'
Roland:
‘You told me that you adopted a Rastafari Elder, JAH Stone as a Godfather. Living an ancient tradittion of Godfatherhood.
Please tell me about this Cannabis Sattiva Saddhu Ganjah Rastaman as you call him?’
Mihlawhdh:
‘I met JAH Stone through curious circumstances at a small Nihyahbihnghi held around a huge Cotton Tree in the grounds of the Devon House in Kingston.
It was during the time of Michael Manley PNP Government when Jamaica was going through a difficult period of whet he called “Democratic Socialism” that had changed the dynamic of the society and was threatening to turn Jamaica into another Haiti.
It seems that even before I knew who he was he knew just who I was....that shows just how small Jamaica really is.
It turned out that when I was a youth my mother used to take me to the Black Market at Constant Spring near where we lived.
JAH Stones mother used to sell their farm produce there and it was then that he first saw me and knew me as Mrs Ziadies´s pihknih, one of the children of the many women who would go to the local Market on a Friday and Saturday to buy fruits and vegetables from the higglers and market women who came from all part of the country to see their produce there.
That was possibly twenty two years before I actually met him and got to know who he was.
During the Itation years I met up with him, sometimes JA style “just out of the blue” when he was out selling his roots tonic.
Sometimes he came to visit me where I was staying at the time. After I met JAH Stone he came to visit me at my parents home in the exclusive uptown suburbs - I am shure he was never invited into such places allways looking from the OUTside in -
After I met JAH Stone he came to visit me at my parents home in the exclusive uptown suburbs - I am shure he was never invited into such places allways looking from the OUTside in -
I am NEVER a rude person, and I dont deal with all the Babylon foolishness of airs and graces just for the sake of it - when he came through the door into the huge living room he walked across the room and sat in a corner and belched like a Camel, took out his Ganjah and started to roll a spliff.
I thought that was just great within the context and how comfortable he felt with me because by then he was an inspiration.
Sometime I went to his yard and spent time there with him, and the pictures in the first Itation of him in his Ganjah field were taken on some land he had in the hills above and beyond Kingston in the Hermitage Dam area.
In fact the very first picture in the first Itation is of him trodding out of his mountain gates on his way into the St Andrew plains below.
It was a “mutual admiration society” between IHI n IHI and I looked upon him as a great inspiration and keeper of Rastafari knowledge - he was for me everything an elder Nihyahbihnghi Rastaman was.
He knew who I was and respected that I accepted him whole heartedly without any of the usual society attitudes towards Rastafari.
I know that for some when they meet an inspiration in Rastafari they embrace them in ONE HEART and “adopt them” in a spiritual sence as someone who has been a influence in their trod into Rastafari.
He had been through the Allalutta Continue since the days of the English King George when he was charged for treason and having a “draw” of his Sacramant and spent three years in prison.
He was most certainly a Guru Saddhu like Ganjah Rastaman and a very wise man indeed who had been through his Shadrack, Meshack and Abednigo Rastafari Fire walk and was a Fire Dread himself....He was affiliated with a group called the JUDAH COPTIC.’
Roland:
Roland:
‘How was it being in the countryside with those ancient Rastaman living an Ital life in the hills and countryside of Jamaica?’
Mihlawhdh:’’It was another life completely, real wild JAMAICA country LIVITY; ITAL, wild and free, free, free - 360 degrees in total opposition to the life in Kingston which was becoming totally mad because of the amount of cars which had been imported into the country.
In the bush life had nothing to do with Babylon work; no clock, no watch to watch or nine to five DEAD lines, nothing but one endless living One Heart vibe to do what you wished. It was really a kind of monastic life lived deep in the heart of nature.
The utter stillness I remember especially, so quiet and calm and only the sound of birds during the day time and the crickets, croaking lizards and peenie wallie during the night......when it RAINed and POURed you FELT the strength of the natural earth energy just inches away from you. There were no walls or barriers as the lightening and thunder would bbbbbburst like an electric storm above and light up the surrounding fields. It was magnetic almost.
Looking up the heavens seemed much much closer and somehow very clear as if you could touch them.
Most of the elders who I stayed with worked the land planting vegetables and crops of some sort and growing Ital Ganjah free from all fertilizers - just water from the river or spring and the heat of the sunshine. I remember one elder Chinese Dread JAH Chung who had not left from up there for 25 years in the bush.
He lived in a thatched hut with some rocks which was where he cooked whatever he cultivated. He ate out of a Calabash gourd with a Coconut shell spoon - yellow yam and cassava with a hot pepper, dasheen, sussumbah, green banana, cho cho and fried plantain.
There were wild roseapple and some mango tress in the area and he had lime, orange and ortanique trees which he made juice from. Someone brought him a Soursop tree which as he loved when he could make juice from the fruit.
There was a small river nearby which he would go and wash and swim in when he needed a fresh and collect water in a drum to boil for drinking.
Sometimes some of his youths used to come up there to visit and perhaps bring him some basic provisions like flour, matches, sugar, a piece of thick sponge which he put in a hammock and slept on until it disentegrated after years of use.
It was up in the mountains beyond the middle of the Island in St Catherine in a place called Coley District where the bus route stopped when the asphalt road ended and it turned to grass again you could go no further in.
From there you had to take the donkey or walk on foot for another two hours through pure wild bush and valleys to get to his flat piece of land where he had his “tatch hut” and cultivation.
He had a HUGE wooden box and it was strange to see about 50 kilos of Ganjah seeds all in one place, it was like a treasure chest with a GREAT potential. His Herb was beautiful in thick fluffy buds with golden strands between the seed capsules and the smell which was sweet, pungent and very strong. At night time he would make a Ganjah Herbal tee with other wild bushes and once you drank that the night fell away to dreams and deep sleeping slumber.
JAH Chung was the elder who said to me once he saw the first Itation “You doing JAH Works so whatever you wish to take pictures of here you are free” - he was another of the wise Saddhu like Rastamen who are living in the secret places in Jamaica.
I spoke about JAHnnoh and Ms Daphney in a past answer.
They lived perched on the hillside right above the most amazing Blue Lagoon below in a most beautiful lush, green part of Jamaica in Portland - from their small stone veranda where I slept you could look out through the breadfruit tree and see the Caribbean in the distance for as far as the IHI could see.
There were times when the tropical storms came up during the day and you could not go out in THAT rain as it was TORRENTIAL - I would sit on that perch, smoke herb, have a meditation, read the Bible, drink Search me Heart tea and just look out to sea with the lashing rains beating upon the water in the distance. Sometimes it would go on like that for two or three days, day and night.
JAHnnoh used to go up into the hills above to pick Guinep and the Search me Heart herb bush which they would hang and dry and use each morning for tea; he would also collect wild beads in different colours which he would bore and string on fishline to sell to tourists and visitors to the Lagoon.
Although the lived right above the main road from Port Antonio going back into St Thomas they were very isolated and quiet people living a very basic frugal life with only the money they made from the bead necklaces they sold and the fish that JAHnnoh caught when he went out to sea for the day in his canoe.
Whenever I had gone back to Jamaica that was my first port of call to go there and spend a week or two with them. It was my favorite part of the Island because it had the sea, mineral springs, the Lagoon and Waterfalls all within distance of each other.
The mystic mineral pool was right at the side of the Lagoon and the water seeped out of the rock hillside from the Nonsuch Caves in the Mountains above - THAT was pure clean virgin liquid crystal water which no one had ever touched, it was allways flowing out into the Lagoon and never the same from one moment to the other. I called it my baptismal waatah and the people who lived around the area would call me “water man” because I would spend hours each day soaking in the cool clear water.
I remember one day sitting there under the huge almond trees looking at the refractions dancing in the water and you could actually see pieces of the rainbow colours rippling on the surface with the sunshine.
Itations as I have said brought forward to me an entirely “other” life which I had never experienced in Jamaica when I was growing up as a youth in Kingston.
During those 18 years of coming and going I saw many varied parts of the country both coastal and in the interior of the Island and it was another very enriching experience to me while doing Itations that revealed to me the natural side of the Heart and Soul of Jamaica itself.
There are still city people who were born and bred in Jamaica who have never ventured out into the “wilds” of the Island from Kingston or Montego Bay and do not know anything about that little Island in the Sun and the treasures which are hidden around every corner once you make a move to see how the other half live outside of the urban crappy areas.
rrrrrrrastafari in my life
Roland:
‘What is the role of Rastafari within your own life?’
