlian’ [non-Christian] and the Christian that need to be maintained for each space to function credibly and autonomously. ROBERT BECKFORD: What most interests me in this examination is dub. I’ve explored the form as having religious folk roots and the role of the engineer/dubbist as a trickster, reworking and encoding the elements of the track. Reflecting on your experience how do you understand dub? WILLIAM HENRY: Dub music is in many ways central to all I am and can be as an Afrikan in Europe’s ‘new world’, for without it there would have been no vehicle for me to DJ and express my innermost concerns at being alienated in the land of my birth. You see, I remember the times when as a youth growing up in the ‘united sindom’, as I call it, I could not wait to get my hands on the dub versions of my favourite tunes. There was something about immersing myself in those Jamaican rhythms that no other form of music can ever come close to and I still listen to dub now. But as a youth, I would rework the dub tunes in my mind whilst taking them in at a club or at home and they would move my spirit in ways that words cannot describe. And that for me is the key because the movement is physical, literally skanking or dancing to the dubwise version, and psychological, providing that space where the music is the key to upliftment as a form of cathartic experience. So the little snippets of the vocal that were transformed through echo or reverb, or even those rhythmic re-workings of instruments that sounded like words, would become the foundation for my own social commentary in the form of poems and later DJ lyrics. Moreover, when thinking of the dubbist as a trickster figure, Jah Shaka has to be the greatest example of that notion. He has been dubbing up sessions for over thirty years. I remember in 1994 I went to Leeds with Musclehead, the owner of Saxon Sound System, who were then the number one juggling Sound

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playing popular Reggae-dancehall music. The session featured Saxon and Jah Shaka and when Shaka ‘signed-on’, Saxon had to sign off. The ‘crowd of people’ would not let them play again as Shaka was generating some serious energy in there and if you have ever taken in his performances you will know that they are amazing. He uses one turntable but the sounds never stops, so before the usage of two turntables to keep the vibes flowing he would maintain the vibe by using echo, reverb and flanges and seamlessly link all of the elements into one mind-boggling outernational experience. ROBERT BECKFORD: I really like the meditative and transformative qualities you describe, especially the idea of instrumental music having its own narrative. The spirituality of dub captured by Lloyd Bradley, who connects the art of dubbing to Africancentred religious practices, particularly the herbalist seeking balance and harmony. He rightly identifies the pharmacosm [healing] of sound in African cultures. My focus here has been on the technical process: the deconstructive work of the engineer, transforming the track so that we listen to it in new ways. I believe that dub as a technical art has power because it causes us to hear and think in new ways – we listen to the dub version and hear something new. As a Rasta and DJ how would you describe the power that dub has? WILLIAM HENRY: Dub is a signifying practice that can speak in various ways to the listener and a good way to think about it is how dub tunes are used as weapons in sound clashes. More so in the past than nowadays, I expect, when ‘specials’ really were oneoffs and could only be played by one or two sound systems. However, what really made these occasions awesome was the fact that you could have four different sets playing version after version of the same rhythm track, but trust me, the sound that had the wickedest version would win. That more than anything speaks to the power of dub because I cannot think of any other musical scenario where this could, or even would, work. Because we are not talking about scratching to change the version. We are talking about something that has been remixed, reworked and revamped in such a way that it’s almost like judgement time when it drops in a session. That is why in Jamaica the selectors began warning their opponents as to what part of their anatomy the dub would reach; ‘straight to you head’; ‘straight to you body’; ‘straight to you chest so you can’t digest’. This idea also speaks to Reggae Bob’s [Bob Marley]

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‘when the music hits you, you feel no pain’, which is why I agree with what Bradley suggested, as most of us are aware of the healing power of the drums and also the fact that drumming, the Afrikan heartbeat, is central to Rastafari. And it’s funny that I see myself as Rastafari in much the same way as you speak about the transforming power of dub, because you can take the elements that are around you, remix them, and locate yourself within the faith. That is why for me they are both aspects of Afrikan renewal and dubwise, like Rastafari, is always about the version or counteraction that empowers and uplifts. A touch of Amiri Baraka’s ‘the changing same’ where the elements are familiar but the vibe speaks to contemporary concerns. ROBERT BECKFORD: It is clear that sound system culture even today is resistance space. The affirmations of Black life, critique of racism(s) and the articulation of alternative social and economic relationships have been implicit in the structure and performance of the tradition. Whether in Jamaica or Britain sound system cultures still engage in transgressive activity – challenging, provoking and resisting. Carolyn Cooper gets to the heart of it by rethinking the term ‘border clash’, to express its encroachment into other spaces and places. How would you describe and assess this socio-political function? WILLIAM HENRY: Sound systems function within Black outernational communities as, among many other things, conduits for change. Foremost in my mind is because they provide the amplified platforms from which the sounds are pumped and experienced in alternative public arenas, the reggae-dancehalls. This means that without them there would have been no outlet for the dub versions nor the DJs that ‘ride on those rhythms’. For this reason, I always argue that without sound systems and the spaces they played in, the Black communities in Britain would have had no viable, autonomous means to challenge much that is suggested about our presence in a White, racist society. You see this is the difference between what Carolyn Cooper calls a ‘counter-culture’ as opposed to an ‘over-the-counter culture’, where the focus is not just on resistance, but also transcendence. That is also why I argue against any account that tries to locate sound system culture within sub-cultural perspectives, as the culture is a vehicle and medium for change that is futureoriented. By this I mean you can use music to detail a ruptured past, a ‘downpressed’ present, and a future that holds promise for those who ‘overstand’ why we are faced with the problems

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we are by virtue of the skin we were born in. Thus, sound systems and the music they play are many things to many different people, but I think that a fundamental purpose they serve is summed up by drawing on the thoughts of Paul Gilroy, who suggests that they ‘dissolve the distinction between art and life’ and give people the courage to go on living in the present. A notion that I explore in much of my work as the dancehall sessions they predominate enable the potency of a pro-Black Afrocentric, social, cultural, political and historical perspective to be heard without compromise. ROBERT BECKFORD: Your description of the socio-political function in some ways mirrors aspects of the functions of the church hall. The worship service is a powerhouse experience where the Spirit of God touches human flesh, creating the hybrid identities expressed in the concept of ‘Black Christian’. Forged in worship, Black Christian identities in general and African Caribbean in particular, enable Black people to negotiate the existential absurdity of being Black in a White society. There are three things that stand out for me. Worship enables people to struggle for change through personal change. This is what, I believe, Spirit possession is all about – the power of the Holy Spirit to change you – so that you can overcome the ‘world’. For African Caribbean Christians the world has always meant more than personal sin, as it also refers in a coded way to the wickedness of the social systems responsible for marginalising Black life. There is also a realised eschatology within the theology of the church hall, where the power of the future is dragged into the present so that all the joy, power and peace of the future Kingdom of God is experienced now. Finally, worship enables people to engage with what Stuart Hall calls ‘the ideological negotiation of resistance’. In this case, church space, as ‘Black space’, affirms Black bodies and Black noise through the acknowledgement that these physical attributes are ‘vessels’ or conduits of the divine. This is why I believe the church hall is one space where Blackness in most of its forms is affirmed and celebrated, but always challenged and re-worked through the dialogue with the Spirit; it is a counter-ideology. But where it fails to mirror sound system politics is in the explicit articulation of politics. It saddens me to say that I have sat through hundreds of sermons and can’t recall one that engages with racism or sexism inside or outside of the church.

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Even though, as Valentina Alexander had demonstrated, these issues may be encoded, they are rarely explicit. Why do you feel that dancehall space has been able to engage in counterhegemonic rhetoric and practices? WILLIAM HENRY: The spaces where sound systems dominate will always have that aspect where we ‘chant down Babylon’ with no apology and no compromise, as these cultural spaces were ‘won’ and remain true to why the culture manifested itself in Jamaican dancehalls in the first place. It is not enough to recognise that you are ‘downpressed’ by a system that seeks to control your every thought and action and then not seek to find a means of resisting and transcending said system. To do so goes against the idea of reggae music being the voice of the Black sufferer who recognises that your enemy, Black and White ‘downpressors’, will not provide you with a public platform for your alternative views when presented in this way. However, they may just ‘allow’ you to build a church, for they recognise that much that is suggested within the church is directed at the congregation, who often separate themselves from the street. Sound systems are the street and thus represent street knowledge par excellence, a point that was raised by Champion, a British DJ who told me that he ‘DJs for the roadman them’, as he has a ‘road man mentality’. What he is arguing is that you are the unwanted other in this racist society when you are on the road, thus irrespective of whether you are a Christian, a Muslim, Rastafari or whatever, you will be treated accordingly. If this is the reality then you should choose to do something about it, and as a DJ in a dancehall, on a sound system, you can for various reasons. One reason is that the restrictions that would be placed on you if you were speaking from the pulpit do not apply as such and the DJ can present their take on social realism, using whatever language they feel is appropriate to, as you suggest, ‘make it plain’; backed by some serious ‘megawattage’. Another reason that springs to mind is that in the dancehalls the ‘ideological negotiation’ becomes a practical negotiation, as the knowledge that is exchanged must be seen to effect real change, both physically and psychologically. This aspect is akin to Garvey’s notion of the ‘social gospel’ where belief in God has to mobilise the Black sufferer to acknowledge the power of the divine through worship, but then do something

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to empower the community. The church does this but in a way that excludes the ‘street people’ who may not go to church, and as such, in my opinion, weakens its role in the wider Black community, where it may well be respected as an organising force, but crucially not as a mobilising force. Yet, ironically, many of the sound systems still use the church hall for their sessions, and during these moments, especially in ‘culture’ dances, that space takes on a far more potent role in Black political life. This is because in cases like this the dancehalls are spaces that Black people have palpable control over, as we generally ‘own’ them legally or otherwise, and as such are not really beholden to anyone and do not have to adhere to a set doctrine – something that is predominant in many churches, which is why I suppose that even if a preacher wanted to tell it like it is, plain and simple, there are protocols they are bound by and thus will resort to tropes or other forms of ‘encoding’ or ‘signifying’ that may well speak to the concerns but for many will have little practical merit. ROBERT BECKFORD: The idea of ‘roadman’ lyrics resonates with Black political theology’s prioritisation of the Black oppressed. We make our point of departure from traditional Western theology the existential concerns of working-class, workingpoor Black people. For this reason, we speak of a ‘God of the oppressed’, or in my case a ‘God of the Rahtid’, and develop a ‘theology of liberation/emancipation’. An important turning point in Black liberation theology was the introduction of womanist perspectives. Womanist identified the sexist presuppositions at work in both Black theology and the Black church. For instance, they made us aware that at the level of the local African Caribbean congregation, women, while not always occupying positions of power, are the real power-base. Elaine Foster calls this system the ‘inverted pyramid’ of Black church leadership. In some ways this church model mirrors what Carolyn Cooper identifies as the centrality of Black women in dancehall culture – despite the male domination of the sound system, the women are in the middle of the dance floor celebrating what Cooper calls a Black woman’s fertility rite. How would you assess the influence of Black women on sound system cultures? WILLIAM HENRY: I agree with what Cooper suggests in many respects. The sound system selectors will always cater for the female

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presence because the space is designed to bring men and women together. On one level it is about dancing and having a good time and raving the night away, and on another level it is about celebrating the female presence in the celebratory ways that Cooper mentions, where the female becomes the focal point of male attention in a heterosexual drama. But on another level the female presence determines what type of session we experience, as the theme of the dance is set before the set strings up and begins to play. In fact, during the heyday of the British DJ scene, let’s say the early to late 1980s, many sound systems who only focused on DJ-ing and clashing with dub-plates saw their female following fall off dramatically in many cases. This naturally impacted on their following as those who were looking for a wider brand of entertainment would go elsewhere, and this perhaps explains why many dancehall folk defected to the soul scene during the mid-eighties. However, many sound systems like ‘Diamonds The Girl’s Best Friend’, from west London, maintained their following as they played a wide selection of music to cater for all tastes. So if you went to one of their sessions you were guaranteed to hear ragga, lovers, soul, roots reggae and any other form of Black music that was popular during that moment. I also believe that although there were now many females up-front, as you suggest, their roles in determining the shape and balance of dancehall culture is always acknowledged, and remember as well that some of the sound systems such as ‘V Rocket’, were owned or co-owned by men and women. Equally, men and women promote many of the sessions, and thus the economic aspect needs to be considered in this form of analysis as it fits into the idea of the informal economies that are created and maintained by a strong Black female presence. ROBERT BECKFORD: If dancehall space is resistance space and gender inclusive – if sometimes encoded and hidden from the observer – how far can we take the practice of resistance? How far does it extend? Does it have boundaries? There are boundaries in the church hall. The ‘worlian’ can enter, but to become a member he/she has to conform to the moral and ethical dictates. As a result, there are some people who will never enter or become part of the tradition. In your experience, have you identified ways in which this space is oppressive? In other words, are there sections of the community that will never find it liberating?

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Yes of course there are aspects of dancehall culture that are oppressive, which I have always found a serious concern and do in fact address in many of my own lyrics and writing. For instance, there is often a narrow idea of what it means to be a man or a woman framed in a hyper-masculinity that dominates the space, which is highly problematic and many sound systems feed off that, and directly into that, as do many DJs. The obvious ways are the nihilistic tendencies, which suggest that everything you don’t agree with should get shot, or whatever punishment they deem necessary, usually in the name of God. Now, I more than most appreciate the manner in which DJs use words in this metaphoric sense, but for me the danger lies in these views being reinforced, so we have the suggestions that women are there for the service of these macho man DJs, and as such need to conform to some of the most damaging stereotypes you can imagine. In this sense the space can be oppressive, as it is in many ways dominated by a form of conservatism that does not seem clear as to what it wishes to conserve. I am thinking about instances of ‘shadism’ where the DJs or soundmen will celebrate and boost-up the lighter-skinned women to the extent that darker-skinned women are encouraged to avoid the video light. In fact, in one of my tunes I released in 1996, ‘Time To Make A Change’ (which commercial radio stations would not play) I dealt with many of these concerns and suggested:

WILLIAM HENRY:

‘Black ah fight Black skin what’s happening, ah seh them prefer the brownin to the Blacknin, that foolish attitude I’ve never understood, it’s like when people used to tell me she me hair no good, now if you check history that notion of beauty, is ah mentality the legacy of slavery, an if you want you mind free don’t worship White imagery, just put you race first like Marcus Garvey. I am suggesting that although the space has that libratory potential there are still many concerns that need to be aired and discussed, as the culture is not just about resistance, but is also about transcendence. ROBERT BECKFORD: I think the counter-cultural work you have proposed is important and necessary, representing the best of dancehall counter-culture – when it critiques itself in order to maintain its transgressive and revolutionary qualities. But what

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of the future? In this exploration, I am reflecting on a particular period of our history, ‘when reggae was king’, in order to do some corrective work. I want to dissolve some of the lines drawn between the church hall and dancehall. After all, most if not all of Black British cultural theory has neglected the importance of African Caribbean Christianity as a major dialogue partner with African diasporan cultures. From the revolutionary Paul Bogel to the singer Estelle (to parody Cornel West), faith matters. However, you have alluded to the fact that things have changed in dancehall culture since the heydays of the ’70s and ’80s. Diversity of music in the Black community, the rise of hiphop and rap culture, as well as more options of where and when to rave, have all contributed to the marginalising of sound clashes in Black communities. ‘Bashment’, the contemporary reworking of dancehall sound clash, like its predecessor, continues to influence musical styles as well as politics in the Black community, but is less dominant. What is your assessment of the current state of sound system cultures today? WILLIAM HENRY: I think that sound system culture is coming out of a transition period, which began about a decade or so ago with the (pirate) radio disc jockeys taking on the mantle of the social commentators, voicing the concerns of the Black community. Also during this period the emphasis was on selectors turning up, taking turns to play their selections of music with one sound system in attendance. These also meant that many of the selectors began to ad-lib and create a new vibe where they became the main voice and would clash with other selectors, sometimes on the same sound system. One reason why this occurred was that the DJs in Jamaica were more often than not featured on stage shows and this meant that the dancehall aspect suffered, as there were not many DJs to chant on the sound systems. Similarly, when the sound systems do meet these are usually under clash circumstances, where the selectors once again dominate the proceedings. A factor that I believe explains why the potency of the form, as a counter-cultural voice for the Black downpressed, has suffered during this transitional phase, both here in Britain and in Jamaica, for the emphasis has been on chorus and punch-line recordings that often have little social, cultural or political merit. However, I have noticed that sound systems are re-emerging, as some of the youths who are coming through now are using them to express their innermost

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concerns. What is significant is that they are not just expressing them in DJ-style, as they are rapping (which is not new to sound system culture) and doing spoken-word performances as well that are spiritually uplifting and inspiring. Moreover, many of these youths are acknowledging the presence of the divine as a key factor in the works they are currently doing, which is not that surprising to me as there are not many Black performers that I know of who do not do so. This is a point that I explore in some of my work as I think it is central to a repositioning of the Black subject in a White racist society in which all of the saviours, real or imagined, are White. Thus, the idea of a Black God enables many of us to think ourselves into being, and acknowledge the power of the divine, free from the shackles of a hegemonic White Jesus, who is often a point of reference in these types of session that are based on a reclamation of an autonomous self. Thus, the dialogue you speak of between the ‘worlians’ and Christians of the African diaspora is undeniably ever-present in Black musical cultures, never more so than when they are ‘resisting against the system’ on the amplified platforms that are the reggae sound systems. This said, you still have the die-hard folk who ensure that when popular sound systems are playing those dances are still rammed, especially ‘Twelve Tribe’ [a denomination within the Rastafarian Movement] gatherings, and Jah Shaka is always guaranteed a full-house wherever he strings-up. I have also noticed that Jamaican DJs have started to chat on sound systems again and I recently heard a Jaro tape with many of the pioneers chatting alongside some up-and-coming youths. In fact, I think this shift has already begun to influence the recorded output of many performers, as I am hearing more conscious tunes being played that are addressing many of the key issues. So for me there is hope that the medium of the sound system will continue to be used to ‘chant down Babylon’, for when this happens it is a qualitatively different experience from any other form of Black expressive and transgressive culture that preaches a social gospel of resistance and transcendence. In the next section, I want to mobilise dub as heuristic, in order to make connections with aspects of Christian thought and practice. Specifically, I want to address some of the pressing concerns facing African Caribbean Christianity. I begin with the work of the Holy Spirit – that is, Spirit dub.

