Bob in the Anglican Church? Yessssss please 🙂‍↕️ 🫡

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The service to commemorate emancipation, held at St Barnabas church, is easily one of the most daring things I have seen in the Anglican church space,

and I am here for it.

Of course I understand the position of the Rastafarian community; the Anglican church as an institution has blessed some of the greatest abuses against black people and been silent on the others. Not least the destruction of Temple Yard in Barbados, and in Jamaica, Bustamante’s 1963 order to “bring in all Rastas, dead or alive” — the Coral Gardens massacre that saw beard men hunted, beaten, and locked away simply for who they were. But this to me represents the new Caribbean Anglican church — the one doing one of the most daring things, proclaiming a God who is also in the image of Caribbean people, a God who stands up for the rights of the sufferah.

I am on this journey too. The same criticisms levelled at this service are the ones that have followed my work on Handel’s Caribbean Messiah — that we are stretching the tradition too far, that we are putting Caribbean bodies and Caribbean God-images where they were never meant to sit.

I wear that criticism the same way this service wears it: as confirmation we are doing something that matters.

May this version of the Anglican church step forward and lead us into a new Caribbean.

I am here for it.

My Top 10 Caribbean Lyrics

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I am poor with lyrics.

In fact, I am dismal with them.

However, a number of lyrics have stuck in my head and really meant something to me over the years.

Here then is my Top Ten lyrics list (of Caribbean music of course, the US has enough lists to last for generations)

Top 10 Lyrics

  1. Caught me on the loose fighting to be free, now you show me a noose under cotton tree, entertainment for you, martyrdom for me. – Third World
  2. Watch out my children, they got a fellah call Lucifer with a bag of white powder. He don’t want to powder yah face, but to bring shame and disgrace to the human race. – Ras Shorty I
  3. Tell them they can keep they money, I goin’ keep mine honey and die with my dignity. – Singing Sandra
  4. Emancipate yourself from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our mind – Bob Marley.
  5. West Indian politician, I check out yah evil ploy, the more you sing, the more you sound like Westminster choir boy. – Mighty Gabby
  6. Get up in the morning slaving for bread sir, so that every mouth can be fed. – Desmond Dekker
  7. The country sick, the country ain’t well, see it as a person and then you will tell. – Red Plastic Bag
  8. So let we live our whole lives, forIvah and Ivah. – Isasha
  9. I am the seed of me father, he is the seed of my grandfather. – Jahaji Bhai
  10. Black woman and child, for you I have so much love. – Sizzla

What are some of yours?