Mihlawhdh:
‘Abbahjahnhoi behsehmaihth yehmentihnhor sihmihyih kihdduhss mehnghistah tihmhtah fahkadah.
Within days of being born I was baptised at the very English Up Park Camp Garrison Church into the Church of England´s Anglican Faith.
It was where all the British soldiers were garrisoned on there deployment to Jamaica, their Crown colony in the Caribbean.
Fourteen years later I was to go to England to a very priviledged school and we attended a small Norman Chapel near my school.
It was in those environments that I discovered out of the blue that I was suddenly cosidered a Nigger, a Wog, a Spook, a Coon, a Kaffa and a Darkie - names I had never heard of in Jamaica; charming names of the Europeans for those of US from their Colonies no matter how well educated or socially well placed we were.
The older West Indians of ALL the Islands were always in AWE of King, Queen and the GREAT Motherland, they fawned upon it, LOVED it, it was the centre of their world MORE than their own countries. Everything about Great Britain, the land, the Monarchy and Europe was paramount in their psyche to be looked up to and adored (no worshipped) beyond belief.
When I went to live in England and experience that so called greatness I wondered seriously what the hell all that fuss was about; for quite the contrary I found a place which was certainly not as advanced humanity wise as where I came from. And within society there was nothing which we lacked down there in Jamaica.
Perhaps they had the Bank of England, Bukkingham Palace, St Paul´s Cathedral, Oxford and Cambridge, hallowed institutions and their well positioned upper classes who no doubt gained their wealth from the “common” wealth and other third world countries ; but what existed below that in their “masses” was certainly quite backward and of no great import.
Contrary to West Indian opinion that we were all an EQUAL part of Madams “common” wealth, we certainly were NOT considered equal nor English and anyway what did I have to do with the Church of England´s Anglican Faith, and BEING in England to boot.
Instead we were all seen as immigrants and auslanders and there is a speech which was given by the poli-tricks-man Enoch Powell in the 60´s which is know as his “rivers of blood” speech in which he “prophesied” that all the immirgation to the UK from its colonies would lead to social catastrophy in the future.
It was in those environs that I totally rejected any LOVE or AFFECTION for the Motherland, or JOY to go to that Church of England Chapel for one hour each sunday morning. In fact I despised the very idea of that as I only felt totally alienated in its arena.
Like ALOT of people of “My Generation” amongst the youth in the 60´s I had absolutely ZERO interest in anything called Church LIKE THAT, “bored to death” and could not care less about some Vicar standing at the front of the Church leading a “service” for one wasted hour.
Now I know its just another one of the dead Babylon Churches leading the people astray.
By dead I mean in contrast to what I discovered in His Imperial Majesties Ethiopian Orthodox Church when I first went to Ethiopia in 1982; where I found the real true and LIVING Church.
Like alot of people of my generation in the 60´s I was looking for “something” in the total dont know darkness.
Lost for years and living between the worlds so to speak. With no one to turn to and ASK, no where to KNOW where to look like many I blundered through the years 1964 into 1978 keeping an open mind and allways seeking that illusive “answer” - Johnny Nash even said it in “There are more questions than answers” - and the more I find out the less I know. FAR IHI that was before RASTAFARI.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTHBfWcikmY
I was seeking that “something” though, looking, enquiring, wondering, THE ANSWER; anything that would make sense of it all and release me to feel soul satisfied.
Popular Youth Culture was on the rise, music was inspiring, we were enquiring all the time. I had started smoking Cannabis Sattiva, Ganjah in 1968 - that blew out all my CONceptions and MISconceptions throwing me about like a small trawler tossed upon the ocean of confusion, doubt and concerns to find a personal SOULution.
Those were the beginnings of my personal revelations, my “brainwash” which before JAH I was sinking. RASTAFARI.
Once on a summer holiday to Jamaica my cousin took me into a Ghetto to buy some Ganjah. There was a youth living in a small ramshackle hut smoking Herb and asking me “Yuh know who yuh FAAHDAH ihihzz” which I found very curious and rather strange because that is all he said time after time after time - now I realTRUTH he was asking me if I knew that Selassie I was IHI n IHI FAAHDAH.
When I started Itations in 1978 it did take some years for me to realTRUTH that the penny had dropped and that EVERYTHING I had been seeking for OUT there in Outernational I found right there under my nose in my own bahkhyaahdh.
EVERYTHING fell into place so silently and easily, and before IHI knew it, it had instated itself in my soul; it is so ironic now to know that but that is just part of the irony of life and the fact that to get to “heaven” you have to go through alot of hell paying dues to “get over” - and so it was that really something which had laid dormant in my soul for so long suddenly sprang to life like a Ganjah seed that had fallen on rocky ground before it recieved the nourishment it needed to explode into real life.
People often ask “when did you become a Rasta” and IHI feel that the statement “Rastafari was allways inside” is very true. I see it like a Lotus Blossom that was closed until at some point it began to open and bloom as a flower. Suddenly all my questions fell away and walking the FIRE walk of Shadrack, Meshack and Abednigo was the process by which I walked into Rastafari and found my TRUE revelation. No man can give that and no man can take that away either, JAH Knows.
I have never looked black since then as the years go by. Certainly after I made my two Journeys to Addis that process was multiplied and quantified several fold; FORIVAH.
I said earlier I dont wish to have anything to do with the Anglican Church of England but I know that I would attend daily services in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and LOVE every amazing ALIVE, LIVING moment of it.
Everything I missed in the “other” I found in the Church of HIM which His Imperial Majesty was FAAHDAH and HEAD of.
Rastafari is a daily everyday thing in my life, it is the beginning and the end. It is all the FULLfillment IHI need. LOVE JAH and LIVE.
It is as simple and as final as that.’
Roland van Reenen interviews Mihlawhdh Faristzaddi
Mihlawdhd Faristzaddi, Jamaican of Arab, Jewish, African, European, and indian ancestry, is an English trained graphic artist and photographer. "Itations Of Jamaica and I Rastafari" is his "Itation" (meditation) of the manifesting culture and the beautiful Caribbean Island of Jamaica. His books are the record of the "I and I" that is his personal history, the history of Jamaica - in the metaphor of the Jamaican creole experience.
Roland:
‘Who is Mihlawhdh? Tell us something about yourself?’
Mihlawhdh:
‘I was born at the Nuttall Hospital, Cross Roads, Kingston Jamaica on the IDES of MARCH 1950.
I grew up and went to school in Kingston and in the country near Spaulding at Knox College.
I attended Jamaica College after the Common entrance examinations in 1962.
In 1964 I was taken to the United Kingdom where I was sent to an English Boarding School; The Pull Court, Bredon School in the West Country between the Malvern Hills and Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire.
I lived in a small city in the South of London called East Croydon where in 1969 I attended the Croydon College of Art and Design and did a four year SIAD Diploma in Graphic Design.
In 1973 I worked at an Advertising Agency in London as a first part of getting experience after leaving College.
After that I was lucky enough to find a creative position at A&M Records, London working as Assistant to the Art Director Fabio Nicoli.
Having grown up in the UK during the 60´s I was deeply influenced by the musical scene and the Popular Youth Movement Culture of the time - it was an era when limits were being tested and borders were being broken down and young people were seeking new experiences and pushing social boundaries.
I had been TAKEN to the UK after receiving my foundational years in Jamaica.
I guess it was a progression coming to Europe where I was able to expand my horizons from an Island mentality into a more UNIVERSALIST approach and in the long run it has been a transformational experience which has broadened my life horizons.
In 1977 I left A&M Records and did a year as an Art Director at Polydor Records, London to gain the necessary experience I would need for the next stage of my journey.
In 1978 I started a 20 year series of Intercontinental Criss Cross journeys between Europe, Jamaica and Africa working on the Itations of Jamaica and I Rastafari books.’
‘Who is Mihlawhdh? Tell us something about yourself?’
Mihlawhdh:
‘I was born at the Nuttall Hospital, Cross Roads, Kingston Jamaica on the IDES of MARCH 1950.
I grew up and went to school in Kingston and in the country near Spaulding at Knox College.
I attended Jamaica College after the Common entrance examinations in 1962.
In 1964 I was taken to the United Kingdom where I was sent to an English Boarding School; The Pull Court, Bredon School in the West Country between the Malvern Hills and Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire.