Part III

Dub theology and social change

Chapter 8

Spirit dub Towards heteroglossia

In this third section, I want to explore how dub as a theological paradigm can transform aspects of African Caribbean Christian thought and practice. It is not my intention to detail the process in minute detail, but instead to identify how dub operates as an implicit process that guides and shapes how we re-work Christian thought. As mentioned at the end of chapter 5, the key aspects of dub are deconstruction guided by the emancipation ethic to produce a dub version. These three themes will appear as key registers of the process of dubbing at hand. In this first chapter of this final section, I want to dub the understanding of the workings of the Holy Spirit, or pneumatology. This is because the working of the Spirit has been a central theme in African Caribbean Christianity. You cannot ‘have church’ (worship) in this tradition without the active tangible presence of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is welcomed at every service and believers expect a manifestation of the Spirit in line with biblical teaching. In recent years, this hallmark has been the subject of increased debate. Unfortunately, the catalyst for these discussions has come from negative news coverage of deliverance ministries and prosperity teaching.1 What has intrigued me most about this ‘new’ wave of interest is that the work of the Spirit is still grounded in the ‘old’ categories of the personal/private/ecstatic views that were popular amongst the first generation of African Caribbean migrants to Britain. The lack of any meaningful development in relationship to the social and cultural world makes pneumatology ripe for a dub experience. This chapter is therefore an offering – an alternative evaluation of the Spirit based on the content and practice of dub outlined in chapters 5 and 6. This chapter has three parts. I will begin with a brief deconstruction of the origins of African Caribbean Pentecostal pneumatology.

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As mentioned previously, deconstruction is iconoclastic, challenging the status quo in order to make room for new interpretations. I will reveal an emancipation ethic rooted in an alternative reading of the birth of Western Pentecostalism. Finally, I will present a dub version, a new way of hearing and experiencing the Spirit through the central doctrinal mark of African Caribbean Pentecostalism: speaking in tongues.

Deconstruction Origins Most African Caribbean churches trace their theology of the Spirit back to what Pentecostal scholars call the ‘Western origins of the Pentecostalism’,2 – that is, the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles in 1906. The birth of Pentecostalism is the result of a culmination of factors. These include the theological sensibilities of the American Holiness Movement, Charles Fox Parham’s theologising on glossolalia and Black Holiness preacher William Seymour’s implicit institutionalising of the Pentecostal experience at the Azusa Street Mission. Holiness The nineteenth-century Holiness Movement in America emerged as a counter-cultural Christian tradition in direct response to what were considered negative modern traits – secularisation, industrialisation and the rise of science and Darwinism in America.3 It was informed initially by the work and theology of British preacher Charles Wesley (1703–91). Wesley’s doctrine of a ‘second blessing’ by the Holy Spirit, after the salvation of a believer or what he termed ‘sanctification/ perfect love’, struck a cord amongst evangelical Protestantism in the early and mid-Nineteenth Century in America. This was especially so amongst those seeking to find a doctrinal remedy to a hostile and changing world – in this case, seeking solace in a deeper experience of faith to cope with and overcome the perils of the world outside. Holiness was not a coherent or structured movement: it was a mixed coalition split not only along theological lines but also on grounds of class, gender, geography and race.4 Nor did it retain a purely British focus, as indigenous issues and concerns in the American context impacted upon theological discussions on the work of the Spirit.5

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In their quest for a deeper relationship with God, holiness preachers explored at length the content and essence of holiness – that is, to be set apart or sanctified by God. They arrived at various positions. A main concern centred on whether there were two or three spiritual ‘blessings’ to be experienced by the believer after salvation, and in what order they occurred.6 There were three major positions on the continued work of the Spirit after ‘personal salvation’.7 The Wesleyan Methodists, who were part of a fledgling holiness tradition, believed in ‘entire sanctification’. This was a deep cleansing by the Spirit; rooting out the desire to sin was a ‘second blessing’, following salvation. The Keswick view emerged from the Keswick Conferences, a collection of evangelicals from Europe who met in the Lake District (UK) for several years from 1875. Influenced by Reformed theologians, this perspective emphasised the second blessing or baptism in the Spirit for the sake of Christian service – that is to say, it provided spiritual power. The third position, which was eventually adopted by most Black Pentecostals is that a believer could undergo a second blessing of sanctification and a third blessing of baptism in the Spirit accompanied by glossolalia, or speaking in tongues. The Holiness Movement, and its incumbent conversations on the nature of salvation, sanctification and tongues was the context for the emergence of one of the founding fathers of the Pentecostal movement, Charles Fox Parham (1837–1929). Parham Parham was the second ‘major player’ in the emergence of a doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Initially a Methodist, he eventually became an independent holiness preacher, setting up a healing mission. Two years later he set up a Bible school near Topeka, Kansas. Through preaching and personal reflection he became convinced that the ‘third blessing’, speaking in tongues, was available to believers and should be pursued. In December 1900 he experienced the gift for himself and propagated his ideas through his newspaper, The Apostolic Faith. Despite his commitment to the power of the Spirit, there were boundaries to his faith: he was a committed racist. Black people were admitted to his school, but were not allowed to sit inside his classrooms. In recent years revisionist Pentecostal historians have reinterpreted this practice sympathetically, suggesting that Blacks sitting outside the classroom represents a compromise by Parham.8 Parham is pivotal for two reasons. He was the first to pursue

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glossolalia as evidence of salvation. That is to say, to have the blessing of the Holy Spirit promised in Acts 2 was to have the gift of tongues.9 Furthermore, the man credited by some as the ‘acceptable’ founder of the Pentecostal movement, the Black holiness preacher William Seymour, sat outside the classroom in 1905 while Parham taught. Parham may have provided Seymour with the theological impetus to preach the gift of the Spirit but Seymour’s motivation and purpose was his own. Seymour William Seymour (1870–1922) was the third influence on the development of Pentecostalism. A Black American raised in the South and the son of slaves, he was unique in that his Christian experience, before meeting Parham, was shaped by a desire for inter-racial fellowship in church and an immersion in the rich religious and cultural traditions of Black worship.10 After accepting Parham’s doctrine – glossolalia as evidence of the Holy Spirit (a third blessing) – Seymour began to preach in Los Angeles early in 1906, after accepting the invitation to be pastor at the Azusa Street Mission, a small Black Holiness congregation. After a series of prayer meetings members of his congregation also experienced glossolalia in 1906.11 However, Seymour brought more to the Pentecostal table than tongues. In addition to his African American spirituality, the dynamism of speaking in tongues as evidence of Spirit baptism, was a real desire for an inclusive ministry. Although others had focused on the role of glossolalia as the initial sign of being filled with the Spirit, it was Seymour who made an implicit connection between glossolalia and social transformation. A generation before the Civil Rights Movement and Dr Martin Luther King, Seymour realised that one’s commitment to the Gospel of Christ should not result in ‘racialised’ or gendered discrimination. Therefore, one could not have tongues and continue with forms of social discrimination: ‘In the Los Angeles Revival White bishops and Black workers, men and women, Asians and Mexicans, White professors and Black laundry women were equals (this in 1906!).’12 Azusa was inherently egalitarian, in stark contrast to the American form of apartheid that surrounded it.13 Sadly, as the movement grew it became difficult to secure doctrinal consensus and this was also true regarding the role of ‘race’. White Americans who received the gift of tongues at Azusa during its most influential period (1906–11)

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were rarely willing to embrace racial integration in their congregations. Consequently, as Pentecostalism grew and became ‘Whiter’ and more middle class, the radical connection between glossolalia and social justice was lost – a view shared by Walter Hollenweger. He states that the radical origins of Pentecostalism have been dulled by generations of Pentecostals and Charismatics unaware of the radical inclusive motifs inherent in their doctrinal origins.14 As mentioned in chapter 2, these de-politicised Pentecostal traditions made their way to the Caribbean in the second and third decades of the Twentieth Century. Consequently, it should be of no surprise that Pentecostal and Charismatic churches in Britain have little memory of the historical connection between glossolalia, community and justice. Caribbean influence Not only is African Caribbean church pneumatology influenced by Azusa, it also shares an inheritance from Africa and the Caribbean. As noted above, the traditional African religions did not completely disappear throughout the course of slavery. Instead, they survived in a variety of forms often invisible to slave masters and missionaries, and woven into the African adaptation of European Christianity (Revival). Caribbean theologian Kortright Davis describes the central impulse of African retention as the ‘African soul’, an all-pervasive sense of an all-powerful God that energised the community and formed the central matrix for the African reworking of Christianity: The African soul or life force has little to do with the configuration of souls or their spheres of influence. It has to do with the spiritual matrix – the source of meaning and worth for all that energizes African existence. It is that which accepts the continuing presence of God as the Great Ancestor and therefore seeks to share in God’s creative activity. . . . The African life force underlies the African people’s deep sense of communalism – the sense that ‘I am only because we are’. . . . African people believe strongly in the immediacy of supernatural beings who share with ordinary persons a common existence and who must be appropriately addressed for the welfare of the whole community. This belief gives concreteness to religion, a historical foundation to spirituality, and an integrated approach to the dominant view of the world, so that there is hardly any distinction between sacred and secular, or between matter and spirit.15

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The African soul is a holistic impulse engendering community and open cosmology. These African religious forms find their way into Jamaican Revivalism and also the Pentecostal traditions.16 In relation to pneumatology, arguably the clearest evidence of this continuation of African forms amongst the Caribbean diaspora is the sense of living within an open spiritual system. Roswith Gerloff captures its essence in worship when she states: In Britain, Black believers encounter that kind of a rapture, which takes a human being beyond its narrow confines unto a new plane of existence, or into the ‘inner court’ of an awareness of the presence of the Divine, which opens up a new perception of life and the self.17 This super-rational worldview recognises the counterforce of evil. Consequently, in African Caribbean church life today believers are encouraged to discern between the presence of true and false spirits (1 John 4:1). Hence, it is not uncommon to hear African Caribbean Christians speak of ‘spiritual warfare’, ‘demonic oppression’ or ‘spiritual protection’ when expressing the cosmic battles taking place around them. In this schema good and evil are not consigned to one domain but scattered throughout reality. I will return to the Azusa Mission and the holistic impetus of African Caribbean spirituality later when discussing the need for a more comprehensive pneumatology that engages with all of life. But for now it is expedient to explore the basic elements of church pneumatology; that is, the stripped-down basics that form the raw material for a remix. The work of the spirit in contemporary African Caribbean Christianity (Pentecostalism) I want to focus on three areas central to this tradition. These are: experiencing the Spirit, spiritual knowledge and gifts of the Spirit. Experiencing the Spirit African Caribbean churches, particularly those influenced by Pentecostalism, stress the centrality of experiencing the Spirit. No matter where they are, whether in a church service or in personal private prayer, believers are encouraged to invoke the presence and

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power of the Holy Spirit. This is why at the start of many worship services songs and prayers invite the Spirit of God to participate: Welcome, welcome, welcome Blessed Holy Ghost we welcome you Come with power and fill this temple Blessed Holy Ghost we welcome you Experiencing the Spirit is not symbolic or merely cerebral but holistic, encompassing the physical and emotional. Roswith Gerloff makes use of Luther P. Garlach and Virginia Hine’s assessment of these activities as the ‘revitalisation of the panhuman capacity for supra-rational, ecstatic experience’.18 The sense of expectation, of a holistic encounter is captured in the lyrics of the ‘old time’ chorus ‘God is not Dead’: God is not dead He’s still alive I can feel him in my hands I can feel him in my feet I can feel him all over Feel him all over me This chorus is an ‘action chorus’, in which the congregation act out the words of the song so that voice, body and Spirit connect in the affirmation of God’s abiding presence through what Cornel West terms ‘kinetic orality and compassionate physicality’.19 The Spirit, as an outpouring from God, is based on images in the Hebrew and Greek texts where the image of the Spirit as water is used to describe the Spirit’s outpouring on humanity (Isaiah 32:15; St John: 4:10). In Revelation, the Spirit as water is an apocalyptic symbol of life-giving water from the throne of God (Revelation 22:1–2). Experiencing the Spirit in worship is necessary for a deeper life or closer walk with God. In the same way that the Spirit led Jesus after his baptism (Matt 4:1) through difficult circumstances, believers are to expect to be led by the Spirit. This is why African Caribbean Christians often speak of the transformative power of worship. It is a means of growing in faith and developing a new awareness of God through encountering the Spirit. Intriguingly, in this chorus the Spirit and God are conflated so that sensing God is simultaneously feeling the Spirit. Womanist theological literature acknowledges the theological significance of

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conflating God the creator and Jesus so that sharp lines are not always drawn between the three persons of the Trinity.20 How does the experience of the Spirit rate in relationship to the counter-ideology of African Caribbean Christianity? It is clear from reflections on Western Pentecostalism (Azusa) that this encounter has served to counter the fixed identity of racial oppression. Less dramatically, within African Caribbean pneumatology, encountering the Spirit is always life-transforming. Nicole Rodriguez Toulis suggests that the experience of worship in Black churches provides an ideological framework that facilitates the negotiation of identity – the ability to engage in a meaningful way with a hostile social climate through the creation of a new sense of self.21 Hence, the encountering of the Spirit in worship has a psychosocial function, providing a context for reconstructing the Black self as whole, dynamic and free. Experiencing the Spirit in worship also affirms the didactic work of the Spirit. This leads to the second aspect of African Caribbean church pneumatology: spiritual knowledge. Spiritual knowledge The emphasis on dynamic worship as a transformative experience promotes a belief that spiritual experience rather than cognition produces real knowledge and wisdom. Within this schema, the Holy Spirit of God is a conduit of divine knowledge communicated to individuals through spiritual encounters/gifts such as prophesy, tongues or a ‘word of knowledge’. Divine communication of this sort provides insight, information and discernment that are not available through book knowledge or academic study. A pneumatic intellectualism is grounded in Scripture in the only personal image of the Spirit recorded in Scripture, the image of the Paraclete. The Paraclete signifies the personality of the Spirit, as a helper (John 14:16). Because real education comes from the Spirit, education is metaphorically speaking gained ‘at the cross’: that is, through the ongoing experiences of salvation and guidance from the Holy Spirit. Let me illustrate the impact of this pedagogy in my hometown of Birmingham. The notice board outside one of my local churches describes the pastor as having a PhD. But in reality this pastor holds no such academic qualification. I know that in some American circles conferring a doctorate to elderly Black ministers is a sign of esteem and recognition of what they have achieved in church life equivalent

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to an academic doctorate and this seems to be the case here. The PhD is a signifier of the level of spiritual intelligence rather than academic achievement. There are epistemological benefits to be exploited in this form of spiritual knowledge. As Patricia Hill Collins has demonstrated, alternative knowledge validation systems in Black communities offer a more democratic basis for assessing truth claims.22 However, in my assessment the spiritual knowledge approach is mostly problematic when it is presented as the only means of discerning meaning or truth, as the door is closed on any reasoning or revelation that appears external to a theological text. Spiritual gifts The third understanding of the Spirit is as endower of spiritual gifts. This phenomenon is explosive and often associated with the force of fire – a principal established in Acts 2 at Pentecost, where speaking in unknown tongues is one of the signs of the presence of the Holy Spirit. In awareness of the seminal importance of the Pentecost event, African Caribbean Christians sing: Fire, fire, fire Fire fall on me On the day of Pentecost Fire fall on me The image of the Spirit as ‘fire’ is an attractive one in this context not only because Jesus talks of a baptism of the ‘Holy Spirit and fire’ (Matthew 3:11–12; Luke 3:16–17), but also because the Spirit as fire communicates a sense of purification (Isaiah 4:4). However, many contemporary Pentecostal and Charismatic traditions have focused on the more dramatic charismatic gifts, in that they tend to promote the sensational, such as healings, prophesy and tongues. These gifts of power (I Corinthians 12) tend to be played up more than the more practical gifts of teaching, generosity and encouragement as found in Romans 12: 6–8. These core themes in African Caribbean pneumatology, expressed every Sunday morning across the country, have immense potential for social engagement. Experiencing the Spirit and its transforming power could be applied to social diseases such as racism, poverty, ageism or sexism. Similarly, the practical gifts concerned with serving others and strengthening relationships (Ephesians 4:7,11 and 12)

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could be reoriented towards social issues outside of the church. However, despite this potential, the engagement with the Holy Spirit is mostly personal and private. This criticism is not unique to African Caribbean churches in Britain. For instance, theologian Miroslav Volf makes a similar criticism of Protestant denominations in the northern hemisphere. In Work in the Spirit, Volf argues that Protestant theology has tended to restrict the work of the Spirit to the ‘spiritual, psychological, moral or religious life of the individual’.23 Volf continues by showing that the spiritual, psychological locus of the Spirit in Protestant theology is not consistent with the locus of the Spirit’s activity as defined in the Greek Scriptures where the Spirit works in the material world to ‘bring integrity to . . . the whole of injured reality’.24 Eminent European theologian Jorgen Moltmann identifies the heart of the problem as a discontinuity between images of the Spirit in Hebrew and Greek Scriptures. In both Protestant and Catholic theologies a division exists between the ruach (‘wind’ or ‘spirit’) of Yahweh as the Spirit of creation and the Spirit of Christ, so that continuity between the Spirit’s works in creation and the new creation has been severed.25 To continue to dub pneumatology, I want to rework these key elements by giving them a new resonance, remixing them so as to express broader and more complex repercussions that delineate the religious-cultural and socio-political aspects of pneumatology. In order to locate the basis for the remix, I want to make a more careful reading of the Azusa Street Revival to give expression to the emancipation ethic.

