PROFESSOR STUART HALL was the first Black academic
castaway on the BBC Radio4 programme Desert Island Disks
where guests are invited to choose eight pieces of music they would
take with them if they were cast away on a desert island.
RAS SAM BROWN was one of the first Rastafari to publish a manifesto summarising the beliefs of the movement. He first came to public attention during the 1961 election campaign in Jamaica when he formed his Suffering People’s Party. Although he was not widely supported because many Rastas declined to be involved in ‘Politricks’, his influence was widespread and Leonard Barrett’s pioneering 1977 study of the movement, The Rastafarians, relied heavily on interviews with Brown.
“I OBSERVED some of the party, to-day, eat of late breakfasts, as if they had never eaten before – a dish of tea, another of coffee, a bumper of claret . . . sangaree, hot and cold meat, stews and fries, hot and cold fish pickled and plain, peppers, ginger sweetmeats, acid fruit, sweet jellies – in short, it was all as astonishing as it was disgusting.”
PROFESSOR Rex Nettleford, who has died aged 76, was an academic, scholar, dancer, social commentator, editor, cultural activist and Vice Chancellor Emeritus of the University of the West Indies who made a massive contribution to redefining Jamaican national identity in the post colonial era.