I lived in a small city in the South of London called East Croydon where in 1969 I attended the Croydon College of Art and Design and did a four year SIAD Diploma in Graphic Design.
In 1973 I worked at an Advertising Agency in London as a first part of getting experience after leaving College.
After that I was lucky enough to find a creative position at A&M Records, London working as Assistant to the Art Director Fabio Nicoli.
Having grown up in the UK during the 60´s I was deeply influenced by the musical scene and the Popular Youth Movement Culture of the time - it was an era when limits were being tested and borders were being broken down and young people were seeking new experiences and pushing social boundaries.
I had been TAKEN to the UK after receiving my foundational years in Jamaica.
I guess it was a progression coming to Europe where I was able to expand my horizons from an Island mentality into a more UNIVERSALIST approach and in the long run it has been a transformational experience which has broadened my life horizons.
In 1977 I left A&M Records and did a year as an Art Director at Polydor Records, London to gain the necessary experience I would need for the next stage of my journey.
In 1978 I started a 20 year series of Intercontinental Criss Cross journeys between Europe, Jamaica and Africa working on the Itations of Jamaica and I Rastafari books.’
Roland:
‘What are the main influences which shaped the life of Mihlawhdh Faristzaddi?
What kind of music did you listen to and what kind of books did you read?’
Mihlawhdh:
‘My Godfather JAH Stone spoke about HEADdecaytion, in difference to Education, in difference, certainly to IHIducation which in his IHIHZHS was even greater than Education.
IHI now know through JAH Knowledge that IHIducation is the IHIYEHST IHIYHTHZHS.
Richie Havens sang a song on an album which was released on A&M Records in the mid 70‘s called “I was educated by myself” - you can Google the lyrics for yourself...
http://www.richiehavens.com/official_site/lyrics/I-Was-Educated.html
And so it is many many years after I first heard that song and met JAH Stone that I see that IHI also “Was educated by myself” - this is not a Knowledge learnt in the classroom it is a KNOWLEDGE I found through Rastafari and Creation on the Itation trodz.
I would guess the first main influence in my life which still travels about with me is the VERY DEEP love I have in my heart for
Mamma Jahmaica - though I can now say I feel like a Son of Ethiopia; through all time my roots in Jamaica are deep and strong and
it was there that I had my first tastes of life.....it was a bless-in to be born in Jamaica for me, it was where I first learnt about abundance of rich natural life in the landscapes, the fruit, foods and bounties that Jamaica is all about.
I IMAGINE a time when the Taino Arawak Indians lived there and there was no “civilized pollution” that exists like eye sores in the shitties around that Island in the Sun and IHI IMAGINE what it must have been lile.
This Island in the Caribbean, filled with sunshine and life giving rain - the Land of Wood and Water, of rivers cascading down through the Emerald Tropical forests to the sandy sea shores - Columbus sent a message to Queen Isabella in Spain as he threw down his handkerchief and said “Jamaica is one of the fairest and most beautiful lands I have ever seen” - an Island full of waterfalls, and green crystal rivers which cross the countryside like arteries in her landmass.
When I close my IHIHZHS and return to the images of those past times it is a place I would love to experience before the so called Modern times, when only the Taino Arawaks lived there in harmony and complete peace. It must have been a heaven on earth.
Growing up in the 50´s and 60´s in Jamaica we listened to RJR and JBC; there was music from all over the world which was played on the airwaves then, certainly all the music from the USA and the United Kingdom we heard there, both Classical, Jazz, mainstream
and Pop Music of that era.
In the early 60´s Rock Steady, Blue Beat and Ska was the Jamaican rage of the times as the first music (apart from Calypso) which was the music of the youth...we danced to it, we sang it and we played it on the large Telefunken Record Player we had then.
They were a part of our musical upbringing in the late 50´s and early 60´s which eventually became Reggae Music.
Of course in 1964 I was taken to the UK to school and suddenly there was all of THAT became my .
The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, The Yardbirds, Cilla Black, Petula Clark, Hermans Hermits, Deep Purple, Unit 4 plus 2,
Manfred Mann, Pink Floyd, Traffic, Spencer Davis Group, The Move; the list is endless almost.
Some of it I liked, some of it seemed very twee and peculiar to me almost....She loves you yeah yeah yeah....Little Red Rooster!
Then I heard HEY JOE.........HEY JOE aah where you going with that gun in your hand.
HEY JOE, I said aah where you going with that gun in your hand......when I saw The Jimi Hendrix Experience on Top of the Pops it was like INSTANT Karmah for me - I did not even have to think about it, I just KNEW it, that THAT was it for me.
I bought the first ARE YOU EXPERIENCED album and I never looked back.....
That was real POWER and VIBES and it captured my feelings forever and he still represents a big part of my life even to today.
Indirectly it was his album covers which inspired in me the wish to go to Art College and do a Graphic Design course which was exactly which happened and that was how eventually worked at A&M Records.
I listened to a cross section of GOOD Music, people like Santana, Lonny Liston Smith, Earl Klug, Aretha Franklin, Wes Montgomery, Charles Lloyd, Lorainne Ellison, Pink Floyd, Mike Oldfield, George Benson, Cream, Gil Scott Heron, Bobby Womack, Curtis Mayfield, The Delfonics, The O Jays, The Doors, Marvin Gaye, Ester Phillips, Buffy St Marie, Richie Havens, Kraftwerk, Joan Armatrading, Supertramp, Tangerine Dream. Tons of music that was in the exceptional bracket. The list is endless.
I listened to alot of music which was not mainstream or which many people never even heard of for I was never interested in the ordinary nor the naawh seh nuttihnh “pop” world.
ALOT of Reggae, The Cimmarons, Burning Spear, Big Youth, Alpha Blondie, Pablo Moses, Bunny Wailer, Bob Marley and the Wailers,
Judy Mowatt, Aswad, Ras Michael and the Sons of Negus, the Congoes, The Abbasinians, The Ethiopians, Misty in Roots, I Jahman Levi, Third World, Black Uhuru, Black Slate, Twinkle Brothers, Alpha and Omega, Count Ozzy and the Mystic Revelation of Rastafari, The Light of Saba, Pablo Moses, Augsustus Pablo, Dennis Brown, Garnett Silk, Steel Pulse, JAH Shaka, The Gladiators and many many more..
At Art College in the early 70´s everyone was reading the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings.......
By then I had read the Autobiography of Malcolm X and all the other Freedom Fighters like Eldridge Cleaver “Soul on Ice” - George Jacksons “Soledad Brother” - Angela Davis and Hewey Newton of the Black Panthers.
I was interested in reality writers mostly; people who were putting out their own stories at the time.
I read the Hippie writers like Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin who spoke in their manifesto about “offing the Pigs” - they were white radicals who considered themselves leaders of sorts and were trying to garner interest with all the dissafected youth over the Vietnam war in the 1960´s...under that banner were Allen Ginsberg the poet and Jack Kerouac who was from the Beat generation.
I read alot of the UK Underground Press which was floating about in the 60´s - the Newspaper OZ and High Times also.
I read books across the board; The Murder of Christ by Willehm Reich, The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer, I read The Glass Bead Game, Steppenwolf and Damian by Herman Hesse, Andre Gide´s The Fruits of the Earth, the Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupery, it was Jonathan Livingston by Richard Bach which I read after smoking some spliffs which revealed to me the “mystical hidden inner meaning” in that story which was truely amazing - it was like a key which opened its secret to me.
There was a great alternative bookshop in Camden Town in London and I used to go up there on a Saturday and spend the entire day browsing their shelves and looking mostly at Photographic and Photo books full of pictures which were startling and unique documents of the natural creation.
There is one book I loved which was called “The Woodbutchers Art, Handmade houses” which was a photo book showing small handmade houses which were made from discarded objects and materials which they recycles to make unique looking tree houses and small structures in forests which were radically different from “normal” city homes.
I was particularily moved by the Edward S. Curtis photographs of the Native American Indians. He was an white American born in the 1860´s who worked in Sepia Tone pictures and spent many years documenting the Native American Indian Culture before it changed drastically and lost direction.
http://www.google.co.uk/images?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-GBfficial&channel=s&hl=en&q=edward+s+curtis+photographer&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=univ&ei=jkEoTen1J4abhQe9x4zNAg&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=2&ved=0CDUQsAQwAQ&biw=1024&bih=578
If you look at his work I see that this medium would be perfect for a book about the Elders of Rastafari photographed in this Ancient looking Sepia tone texture in which he shot his pictures.