Emancipation ethic As mentioned above, the birth of Western Pentecostalism is located within the Azusa Street Revival of 1906. Commenting on this history African American religious historian Gayraud Wilmore notes that for at least two years the church could boast that the ‘color line’ was washed away by the blood of Jesus.26 As well as challenging existing ideas about ‘race’ the first wave of the Revival also challenged boundaries of gender and class. Furthermore, this pneumatically inspired ‘new ethnicity’ was Black-led: . . . multitudes converged on Azusa, including virtually every race, nationality and social class on earth, for Los Angeles contained the world in miniature. Never in history has any such group surged into the church of a Black person.27

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The birth of Western Pentecostalism at Azusa can, I believe, be interpreted as the birth of a socio-political pneumatology where speaking in tongues was not just an initial sign of receiving the Holy Spirit, but was also a signifier of a commitment to radical social transformation. Religious cultural critic Mike Dyson captures the essence of this sentiment when he suggests that speaking in tongues is akin to speaking a radical language of equality.28 Concomitantly, to interpret tongues is to translate this message into the concrete world where racism, sexism, poverty and homophobia restrict and limit life opportunities. Running parallel with this new pneumatology at Azusa was an anti-oppressive Christian praxis. Despite the highly-segregated societies across the West Coast of America at the turn of the Twentieth Century, Seymour’s church developed an anti-sexist and anti-classist ministry. Even the seating arrangement embodied this egalitarian theme: Worshippers gathered in a new way completely equal in the house of God, the body of Christ not a collection of individuals looking over the back of many heads simply to the clergy or choir but an intimate whole serving one another. This unconventional seating plan revealed Seymour’s conviction that events transpiring at Azusa Mission were different, unique and revolutionary.29 Azusa therefore gave expression to the emancipation ethic; that is, an understanding of the Spirit as a liberating force that challenges both individuals and social and institutional practices. A more sophisticated way of interpreting these trajectories of the Spirit emerges in the work of Hispanic theologian Eldin Villafañe. Villafañe’s context is the Latin American Pentecostal Diaspora in America. I want to refer to Villafañe’s work in order to provide a theological content to the emancipation ethic. Social Pneumatology Villafañe’s social pneumatology is Christocentric – grounded in the life of Jesus. Jesus’s ministry is presented as holistic – concerned with every dimension of life, or what Black theologian Dwight Hopkins calls ‘total liberation’.30 Villafañe describes this 360 degree ministry as being directed inward and outward, vertically and horizontally.

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The vertical is ‘personal transformation/piety (prayer mystic, contemplation, thus inner-directed and vertical)’, while the horizontal is ‘social transformation/piety (justice, advocacy, social action, thus outer-directed and horizontal)’.31 Villafañe offers two images of the Spirit from Scripture that illustrate the horizontal trajectory. These are grieving and brooding. The first category is useful because it describes the theological basis for a social pneumatology. The Spirit’s grieving (Ephesians 4:30 and 5:1–2) is a way of describing how ‘sin’ (that which separates from God) grieves the Spirit. For Villafañe, grieving the Spirit is caused by sin that is both personal and social. The personal originates in the fall of humanity (Genesis 1–3) and results in separation from God (Romans 6:23a).32 Social sin is seen in the unjust organisation of human society. When wrongly and unjustly organised social organisations and practices provide evil with an opportunity to manifest itself in social structures such as education, employment and policing. Villafañe’s argument suggests that to follow Jesus and reject sin is also an implicit rejection of the social manifestations of sin, whether in racism, sexism, classism and unjust laws.33 Whereas grieving the Spirit enables the believer to identify sin as a reality in the social world, the Spirit’s brooding describes how the Spirit is a force for social justice. Here, the Spirit works in the capacity of restrainer (to Katechon – 2Thess. 2:6,7) and helper (parakletos – John 14:16). The former refers to the defensive work of the Spirit, the way that the Spirit maintains order and restrains the evil powers of this world. The latter refers to the Spirit’s offensive role assisting with the task of teaching and nurturing so as to usher in the signs of God’s reign of love, peace and justice.34 While affirming the divine source of spiritual knowledge, Villafañe reminds us that to struggle against sin is also to struggle against unjust social relationships, and that to fail to do so grieves the Spirit. These new parameters require a new index for measuring and accounting for spiritual knowledge so that those committed to a socio-political pneumatology have measures that signify the Spirit’s work. For instance, a church community committed to this holistic pneumatology should be more socially active, more willing to speak against injustice and exhibit a greater sense of individual and corporate empowerment. According to Latin American theologian José Comblin this has been the case in parts of Latin America where there is evidence of the socio-political experience of the Holy Spirit.35 Therefore the church as a community filled with the Spirit must

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involve itself in the defensive and offensive work of the Spirit in the world through an active engagement with the forces of evil and death.

Spirit dub Spirit dub here is essentially a more holistic pneumatology that understands how the Spirit is at work emancipating individuals, structures, and communities. In other words, Spirit dub equates with experiencing the Spirit not only in super-rational ecstatic moments in church, but also by participating in the work of the Spirit in civil society and in the environment. The experience of the Spirit is never separate from the quest for justice. Spirit dub is exemplified in Luke 4:18–20. Here, Jesus connects the emancipating power of the Spirit to social justice: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. (Revised Standard Version) Similarly, Spirit dub transforms the gifts of the Spirit so their scope and locus of understanding is expanded. In other words, these characteristics are bi-focal, simultaneously transforming those inside and outside of the church. To this end, Spirit dub foregrounds the practical gifts of service and generosity and also transforms healing into a social ethic – concerned with the brokenness of the community and planet. A paradigm for the dubbing of gifts, that is, a manifestation of the gifts of helping and caring is located in the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:29–37). Here, Jesus makes clear that it was not enough for the helper to simply locate a ‘hospital’ for the injured man. It was also incumbent for provision to be made for the man’s healing (v.35). So the Samaritan pays for the injured man’s stay and promises to return to take care of him. I will say more about the dubbing of spiritual knowledge in the next chapter when I discuss revelation knowledge.

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Tongues dub Spirit dub provides a new way of understanding the manifestation of the Spirit in glossolalia, which is so central to Pentecostals. To dub tongues is to arrive at heteroglossia. The term ‘heteroglossia’ is used within Black women’s literary theory to express the capacity to speak from one’s location into a multiplicity of discourses: While glossolalia refers to the ability to ‘utter the mysteries of the spirit’ heteroglossia describes the ability to speak in the multiple languages of public discourse. If glossolalia suggests private, non-mediated, non-differentiated univocality, heteroglossia connotes public, differentiated, social, mediated, dialogic discourse.36 Here, I want to use the term to designate the ability to translate the power of the Spirit into a variety of situations, locations and contexts. Heteroglossia as tongues dub requires African Caribbean churches to engage in dialogue with the social world in order to bring the liberating power of the Spirit into the total life setting. Heteroglossia also provides a new way of describing the workings of spiritual gifts. Within this schema charismatic gifts are not confined to the worshipping community, but also directed outwards so that spiritual gifting is expressed in practical Christian service and within the political quest to fight injustice and protect the vulnerable. Within heteroglossia these gifts are as important and as highly prized as miraculous healings, unknown tongues and prophesy. In conclusion, I have deconstructed the origins and elements of African Caribbean pneumatology. I have searched for an emancipation ethic in the Western origins of Pentecostalism, as the first Western Pentecostals understood the importance of a social manifestation in the infilling of the Spirit. I have used social pneumatology to elaborate on the Spirit’s work as both vertical/personal and horizontal/communal. Therefore, the old version of pneumatology as an expression of private supernatural phenomena such as miraculous healings or speaking in unknown tongues expresses only a part of the Spirit’s mandate. In order to dub pneumatology I have brought back into the mix new ways of interpreting spirituality found in socio-political pneumatology. Spirit dub augments the parameters of spirituality to provide a holistic, socially-engaged and practical model of the Spirit – a counter-dub to the spiritualised escapist dub mentioned above. Spirit dub has profound implications

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for the heart of African Caribbean church life and its worship service. For instance, when we usher in the Spirit of God at the beginning of worship we are participating in God’s sustaining and liberating activity in our lives, the community and the planet. Welcome, welcome, welcome Blessed Holy Ghost we welcome you Come with power and fill this temple Blessed Holy Ghost we welcome you

Chapter 9

Prosperity dub Commonwealth economics

In the previous chapter, I explored pneumatology, a defining motif within African Caribbean Christianity (Pentecostalism). Another important theme is finance. In this chapter, I want to dub ‘prosperity doctrine’. To this end, I will begin with a brief discussion of the status quo regarding giving in African Caribbean Pentecostal churches. I will deconstruct the key elements of prosperity doctrine and make use of the experience of a ‘complex poverty’ faced by Black people in Britain to frame the emancipation ethic. I will then reconstruct prosperity to produce a new praxis that I term ‘commonwealth’.

Tithing Most African Caribbean congregations, especially independent Pentecostal congregations, are self-financing. Even those with links to wealthy Euro-American denominations have had to use their own ingenuity and hard work to fund building projects, church programmes and pastors’ salaries. Consequently, money is important in the African Caribbean church – giving shapes and develops the ministry. The rationale for giving is based on a biblical principle. Most members of African Caribbean denominations believe in tithing: giving one tenth of their income to the church.1 Tithing is based on several texts including a literal reading of Malachi 3:10–11: ‘Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,’ says the LORD Almighty, ‘and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it.’ (New International Version)

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African Caribbean church circles often regard tithing as a command from God; however, many biblical scholars dispute this interpretation. For instance, Russell Earl Kelly has demonstrated that modern scholarship situates this passage within a discourse on the role of priests. Therefore the particular text in Malachi should not be the theological rationale for giving within the church.2 Even so, most African Caribbean churches point to a range of texts involving tithing and believe it to be a sound principle for African Caribbean Christians: There can be no doubt that tithing was commanded by God in the Old Testament as a means of supporting the Levites, priests and those worshipping in God’s temple, and preserving national and local ceremonial rites (Numbers 18:23–29; Deuteronomy 14:22–29). The tithe later became a form of taxation to support widows, orphans the poor, foreigners and strangers in need.3 In sum, giving a tenth of all material wealth to the Lord supports the ministry; moreover, God will ‘bless’ you – that is, provide grace (unmerited favour) in some way – although monetary concerns are never too far from the surface. Given the limited opportunities for financial development faced by the first generation African Caribbean, tithing was and still is a major economic commitment. The inability to conform – that is, pay the tithe regularly – has continued a debate on the form and context of giving and several issues have emerged. One matter concerning church members is whether to give 10 per cent of gross or net income, and churches differ on which they expect members to tithe. Another concern is whether members who are unemployed and receiving State benefits should be exempted from the tithe. Most churches would insist on an ‘offering’ than tithe under these circumstances. In recent years, with the awareness of texts other than Malachi on giving, there is a suggestion that tithing is no longer relevant and that each Christian should give a set amount and stick to it (2 Corinthians 9:7). Unfortunately, media interest and reports into financial impropriety in the African Caribbean church has caused some to refuse to give money to the church out of fear that it would be misused, despite the biblical argument that giving sparingly has negative repercussions for the individual and the church (2 Corinthians 9:6). In recent years a new interpretation has emerged to capture the hearts, minds and wallets of African Caribbean Christians, based on a particular interpretation of divine reciprocity:

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Honour the LORD with your wealth, with the firstfruits of all your crops; then your barns will be filled to overflowing, and your vats will brim over with new wine (Proverbs 3 9–10 New International Version) As a result of reading this passage literally, there is a belief that tithing is a sort of Christian bank. There are various treatments of this idea. For instance, I have heard preachers suggest that this passage is a call for communal responsibility within the church so that when times are financially rough for individuals the church community must rally round and help out those in need. Conversely, I have heard television evangelists suggest that it is a guaranteed biblical law: give money to God and you will get back more money in return. The latter can be categorised as ‘prosperity doctrine’. Prosperity doctrines are not uniform but come in a variety of forms and have made a sizable impact on and present new challenges for churches in Britain.4 I begin the process of deconstruction by examining the origins and structures of this new tradition.

Word of Faith Movement Prosperity doctrine has its origins in the Word of Faith Movement – a post-war, trans-national and quasi-religious movement.5 The Word of Faith Movement has several contributories. These include aspects of Pentecostalism, the healing ministry of A.J. Gordon on the East Coast of America in the early part of the Twentieth Century, and the ministry of the patriarch of the ‘Faith Movement’, the EuroAmerican preacher Kenneth Hagin.6 Although uncertainty exists as to whom the origins of the movement can be attributed, Hagin’s ministry is pivotal, as he inspires some of the Euro-American ‘superstars’ of prosperity doctrines such as Kenneth and Gloria Copeland, Jerry Savelle and Bob Tilton. In African diasporan Christian circles, Creflo Dollar, T.D. Jakes and F.K.C. Price are African American devotees, while Matthew Ashimolowo of Kingsway International Christian Centre is a UK example.7 The Word of Faith Movement has a complex tradition of faith and practice and it is not my intention to cover every aspect, but I do want to pay attention to its distinctive doctrinal themes. Fundamental to prosperity doctrine is the salvation history represented in the life and meaning of Jesus:

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By virtue of Christ’s death the believer is entitled not only to salvation and the sanctifying indwelling of the Holy Spirit but also to the material benefits of health and prosperity. These things do not appear automatically in a person’s life. . . . They need to be claimed by faith and in accordance with the will of God.8 The pre-occupation with gaining health and material benefit is part of a broader theological system and to deconstruct prosperity we must relate it to the other features of the movement – that is, revelation knowledge, positive confession and divine healing.9 Revelation knowledge The first time I heard anyone talk about ‘revelation knowledge’ was in the late 1980s. There was a guest speaker preaching at my local church. He was from North America. Every few minutes he shouted the phrase ‘revelation knowledge’. It seemed to me then that he was using the phrase to illustrate a kind of secret information God gave to the believer through the vehicle of the Holy Spirit – what I describe in the previous chapter as spiritual knowledge. Revelation knowledge was presented as the only way to know God. It was a form of supra-human insight, which enables believers to transcend everyday knowledge or sense knowledge and tap into the divine. Naturally, to know the mind of God provides immense human possibilities and options. According to Robert Tilton, those who tap into revelation knowledge become superhuman, ‘little gods’ or ‘kings of life’.10 The doctrine has not bypassed Christians in Britain, and is affirmed by Kingsway International, the ‘super church’ based in East London. In one daily prayer for its adherents it is stated: ‘I believe and confess that I have received the anointing to operate in supernatural knowledge. The treasures of wisdom and knowledge are residing in me.’11 There is a positive aspect to this doctrine in that it nurtures a healthy interest in seeking God’s direction and deeper truths of the human condition. However, there are real intellectual dangers. There is, for example, the possibility that the intellect and senses have limited value to those seeking to understand God.12 We know that in the Bible God is revealed in both spiritual and physical realms, and is also transcendent and immanent. These themes are illustrated in the incarnation ‘the word became flesh’ (John. 1.14). Believers are encouraged to serve God holistically, which includes the use of the intellect (Mk 12.30).13It seems to me that when faith

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is ‘measured’ in terms of ‘revelation knowledge’ the real test of faith – that is, love – can be marginalised. Christians should not forget that in the teachings of Paul, it is love, not knowledge, that is the true measure of one’s understanding of God. Positive confession The second plank within the Word of Faith Movement is a belief that laws governing the universe located in the Bible, when followed, determine success: In the end, the process by which faith is put into practice in Word of Faith spirituality can be reduced to a simple, but not rigid formula: first, find the promise in God’s word; secondly, believe in your heart; thirdly confess with your lips; lastly, act as if the prayer has been answered.14 The logic of this practice can be illustrated thus: if you needed a new house for example, you would find the appropriate biblical text/ spiritual promise, and confess that God was going to provide you with a new home and then act as if it had been provided. You can ‘name it’ because as a spiritual being you can activate the ‘spiritual laws’ of the universe by having faith and thereby control circumstances. As was the case with revelation knowledge, positive confession has some constructive benefit. In particular, it reminds us of the importance of Christian hope, which transcends the finite human possibilities. Psychologists agree that words and thoughts do impact on our actions and that awareness of our inner feelings is important However, positive confession goes beyond Christian hope in that it risks presenting God as a puppet to be remotely controlled through positive thought or faith. While there are examples in the Scriptures of individual faith resulting in healing or other supernatural occurrences, as a principle God’s actions are designed and directed by God (Ps. 115.3). Yes, it is true that there are examples in the Bible where God’s intention is altered by human pleading, but I would contend that these incidents are acts of compassion rather than the observance of a particular law or code of the universe. Faith in God is a quality of relationship and trust rather than a magician’s wand. Even so, leading evangelists and churches still profess this ‘doctrine’. Take for example the teaching on ‘positive confession’ at Kingsway International, where through positive confession the believer changes the world around them:

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Words have been known for a long time as tools that: influence your perspective, affect your performance, determine your possession. Since words are such powerful tools, you should use your words to: build your spirit man, re-write the negatives spoken into your life, paint the picture of your desired future, lift yourself from defeat to victory.15 Where this doctrine becomes really problematic is in its belief that we can ‘create’ the world we want to live in. If this were the case then surely Christians would not be bound by illness or poverty in the world! Divine healing Within a theology that enables the believer to take control of the physical realm, healing becomes another arena for divine deliverance through ‘faith force’ – the utilisation of so-called ‘spiritual laws’. If sickness does occur it is a result of the believer not making use of spiritual power to defeat it. In this sense, sickness is a physical manifestation of a spiritual matter. Within this schema physical healing is a certainty. Wellness may not be experienced immediately but the healing process begins instantaneously. Healing is assured through the atonement, the work of Jesus on the cross, as Jesus’s suffering ensures salvation today that includes healing. Given the spritualisation of illness there is a line of argument which suggests that medicine and doctors are not really necessary when the believer completely trusts in divine health. I once heard the TV evangelist and Word of Faith Movement prophet Kenneth Copeland claim that he did not go to the dentist because he has received ‘divine health’ that keeps him in good dental health. Some preachers even maintain that believers should not die before the age of 70!16While these preachers should be commended for reintroducing the importance of healing as part of the ministry and mission of the church, there are some difficulties. The New Testament is full of believers who experience illness and seek medical remedy – for example, Paul’s ‘wine for stomach’s sake’.17God is always concerned with health and healing, but sensible theology cannot accept the collapse of a complex sense of wholeness in mind, body and Spirit into a unilateral conception of physical healing. Neither can we say that God always responds to faith with physical healing. What I am getting at here is the potential for