Alltogether these different researches were what fuelled my feelings and inspiration towards doing Itations which came many years after all those years on injesting so much visual and verbal information.
It is they that consitiute my own personal IHIducation and researches which inspired me and led me on into the Itation times in 1978.’
‘What are the main influences which shaped the life of Mihlawhdh Faristzaddi?
What kind of music did you listen to and what kind of books did you read?’
Mihlawhdh:
‘My Godfather JAH Stone spoke about HEADdecaytion, in difference to Education, in difference, certainly to IHIducation which in his IHIHZHS was even greater than Education.
IHI now know through JAH Knowledge that IHIducation is the IHIYEHST IHIYHTHZHS.
Richie Havens sang a song on an album which was released on A&M Records in the mid 70‘s called “I was educated by myself” - you can Google the lyrics for yourself...
http://www.richiehavens.com/official_site/lyrics/I-Was-Educated.html
And so it is many many years after I first heard that song and met JAH Stone that I see that IHI also “Was educated by myself” - this is not a Knowledge learnt in the classroom it is a KNOWLEDGE I found through Rastafari and Creation on the Itation trodz.
I would guess the first main influence in my life which still travels about with me is the VERY DEEP love I have in my heart for
Mamma Jahmaica - though I can now say I feel like a Son of Ethiopia; through all time my roots in Jamaica are deep and strong and
it was there that I had my first tastes of life.....it was a bless-in to be born in Jamaica for me, it was where I first learnt about abundance of rich natural life in the landscapes, the fruit, foods and bounties that Jamaica is all about.
I IMAGINE a time when the Taino Arawak Indians lived there and there was no “civilized pollution” that exists like eye sores in the shitties around that Island in the Sun and IHI IMAGINE what it must have been lile.
This Island in the Caribbean, filled with sunshine and life giving rain - the Land of Wood and Water, of rivers cascading down through the Emerald Tropical forests to the sandy sea shores - Columbus sent a message to Queen Isabella in Spain as he threw down his handkerchief and said “Jamaica is one of the fairest and most beautiful lands I have ever seen” - an Island full of waterfalls, and green crystal rivers which cross the countryside like arteries in her landmass.
When I close my IHIHZHS and return to the images of those past times it is a place I would love to experience before the so called Modern times, when only the Taino Arawaks lived there in harmony and complete peace. It must have been a heaven on earth.
Growing up in the 50´s and 60´s in Jamaica we listened to RJR and JBC; there was music from all over the world which was played on the airwaves then, certainly all the music from the USA and the United Kingdom we heard there, both Classical, Jazz, mainstream
and Pop Music of that era.
In the early 60´s Rock Steady, Blue Beat and Ska was the Jamaican rage of the times as the first music (apart from Calypso) which was the music of the youth...we danced to it, we sang it and we played it on the large Telefunken Record Player we had then.
They were a part of our musical upbringing in the late 50´s and early 60´s which eventually became Reggae Music.
Of course in 1964 I was taken to the UK to school and suddenly there was all of THAT became my .
The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, The Yardbirds, Cilla Black, Petula Clark, Hermans Hermits, Deep Purple, Unit 4 plus 2,
Manfred Mann, Pink Floyd, Traffic, Spencer Davis Group, The Move; the list is endless almost.
Some of it I liked, some of it seemed very twee and peculiar to me almost....She loves you yeah yeah yeah....Little Red Rooster!
Then I heard HEY JOE.........HEY JOE aah where you going with that gun in your hand.
HEY JOE, I said aah where you going with that gun in your hand......when I saw The Jimi Hendrix Experience on Top of the Pops it was like INSTANT Karmah for me - I did not even have to think about it, I just KNEW it, that THAT was it for me.
I bought the first ARE YOU EXPERIENCED album and I never looked back.....
That was real POWER and VIBES and it captured my feelings forever and he still represents a big part of my life even to today.
Indirectly it was his album covers which inspired in me the wish to go to Art College and do a Graphic Design course which was exactly which happened and that was how eventually worked at A&M Records.
I listened to a cross section of GOOD Music, people like Santana, Lonny Liston Smith, Earl Klug, Aretha Franklin, Wes Montgomery, Charles Lloyd, Lorainne Ellison, Pink Floyd, Mike Oldfield, George Benson, Cream, Gil Scott Heron, Bobby Womack, Curtis Mayfield, The Delfonics, The O Jays, The Doors, Marvin Gaye, Ester Phillips, Buffy St Marie, Richie Havens, Kraftwerk, Joan Armatrading, Supertramp, Tangerine Dream. Tons of music that was in the exceptional bracket. The list is endless.
I listened to alot of music which was not mainstream or which many people never even heard of for I was never interested in the ordinary nor the naawh seh nuttihnh “pop” world.
ALOT of Reggae, The Cimmarons, Burning Spear, Big Youth, Alpha Blondie, Pablo Moses, Bunny Wailer, Bob Marley and the Wailers,
Judy Mowatt, Aswad, Ras Michael and the Sons of Negus, the Congoes, The Abbasinians, The Ethiopians, Misty in Roots, I Jahman Levi, Third World, Black Uhuru, Black Slate, Twinkle Brothers, Alpha and Omega, Count Ozzy and the Mystic Revelation of Rastafari, The Light of Saba, Pablo Moses, Augsustus Pablo, Dennis Brown, Garnett Silk, Steel Pulse, JAH Shaka, The Gladiators and many many more..
At Art College in the early 70´s everyone was reading the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings.......
By then I had read the Autobiography of Malcolm X and all the other Freedom Fighters like Eldridge Cleaver “Soul on Ice” - George Jacksons “Soledad Brother” - Angela Davis and Hewey Newton of the Black Panthers.
I was interested in reality writers mostly; people who were putting out their own stories at the time.
I read the Hippie writers like Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin who spoke in their manifesto about “offing the Pigs” - they were white radicals who considered themselves leaders of sorts and were trying to garner interest with all the dissafected youth over the Vietnam war in the 1960´s...under that banner were Allen Ginsberg the poet and Jack Kerouac who was from the Beat generation.
I read alot of the UK Underground Press which was floating about in the 60´s - the Newspaper OZ and High Times also.
I read books across the board; The Murder of Christ by Willehm Reich, The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer, I read The Glass Bead Game, Steppenwolf and Damian by Herman Hesse, Andre Gide´s The Fruits of the Earth, the Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupery, it was Jonathan Livingston by Richard Bach which I read after smoking some spliffs which revealed to me the “mystical hidden inner meaning” in that story which was truely amazing - it was like a key which opened its secret to me.
There was a great alternative bookshop in Camden Town in London and I used to go up there on a Saturday and spend the entire day browsing their shelves and looking mostly at Photographic and Photo books full of pictures which were startling and unique documents of the natural creation.
There is one book I loved which was called “The Woodbutchers Art, Handmade houses” which was a photo book showing small handmade houses which were made from discarded objects and materials which they recycles to make unique looking tree houses and small structures in forests which were radically different from “normal” city homes.
I was particularily moved by the Edward S. Curtis photographs of the Native American Indians. He was an white American born in the 1860´s who worked in Sepia Tone pictures and spent many years documenting the Native American Indian Culture before it changed drastically and lost direction.
http://www.google.co.uk/images?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-GBfficial&channel=s&hl=en&q=edward+s+curtis+photographer&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=univ&ei=jkEoTen1J4abhQe9x4zNAg&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=2&ved=0CDUQsAQwAQ&biw=1024&bih=578
If you look at his work I see that this medium would be perfect for a book about the Elders of Rastafari photographed in this Ancient looking Sepia tone texture in which he shot his pictures.
Alltogether these different researches were what fuelled my feelings and inspiration towards doing Itations which came many years after all those years on injesting so much visual and verbal information.
It is they that consitiute my own personal IHIducation and researches which inspired me and led me on into the Itation times in 1978.’
Roland:
‘Being originally from the upper-class Jamaican society, how did you came in contact with the Idren and sistren, you’ve been picturing?’
Mihlawhdh:
‘Before I had a chance to grow up in Jamaica I was removed to the Motherland England and it was really there that I first experienced racism and began to ask questions as I grew into my teens and 20´s.
THAT was where my seperation began and I unconsciously took another path than the one which I was born into.
Growing up in the UK altered my lifes path and inadvertently brought me into Rastafari fourteen years later when I returned to Jamaica and started doing the pictures some of which were used in the Itation books.
It did not mean I had become a revolutionary;
I just started thinking for myself and realised the reality of 1, 2 and 3 class citizens which I could see how it DIEvided the people.....living outside of Jamaica and returning there for my summer holidays really brought that home to me.
Through Rastafari I was able to answer for myself (for no one else) what I needed to know to come to terms with a life like the one I was beginning to form out of my earlier years and which I would have to live with for the rest of my days on terra firma.
I was allways interested in Rastafarians from I was young.
In 1978 I left the UK and returned to visit Jamaica for the first time again in almost seven years....that was the definitive start of Itations when I started taking pictures and moving in Rasta circles.
A friend of mine who was managing Third World at the time lived up in the Mountains above Kingston at a place called Irish Town.
He lived there with his wife and youth and an Ihidrihnh called Dallas and his woman at the time Deenah and their daughetr Ziska.
It was a kind of Rastafari reality, an Ital life; no locked doors or windows, a collective of people together, drumming and chanting in the evenings and of course alot of Purple Haze smoke was allways being burned....
I met I JAHMAN Levi at the Constant Spring Bus Stop and sat and listened as he reasoned with ones who gathered around to hear what he had to say....I met Binghi Brown from the Light of Saba who used to also play Binghi Drums with IM Cedric Brooks, he was just one of many very special Rastafarians who made me feel well drawn into their midsts.
I was not going through anyone for my IHInitiation; it just happened that I was walking JAH road on my own and situation followed situation as I opened up the Revelations of Rastafari for IHIself and found THE KNOWLEDGE from IHIrect experience and the Fire walk of Shadrack, Meshack and Abednigo.
IHI would like to say here that IHI dont “follow” anyone except His Imperial Majesty and HIS Inspiration - I have found that it is the path of least “resistance” because IHI MAHNH dont like fussing and fighting or any complications on a trod into Zion Ihiyhthzhs.
I met quite a few of the emerging Dub Poets; Mikey Smith allways hung out at Zinc Fence where Third World rehersed.
I met Sister Farika Birhan who was an inspiration with her poem “I Man kingman Dreadman Rule” where she writes “See you not Father Selassie walking into the houses of the rich, snatching away dem firs born an tekking dem to him bosom” - when I read that it was like a very personal page being taken out of my own book and I made a definate decision to find her and spent time reasoning with her,
I met Alonzo IZO Robinson who had an Arts and Crafts bus which was parked at the side along Oxford Road and I used to stop in to see him and have a smoke when passing through.
I met Sister Faybiene Miranda and Oku Onoura and many other Bredrihnh who were street sellers selling their red, yellow and green tams, coconut badges, pipes, carvings, insence and Rasta crafts.
We used to drive out into the countryside on missions to other Ihidrihnh sometimes and pick Mangoes, Aloes, Peppers, Peanuts and
catch an Ital fresh in the rivers.....it was the first time I was REALLY discovering Jamaica in the HEARTland and it was the start of new experiences for me which I had never had growing up as a youth in the confines of a family life in Kingston, going to school and all that entailed.
Quite a few Ihidrihnh used to trod into the yard and in that time I also met Jeep Man and Gregory Isaacs at Kisddus I´s yard...
There were others like Ikel Tafari, Prof I and Bona Gees at whose yard I met Ras Michael.
Many times I used to go to Tuff Gong when it was a open place and watch Bob and Jacob Miller play football on the small pitch in front of the house.’
‘Being originally from the upper-class Jamaican society, how did you came in contact with the Idren and sistren, you’ve been picturing?’
Mihlawhdh:
‘Before I had a chance to grow up in Jamaica I was removed to the Motherland England and it was really there that I first experienced racism and began to ask questions as I grew into my teens and 20´s.
THAT was where my seperation began and I unconsciously took another path than the one which I was born into.
Growing up in the UK altered my lifes path and inadvertently brought me into Rastafari fourteen years later when I returned to Jamaica and started doing the pictures some of which were used in the Itation books.
It did not mean I had become a revolutionary;
I just started thinking for myself and realised the reality of 1, 2 and 3 class citizens which I could see how it DIEvided the people.....living outside of Jamaica and returning there for my summer holidays really brought that home to me.
Through Rastafari I was able to answer for myself (for no one else) what I needed to know to come to terms with a life like the one I was beginning to form out of my earlier years and which I would have to live with for the rest of my days on terra firma.
I was allways interested in Rastafarians from I was young.
In 1978 I left the UK and returned to visit Jamaica for the first time again in almost seven years....that was the definitive start of Itations when I started taking pictures and moving in Rasta circles.
A friend of mine who was managing Third World at the time lived up in the Mountains above Kingston at a place called Irish Town.
He lived there with his wife and youth and an Ihidrihnh called Dallas and his woman at the time Deenah and their daughetr Ziska.
It was a kind of Rastafari reality, an Ital life; no locked doors or windows, a collective of people together, drumming and chanting in the evenings and of course alot of Purple Haze smoke was allways being burned....
I met I JAHMAN Levi at the Constant Spring Bus Stop and sat and listened as he reasoned with ones who gathered around to hear what he had to say....I met Binghi Brown from the Light of Saba who used to also play Binghi Drums with IM Cedric Brooks, he was just one of many very special Rastafarians who made me feel well drawn into their midsts.
I was not going through anyone for my IHInitiation; it just happened that I was walking JAH road on my own and situation followed situation as I opened up the Revelations of Rastafari for IHIself and found THE KNOWLEDGE from IHIrect experience and the Fire walk of Shadrack, Meshack and Abednigo.
IHI would like to say here that IHI dont “follow” anyone except His Imperial Majesty and HIS Inspiration - I have found that it is the path of least “resistance” because IHI MAHNH dont like fussing and fighting or any complications on a trod into Zion Ihiyhthzhs.
I met quite a few of the emerging Dub Poets; Mikey Smith allways hung out at Zinc Fence where Third World rehersed.
I met Sister Farika Birhan who was an inspiration with her poem “I Man kingman Dreadman Rule” where she writes “See you not Father Selassie walking into the houses of the rich, snatching away dem firs born an tekking dem to him bosom” - when I read that it was like a very personal page being taken out of my own book and I made a definate decision to find her and spent time reasoning with her,
I met Alonzo IZO Robinson who had an Arts and Crafts bus which was parked at the side along Oxford Road and I used to stop in to see him and have a smoke when passing through.
I met Sister Faybiene Miranda and Oku Onoura and many other Bredrihnh who were street sellers selling their red, yellow and green tams, coconut badges, pipes, carvings, insence and Rasta crafts.
We used to drive out into the countryside on missions to other Ihidrihnh sometimes and pick Mangoes, Aloes, Peppers, Peanuts and
catch an Ital fresh in the rivers.....it was the first time I was REALLY discovering Jamaica in the HEARTland and it was the start of new experiences for me which I had never had growing up as a youth in the confines of a family life in Kingston, going to school and all that entailed.
Quite a few Ihidrihnh used to trod into the yard and in that time I also met Jeep Man and Gregory Isaacs at Kisddus I´s yard...
There were others like Ikel Tafari, Prof I and Bona Gees at whose yard I met Ras Michael.
Many times I used to go to Tuff Gong when it was a open place and watch Bob and Jacob Miller play football on the small pitch in front of the house.’
Roland:
‘Why do you write your name like this, as Mihlawhdh.
Wasn´t it spelt Millard?’
Mihlawhdh:
‘The name is originally an Arabic name given to my Father by his Lebanese, Syrian Father who emigrated and lived in Jamaica...
The English spelling of it is Millard.
I dont know how it would be written in Arabic as the enunciation of it is even very different to the English rendition.
For many reasons, especially when I entered the Itation trod, the revelations and insights into the language and my own Pahthwah/PATOIS insights led me to “altering” the spelling and phonetics of the name over a period of time in which I had been
word juggling with it in different altered forms.
There were also personal reasons which are not important here.
I think it was two years into Itations that I went to a yard and met a Bredrihnh who was also a Graphic Designer.
Bona El Swa and I spent a day smoking and reasoning about word, sound and power and the “graphicity of language”
We met and saw “things” IHI to IHI so to speak within Graphic words, Rastafari and reality, the link was interesting, amazing, spontaneous and of a total unilateral agreement between us both.