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redemptive suffering – suffering that builds faith. While I would never argue for redemptive suffering as a central or dominant theological principle, I would not want to limit what God is able to do in this world. It is dangerous to suggest that all sickness is the result of spiritual forces as it diminishes our responsibility for what happens to us in the material world; namely, we eat, live and behave in ways that pollute the environment and our bodies. The obsession with physical healing has resulted in healing becoming a gospel in itself rather than a sign accompanying believers. Finance Finally, and most importantly, Word of Faith preachers promote a belief in material prosperity. In the same way that health is secured by atonement, so is material wealth or freedom from poverty. Jesus’s suffering restored the right to prosperous living for believers (II Corinthians 8:9). The equation here is simple: purity leads to prosperity; the more righteous and faithful in giving (purity) you are, the more you will be blessed (prosperity). However, in this case the equation is primarily explored materially: the more you give to God materially, the more God will give to you. It is a kind of inversion of ‘much is expected of those to whom much is given’. In this case the mantra is ‘much is reciprocated to those who give much’. Divine blessing as material prosperity is based on the belief that the blessing promised to Abraham (Gen. 17 and Gal. 3.13–15) is applicable to Christians today. So how does this doctrine work as part of financial management? Word of Faith devotees develop a divine economic system to counter the economics of this world. A defining motif is the belief in multiplicity. The idea here is that those who make sacrifices for Jesus, ‘leave home and fields’, will be materially blessed (Mk. 10.29). As Gloria Copeland states, ‘You give $1 for the Gospel’s sake and $100 belongs to you’.18 Again, the context of the biblical passage is ignored and it is ‘read’ as a statement about monetary gain. Even so, for Creflo Dollar the principle is clear: ‘God’s system is based on giving and receiving. . . . God tells you to give in order to get.’19 However, not all African Caribbean Christians believe in viewing tithing as a law. For instance, Mark Sturge the former director of the African Caribbean Evangelical Alliance states:

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Integrity demands that tithing should be presented as an economical and freely given commitment to the kingdom development rather than a biblical demand that cannot be sustained when compared to the evidence presented in Scripture.20 Prosperity doctrines have nurtured a mostly constructive interest in responsible personal finance and living debt free. Within those contexts that are blighted by social and economic marginalisation, it makes good sense to direct people to the fact that the biblical text has something to say about financial needs! Problems emerge when ‘need’ explodes into a legitimisation of materialism to the exclusion of sacrifice and sharing the message of the cross. A critic of prosperity, D.R. McConnell, puts it this way: This prosperity mindset contradicts the cross in at least three ways. First, it subverts the demands of the cross for self-denial. . . . Second, the gospel of prosperity reduces God to a means to an end. . . . Third, the mindset of prosperity is focused on the things of this world as the sign of God’s approval and the means of God’s blessing.21 In sum, prosperity doctrine is highly individualistic, potentially materialistic and, despite having some progressive attributes, remains theologically problematic. Ironically, the rise of prosperity doctrine over the past two decades in the African Caribbean church has paralleled the rise of the distribution and sale of crack-cocaine in the same inner-city regions as these churches. The sale and distribution of this Class-A drug is symbolic of ‘secular prosperity doctrine’. This form of prosperity doctrine, while ethically diametrically opposed to that found within prosperity churches, shares several basic presuppositions. While African Caribbean church prosperity trusts in God as the ultimate protection, their crack counterparts trust in the gun. Both groups believe that adhering to particular rules or laws will secure their prosperity. Both have ‘bought into’ a belief that materialism is a sign of personal worth, value and prestige. In both cases material success is grounded in an individualistic perception of the world. Through a literal reading of the Bible and, for gangs, a limited analysis of life, both believe they are ‘due what is rightfully theirs’. Ironically, in both cases the lack of material wealth or personal success is the result of ‘sin’. For the Christians this means not obeying the laws of God, and for the gangs it means not obeying the laws of the gang/street life. Now, I am in no way suggesting that

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gangs are equivalent to the church, but what I am suggesting is that prosperity doctrines that emphasise wealth creation and materialism with insufficient critiques of wealth and ethics run the risk of having ‘a form of godliness’ but lacking its power. It is not my intention to totally discredit or ignore prosperity doctrine but instead dub it; that is, rework the notion of prosperity in the light of an emancipation ethic. The next task is to give voice to the emancipation ethic based on the socio-economic realities of contemporary life.

Emancipation ethic As mentioned in the previous chapter, the first aspect of deconstruction is iconoclastic: an attempt to dismantle ideological origins and offer a new theological knowledge based on experience and history. So in order to dub prosperity I want to draw on the experience of poverty within the social context of Black life, to build an emancipatory ethic. Despite being well into the third generation of a distinctive African Caribbean history, economic marginalisation is still a salient feature. For instance, the Challenges for the Future report published in March 2001 described the city of Birmingham as being on its way to apartheid, with prosperous suburbs and poorer inner cities, split on ethnic lines.22 This is not the case for all African Caribbeans, as economic success exists in parts of the country, but the overall picture is problematic. My awakening to the reality of material poverty of the Caribbean diaspora came through working with young African Caribbean offenders in prisons.23 I thought I was reasonably cognisant of urban poverty because I was raised in the inner city in a family of nine children. My parents worked hard to support us and there were numerous occasions when we had to stretch, share or go without. In contrast to what these young men received from their parents, what my parents gave me was priceless. I became aware of the reality of a third generation of African Caribbean youths born into greater material poverty. In many inner cities urban regeneration (tidying-up of the fascia of African Caribbean neighbourhoods) and ‘catalogue culture’ (living on credit) masks ‘real life’ material poverty and debt. Today, according to the government’s own statistics, African Caribbean people as part of Britain’s minority ethnic community are more

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likely to be over-represented in deprived areas,24 and live in crowded, high-rise and council accommodation. Furthermore, given the interlocking nature of poverty, African Caribbean young people today are more likely to be exposed to problems associated with social deprivation as a result of where they live, how they are cared for and how they are policed.25 Half a century of academic research has demonstrated that material poverty has an impact on educational attainment, health and the propensity to be arrested for ‘working-class crime’. In my home city, Birmingham, in 1999 African Caribbean children receiving free school meals were only half as successful in their GCSE exams compared to their White peers.26 Poverty also affects health. African Caribbean people are a third more likely to be ill compared with the White population. Moreover, it has been well reported in several academic texts that African Caribbean men and women are over-represented, misdiagnosed and sometimes mistreated in the mental health service.27 The relationship between crime and poverty is also a well-worn research pathway. Add to the equation ethnicity and ‘racial profiling’ in policing and we end up with the over-representation of African Caribbean males at every level of the criminal justice system, from stop-and-search by the police to disproportionate sentencing.28 But one of the shocking things that I have discovered through my work is the large number of offenders who left home before or on their sixteenth birthday, or who spent a considerable period of time in the Care System. African Caribbean people make up half of the users of some homeless centres in London,29 and in the early 1990s African Caribbean children were also over-represented amongst the number of children looked after by local authorities.30 Nevertheless, the material poverty the young men talked about is not new in African Caribbean history. We arose out of the poverty of slavery and colonialism to forge communities and societies rich in spirit and culture, hope and belief. What is new is the apparent inability to out-manoeuvre the downward spiral of material poverty. It seems as if, two generations removed from the post-war West Indian migrants, we are losing important economic survival skills, which were passed down by our ancestors. There are at least two main reasons for this. First, my generation had the church and to some degree the extended family to provide sustenance when times were bad. Today, with the decline in church congregations, African Caribbean people, in the words of my mother, ‘do not know how

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to call on the name of God’. That is to say, they make little use of the communal and spiritual resources of the church. Second, there is greater recognition that the rewards on offer to Black communities are much smaller compared to their White peers. For example, African Caribbean unemployment, even amongst those with good exam results, is higher than that of their White peers.31

Towards commonwealth Given the social and economic context of African Caribbean life in Britain, it seems to me that we need an approach to giving in the church that moves beyond the narrow, narcissistic and theologically problematic emphasis on tithing to discover a new ethic that is inclusive, theologically meaningful and missiological in focus. Any meaningful prosperity doctrine arising out of African Caribbean life must be counter-hegemonic. While not neglecting the need for good financial management and ethical gain, it must be communally oriented – that is take seriously financial well-being for all. In addition, it must take seriously a broader understanding of poverty that recognises the social and cultural poverty that feeds off material instability. The seeds of a counter-hegemonic prosperity already exist. Caribbean people in Britain have a long history of communal financial systems geared towards mutual benefit. ‘Pardner’ from Jamaica and ‘Susu’ from Trinidad are two well-known communal saving systems.32 There also exists a cognisance of a notion of poverty beyond its material manifestations. Pentecostal churches have long nurtured a belief and practice of becoming ‘rich in spirit’ through sharing and sacrifice. Consequently, the platform for a new perspective already exists. Armed with these concerns there are several texts which provide new hope for giving within African Caribbean Christianity, but I want to focus on the feeding of the multitude in St Mark 6. The basis for an emancipatory ethic are the teachings of Jesus, in particular the traditions of sharing. The principle of sharing is exemplified in the feeding of the multitude (Mark 6:30ff), where rather than have people buy their own food, Jesus calls on his disciples to feed them (v. 37). What interests me here is not the central miracle, the feeding of the multitude, but the message within it; that is, the demand to give and share wealth. Moreover, the giving by providing a new principle of how to manage resources, indirectly subverts the local economic system.33

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African American theologian Dwight Hopkins describes the quest for a new economic orientation grounded in humanitarian concerns for the outsider: ‘common wealth’.34 The term has mixed meanings amongst Caribbean people, for it was the concept developed to symbolise post-colonial relationships between former colonial subjects and Britain as the former colonial power. The experience of neocolonialism – that is, continued forms of economic oppression under the rubric of the British Commonwealth – has not endeared African Caribbean people to this term. However, the commonwealth values I am proposing seek to give, share or trade in such a way as to challenge and subvert unjust economic systems, whether local or global.

Prosperity dub How then do we dub prosperity doctrine, even its worst excesses, so that it becomes a life-giving force geared towards the transformation of the church and community, associated with emancipation and radical action? What must we embellish with the emancipation ethic and what do we need to bring in and take out? I want to use the term ‘commonwealth’ as a guiding principle that will expand the meaning of prosperity beyond the narrow confines of physical health and material wealth to be concerned with the well-being of all. Here, prosperity dub is commonwealth. In order to translate the ethical core of commonwealth in relation to prosperity doctrine and the economic issues pertaining to African Caribbean urban life, I want to return to the central elements of prosperity doctrine outlined above. The first part of a commonwealth is to challenge the African Caribbean church to become ‘good news’ to the marginalised (poor), the second is to make healing a social reality and the third is to foster lifestyles and micro-economies that express solidarity with the ‘poor’. To dub ‘revelation knowledge’, I want to use an echo chamber effect to expand and transform its meaning. In Black political theology, revelation is the capacity and capability to receive and participate in the Spirit’s emancipatory work in the world today. James Cone identifies the core of this theological source in his exploration of revelation when he states that revelation is God’s selfdisclosure in the context of liberation.35 In short, to know God is to do the will of God in relation to those who are poor and excluded. In response to Cone’s theological proposition, I want to dub the concept of ‘revelation knowledge’ so that it is no longer synonymous with the search for cryptic-Christian materialist, individualistic

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lifestyle codes submerged in obscure biblical passages. Instead, I want to draw out from within the original notion of revelation knowledge the quest to hear and do the will of God. But in this case the will of God refers to an open, clear and unambiguous process to seek out ways in which to ‘love your neighbour’. The command to ‘love’ is not ephemeral but concrete, and within this context is a call to seek out, care for and share. Such a task is communal in order to counter the individualistic and subjective limitations of the charismatic revelation knowledge outlined above (p. 133). Within this schema, the first task is for the African Caribbean church to be ‘good news for the poor’. Put simply, to experience and engage with revelation knowledge is to become spiritually aware of God’s action on behalf of the poor today. I believe this dub reworking of revelation knowledge encourages the church to strive to be a place of commonwealth for all who enter. As poverty is not simply material but also denotes those who are pushed to the periphery of society by racism, classism, homophobia and sexism, combating poverty with the good news is to struggle for complete emancipation from all that keeps people in all forms of poverty. To dub health, or what is commonly referred to as ‘divine healing’, we take the same trajectory of revelation knowledge. Within African Caribbean pneumatology, it is imperative that we dub and make practicable the concept and practice of divine healing so as to expand its meaning beyond physical transformation. In order to explain this process, I want to re-read the healing of the man lame from birth in Acts 3. The narrative begins with the disciples Peter and John travelling to the temple for prayer where they encounter a man ‘lame from birth’. When interpreting this passage it is important to move beyond simply rearticulating a negative view of physical impairment – portraying disability as problematic. Conversely, we can dub this text by viewing impairment as a symbolic space representing divine favour. Within this schema, images of brokenness, literal or symbolic, are translated as metaphors of grace so that in the Acts narrative ‘lame from birth’ is a site for God’s redemptive action. For instance, interpreting from within the African American context, Randall Bailey suggests that ‘lame from birth’, as a place of social marginalisation, finds a dynamic equivalent in the social and cultural ‘disability’ visited upon those living in a society that disadvantages and marginalises you – that is, makes one ‘lame from birth’.36 The

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narrator tells us that they (Peter and John) ‘looked at him’ (v. 4) and got close enough to the man to touch him (v. 7). The high point of the narrative is the refusal to offer money as a solution to the impairment but instead to offer healing through faith in Jesus Christ. As a result, the man, who is now made ritually ‘clean’, is freed from paying the priests for ‘cleansing’, thereby indirectly subverting the local health system – the patronage of the Temple. I want to suggest that in the contemporary context the ‘look’ of the disciples is a call to do social analysis; that is, to be able to identify brokenness within our churches and communities. Similarly the disciples’ decision to get close to the man is the equivalent of participating in the lives of those in crisis, the marginal or disenfranchised. However, a dub version of healing moves beyond the vertical understanding of this spiritual gift to a broader horizontal analysis, so that healing is a metaphor for engagement and for transforming the community. Finally, the invitation to the lame man to walk is an invitation to have a relationship with Jesus and the church community as the cure to his condition. We do not know what became of the man in the passage after his healing, but today this invitation to have a relationship should be understood as a journey for those who have been damaged by broken relationships and shattered dreams. In sum, healing is a relational journey and not simply an instantaneous miracle. Within a commonwealth perspective, healing moves beyond the confines of the church building from a limited preoccupation with physical form, to wider multidimensional engagement with all forms of sickness. Why is this necessary? Because if we only emphasise personal, miraculous healings we risk reducing healing to an appendage of Sunday worship. Dubbing prosperity does not mean that we rule out the potential for divine financial blessing. Instead, we recognise that blessing cannot be reduced to the material, and explore new ways of utilising the blessing. The early church provides us with an important lesson for the use of material wealth in Acts 2: 44 And all who believed were together and had all things in common; 45 and they sold their possessions and goods and distributed them to all, as any had need. 46 And day-by-day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they partook of food with glad and generous hearts, 47 praising God and having favour with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. (Revised Standard Version)

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Although the paradigmatic nature of New Testament wealth and poverty passages are not always clear and must be read in context, 37 interpretations of this passage have ranged from radical giving to sharing. Fundamentally, this passage demands that we make lifestyle choices that free up resources for mission and transformation. Furthermore, our giving must be sensible. As mentioned in the previous chapter, the story of the Good Samaritan reminds us that we must use our gifts in a practical way. Adopting these two principles in light of the quest for commonwealth means that the material clout of the individuals within the church is constantly recycled, refocused and redirected so that it is placed at the disposal of the church as an agent of the Kingdom of God. Integral to the principle of sharing is the importance of stewardship. Recognition that God is the owner of all resources, whether mineral, social or political, reminds us that we are all equal in the presence of God. Consequently, economic restructuring must be an outernational project, where local church action is integrated with global efforts to alleviate poverty, and hunger provides an opportunity for the church to engage the ‘greater works’ projects that Jesus predicts in St John. In conclusion, the rise of prosperity doctrine in the African Caribbean church cannot be ignored. Placed within the context of the material and economic urban crisis that confronts African Caribbean communities, prosperity doctrine when dubbed provides an opportunity for the church to place itself at the centre of a wealth creation scheme where knowledge of God is refocused on the needs of the poor. The New Testament tradition of generous giving is a New Covenant principle. However, the commonwealth motif provides a useful framework for material gain to take on a new meaning when the African Caribbean church becomes a sharing community, redistributing its wealth as an integral dimension of its evangelism and mission. Commonwealth as prosperity dub asserts a ‘prosperity doctrine’ in so much as it demands much from those to whom much has been given, but does not promise a cash dividend or bonus in this life.

Conclusion Theology and culture dub

One of the principal aims of this exploration has been to examine new ways of creating a dialogue between Christian theology and contemporary culture. As mentioned in the introduction, Black theology’s engagement with Black culture is in part a quest to think creatively about how to make sense of how God is active in the world around us. By way of concluding this investigation, I intend to further develop my understanding of the interface between theology and culture. In God and the Gangs: An Urban Toolkit for Those Who Won’t Be Bought Out, Sold Out or Scared Out,1 I outlined three modalities through which theology and culture are explored in African Caribbean Christianity. These are mission, recognition and praxis. These categories are not mutually exclusive, but express a range of approaches deployed by critics, reflecting the inter/multidimensionality of the discipline. I want to further develop these approaches to demonstrate how the approach within this text represents a ‘dubbing’ of methodology of engaging theology and culture.