He began to show me some “new” pahthwahgraphic interpretations of the name spelt as Millard.
As it transpired I had already been looking into it through my own inspirations over a period of time and both of us had come to almost the exact same word structured re spelling of the name as MIHLAWHDH.
It was quite coincedental and seperate but a very unified reasoning and revelation in which we both drew the same conclusions.
Its also a fact that in Rastafari many ones “recieve” or take a “New Name” through Rastafari.
It just “happened” that my new name was a new pahthwah rearranged rendition of the old name.
That somehow solved the personal problems which I had with the name and projected it into a wholly different Jahmaihkahnh VERHSHAHNH which I embraced in 1978.
It certainly placed me more in a Jahmaihkahnh experience than an unknown Arabic or English context where my name was concerned.
IHI liked it and it symbolised a “new beginning” out of the reality behind me and into the new creation of Rastafari in front of me.’
‘Why do you write your name like this, as Mihlawhdh.
Wasn´t it spelt Millard?’
Mihlawhdh:
‘The name is originally an Arabic name given to my Father by his Lebanese, Syrian Father who emigrated and lived in Jamaica...
The English spelling of it is Millard.
I dont know how it would be written in Arabic as the enunciation of it is even very different to the English rendition.
For many reasons, especially when I entered the Itation trod, the revelations and insights into the language and my own Pahthwah/PATOIS insights led me to “altering” the spelling and phonetics of the name over a period of time in which I had been
word juggling with it in different altered forms.
There were also personal reasons which are not important here.
I think it was two years into Itations that I went to a yard and met a Bredrihnh who was also a Graphic Designer.
Bona El Swa and I spent a day smoking and reasoning about word, sound and power and the “graphicity of language”
We met and saw “things” IHI to IHI so to speak within Graphic words, Rastafari and reality, the link was interesting, amazing, spontaneous and of a total unilateral agreement between us both.
He began to show me some “new” pahthwahgraphic interpretations of the name spelt as Millard.
As it transpired I had already been looking into it through my own inspirations over a period of time and both of us had come to almost the exact same word structured re spelling of the name as MIHLAWHDH.
It was quite coincedental and seperate but a very unified reasoning and revelation in which we both drew the same conclusions.
Its also a fact that in Rastafari many ones “recieve” or take a “New Name” through Rastafari.
It just “happened” that my new name was a new pahthwah rearranged rendition of the old name.
That somehow solved the personal problems which I had with the name and projected it into a wholly different Jahmaihkahnh VERHSHAHNH which I embraced in 1978.
It certainly placed me more in a Jahmaihkahnh experience than an unknown Arabic or English context where my name was concerned.
IHI liked it and it symbolised a “new beginning” out of the reality behind me and into the new creation of Rastafari in front of me.’
Roland:
‘What is your fascination with language?
If someone is aware of the manipulation of words and language it must be you.
Please explain this to us?’
Mihlawhdh:
‘Through The KNOWLEDGE of RASTAFARI IHI stumbled into a word gold mine which has slowly over many years revealed itself to me. Sometimes I think this has to do with the “opening” of the seven seal within one....
For me its as if “my own” language has been returned to me because in all the years growing up and sometimes speaking in “pahthwah” I never saw a correct rendition of the spelling of those words....
For example, for years, and still to this day, the word MAN is written in public words and spelt as MON.
If you can read that rendition it says MON.
The correct spelling which holds the phonetic information would be MAHNH.
As in Yeaah MAHNH...which is how it is enunciated in Jamaica.
IHI have been termed as one of the Scribes, those dealing with the WORD.
You have to have a pre disposition for accepting and OVERstanding what Rastafari are doing with the language otherwise it just seems like a load of nonsence to the untoutored ear.
I know that alot of people especially in Jamaican society who just cannot “get it” and think of it as gibberish.
A great influence in my life was the meeting of my Rastafari Gurugodfather JAH Stone, an elder who was deeply instrumental in showing me “other” IHIYHTHZHS through countless Cosmic reasoning concerning his inspiration of the WORD.
It is also my OVERstanding that this is a tradittion going back into slavery days and from the time when AFROSAXONS came together during slavery to create an English based Africanite inflected Jamaican Pahthwah speech......it was a speech which was essentially English but sounded like another language which the slaves used to communicate with themselves so the slave master could not know what they were saying.
JAH Stone wanted to distance himself from anything to do with England and the slave masters mentality.
It is the ROOTS language of Jamaica and is yet to be given its rightfull place and written UP (not down) in the scheme of thing.
From a revolutionary point of view IHI n IHI cannot have a “new language” which is still spelt in terms of English peramiters.
For a long time the I and I has been written like that - that is an English version and it cannot fully describe or contain what the I is until it is taken to another level...
I personally saw it written as IHI n IHI.
As I-HAILE-I to give it its true power.....
Similar to INRI as I-NEGUS-RULE-ISRAEL.
Spontaneity and transformation can come from many and any direction....change the Negative to the POSITIVE.
A bredrihnh from Sweden put it forward as JEWTRUTH and not JEWLIE as in JULY.
Perhaps it takes those who imbibe Cannabis Sattiva, GANJAH to OVERstand it and ACCEPT it and not reject it.
Its an eternal struggle in Jamaica today where there are warring factions concerning many things.
My Godfather JAH Stone was a Rastaman wordsmith who could sit and dictate his thoughts and feelings right off the top of his head.
He was truely radical in the nicest possible way and for me it was not to be questioned because it was a fact.
If people were openly honest and did not rush to judgement and were more impartial to HEAR what a person is dealing with then they would have to concur with him. He was certainly not dealing with fantasia but brutal reality of his ghetto life.
He had alot to say about the “English” shituatiations which going back in time had enslaved his ancestory and had imprisoned him as a young man for smoking his herbs and speaking against the Crown of England in the 1940´s.
He wanted to remove himself from anything and everything to do with Anglo Saxon guidelines.
When he sang Me want go home, for him it was said and written as MIH WAAH GUH HOME; when he spoke it you could FEEL it in his deep rasping voice that he spoke braawhdh Pahthwah and certainly not the Queens English.
For example if you write in English “I am going down there” it certainly does not LOOK or SOUND like the Pahthwah version of
MIH AAH GUH DUHNGH DEH” - and certainly if you run the spellings all into one as MIHAAHGUHDUHNGHDEH you can see what I mean about DIFFERENT!
JAH Stone opened for me the insight into the reality of moving away from the English I and into a stratospheric IHI which could say so much more, which was much more discriptive and alive for the songs, poetry and texts of the Rastafari written words.
They could fly upon paper and are given an inner powerfull dimension when spoken aloud.
He would speak about his IHIhzhmerry as Rosemary; IHIshence for Gahjah, substituting the IHI in the beginning of alot of words starting with ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ - where appropriate the IHI substituted and ruled supreme to lift the mundane into the very unusual but very Rastafarious.
Thus his Papaw became IHIpaw, a tangerine became an IHIJAHrine, ackee became IHIkee, tomato became IHImato, he did not wish to eat any mango anymore but would say bring me an IHIcome because he said he was tired of man-go no where.
There are dictionaries of words too numerous to mention here.
People unconsciously say HELLo everyday not real-TRUTHING what they are saying; like the mantra coming off the entire planet is HELL-low........the REAL curious thing is that for every negative there is a converse POSITIVE so Hello would change to HEAVEN-HIGH.
He would speak about FIRST night instead of LAST night, power became IHIwah, in Rasta for him next week/weak became a STRONG and his week end became a STRONG START. Rastafari OVERstand rather than UNDERstand.
He said JAH did not have a KingDUMB but rather a KingCOME which affirmed in its projection the arrival of His Imperial Majesties presence. So too was Wisdom intoning wise and dumb together - no there is only Wizzy or Jahwise.
He would say look into SECURE and tell me what you HEAR - and shure enough one would ask how can SICK and CURE be put together to make a word which he revoluted to IHICURE or JAHCURE.....
Even the fruit called Jack Fruit seemed more appropriate re christened as JAH Fruit.
O-ringe became IHIringe, Coconut became IHInut or a JAHnut. The small round green vegetable Sussumba sounded as IHIsumba.