Mission The first interface between theology and culture I term ‘mission’. This is because the aim of the dialogue is evangelical – that is, to communicate the Christian message into the cultural context and make Christ known in the lives of people.2 Mission as engagement with culture has produced two foci: the cynical and the pragmatic. Regarding the first view, emerging from a low view of culture the sceptics discourage explicit engagement with Black expressive cultures, fearing contamination; but they are none the less willing to

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make use of cultural resources so long as they are set apart for divine use. In Black British history, this first position was occupied by most of the first generation of Christians from the Caribbean. Their commitment to the holiness traditions of North America led to a sharp dichotomy between the church and the world – popular culture, whether music, film or television, was associated with the latter. However, despite pontificating on the avoidance of consuming popular culture, the cynics are still willing to utilise cultural forms to enhance or embellish the presentation of the Gospel – for instance, the use of contemporary instrumentation such as organs, drums and electric guitars and synthesisers in worship services, to enhance and contemporise their rendition of hymns and songs. The contradiction at the heart of the cynics is resolved through a Christian utilitarianism, expressed through traditions of spiritualising, so that the church, set apart for divine use, sanctifies instruments and other cultural tools. A good example of the sanctifying tradition is the songs of the European American country singer Jim Reeves. Reeves’s collection of gospel albums achieved cult status amongst the first generation of African Caribbean Christians in the 1970s. These Christian communities were impressed with his rendition of their favourite gospel songs such as ‘Precious Memories’, ‘Lord take my hand’, ‘God be with you’ and ‘How long has it been?’ And they eventually accepted these albums into their canon of ‘sacred music’.3 Another approach within mission is more pragmatic and has historically been adopted by second and third generation African Caribbean Christians. This second focus is more accepting of popular culture. Here, mission is an explicit, selective appropriation. The Gospel is understood as supra-cultural and easily adapted to any cultural context without change or compromise. All the believer has to do is ‘dress up’ the Gospel message in relevant cultural clothes; for instance, appropriating appropriate musical styles or visual forms to communicate faith. There is no quest to sanctify equipment but simply to engage in a process of translation, to make sure people understand the Gospel message through their own cultural worldview. Raymond and Co, the winners of the Gospel Music category of the Music of Black Origin Awards (MOBO) in 2004, exemplifies this approach. Their musical styles, ranging from R&B and hip-hop to garage, are the backdrop for creative and assertive accounts of popular African Caribbean theology. Mission is, how ever, more than just copying the form; it is also concerned with

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correspondence – seeking out similarities between Christian theology and popular culture, to provide comparative meanings or practices, as an act of translation. Take for example the use of the relational term ‘homie’, a shortened version of ‘home-boy’ or ‘home-girl’, used to express a close relationship based on geography and sociality. In the song ‘Jesus is my Homie’, former Dru Hill R&B singer turned gospel artist Woody Rock explores the quality of divine–human relations.4 In this case, the relational quality of ‘homie’ is used to translate the quality of the divine–human encounter – intimacy and communality. The main advantage here is that it preserves the essence of the Gospel message. It does not try to dilute it or change it, but simply pours it into the cultural context, whether in the USA or urban Britain, as part of a process of translation. However, prioritising the religious message devalues wider culture, demoting it to the role of a communication tool with no intrinsic transcendent or spiritual quality of its own.

Recognition The second way of interfacing theology with culture is through recognition. This method is concerned with discovering where God’s liberating message and practice is already at work in urban cultures. It is based on the presupposition that divine revelation, the ‘divine spark’ is already revealed and at work in contemporary cultures. Therefore, the task of the theologian is to engage in a dialogue, respectful of revelation in popular culture. Recognition is profoundly influenced by the work of European scholar Paul Tillich. Tillich argued that culture and faith could be correlated by a process of finding points of connection between the two entities to further the formulation, adaptation and translation of faith within a cultural location.5 Recognition is particularly popular amongst progressive academic theologians trained in theology and cultural analysis, as it provides a vehicle for exploring the meaning of God in cultural expression. Here, the task of the analyst is to decipher religious motifs and totems within cultural forms with the expressed aim of demonstrating divine activity and expression within it. According to Gordon Lynch, central to engaging with and evaluating popular music forms is a sophisticated appreciation of musicology. To this end, Lynch asserts an aesthetic approach affirming style and technique.6 There are strong and weak examples of ‘recognition’ at work in Black Atlantic theologies. Weak recognition occurs when, as a result

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of identifying divine presence and activity in culture, the theologian decides to rework and rethink Christian theology in the light of their discovery. For instance, in my own work, I have explored the way in which music cultures challenge theological ideas – for example, how reggae star Bob Marley offers an alternative assessment of what it means to be a theologian7 and how rapper Lauryn Hill transforms the notion of redemption.8 Likewise, biblical scholars, working out of the same framework, allow cultural discoveries to influence the theological method and tools responsible for biblical studies.9 For instance, African American biblical scholar Randall Bailey has for some time engaged in a dialogue between Scripture and contemporary culture predicated upon an ideological analysis of the Bible. For Bailey, issues of power, resistance and marginality in contemporary culture require a rethinking of biblical tools. He introduces an ideological criticism to give voice to those on the margins in society and also within the biblical text.10 Strong examples are more serious about the level of revelation at work in popular culture. Here, theologians seek out the ways that popular culture exhibits intrinsic theological value and is therefore more than a dialogue partner or source of appropriation. A good example of this second school is Anthony Pinn. Working from a Black humanist perspective, Pinn has explored how popular culture produces new theological ideas that don’t just simply confirm Christian theology, but challenge and expand its understanding.11 For instance, through an evaluation of theodicy within hip-hop, Pinn outlines new religious hermeneutics shaped outside the boundaries of Christianity.12 Commenting on the music of now defunct hip-hop band Arrested Development Pinn captures the essence of strong recognition: Arrested Development musically outlines religiosity committed to the hands-on deliverance of Black people from a profusion of existential dilemmas, without respect to traditional theology and doctrine. In this – AD’s constructive project – one sees another aspect of nitty-gritty hermeneutics: the uncovering and revitalisation of religion outside the confines of long-standing but ineffectual theological tradition.13 The strength of the recognition approach is that it affirms God’s presence in culture and challenges the utilitarian approach of mission. Its shortcoming is its potential for weakening the authority or

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meaning of the Scriptures, as recognition in its strongest form identifies alternative and sometimes problematic sources of revelation.

Praxis The final theme is praxis. The central concern here is dialogue with the intention of change. The word ‘praxis’ emerged from the Frankfurt School of Sociology and demarcates a way of thinking where thought and action are merged into one. The basic nature of the dialogue is intimately related to its outcome, so while the mission approach seeks to get the message across, and the recognition approach enables us to discover what God is already doing, the praxis interface tells us that we achieve nothing unless we change the way things are. Praxis is based on the presupposition that Christian engagement with culture is intimately linked to political and economic forces in the world. All analysis is contextual and therefore we must be aware of how issues of power impact on every dimension of analysis, interpretation and action. The action-reflection theological model influences the praxis approach. Action-reflection asserts that the task of the theologian is to participate in struggles for justice and engage in theological and cultural analysis only to reflect on their action. More precisely, praxis is where the theologian engages with culture in order to find new ways of fostering values that restore hope, engender courage and challenge oppression. The praxis model is appealing to theologians engaged in cultural production beyond the writing of essays and giving of lectures. Becoming cultural artisans and producers in their own right, this group of media-savvy academics, through media projects or participation within social movements, seek to address a wider audience and engender change. A good example of the praxis approach is the African American philosopher Cornel West’s recording project ‘Sketches of My Culture’. Backed musically by contemporary forms, West, through the spoken word, examines issues as far-ranging as the legacy of Martin Luther King and debates of the use of the ‘N’ word.14 Similarly, the praxis model undergirds my own documentary filmmaking in Britain.15 For example, in 2005, I made a film entitled ‘The Empire Pays Back’. The aim of the film was to calculate and demand compensation for the descendants of British slaves in the Caribbean, and request a monument and an apology from the British government. On the strength of the documentary, Members of

150 Conclusion

Parliament (MPs) committed themselves to working towards these objectives for the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in Britain in 2007.

Theology and culture dub Implicitly, this book has deployed a theology and culture dub – that is, a reworking and remixing of the interfaces between theology and culture for the sake of engendering emancipation. Elements of mission, recognition and praxis have been at the forefront of this exploration. Regarding mission, one of my central aims has been to affirm the liberating power of the Gospel. To this end, I have made use of the pragmatic mission paradigm. More precisely, I have appropriated the concept and practice of dubbing. Dub was, however, reworked and given a new expression so as to function as a hermeneutic which leads to recognition. I have engaged in a weak form, by enabling dub to reshape and rethink theological categories. Further, I have, in a limited way, identified the strong aspects of recognition by demonstrating that the studio engineer who dubs personifies an indigenous healer, conjuring the mixing desk in search of equilibrium. Finally, regarding praxis, I have demonstrated how the interface between dub and theology produces new ways of experiencing the Spirit and developing commonwealth. In conclusion, to arrive at ‘Jesus dub’, as a way of doing theology, I have made use of a multiple strategy, which utilises aspects of all the approaches outlined above. In the spirit of rhizomes, this is a ‘nomadic approach’ that seeks connections between theology and culture in new ways. However, the ultimate concern has been emancipation for those inside and outside of the African Caribbean church.

Notes

Introduction 1 I refer here to Black Christian traditions in North America, the Caribbean and Europe. 2 I use the term ‘Black’ throughout to describe people of African descent in the North Atlantic. I refer specifically to African Caribbean cultures and communities to highlight a particular expression and experience of Blackness. However, I recognise that Blackness is diverse and multiple – there is no single homogeneous Black identity. 3 African Caribbean Christianity refers to a specific form found amongst the Caribbean diaspora, including Black Pentecostals. 4 Paul Gilroy uses this term to mark the interplay of ideas between Black communities in Atlantic cultures of the US, Caribbean and Britain. See Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, London: Verso, 1993. 5 James H. Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation, Twentieth Anniversary Edition, New York: Orbis, 2002, p. 1. 6 Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation, New York: Orbis, 1973. 7 Gustavo Gutierrez, The Power of the Poor in History, New York: Orbis, 1983, pp. 138–40. 8 Raymond Williams, Sociology of Culture, New York: Schocken Books, 1982. 9 Glenn Jordan and Chris Weedon (eds), Cultural Politics: Class, Gender, Race and the Postmodern World, Oxford: Blackwell, 1995, pp. 6–10. 10 Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature, New York: Oxford University Press, 1977, p. 132. 11 David Brain, ‘Cultural Production as “Society in the Making”: Architecture as an Exemplar of the Social Construction of Cultural Artefacts’, in Diana Crane (ed.) The Sociology of Culture: Emerging Theoretical Perspectives, Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1994. 12 Kobena Mercer, ‘Diasporic Culture and the Dialogic Imagination, in Mbye Cham and Clair Andrade-Watkins (eds) Black Frames: Celebration of Black Cinema, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1988, p. 56. 13 Raymond Williams, Sociology of Culture, p. 13.

152 Notes 14 Stuart Hall, ‘What is the “Black” in Black Popular Culture?’, in Gina Dent (ed.), Black Popular Culture, Seattle: Bay Press, 1992, p. 24. 15 Michael Warren, Seeing Through the Media: A Religious View of Communications and Cultural Analysis, Pennsylvania: Trinity Press International, 1997, p. 48. 16 Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, London & New York: Continuum, 1987, p. 6. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid., p. 8. 19 Ibid., p. 7. 20 Dulcie Mackenzie, Unpublished PhD thesis proposal, University of Birmingham, 2004. 21 Carolyn Cooper, Sound Clash: Jamaican Dancehall Culture At Large, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, p. 35. 22 Paul Gilroy, After Empire: Melancholia or Convivial Culture?, London: Routledge, 2004, pp. 133ff. 23 Victor Anderson, Beyond Ontological Blackness, An Essay on African American Religious and Cultural Criticism, New York: Continuum, 1995, p. 84. 24 James H. Cone, The Spiritual and the Blues, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1970. 25 Ibid., p. 129. 26 James H. Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation. 27 James H. Cone, God of the Oppressed, New York: Orbis, 1975. 28 Anthony Pinn, Why Lord? Suffering and Evil In Black Theology, New York: Continuum, 1995. 29 Victor Anderson, Beyond Ontological Blackness. 30 Paul Gilroy, There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack, London: Unwin Hyman, 1988. 31 Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, The Empire Strikes Back: Race and Racism in 70s Britain, London: Routledge, 1982, pp. 118–21. 32 Paul Gilroy, Against Race: Imagining Political Culture Beyond the Color Line, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000. 33 Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic. 34 Michael Eric Dyson, Reflecting Black: African American Cultural Criticism, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1993, p. xv. 35 Spivak makes this comment in an interview with Walter Adamson recorded in 1986. See Sarah Harasym, The Post-Colonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues, New York & London: Routledge, 1990, p. ix. 36 See Kenan Malik, The Meaning of Race: Race, History and Culture in Western Society, London: Macmillan, 1996, pp. 261ff. 37 Alice Walker, In Search of our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose, New York: HBJ, 1998, pp. xi–xii. 38 bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, Boston: South End Press, 1984. 39 Jacquelyn Grant, ‘Womanist Jesus and the Mutual Struggle for Liberation’, in Randall C. Bailey and Jacquelyn Grant (eds), The Recovery of

Notes 153

40

41 42 43

Black Presence: An Interdisciplinary Exploration, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995, pp. 129–42. Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment, New York: Routledge, 1990. Fighting Words: Black Women and the Search for Justice, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press: 1998. Carolyn Cooper, Noises in the Blood: Orality, Gender and the ‘Vulgar’ Body of Jamaican Popular Culture, Durham: Duke University Press, 1993. Kelly Brown Douglas, The Black Christ, New York: Orbis Books, 1994. Pentecostalism takes its lead from the coming of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2. It is a movement concerned with the experience of the Spirit and practice of spiritual gifts. There is a range of Pentecostalisms even within African Caribbean communities in Britain.

Chapter 1 Theorising the politics of sound 1 Michael Bull and Les Back, The Auditory Culture Reader, Oxford: Berg, 2003, p. 7. 2 Maulana Karenga, Introduction to Black Studies, Los Angeles: University of Sankore Press, 1993, p. 311. 3 Julian Henriques, ‘Sonic Dominance and the Reggae Sound System Session’, in Michael Bull and Les Back (eds), The Auditory Culture Reader, Oxford: Berg, 2004, p. 452. 4 Tappa Zukie, ‘MPLA’, Tappa Zukie from the Archives, 1995. Translation mine. 5 Stuart Hall, ‘Encoding and Decoding’, in Simon During (ed.), The Cultural Studies Reader, London: Routledge, 1990, pp. 507–17. 6 Kobena Mercer, ‘ “1968”: Perodizing Politics and Identity’, in Lawrence Grossberg, John Frow, Graham Turner and Janice Radway (eds), Cultural Studies, London: Routledge, 1991, p. 427. 7 Paul Gilroy in ‘The Clash of the Sound Systems’, BBC Radio 4, November 2004. 8 Iain MacRobert, Black Pentecostalism, its Origins, Functions and Theology, PhD thesis, University of Birmingham, 1989, p. 277. 9 Carolyn Cooper, Noises in the Blood. 10 A classic study being Dick Hebdige, Cut ‘n’ Mix: Culture, Identity and Caribbean Music, London: Routledge, 1987. 11 Dianne M. Stewart, Three Eyes for the Journey: African Dimensions of the Jamaican Religious Experience, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 16. 12 Revival was not homogeneous, as groups differed according to the amount of African retention that shaped their theology and practice. 13 Leonard E. Barrett, Soul Force, Garden City: Anchor Press, 1974, p. 115. 14 Leonard E. Barrett, The Rastafarians, Boston: Beacon Press, 1977, p. 23. 15 For Revival influence on Rastafari, see Barry Chevannes, Rastafari: Roots and Ideology, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1994, p. 22.

154 Notes 16 Dianne M. Stewart, Three Eyes for the Journey, p. 109. 17 Diane J. Austin-Broos, Jamaica Genesis: Religion and the Politics of Moral Orders, Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1997, pp. 125ff. 18 J. Serverino Croatto, Biblical Hermeneutics: Towards a Theory of Reading as the Production of Meaning, New York: Orbis Books, 1987, p. 6. 19 Anthony Pinn, Terror and Triumph: The Meaning of African American Religion, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001, pp. 81ff. 20 Gayraud S. Wilmore, Black Religion and Black Radicalism: An Interpretation of the Religious History of African Americans, Third Edition, New York: Orbis Books, 1973. 21 Valentina Alexander, ‘ “Breaking Every Fetter”? To What Extent Has The Black Led Church In Britain Developed A Theology Of Liberation?’, Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Warwick, 1996, p. 228. 22 I refer to the Wesleyan Church in Marion, Indiana. 23 Robert Beckford, Jesus is Dread: Black Theology and Black Culture in Britain, London: Darton Longman and Todd, 1998. 24 For a discussion of bio-politics in Black expressive cultures, see Paul Gilroy, Against Race. 25 Mark Sturge, Black Majority Churches UK: Directory, London: ACEA, 2003/4, p. 2. 26 Carolyn Cooper, Noises in the Blood, p. 126. 27 Ibid. 28 Robert Beckford, Jesus is Dread, and Dread and Pentecostal: A Political Theology for the Black Church in Britain, London: SPCK, 2000. 29 Gordon Lynch, Understanding Theology and Culture, Oxford: Blackwell, 2005, p. 40. 30 Robert Beckford, Jesus is Dread, pp. 147ff. 31 R.S. Sugirtharajah, Vernacular Hermeneutics, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999, p. 12. 32 Ibid. 33 George Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Post-liberal Age, Westminster: John Knox Press, 1984. 34 Brian Blount, Cultural Interpretation: Reorienting New Testament Criticism, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995. 35 Ibid., p. 15. 36 Ibid., pp. 17–19. 37 Steven Feld, ‘Places Sensed, Senses Placed: Towards a Sensory Epistemology of Environments’, in David Howes (ed.), Empire of the Senses: The Sensual Culture Reader, Oxford and New York: Berg, 2005, p. 185. 38 Gino Stefani, ‘On the Semiotics of Music’, in Derek B. Scott (ed.), Music, Culture and Society, A Reader, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002, pp. 50–5. 39 Mark Smith, ‘Listening to the Heard Worlds of Antebellum America’, in Michael Bull and Les Back (eds), The Auditory Culture Reader, Oxford: Berg, pp. 137–63.