Then we have spellings which are niavely spelt like ISES to intone IHIZIHZHS. IRIE into IHIRIH looks and is closer to the correct phonetic enunciation. IWA should look like IHIWAH; in the ordinary renditions they are only attempts to spell them which dont really take the IHIYAHRIHKH away from the English rendition and into the Afrikanite stratosphere.
These are just some of the words which now belong to the Rastalogical word sound and power doctrine of Rastafari which has developed (and is still developing) in the last 35 years.’
nehxx kwestchan
Roland:
‘What was your motivation to do these books?
What was your starting point?’
Mihlawhdh:
‘My starting point was happening for a very long time before 1978 when the IDEA for Itations was first recieved in Jamaica;
It was over a period of time in which I was being “prepared” to manifest these books and looking black I can see a definate pattern of what was happening over those years to bring me to the point of Itations.
People speak about “The Inspiration of His Imperial Majesty” - it was not only INSPIRATION but also PREPERATION which brought me to the year 1978; July, and a return to Jamaica after six years of not being there to recieve the concept for the
Itations of Jamaica and I Rastafari begin.
I was on my way to Los Angeles to see if I could live and find work in the Art Department of a major Record Lable as I had done in London since leaving Art College in 1973.
I made a detour to spend three months in Jamaica and enjoy my Island in the Sun again after almost six years not visiting there.
On my trips around the Island, North South, East and West I was experiencing for the first time the HEART n SOUL of Jamaica
which I had never seen before.
When I was growing up we were taken to Ocho Rios to the Dunns River Falls and to other seaside locations on some holidays but that was only for a few days at a time. Now for the first time I was penitrating Jamaica and seeing the Native Island life which lay beyond the Tourist brochures. For me nearly all of my contact was with Rastafari ones who I was on a mission to meet and sit in with.
Hitchiking and travelling on Mini Vans, and the big old Leyland ROCKET buses into the interior and costal regions on individual missions in and out of Kingston I was enjoying the island and takeing pictures to start a collection of works.
I wanted to free my spirit for awhile and absorb as much of the Island as possible before leaving for Los Angeles.
I was also spending alot of time with a friend who I had been to Jamaica College with from the mid 60´s who was living in the hills above Kingston in a place called Irish Town. He had been studying Architecture in London where he met his wife and they returned to Jamaica just before I got there with their young daughter. Michael “Ibo” Cooper the organist of Third World was also a school friend of ours from when we were youths going to JC in the early 60´s and Allan was managing them at the time.
There were many of us living as a Community up there in Irish Town and it was a kind of life I had never experienced when I was growing up in Jamaica as a youth before I went to the UK to school.
A Dread and his Queen and their youth living there and often some of the youth from the rural area used to come to the yard in the evening when there was drumming and chanting. Prof I and other Rastafarians used to trod on the yard and spend time with us.
One night we were all gathered together and we heard the sound of a Drum in the distance coming along the path leading up to the house - out of the black night a tall Dread stepped onto the veranda, there before me stood a light skinned barefooted Rastafarian with locks down to his knees who looked exactly like the Christ, wearing Khaki clothes and holding a funde or kette drum under his arm. His name was Ikel Tafari and he was a professor at the University of the West Indies!
He joined the small group of us who were smoking Colly Herb, Sensi or Lamb´s Bread, drumming and chanting and reasoning together deep into the wee hours of the morning.
It was a time in Jamaica when ones and ones in Rastafari were talking about “Citing up this or that” - and the phrase “Citing” stuck in my thoughts. I allways slept on a couch on the veranda overlooking the distant Mountain Valleys. I woke up one morning after the Purple Haze all in my brain and said I am going to do a book about Jamaica and Rastafari called “Citing the Island of Jamaica and I Rastafari.
That was the defining moment Itations was born up there in Irish Town in those Mountains above Kingston when the idea presented itself to me as a constructive meditation forged in the fire of the Herb and my “new” Jamaican experiences.
Eventually it IHIvolved into “Itations of Jamaica and I Rastafari” by the time it was completed five years later - it was in that situation and amongst those runnings that the IHIDEA for IHITATIONS first appeared to me inspirationally out of the Ganjah vibes.
I had brought a camera from London and had been taking pictures along the various trods which we had gone on together into the country areas.
There were many Rastafarians who were trodding through the yard from time to time and often during the day we would drive out to the distant countryside of Linstead in Clarendon to visit a Rastafarian who lived quietly out there or to meet up with other Rasta situations as happens in Jamaica the land of the Rastafari.
We would pick mangoes, sugar cane, peanuts, ground foods, Alovera, avocado and IHIpah which we took back home to prepare in the Ital food. Often on the trods we would stop somewhere and catch a cool clean fresh in one of the Mountain rivers or streams as I dont ever remember having “showrs” at the house or even using the toilet there - it always was an Ital visit to the bush and standing on the two big fallen stumps to take a morning download - it certainly felt very free and liberating than sitting on a house toilet.
It was a time of great paranoia in Kingston below us in the distance; but we lived in that house with never a door locked or the windows closed day or night....and there was never once any problems with all the comings and goings.’
nehxx kwestchan
‘What is your fascination with language?
If someone is aware of the manipulation of words and language it must be you.
Please explain this to us?’
Mihlawhdh:
‘Through The KNOWLEDGE of RASTAFARI IHI stumbled into a word gold mine which has slowly over many years revealed itself to me. Sometimes I think this has to do with the “opening” of the seven seal within one....
For me its as if “my own” language has been returned to me because in all the years growing up and sometimes speaking in “pahthwah” I never saw a correct rendition of the spelling of those words....
For example, for years, and still to this day, the word MAN is written in public words and spelt as MON.
If you can read that rendition it says MON.
The correct spelling which holds the phonetic information would be MAHNH.
As in Yeaah MAHNH...which is how it is enunciated in Jamaica.
IHI have been termed as one of the Scribes, those dealing with the WORD.
You have to have a pre disposition for accepting and OVERstanding what Rastafari are doing with the language otherwise it just seems like a load of nonsence to the untoutored ear.
I know that alot of people especially in Jamaican society who just cannot “get it” and think of it as gibberish.
A great influence in my life was the meeting of my Rastafari Gurugodfather JAH Stone, an elder who was deeply instrumental in showing me “other” IHIYHTHZHS through countless Cosmic reasoning concerning his inspiration of the WORD.
It is also my OVERstanding that this is a tradittion going back into slavery days and from the time when AFROSAXONS came together during slavery to create an English based Africanite inflected Jamaican Pahthwah speech......it was a speech which was essentially English but sounded like another language which the slaves used to communicate with themselves so the slave master could not know what they were saying.
JAH Stone wanted to distance himself from anything to do with England and the slave masters mentality.
It is the ROOTS language of Jamaica and is yet to be given its rightfull place and written UP (not down) in the scheme of thing.
From a revolutionary point of view IHI n IHI cannot have a “new language” which is still spelt in terms of English peramiters.
For a long time the I and I has been written like that - that is an English version and it cannot fully describe or contain what the I is until it is taken to another level...
I personally saw it written as IHI n IHI.
As I-HAILE-I to give it its true power.....
Similar to INRI as I-NEGUS-RULE-ISRAEL.
Spontaneity and transformation can come from many and any direction....change the Negative to the POSITIVE.
A bredrihnh from Sweden put it forward as JEWTRUTH and not JEWLIE as in JULY.
Perhaps it takes those who imbibe Cannabis Sattiva, GANJAH to OVERstand it and ACCEPT it and not reject it.
Its an eternal struggle in Jamaica today where there are warring factions concerning many things.
My Godfather JAH Stone was a Rastaman wordsmith who could sit and dictate his thoughts and feelings right off the top of his head.
He was truely radical in the nicest possible way and for me it was not to be questioned because it was a fact.
If people were openly honest and did not rush to judgement and were more impartial to HEAR what a person is dealing with then they would have to concur with him. He was certainly not dealing with fantasia but brutal reality of his ghetto life.
He had alot to say about the “English” shituatiations which going back in time had enslaved his ancestory and had imprisoned him as a young man for smoking his herbs and speaking against the Crown of England in the 1940´s.
He wanted to remove himself from anything and everything to do with Anglo Saxon guidelines.
When he sang Me want go home, for him it was said and written as MIH WAAH GUH HOME; when he spoke it you could FEEL it in his deep rasping voice that he spoke braawhdh Pahthwah and certainly not the Queens English.