Notes 155 40 Paul Gilroy, There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack, pp. 153ff. 41 Kodwo Eshun, More Brilliant Than The Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction, London: Quartet Books, 1998. 42 David Katz, People Funny Boy: The Genius of Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, London: Payback Press, 2000, p. 49. 43 Richard Burton, Afro-Creole: Power, Opposition and Play in the Caribbean, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1997, pp.159–61. Chapter 2 Diasporic dialogue 1 Norman C. Stolzoff, Wake The Town and Tell The People, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2000, p. 1. 2 Richard Burton, Afro-Creole, p. 25. 3 Ibid. 4 Norman C. Stolzoff, Wake the Town and Tell the People, p. 65. 5 Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic, p. 83. 6 Ibid., p. 38. 7 Dick Hebdige, Cut ‘n’ Mix, pp. 62ff. 8 Ibid., p. 65. 9 See Paul Gilroy, There Ain’t No Black In the Union Jack, p. 164. 10 Clement Gayle, George Liele: Pioneer Missionary to Jamaica, Jamaica: Jamaica Baptist Union, 1882. 11 J. Wilkinson, The Church in Black and White, Edinburgh: St Andrew’s Press, 1993, pp. 23–35. 12 Iain MacRobert, Black Roots and White Racism in Early Pentecostalism, London: Macmillan, 1988. 13 Robert E. Hood, Must God Remain Greek?: Afro Cultures and GodTalk, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990, pp. 66–9. 14 Ivor Morrish, Obeah, Christ and Rastaman: Jamaica and Its Religion, Cambridge: James Clarke and Co., 1998, pp. 40–3. 15 Dianne M. Stewart, Three Eyes for the Journey, p. 41. 16 Robert E. Hood, Must God Remain Greek?, pp. 64–5. 17 Ibid., pp. 65–6. 18 Gayraud Wilmore, Black Religion and Black Radicalism, p. 19. 19 Anthony Pinn, Terror and Triumph, pp. 71–7. 20 Horace Campbell, From Rasta To Resistance: From Marcus Garvey to Walter Rodney, London: A Hancib Publication, 1985, pp. 26ff. 21 For a fuller discussion see Richard Burton, Afro-Creole, pp. 6–7. 22 Robert Beckford, Dread and Pentecostal, pp. 95ff. 23 Ibid. 24 See Stuart Hall, ‘Religious Ideologies and Social Movements in Jamaica’, in R. Bocock, and K. Thompson. (eds), Religion and Ideology, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985, pp. 269–97. 25 Ibid. 26 See Walter J. Hollenweger, Pentecostalism: Origins and Development Worldwide, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers Inc., 1997, p. 18. 27 Allan Anderson, An Introduction to Pentecostalism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

156 Notes 28 In 1908 Ambrose Jessup Tomlinson, the White general overseer of the predominantly White and segregationist Church of God (Cleveland), known in Britain as the New Testament Church of God, became a Pentecostal denomination. Tomlinson was eventually expelled from COG over financial irregularities in 1923 and took a quarter of his membership with him into a rival denomination that eventually became the Church of God of Prophesy. 29 Roswith Gerloff, A Plea for British Black Theologies: The Black Church Movement in Britain in its Transatlantic Cultural and Theological Interaction, Vol. 1, Frankfurt and New York: Peter Lang, 1992, pp. 106ff. 30 Ibid., pp. 25ff. 31 Diane J. Austin-Broos, Jamaica Genesis, 1997, p. 101. 32 William Wedenoja, ‘Religion and Adaptation in Rural Jamaica’, Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of California, San Diego, 1978, p. 116. 33 Allan Anderson, An Introduction to Pentecostalism. 34 William Wedenoja, ‘Religion and Adaptation in Rural Jamaica’. 35 Norman Stolzoff, Wake the Town, Tell the People, p. 37. 36 Robert Miles and Sally Phizaclea, White Man’s Country, London: Pluto Press, 1984, pp. 16ff. 37 Lambeth Council, Forty Winters On: Memories of Britain’s Post War Caribbean Immigrants, London: South London Press, 1988. 38 Stuart Hall and Bram Gieben, Foundations of Modernity, London: Polity Press, 1992, pp. 291ff. 39 Peter Fryer, Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain, London: Pluto Press, 1984, pp. 133ff. 40 When I speak of racism here I refer to historic ideologies of Black inferiority and identity that are translated into institutional practices and common-sense reasoning. 41 Clive Harris and Winston James (eds), Inside Babylon: The Caribbean Diaspora in Britain, London: Verso, 1993. 42 Ron Ramdin, The Makings of the Black Working Class in Britain, Aldershot: Gower Press, 1987, pp. 244ff. 43 Clive Harris and Winston James, Inside Babylon, pp. 260ff. 44 S. Jones, Black Youth, White Culture: The Reggae Tradition from JA to UK, London: Macmillan, 1988, p. 33. 45 Clifford Hill, West Indian Migrants and the London Churches, London: Oxford University Press, 1963, p. 22. 46 John Wilkinson, The Church in Black and White, pp. 101ff. 47 Lloyd Bradley, Bass Culture: When Reggae Was King, London: Pluto Press, 2001. 48 Dick Hebdige, Cut ‘n’ Mix, p. 92. 49 Paul Oliver, Black Music in Britain, Buckingham: Open University Press, 1990, p. 106. 50 John Connell and Chris Gibson, Sound Tracks: Popular Music, Identity and Place, London: Routledge, 2003, p. 176. 51 Interview with Duke Vin in ‘Clash of the Sound Systems’, BBC Radio 4, December 2004.

Notes 157 52 Roswith Gerloff, A Plea for Black British Theologies. 53 Joe Aldred, Unpublished discussion paper, Black Theology Forum, September 2001. 54 Malcolm Calley, God’s People: West Indian Pentecostal Sects in England, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965. 55 Ibid., p. 3. 56 Ibid., p. 8. 57 Ibid., p. 134. 58 Although the Wesleyan Church believes in a two-stage approach to grace – that is, regeneration and sanctification by the Holy Spirit – there has always been a Pentecostal under-current in the African Caribbean tradition, where there is a greater awareness and affirmation of spiritual gifts, including tongues. 59 Nicole Rodriguez Toulis, Believing Identity: Pentecostalism And The Mediation of Jamaican Ethnicity and Gender in England, Oxford: Berg, 1997, pp. 165ff. Chapter 3 The set and the Spirit 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

Paul Gilroy, There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack, pp. 161–2. Quoted in Roswith Gerloff, A Plea, p. 44. Ibid. Peter Fryer, Staying Power. Steven Small, Racialised Barriers: The Black Experience in the United States and England, London: Routledge, 1994, p. 91. Ibid. Quoted in Paul Gilroy, There Ain’t No Black In The Union Jack, p. 105. Ibid. Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, The Empire Strikes Back, pp. 9–76. Les Back and John Solomos (eds), Theories of Race and Racism: A Reader, London: Routledge, 2000, pp.133ff. A. Sivanandan, ‘Why Muslims Reject British Values’, The Observer, October 16 2005. Paul Gilroy, ‘One Nation under a Groove: The Cultural Politics of “Race” and Racism in Britain’, in David Theo Goldberg (ed.), Anatomy of Racism, Minnesota: Minnesota University Press, 1990, pp. 274ff. Ibid., p. 274. Paul Gilroy, ‘Clash of the Sound Systems’, BBC Radio 4, December 2004. Ibid. Lloyd Bradley, Bass Culture, p. 370. Paul Gilroy, There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack, pp. 194ff. See Imruh Bakari, ‘Exploding the Silence: African-Caribbean and African-American Music in British Culture Towards 2000’, in Andrew Blake (ed.), Living Through Pop, London: Routledge, 1999, p. 108. Les Back, New Ethnicities and Urban Culture: Racisms and Multiculture in Young Lives, London: UCL Press, 1996, pp. 188ff.

158 Notes 20 Interview with Gladdy Wax Sound System, Monday 30th August 2004. 21 Les Back, New Ethnicities and Urban Culture, pp. 188ff. 22 Tricia Rose, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America, Hanover and London: Wesleyan University Press, 1994, p. 39. 23 Ibid. 24 See William ‘Lez’ Henry’s discussion of DJ lyricism as a form of reasoning in Michael Bull and Les Back (eds) The Auditory Culture Reader, p. 439. 25 Organic intellectuals challenge, disrupt and identify new ways of thinking and being. 26 William ‘Lez’ Henry, ‘Reggae/Dancehall Music’, Unpublished book draft, 2005, p. 114. 27 Paul Gilroy, There Ain’t No Black, p. 188. 28 William ‘Lez’ Henry, ‘Reggae/Dancehall Music’, p. 114. 29 Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic, p. 36. 30 Carolyn Cooper, Sound Clash, p. 3. 31 Denise Noble, ‘Ragga Music: Dis/Respecting Black Women and Dis/Reputable Sexualities’, in Barnor Hesse (ed.), Un/settled Multiculturalisms: Diasporas, Entanglements, Transruptions, London: Zed Books, 2000, pp. 154ff. 32 L.P. Gerlach and V. Hine, People Power Change: Movements of Social Transformation, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970, p. 78. 33 Joel Edwards (ed.), Let’s Praise Him Again: An African-Caribbean Perspective on Worship, UK: Kingsway Publications, 1992. 34 Ibid., pp. 68–9. 35 Elaine Foster, ‘Women and the Inverted Pyramid of the Black Churches in Britain’, in Gita Sahgal and Nira Yuval-Davis (eds), Refusing Holy Orders: Women and Fundamentalism in Britain, London: Verso, 1992, pp. 45ff. 36 Conversation with Michael Grant on the ‘Robert Beckford Show’, BBC WM, Saturday 20th August, 2004. 37 Carol Tomlin, Black Language Style in Sacred and Secular Contexts, New York: Caribbean Diasporan Press 1999. 38 Joe Aldred, ‘Respect: A Caribbean British Theology’, PhD thesis, University of Sheffield, 2003, p. 240. 39 Elaine Foster, ‘Women and The Inverted Pyramid’, pp. 45–68. 40 Maxine Howell and Tonya Bolton, Am I My Brother’s Keeper: Black Churches and Development, London: Christian Aid, 2003. 41 Valentina Alexander, ‘Breaking Every Fetter’. 42 Robert Beckford, Jesus is Dread, p. 13. 43 Ibid. 44 William ‘Lez’ Henry, ‘Reggae/Dancehall’, p. 7. 45 John Rex and Sally Tomlinson, Colonial Immigrants in a British City: A Class Analysis, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979, pp. 240ff. 46 See Houston A. Baker, Jr., Manthia Diawara and Ruth Lindeborg (eds), Black British Cultural Studies: A Reader, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1996. 47 John Connell and Chris Gibson, Sound Tracks, p. 10. 48 Robert Beckford, Dread and Pentecostal.

Notes 159 Chapter 4 The gospel of dub 1 See Steven Feld, ‘A Rainforest Acoustemology’, in Michael Bull and Les Back (eds) The Auditory Culture Reader, Oxford: Berg, 2003, p. 226. 2 Steven Feld, ‘Places Sensed, Senses Placed’, p. 185. 3 M. Roseman, Healing Sound from the Malaysian Rainforest, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991, p. 175. 4 John Connell and Chris Gibson, Sound Tracks, p. 43. 5 Ivan Van Sertima, Blacks In Science, USA: Transaction Publishers, 1990. 6 Nelson George, ‘Rhymin’ and Stealing’, The Observer, January 23rd 2005, http://observer.guardian.co.uk/omm/story/0,,1393768,00.html. 7 ‘History of the Remix’, BBC OneXtra Documentary, http://www.bbc. co.uk/1xtra/tx/documentaries/remix.shtml. 8 H.W. Fowler (ed.), The Oxford Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. 9 Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae: The Definitive Guide to Jamaican Music from Ska Through Roots to Reggae, London: Penguin, 2001, p. 230. 10 Paul Gilroy, ‘Steppin’ out of Babylon – Race, Class and Autonomy’, in Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (ed.), The Empire Strikes Back, p. 300. 11 Dick Hebdige, Cut ‘N’ Mix, p. 83. 12 Ann Swidler, ‘Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies’, American Sociological Review, 51 (1986): 273–86. 13 Norman Stolzoff, Wake the Town, p. 42. 14 Obika Gray, Radicalism and Social Change in Jamaica, 1960–1972, Tennessee: University of Tennessee Press, 1991, p. 13. 15 Norman Stolzoff, Wake the Town, p. 91. 16 See S. Clarke, Jah Music: The Evolution of the Popular Jamaican Song, London: Heinemann, 1980, p. 128. 17 Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, p. 227. 18 Ibid., p. 228. 19 Ibid., p. 229. 20 Ibid., p. 320. 21 Ibid., p. 231. 22 David Katz, Solid Foundation: An Oral History of Reggae, London: Bloomsbury, 2003, p. 167. 23 David Katz, People Funny Boy, p. 177. 24 ‘Nine-nite’ is a Caribbean ceremony lasting nine nights before the burial of a dead person. 25 Lloyd Bradley, Bass Culture, p. 309. 26 Arthur Asa Berger, Cultural Criticism: Foundations of Popular Culture, London: Sage, 1995, pp. 74ff. 27 Henry Louis Gates, Jr, The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of AfricanAmerican Literary Criticism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988, p. 74. 28 Richard E.D. Burton, Afro-Creole, p. 61.

160 Notes 29 Robert D. Pelton, The Trickster in West Africa: A Study of Myth, Irony and Sacred Delight, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1980, p. 35. 30 See Henry Louis Gates, The Signifying Monkey, p. 21. 31 Chris Potash, Reggae, Rasta, Revolution; Jamaican Music from Ska to Dub, London: Books with Attitude, 1997, p. 146. 32 David Brain, ‘Cultural Productions’. 33 See S. Craig Watkins, Representing: Hip Hop Culture and the Production of Black Cinema, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1998, pp. 215ff. 34 Linton Kwesi Johnson, Tings an Times: Selected Poems, London: Bloodaxe Books, p. 28. 35 Michael Bull and Les Back, The Auditory Culture Reader, p. 7. 36 D.A. Cruse, Lexica Semantics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986, pp. 40ff. 37 Ibid. 38 Brian Blount, Cultural Interpretation, p. vii. Chapter 5 Dub hermeneutics 1 Walter Hollenweger, Pentecostalism, p. 308. 2 M. Herskovits, The Myth of the Negro Past, Boston: Beacon Press, 1958, pp. 265ff. 3 Dianne Austin-Broos, Jamaica Genesis, p. xxi. 4 Robert Beckford, Jesus is Dread. 5 Grant R. Osborne, The Hermeneutical Spiral: A Comprehensive Introduction to Biblical Interpretation, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1991, pp. 7ff. 6 Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. 7 R.S. Sugirtharajah, Voices from the Margin: Interpreting the Bible in the Third World, London: SPCK, 1991. 8 Idris Hamid (ed.), Out of the Depths, Trinidad: St Andrew’s Theological College, 1977. 9 R.S. Sugirtharajah, The Postcolonial Bible, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998, p. 16. 10 I. Mosala, Biblical Hermeneutics and Black Theology in South Africa, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1989. 11 Victor Anderson, Beyond Ontological Blackness. 12 Allan Anderson, An Introduction to Pentecostalism, p. 225. 13 J. Serverino Croatto, Biblical Hermeneutics. 14 Allan Anderson, An Introduction to Pentecostalism, p. 225. 15 See Christopher Tilley (ed.), Reading Material Culture, Oxford: Blackwell, 1990. 16 Such a task requires analysis of social-historical contexts, discursive analysis of events or texts and then interpreting or re-interpreting them. See John B. Thompson, Ideology and Modern Culture, London: Polity, 1990, pp. 20–2. 17 Ibid., p. 22.

Notes 161 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid. 20 J. Hillis Miller, ‘The Critic As Host’, in Harold Bloom, Paul De Man, Jacques Derrida, Geoffrey Hartman, J. Hillis Miller, Deconstruction and Criticism, New York: Seabury Press, 1979, p. 251. 21 See bell hooks, Black Looks: Race and Representation, London: Turnaround Books, 1992, pp. 115ff. 22 James Evans Jr, ‘ “Deconstructing the Tradition”: Narrative Strategies in Nascent Black Theology’, Union Seminary Quarterly Review, 44 (1990): 101–19. 23 James H. Cone, God of the Oppressed. 24 D. Tracy, Plurality and Ambiguity, San Francisco: Harper Row, 1987, p. 79. 25 James Evans Jr, ‘Deconstructing the Tradition’, p. 103. 26 See Kortright Davis, Emancipation Still Commin’: Explorations in Caribbean Emancipatory Theology, New York: Orbis, 1990, pp. 63–7. 27 See Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation, p. XXV. 28 Delores Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk, New York: Orbis, 1993, pp. 144ff. 29 Gayraud Wilmore, Black Religion and Black Radicalism. 30 Kortright Davis, Emancipation Still Commin’, p. 107. 31 Cornel West, Race Matters, Boston: Beacon Books, 1993, p. 14. 32 Kelly Brown Douglas, The Black Christ, p. 105. Chapter 6 Jesus dub 1 Roswith Gerloff, A Plea for Black British Theologies. 2 Ibid. 3 A.B. Cleage, The Black Messiah, Trenton, NJ: African World Press, 1989. 4 See James H. Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation. 5 R.A. Norris, (trans. and ed.), The Christological Controversy, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980, p. 3. 6 Kelly Brown-Douglas, The Black Christ. 7 Jacquelyn Grant, White Woman’s Christ, Black Woman’s Jesus: Feminist Christology and Black Women’s Response, Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988. 8 See Michel Clévenot, Materialist Approaches to the Bible, New York: Orbis, 1985, pp. 77–9. 9 Sandra M. Schneiders, Written That You May Believe: Encountering Jesus In The Fourth Gospel, New York: Herder and Herder, 2003, pp.26–36. 10 See David Rensberger, Johannine Faith and Liberating Community, Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1988, pp.15–36; and J. Louis Martyn, History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1979. 11 See Frederick Herzog, Liberation Theology: Liberation in the Light of the Fourth Gospel, New York: Seabury Press, 1972; and José Porfirio Miranda, Being and the Messiah: The Message of St John, New York: Orbis, 1977.

162 Notes 12 John Ashton, The Interpretation of John, London: SPCK, 1986, p. 6. 13 Sandra M. Schneiders, Written That You May Believe, p. 49. 14 Robert Beckford, God and the Gangs: Urban Toolkit for Those Who Won’t Be Bought Out, Sold Out or Scared Out, London: Darton Longman and Todd, 2004. 15 Ibid. 16 Informal conversation with Randall Bailey, October 2004. 17 Sandra M. Schneiders, Written That You May Believe, p. 102. 18 Jacquelyn Grant, White Women’s Christ. Chapter 8 Spirit dub 1 See for example the case of Pastor Douglas Goodman. The Voice, April 26, 2004. http://www.voice-online.net/content.php?show=3816&type=1 2 It is now agreed that a multiple origins theory best describes the ways that the movement developed simultaneously in different parts of the world at the turn of the Twentieth Century. 3 Iain MacRobert, Black Roots and White Racism. 4 Allan Anderson, An Introduction to Pentecostalism, p. 27. 5 Ibid. 6 See Harvey Cox, Fire From Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-First Century, London: Cassell, 1996. 7 Allan Anderson, An Introduction to Pentecostalism, p.29. 8 Ibid., p. 35. 9 Ibid., p. 34. 10 Iain MacRobert, Black Roots and White Racism, pp. 34ff. 11 See Walter Hollenweger, The Pentecostals, London: SCM Press, 1972; and Iain MacRobert, Black Roots and White Racism. 12 Walter Hollenweger, Pentecostalism, p. 20. 13 Ibid., p. 18. 14 Ibid. 15 Kortright Davis, Emancipation Still Commin’, p. 59. 16 Roswith Gerloff, A Plea for Black British Theologies, p. 153. 17 Ibid., p. 62. 18 Quoted in ibid. 19 Cornel West, The Cornel West Reader, New York: Basic Books, 1999, pp. 428ff. 20 See Karen Baker-Fletcher, Sisters of the Dust, Sisters of Spirit: Womanist Wordings on God and Creation, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998. 21 Toulis, Believing Identity. 22 Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought, p. 208. 23 Miroslav Volf, Work in the Spirit: Towards a Theology of Work, Eugene, Oreg.: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2001, p. 102. 24 Ibid., p. 104. 25 Jorgen Moltmann, The Spirit of Life: A Universal Affirmation, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992, pp.8–9. 26 Gayraud Wilmore, Black Religion and Black Radicalism, p. 182.

Notes 163 27 Douglas Nelson, ‘For Such a Time as This: The Story of Bishop William J. Seymour and the Azusa Street Revival’, Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Birmingham, May 1981, p. 196. 28 Michael Eric Dyson, Between God and Gangsta Rap: Bearing Witness to Black Culture, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. 29 Douglas Nelson, ‘For Such a Time as This’, p. 120. 30 Dwight Hopkins, Down, Up and Over: Slave Religion and Black Theology, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000, p. 158. 31 Eldin Villafañe, The Liberating Spirit: Towards a Hispanic American Pentecostal Social Ethic, Michigan: Wm B. Eerdmans, 1993, p. 165. 32 Villafañe uses the theological concept of sarx (flesh) to articulate the theological nature of personal sin. What is important is that sin is also social, in that individuals constitute society and a social order produces human beings; in short, social institutions, whether family, school, work or state, exhibit a morality. 33 Villafañe, The Liberating Spirit, p. 191. 34 Ibid., p. 183. 35 José Comblin, The Holy Spirit and Liberation, New York: Orbis, 1989, pp. 1–33. 36 Mae Gwendolyn Henderson, ‘Speaking in Tongues: Dialogics, Dialectics and the Black Woman Writer’s Literary Tradition’, in P. Williamson and L. Chrisman (eds) Colonial Discourse and Post Colonial Theory: A Reader, New York: Harvester, Wheatsheaf, 1993, p. 262. Chapter 9 Prosperity dub 1 For example, the Church of God (Cleveland) states its commitment in its doctrinal statement. See http://www.churchofgod.cc/doctrinal_ commitments.cfm 2 Russell Earl Kelly, Should The Church Teach Tithing?: A Theologian’s Conclusions about a Taboo Doctrine, Lincoln, NE: Universe Inc, 2000, pp. 89ff. 3 Mark Sturge, Look What the Lord has Done! An Exploration of Black Christian Faith in Britain, Bletchley: Scripture Union, 2005, p. 129. 4 Andrew Perriman (ed.) Faith, Health and Prosperity: A Report on ‘Word of Faith’ and ‘Positive Confession’ Theologies by the Evangelical Alliance (UK) Commission on Unity and Truth among Evangelicals, Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 2003, p. xvii. 5 D.R. McConnell, A Different Gospel: A Biblical Look at the Word and Faith Movement, Lincoln, NE: Hendrickson, 1988. 6 Ibid., pp. 3–13. 7 Andrew Perriman, Faith, Health and Prosperity, pp. 11–12. 8 Ibid., p. 19. 9 Charles E. Hummel, The Prosperity Gospel, Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1991, pp. 12–16. 10 Robert Tilton, God’s Laws of Success, Dallas: Word of Faith, 1983, pp. 170–1. 11 http://www.kicc.org.uk/cgibin/SoftCart.100.exe/scstore/sitepages/ main.html?scstore

164 Notes 12 E.W. Kenyon, The Two Kinds of Knowledge, Seattle: Kenyon’s Gospel Publishing Society, 1942. Quoted in Charles Hummel, The Prosperity Gospel, p. 34. 13 See D.R. McConnell, A Different Gospel, p. 110. 14 Andrew Perriman, Faith Health and Prosperity, p. 35. 15 www.kicc.org.uk/cgi–bin/SoftCart.100.exe/scstore/sitepages/main. html?E+ scstore 16 Fredrick Price, Is Healing For All? Tulsa: Harrison House, 1976, p. 104. 17 See D.R. McConnell, A Different Gospel, pp. 157–9. 18 Gloria Copeland, God’s Will is Prosperity, Tulsa: Harrison House, 1978, p. 54. 19 Creflo A. Dollar, No More Debt: God’s Strategy for Debt Cancellation, College Park, GA: Creflo Dollar Ministries, 2000, p. 25. 20 Mark Sturge, Look What The Lord Has Done, p. 132. 21 D.R. McConnell, A Different Gospel, pp. 178–9. 22 Challenges for the Future – Race Equality in Birmingham. Report of the Birmingham Stephen Lawrence Inquiry Commission, Birmingham: Birmingham City Council, March 2001. 23 Since 1995 I have taught theology to African Caribbean offenders in UK prisons. 24 Minority Ethnic Issues in Social Exclusion and Neighbourhood Renewal: A Guide to the Work of the Social Exclusion Unit and the Policy Action Teams So Far, London: Social Exclusion Unit, June 2000. www.cabinet-of_ce.gov.uk/seu/2000/bmezip/02 25 Ibid., p. 2. 26 Challenges for the Future, pp. 17–29. 27 See Kamaldeep Bhui, Racism and Mental Health: Prejudice and Suffering, London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2002. 28 See Stephen Moore, Investigating Crime and Deviance, London: Collins Educational, 1996, pp. 245–7. 29 Minority Ethnic Issues, p. 2. 30 Ibid. 31 A larger percentage of African-Caribbean youths (compared to their White counterparts) were engaging in post-16 education (Challenges for the Future, p. 25). Yet underemployment and unemployment were higher in the African-Caribbean community (ibid., pp. 22–7). 32 See A. Sivanandan, A Different Hunger: Writings on Black Resistance, London: Pluto, 1982, p. 6. 33 See Michel Clévenot, Materialist Approaches to the Bible, pp. 77ff. 34 Dwight Hopkins, Head and Heart: Black Theology, Past, Present and Future, New York: St Martin’s Press, 2002. 35 James H. Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation, p. 45. 36 Sermon Preached by Randall Bailey at Trinity Fellowship, Birmingham, August 1996. 37 Andrew Perriman, Faith, Health and Prosperity, pp. 179–80.

Notes 165 Conclusion 1 Robert Beckford, God and the Gangs. 2 While acknowledging missiology as a dimension of Christian theology, it is important to note that amongst African Caribbean Christians, mission, as a term and practice, has a problematic resonance. Suspicion of the concept is founded on the history of the conflation of European missionary activity in the Caribbean with the colonisation of Africans. The social and religious residue of the distortion of the gospel is felt today in African Caribbean congregations. Consequently, in order to transform its meaning African Caribbean Christians have tended to collapse mission into an expansive understanding of evangelism. Evangelism in this schema is the local focus on bearing witness to the gospel message. 3 See Jim Reeves, Gospel Favourites, Camden 1998. 4 Woody Rock, ‘Jesus is my homie’, Soul Music, Gospocentric, 2002. 5 Paul Tillich, Theology of Culture, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959. 6 Gordon Lynch, Understanding Theology and Popular Culture, pp. 185ff. 7 Robert Beckford, Jesus is Dread. 8 Robert Beckford, God of the Rahtid: Redeeming Rage, London: DLT, 2003. 9 See Cain Hope Felder, Troubling Biblical Waters: Race Class and Family, New York: Orbis, 1989. 10 Randall C. Bailey (ed.), Yet With A Steady Beat: Contemporary U.S. Afrocentric Biblical Interpretation, Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003. 11 See for example Pinn’s exploration of conversion in Anthony Pinn, Terror and Triumph. 12 Anthony Pinn, Why Lord? 13 Ibid., p.133. 14 Cornel West, ‘Sketches of My Culture’. Songs by Cornel West, Mike Dailey and Clifton West. Produced by Derek ‘D.O.A.’ Allen, Artemis Records, 2001. 15 For instance, in my role as presenter of documentaries fundamentalism, cultural hybridity, biblical criticism and contemporary politics, and reparations for slavery provided new ways of addressing the economic marginalisation of African Caribbean men and women in Britain. See ‘God is Black’ (Channel 4, 2004), ‘Gospel Truth’ (Channel 4, 2005) and ‘The Empire Pays Back’ (Channel 4, 2005).

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Bibliography 173 Alliance (UK) Commission on Unity and Truth among Evangelicals, Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 2003. Pinn, Anthony, Why Lord? Suffering and Evil In Black Theology, New York: Continuum, 1995. Pinn, Anthony, Terror and Triumph: The Meaning of African American Religion, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001. Potash, Chris, Reggae, Rasta, Revolution; Jamaican Music from Ska to Dub, London: Books with Attitude, 1997. Price, Fredrick, Is Healing For All? Tulsa: Harrison House, 1976. Ramdin, Ron, The Makings of the Black Working Class in Britain, Aldershot: Gower Press, 1987. Rensberger, David, Johannine Faith and Liberating Community, Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1988. Rex, John and Sally Tomlinson, Colonial Immigrants in a British City: A Class Analysis, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979. Rose, Tricia, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America, Hanover and London: Wesleyan University Press, 1994. Roseman, M., Healing Sound from the Malaysian Rainforest, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. Schneiders, Sandra M., Written That You May Believe: Encountering Jesus In The Fourth Gospel, New York: Herder and Herder, 2003. Sivanandan, A., A Different Hunger: Writings on Black Resistance, London: Pluto, 1982. Sivanandan, A., ‘Why Muslims Reject British Values’, The Observer, October 16 2005. Small, Steven, Racialised Barriers: The Black Experience in the United States and England, London: Routledge, 1994. Smith, Mark, ‘Listening to the Heard Worlds of Antebellum America’, in Michael Bull and Les Back (eds), The Auditory Culture Reader, Oxford: Berg, 2004. Stefani, Gino, ‘On the Semiotics of Music’, in Derek B. Scott (ed.), Music, Culture and Society, A Reader, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Stewart, Dianne M., Three Eyes for the Journey: African Dimensions of the Jamaican Religious Experience, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Stolzoff, Norman C., Wake The Town and Tell The People, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2000. Sturge, Mark, Black Majority Churches UK: Directory, London: ACEA, 2003/4. Sturge, Mark, Look What the Lord has Done! An Exploration of Black Christian Faith in Britain, Bletchley: Scripture Union, 2005. Sugirtharajah, R.S., Voices from the Margin: Interpreting the Bible in the Third World, London: SPCK, 1991. Sugirtharajah, R.S., The Postcolonial Bible, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998.

174 Bibliography Sugirtharajah, R.S., Vernacular Hermeneutics, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999. Swidler, Ann, ‘Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies’, American Sociological Review, 51 (1986). Thompson, John B., Ideology and Modern Culture, London: Polity, 1990. Tilley, Christopher, (ed.), Reading Material Culture, Oxford: Blackwell, 1990. Tillich, Paul, Theology of Culture, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959. Tilton, Robert, God’s Laws of Success, Dallas: Word of Faith, 1983. Tomlin, Carol, Black Language Style in Sacred and Secular Contexts, New York: Caribbean Diasporan Press 1999. Toulis, Nicole Rodriguez, Believing Identity: Pentecostalism and The Mediation of Jamaican Ethnicity and Gender in England, Oxford: Berg, 1997. Tracy, D., Plurality and Ambiguity, San Francisco: Harper Row, 1987. Van Sertima, Ivan, Blacks In Science, USA: Transaction Publishers, 1990. Villafañe, Eldin, The Liberating Spirit: Towards an Hispanic American Pentecostal Social Ethic, Michigan: Wm B. Eerdmans, 1993. Volf, Miroslav, Work in the Spirit: Towards a Theology of Work, Eugene, Oreg.: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2001. Walker, Alice, In Search of our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose, New York: HBJ, 1998. Warren, Michael, Seeing Through the Media: A Religious View of Communications and Cultural Analysis, Pennsylvania: Trinity Press International, 1997. Watkins, S. Craig, Representing: Hip Hop Culture and the Production of Black Cinema, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Wedenoja, William, ‘Religion and Adaptation in Rural Jamaica’, Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of California, San Diego, 1978. West, Cornel, Race Matters, Boston: Beacon Books, 1993. West, Cornel, The Cornel West Reader, New York: Basic Books, 1999. West, Cornel, ‘Sketches of My Culture’. Songs by Cornel West, Mike Dailey and Clifton West. Produced by Derek ‘D.O.A.’ Allen, Artemis Records, 2001. Wilkinson, J., The Church in Black and White, Edinburgh: St Andrew’s Press, 1993. Williams, Delores, Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk, New York: Orbis, 1993. Williams, Raymond, Marxism and Literature, New York: Oxford University Press, 1977. Williams, Raymond, Sociology of Culture, New York: Schocken Books, 1982.

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Index

acoustemology 25–6, 65–6 action-reflection model 149 Acts of the Apostles 142–3 adultery see ‘Caught in adultery’ dub African Caribbean Christianity 1, 2, 10, 82; in Britain 41–4, 54–61, 139–40; and emancipation of poor 139–40, 141–2; focus on Holy Spirit 115–29; focus on Jesus 93; implicit theology and politics 20, 21–2, 27; lack of political engagement 106–7; Pentecostalism 34–7; and popular culture 5–6, 17, 22–3, 146; and prosperity doctrine 130–44; and resistance 59–61, 106; spiritualised interpretation 21, 85; and word-sound-power 78–80; worship and resistance 106; see also Black theology; church hall; Pentecostalism African folk culture 18–19, 52, 103; Anancy figure 74–5 African religions 19, 31–3, 82, 119–20; and dub 73–4, 104, 105 ‘African soul’ 119–20 Akan peoples 74–5 Aldred, Bishop Joe 42, 58–9 Alexander, Valentina 21–2, 60, 107 Anancy (folk figure) 74–5 Anderson, Allan 34, 37, 85 anti-essentialism 4, 8 Arrested Development 148 Ashimolowo, Matthew 132 Assemblies of God (AOG) 35 Austin-Broos, Dianna 19, 82

Azusa Street Revival, Los Angeles 11, 34, 35, 116–17; and emancipation ethic 124–5; and social justice 118–19 Back, Les 50, 51 Bailey, Randall 97, 142, 148 baptismal formulae controversy 35 Baptists 42; native Baptist tradition 31, 32–3 Baraka, Amiri 3–4, 105 Barrett, Leonard 18 ‘Bashment’ 111 Beckford, Ewart see U-Roy Beckford, Robert: Dread and Pentecostal 61; God and the Gangs 145; Jesus is Dread 23, 24 Bell, J. Wilson 36 Bible see Scripture Birmingham: poverty in African Caribbean community 138, 139 Black Atlantic 2–3, 6, 8–9, 10, 147–8 Black culture: and Black theology 2–10, 18–20, 81–2, 108–9, 145–50; plurality 4, 7; see also popular culture Black humanism 7, 148 Black liberation theologies 2–3, 9, 108; and hermeneutics 84, 88, 89 ‘Black noise’ 17, 26, 66 Black Pentecostal churches 34, 42–4, 45, 54–61; communality 55–6; and Holy Spirit 120–4; liturgy 55; music and role of Holy Spirit 56–7; and prosperity doctrine 130–44; sanctification 117; and word-sound-power 78–80; see

Index 177 also African Caribbean Christianity Black theology: and Black Culture 2–10, 18–20, 81–2, 108–9, 145–50; and deconstruction 87–8; and hermeneutics 84; implicit theology 20, 21–2, 27; politics of Christology 93–4; survival strategies 89–90; theological language 23–5, 27, 79 Black youth: and dub in 1970s Britain 15–17; in institutional discourse 46–7; and law and order 48–9, 60; resistance 47–8, 111–12 Blackboard Jungle Dub (album) 71 Blount, Brian 24–5, 79 blues as ‘secular spiritual’ 7 Bogel, Paul 111 border clashes 6, 98, 99, 105 Bradley, Lloyd 40, 49, 73–4, 104, 105 Brain, David 76 Britain: Black Pentecostal churches 34, 42–4, 45, 54–8; Caribbean migrants’ experiences 37–44; poverty and African Caribbean community 130, 138–41; sound systems 40, 41, 49–54, 101–2, 105–6 British Union of Fascists 39 Brixton riots: Scarman Report 46–7 Brown, Overton ‘Scientist’ 71–2 Bultmann, Rudolf 83 Buster, Prince 30 Calley, Malcolm 42–3 care system in Britain 139 Caribbean: migration to Britain 37–44; slave heritage 17–19; see also African Caribbean Christianity; Jamaica ‘Caught in adultery’ dub 98–100 Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) 46, 47–8 Challenges for the Future report 138 Champion (DJ) 107 Charismatic movement 31, 58 Christianity: and African retentions 32, 33; opposition and resistance of subjects 33–4; and social class in Jamaica 31, 36–7; see also

African Caribbean Christianity; missionaries Christology 9, 23, 93–4, 98 church attendance in Britain 39–40, 42–4 Church of God (COG) 35, 36 Church of God of Prophesy 34, 36 church hall 31–2, 34; appropriation of dancehall 54, 101–2, 146; in Britain 42–4; as counter-ideology 58–9, 65, 106, 122; disapproval of dancehall 54, 102–3; gender imbalances 108; lack of political engagement 106–7, 107–8; and resistance 45, 58–9, 65, 106; and sound systems 49–50, 54, 61, 102–3; theology and culture 4, 5–6, 18–20, 26–7; see also African Caribbean Christianity; Pentecostalism Cleage, Albert 94 ‘Cockney Translation’ 49 code: decoding and encoding 16, 107, 108; and sound 25–6, 27 Collins, Patricia Hill 9, 123 collocation 78–9 colonialism 18–19, 37–8, 141, 149–50 Comblin, José 126–7 ‘common sense racisms’ 8 commonwealth 11, 130, 141, 143, 144 ‘complex poverty’ 130 Cone, James H. 2–3, 6–7, 94, 141 confession: positive confession 134–5 Connell, John 61, 66 ‘Conquering Lion’ (sound system) 15–17 conscious poets 76 constructive deconstruction 87 Cooper, Carolyn 6, 9, 18, 23, 52, 53, 105, 108–9 Copeland, Gloria 132, 136 Copeland, Kenneth 132, 135 counter-cultural spaces 40–4, 105, 110–112 counter-hegemony: of dancehall 61, 65, 107–8; and prosperity doctrine 140–1 counter-ideology of church hall 58–9, 65, 106, 122 Coxone, Sir 30

178 Index crack-cocaine dealing 137–8 crime and African Caribbean community 138, 139 Croatto, Serverino 85 cultural studies 7–8 cultural-linguism 24 culture 3–4; see also Black culture; popular culture culture DJs 52–3, 101 cumina tradition 19 dancehall 28–30, 101–12; appropriation of church hall 37, 101–2; in Britain 40–1, 44; as oppressive space 110; and Rastafarianism 19; and resistance 45, 49–54, 58, 107–8, 109, 111–12; social origins of dub in Jamaica 68–70; theology and culture 4, 5–6, 18–20, 26–7; see also sound systems Davis, Kortright 90, 119 de Certeau, Michel 33–4 decoding and encoding 16, 107, 108 deconstruction 86–8, 115; and Black theology 87–8; dub as act of deconstruction 11, 72–4, 77, 88, 91; and Jesus dub 94–5, 97–8; of pneumatology 115–24 Deleuze, Gilles 4–5 ‘Diamonds The Girl’s Best Friend’ (sound system) 109 Diddy, P. 67 divine healing 135–6, 142–3 DJs 2, 16, 72, 101–2, 111; dubbists as trickster figures 103–4; in Jesus dub 98, 99, 100; lyricism 52–4, 60, 76 Dollar, Creflo 132, 136 double voice 66, 74, 75 Douglas, Kelly Brown 10, 91, 94 ‘Dread’ 23, 61 drumming 19, 105 dub 1–2; as deconstruction process 11, 72–4, 77, 88, 91; definition 67–8; Henry on 101–12; as interpretative process 10–11, 86–92; as musical code 26; musical origins 30; recording history 70–2; and signification 74–6; social origins 68–70, 81 dub Jesus 2

dub poetry 2, 76–7; word dub/wordsound-power 77–80 dub version 1–2, 71 Dyson, Michael Eric 8, 125 Eccless, Clancy 71 Echo, General 101 economic growth 48, 59–60 emancipation ethic 11, 100, 115, 116, 150; and hermeneutics 88–92, 95, 97, 100; and pneumatology 124–7; and prosperity doctrine 130, 140–1 ‘Empire Pays Back, The’ (film) 149–50 Empire Strikes Back, The (CCCS) 46, 47–8 Empire Windrush (ship) 38 ‘enabling solidarity’ 8 encoding and decoding 16, 107, 108 Eshun, Kodwo 26 essentialism 4, 7–8 Estelle (R&B singer) 1, 111 ‘eudemonic’ 19 Evans, James 87 experiencing the Spirit 120–2, 127 ‘faith force’ 135 financial management 136–8; tithing 130–2 ‘finished work’ doctrine 35 fire imagery and Holy Spirit 123 Fisher, Elmer 35 folk culture see African folk culture folk religiosity 73 Foster, Elaine 56, 59, 108 Foucault, Michel 6 Frankfurt School 149 Fryer, Peter 38 Gadamer, Hans-Georg 83 gangs: prosperity doctrine 137–8 Garvey, Marcus 107–8, 110 Gates, Henry Louis 74 gender: dancehall/church hall positionings 108–9, 110; Jesus dub stories 95–100; see also womanism George, Nelson 67 Gerlach, Luther P. 54, 121 Gerloff, Roswith 35, 120, 121 Gibson, Chris 61, 66

Index 179 gifting: and emancipatory ethic 140–1; spiritual gifts 123–4, 127, 128; tithing 130–2, 136–7 Gilroy, Paul 6, 8, 26, 47–8, 68, 106 ‘Glorious Freedom’ (hymn) 89 glossolalia (speaking in tongues) 34, 116, 117–19, 123, 125; and heteroglossia 128 Gordon, A.J. 132 gospel music 54, 146 Gospels: John as dub 94–100; politics of 93–4; social justice in Luke 127 Grant, Jacquelyn 9, 94, 100 Grant, Michael 57 Gray, Obika 69 Guattari, Felix 4–5 Gutierrez, Gustavo 3 Hagin, Kenneth 132 Hall, Stuart 4, 7–8, 16, 106 Harder They Come, The (film) 70 Harris, Clive 39 Haywood, G.T. 35 healing: divine healing 135–6, 142–3; healing powers of dub 104–5 Hebdige, Dick 30 Henriques, Julian 16 Henry, William (Lez) 11, 50, 52, 53, 100, 101–12 heritage 17–20, 26–7 hermeneutics 11, 82–6; deconstruction and black theology 87–8; of dub 2, 86–92; and emancipation 88–92, 97, 100; of sound 25–7; vernacular hermeneutics 23–4, 27 heteroglossia 128 Hill, Clifford 40 Hill, Lauryn 148 Hine, Virginia 54, 121 hip-hop 51–2, 67, 148 history and remembering 60–1 Holiness Movement 116–17, 146 Hollenweger, Walter 81, 119 Holt, John 71 Holy Spirit 11, 55; in African Caribbean Christianity 115–29; experiencing the Spirit 120–2, 127; and interpretation 21, 85; and music 56–7; spiritual gifts 123–4, 127, 128; spiritual

knowledge 122–3, 126, 133; see also glossolalia ‘homies’ 147 hooks, bell 8–9, 87 Hopkins, Dwight 141 Hudson (church member) 36 iconoclastic deconstruction 87 immigration to Britain 37–44; racial hostility 39–40; social function of church 43–4 implicit theology 20, 21–2, 27 instrumentals 70–1 interpretation: spiritualised interpretation 21, 85; urban socio-political reading strategy 97; see also hermeneutics ‘inverted pyramid’ and gender 108 Islam: negative discourse 47 Jakes, T.D. 132 Jamaica: dancehall and sound systems 28–30; metaphor in 23, 27; migration to Britain 37–44; missionaries in 31, 34, 36–7; outernational influence 9; Pentecostalism 31, 36–7; Revival 19–20, 27, 31, 119, 120; social class and Christianity 31, 36–7; and social origins of dub 68–70, 81 James, Lloyd ‘Jammy’ 71 James, Winston 39 Jammy, King 67–8 Jesus Dub 79, 80, 94–100, 150 ‘Jesus-centricity’ see Christology John (Gospel) as dub 94–100 Johnson, Linton Kwesi 2, 76, 77 judicial system and Black youth 48–9, 60 Karenga, Maulana 15 Kelly, Russell Earl 131 Keswick view 117 Kinder, James L. 36 Kingsway International, London 133, 134–5 Kuhn, Thomas 83 Kukumo (poet) 77 language: collocation 78–9; theological language 23–5, 27, 79

180 Index Latin American Pentecostalism 125–7 law and order and Black youth 48–9, 60 Levi, Papa 101 liberation theology see Black liberation theologies Lindbeck, George 24 looked after children 139 Los Angeles see Azusa Street Revival Luke (Gospel) 127 Lynch, Gordon 23, 147 lyricism 52–4, 60, 76 McConnell, D.R. 137 Mackenzie, Dulcie 6 MacRobert, Iain 31–2, 45 Malachi (book of Bible) 130, 131 Malik, Kenan 8 Marley, Bob 73, 104–5, 148; ‘Redemption Song’ 66, 88–9 material poverty in Britain 138–41 memory and dub 75 Mercer, Kobena 17 metaphor 23, 27, 89 Methodism 42, 116, 117 ministry/minstrelsy 57–8, 78 mission 145–7, 148, 150 missionaries: in Jamaica 31, 34, 36–7; and popular culture 5–6 mixing 51, 71, 74 Moltmann, Jorgen 124 Mosala, Itumeleng 84 Mosley, Oswald 39 Muddle (church member) 36 music: as coded language 26, 27; and cultural memory 18–19; influence of revival 19–20; theology and culture 146–7, 148; see also sound; sound systems Myal-Obeah complex 32–3, 73–4 Myalism 32 native Baptist tradition 31, 32–3 negro spirituals 6–7, 66 neo-colonialism 141 ‘New Issue’ controversy 35 New Testament Church of God 34, 36 Noble, Denise 54 ‘nomadology’ 5, 150

Obeah 32 Obeah-Myal complex 32–3, 73–4 ‘old racism’ in Britain 46–7 one-track recordings 70 Onuora, Oku 76 operators 50, 51, 52 opposition and religion 33–4 Paraclete image 122 Paradise 54 Parham, Charles Fox 116, 117–18 passive radicalism 21–2, 60 Peckings, ‘Daddy’ 41 Pentecostal Assemblies of the World (POW) 35 Pentecostalism 10; appropriation of sound 66; in Britain see Black Pentecostal churches; in Jamaica 31, 36–7, 82; origins 116–20; pneumatological hermeneutics 85; racial segregation 35, 117, 118–19; and Revival 19–20, 119, 120; Western Pentecostalism 34–7, 116, 122, 124–5; see also African Caribbean Christianity; Black theology; church hall Perry, Lee ‘Scratch’ 26, 71, 73 Pinn, Anthony 7, 21, 27, 33, 59, 148 pirate radio 49–50, 111 pneumatology 11, 115–29, 125–7; and hermeneutics 21, 85, 86; social pneumatology 125–7 poetry see dub poetry police and Scarman Report 46–7 politics: and Christology 93–4; church’s lack of engagement 106–7, 107–8; counter-hegemony and counter-ideology 58–61, 106, 107–8; and dub in Jamaica 69; of sound 15–27, 22, 61, 111–12 popular culture: and African Caribbean Christianity 5–6, 17, 22–3, 146; see also Black culture; dancehall positive confession 134–5 post-colonial hermeneutics 84 post-modern hermeneutics 83–4, 86 poverty: in Britain 130, 138–41; and Pentecostalism in Jamaica 36–7; prosperity dub 141–4 praxis 149–50 Price, K.F.C. 132

Index 181 productivism 48, 59–60 prophecy 91 prosperity doctrine 11, 115, 130, 132–44 prosperity dub 141–4 Prugresiv Aatis Muvmant 76 racism: in Britain 39–40, 46–7; early Pentecostalists 35, 117–18, 118–19 Ranking Slackness 101 Rastafarianism 19–20, 23, 69, 71, 105 Raymond and Co 146 recognition 147–9, 150 recording history of dub 70–2 redemptive suffering 135–6 Redwood, Ruddy 70–1 Reeves, Jim 146 Reid, Duke 30, 70–1 religious-cultural emancipation 91 religious-cultural heritage 19–20 remembering 49, 60–1; and dub 75 remixes 67, 71, 74 resistance 7–8, 45–61, 76; and Black youth culture 47–8; religion as 21, 33–4, 54–8, 106; sound system as 49–54, 105, 107–8, 111–12 respect ethic 58–9 responsible syncretism 81 revelation knowledge 133–4, 141–2 Revival 19–20, 27, 31, 119, 120 rhizomes 4, 5, 150 riddim 72, 73, 76–7 right-wing racist politics 39 Rock, Woody 147 Rose, Trish 51–2 ‘Rude Boy’ genre 69 ‘rudie blues’ 30 salvation and sanctification 116, 117–18, 132–3 Saussure, Ferdinand de 23 Savelle, Jerry 132 Saxon Sound System 50, 101, 103–4 Scarman Report 46–7 Scripture: cultural interpretation 24–5, 148; doctrinal difference in Britain 42; hermeneutics 82–6; spiritualised interpretation 21, 85; see also Acts; Gospels; Malachi

second blessings 116, 117 ‘secular prosperity doctrine’ 137 selectors 50, 52, 111 self-revelation of Jesus 95, 98, 100 semiotics of sound 25–6 Sertima, Ivan Van 67 Seymour, William 34, 35, 116, 118–19, 125 ‘shadism’ 110 Shaka, Jah 103–4, 112 Sidney Stringer Comprehensive School, Coventry 15–17 signification 4; of dub 74–6; passive radicalism 22 Simmons, E.E. 36 Sinclair, David (‘Tapper Zukie’) 16–17 Sivanandan, Anwar 47 ska 30, 40, 41 skin colour and dancehall 110 slackness 52–4, 101, 102–3 slam poets 76 slavery: and Black culture 6, 17–19; slave religions 21, 31–3, 82, 119 Small, Steven 46 Smith, Mark 26 social class: and Christianity in Jamaica 31, 36–7; and dub in Jamaica 68–70; and race in Britain 38–9 social heritage 17–18, 26–7 social hermeneutics 85–6 social justice: and Azusa Street Mission 118–19; in Gospels 127 social pneumatology 125–7 social spaces for immigrants in Britain 39, 40–1 socio-political emancipation 90 sound: hermeneutics of 25–7; politics of 15–17, 22, 61, 111–12; theory of 65–7 sound clashes 52, 98, 104, 111 sound systems 10, 101–12; in Britain 40, 41, 49–54, 101–2, 105–6; division of labour 50; and gender 108–9; in Jesus dub 98–100; lyricism 52–4, 60, 76; music technology 51–2; origins 28, 29–30; and politics of sound 15–17, 22, 61, 111–12; as resistance 49–54, 105, 107–8,

182 Index 111–12; and tension with church hall 102–3; see also dancehall spaces: counter-cultural spaces 40–4, 105, 110–112; social spaces for immigrants in Britain 39, 40–1 speaking in tongues see glossolalia specials 30, 52, 104 spider-trickster 74–5 Spirit see Holy Spirit Spirit dub 127–9 spirits in African Caribbean Christianity 120 spiritual gifts 123–4, 127, 128 spiritual knowledge 122–3, 126, 133 ‘spiritual laws’ 135 spirituals 6–7, 66 Spivak, Gayatri 8 spoken word and dub 76–80 State repression 48–9, 60 Stewart, Dianne M. 19, 32 Stitchie, Lieutenant 102 Stolzoff, Norman 37, 68–9 ‘structures of feeling’ 3 Sturge, Mark 136–7 suffering: redemptive suffering 135–6 Sugirtharajah, R.S. 23–4, 84 survival 89–90 Swidler, Ann 68 syncretism 81–2 theological language 23–5, 27, 79 theologically responsible syncretism 81–2 theology see Black liberation theologies; Black theology ‘theology and culture dub’ 150 third blessings 117–18 Thompson, Errol 71 Thompson, John B. 86 Tillich, Paul 23, 147 Tilton, Robert 132, 133 tithing 130–2, 136–7 toasters/toasting 2, 16, 72, 76; see also DJs Tomlin, Carol 57

Tomlinson, A.J. 36 tongues dub 128 Toulis, Nicole Rodriguez 44, 122 trickster motif 74–5, 77; dubbist as trickster 103–4 Tubby, King 68 U-Roy (Ewart Beckford) 71 urban socio-political reading strategy 97 vernacular hermeneutics 23–4, 27 versions 1–2, 71 Villafañe, Eldin 125–6 Vin, Duke 41 Volf, Miroslav 124 Wailers see Marley, Bob Walker, Alice 8 Wedenoja, William 37 Wesley, Charles 116, 117 West, Cornel 90, 121, 149 West, Kanye 80 Western Pentecostalism 34–7, 116, 122, 124–5; see also Azusa Street Revival white supremacy 21; in religion 35, 112 Wilkinson, John 40 Williams, Delores 89 Williams, Raymond 3–4 Wilmore, Gayraud 33, 124 Witness, DJ 54 Witness (DJ) 102 ‘Woman at the Well’ dub 96–8, 100 womanism 8–9, 10, 58, 59, 94; dancehall/church hall positionings 108–9; and Holy Spirit 121–2 word dub/word-sound-power 1, 2, 77–80 Word of Faith Movement 11, 132–8 Wright, Gladwyn 51 ‘Zukie, Tappa’ (David Sinclair) 16–17