For example if you write in English “I am going down there” it certainly does not LOOK or SOUND like the Pahthwah version of
MIH AAH GUH DUHNGH DEH” - and certainly if you run the spellings all into one as MIHAAHGUHDUHNGHDEH you can see what I mean about DIFFERENT!
JAH Stone opened for me the insight into the reality of moving away from the English I and into a stratospheric IHI which could say so much more, which was much more discriptive and alive for the songs, poetry and texts of the Rastafari written words.
They could fly upon paper and are given an inner powerfull dimension when spoken aloud.
He would speak about his IHIhzhmerry as Rosemary; IHIshence for Gahjah, substituting the IHI in the beginning of alot of words starting with ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ - where appropriate the IHI substituted and ruled supreme to lift the mundane into the very unusual but very Rastafarious.
Thus his Papaw became IHIpaw, a tangerine became an IHIJAHrine, ackee became IHIkee, tomato became IHImato, he did not wish to eat any mango anymore but would say bring me an IHIcome because he said he was tired of man-go no where.
There are dictionaries of words too numerous to mention here.
People unconsciously say HELLo everyday not real-TRUTHING what they are saying; like the mantra coming off the entire planet is HELL-low........the REAL curious thing is that for every negative there is a converse POSITIVE so Hello would change to HEAVEN-HIGH.
He would speak about FIRST night instead of LAST night, power became IHIwah, in Rasta for him next week/weak became a STRONG and his week end became a STRONG START. Rastafari OVERstand rather than UNDERstand.
He said JAH did not have a KingDUMB but rather a KingCOME which affirmed in its projection the arrival of His Imperial Majesties presence. So too was Wisdom intoning wise and dumb together - no there is only Wizzy or Jahwise.
He would say look into SECURE and tell me what you HEAR - and shure enough one would ask how can SICK and CURE be put together to make a word which he revoluted to IHICURE or JAHCURE.....
Even the fruit called Jack Fruit seemed more appropriate re christened as JAH Fruit.
O-ringe became IHIringe, Coconut became IHInut or a JAHnut. The small round green vegetable Sussumba sounded as IHIsumba.
Then we have spellings which are niavely spelt like ISES to intone IHIZIHZHS. IRIE into IHIRIH looks and is closer to the correct phonetic enunciation. IWA should look like IHIWAH; in the ordinary renditions they are only attempts to spell them which dont really take the IHIYAHRIHKH away from the English rendition and into the Afrikanite stratosphere.
These are just some of the words which now belong to the Rastalogical word sound and power doctrine of Rastafari which has developed (and is still developing) in the last 35 years.’
nehxx kwestchan
Roland:
‘What was your motivation to do these books?
What was your starting point?’
Mihlawhdh:
‘My starting point was happening for a very long time before 1978 when the IDEA for Itations was first recieved in Jamaica;
It was over a period of time in which I was being “prepared” to manifest these books and looking black I can see a definate pattern of what was happening over those years to bring me to the point of Itations.
People speak about “The Inspiration of His Imperial Majesty” - it was not only INSPIRATION but also PREPERATION which brought me to the year 1978; July, and a return to Jamaica after six years of not being there to recieve the concept for the
Itations of Jamaica and I Rastafari begin.
I was on my way to Los Angeles to see if I could live and find work in the Art Department of a major Record Lable as I had done in London since leaving Art College in 1973.
I made a detour to spend three months in Jamaica and enjoy my Island in the Sun again after almost six years not visiting there.
On my trips around the Island, North South, East and West I was experiencing for the first time the HEART n SOUL of Jamaica
which I had never seen before.
When I was growing up we were taken to Ocho Rios to the Dunns River Falls and to other seaside locations on some holidays but that was only for a few days at a time. Now for the first time I was penitrating Jamaica and seeing the Native Island life which lay beyond the Tourist brochures. For me nearly all of my contact was with Rastafari ones who I was on a mission to meet and sit in with.
Hitchiking and travelling on Mini Vans, and the big old Leyland ROCKET buses into the interior and costal regions on individual missions in and out of Kingston I was enjoying the island and takeing pictures to start a collection of works.
I wanted to free my spirit for awhile and absorb as much of the Island as possible before leaving for Los Angeles.
I was also spending alot of time with a friend who I had been to Jamaica College with from the mid 60´s who was living in the hills above Kingston in a place called Irish Town. He had been studying Architecture in London where he met his wife and they returned to Jamaica just before I got there with their young daughter. Michael “Ibo” Cooper the organist of Third World was also a school friend of ours from when we were youths going to JC in the early 60´s and Allan was managing them at the time.
There were many of us living as a Community up there in Irish Town and it was a kind of life I had never experienced when I was growing up in Jamaica as a youth before I went to the UK to school.
A Dread and his Queen and their youth living there and often some of the youth from the rural area used to come to the yard in the evening when there was drumming and chanting. Prof I and other Rastafarians used to trod on the yard and spend time with us.
One night we were all gathered together and we heard the sound of a Drum in the distance coming along the path leading up to the house - out of the black night a tall Dread stepped onto the veranda, there before me stood a light skinned barefooted Rastafarian with locks down to his knees who looked exactly like the Christ, wearing Khaki clothes and holding a funde or kette drum under his arm. His name was Ikel Tafari and he was a professor at the University of the West Indies!
He joined the small group of us who were smoking Colly Herb, Sensi or Lamb´s Bread, drumming and chanting and reasoning together deep into the wee hours of the morning.
It was a time in Jamaica when ones and ones in Rastafari were talking about “Citing up this or that” - and the phrase “Citing” stuck in my thoughts. I allways slept on a couch on the veranda overlooking the distant Mountain Valleys. I woke up one morning after the Purple Haze all in my brain and said I am going to do a book about Jamaica and Rastafari called “Citing the Island of Jamaica and I Rastafari.
That was the defining moment Itations was born up there in Irish Town in those Mountains above Kingston when the idea presented itself to me as a constructive meditation forged in the fire of the Herb and my “new” Jamaican experiences.
Eventually it IHIvolved into “Itations of Jamaica and I Rastafari” by the time it was completed five years later - it was in that situation and amongst those runnings that the IHIDEA for IHITATIONS first appeared to me inspirationally out of the Ganjah vibes.
I had brought a camera from London and had been taking pictures along the various trods which we had gone on together into the country areas.
There were many Rastafarians who were trodding through the yard from time to time and often during the day we would drive out to the distant countryside of Linstead in Clarendon to visit a Rastafarian who lived quietly out there or to meet up with other Rasta situations as happens in Jamaica the land of the Rastafari.
We would pick mangoes, sugar cane, peanuts, ground foods, Alovera, avocado and IHIpah which we took back home to prepare in the Ital food. Often on the trods we would stop somewhere and catch a cool clean fresh in one of the Mountain rivers or streams as I dont ever remember having “showrs” at the house or even using the toilet there - it always was an Ital visit to the bush and standing on the two big fallen stumps to take a morning download - it certainly felt very free and liberating than sitting on a house toilet.
It was a time of great paranoia in Kingston below us in the distance; but we lived in that house with never a door locked or the windows closed day or night....and there was never once any problems with all the comings and goings.’
nehxx kwestchan
Roland:
‘What was your previous work before doing Itations and how did it influence the Itations of Jamaica and I Rastafari books?’
Mihlawhdh:
‘Like so many of us in these times MUSIC has played a BIG part in my life.
My first big influence has allways been through the Jimi Hendrix Experience before all else.
‘What was your previous work before doing Itations and how did it influence the Itations of Jamaica and I Rastafari books?’
Mihlawhdh:
‘Like so many of us in these times MUSIC has played a BIG part in my life.
My first big influence has allways been through the Jimi Hendrix Experience before all else.
JIMI HENDRIX.....Literally LIGHT YEARS ahead of his time.
From the first moment I heard his music I embraced him as a musical genuis.
He was coming from a very very HIGH Universal dimension, waaaaay beyond this earth plain....
Apart from his music there was alot of inspiration I got from those times about record cover Graphics.
The Axis Bold as Love album cover especially, and it was that which gave me the direction to go to Art College and do a Graphic Design Diploma.
After College I worked for a year in Advertising and then took a position at A&M Records in London in the Art Department as Assistant to the Art Director Fabio Nicoli.
We did all the album covers and publicity material for artists like Supertramp, Joan Armatrading, Rick Wakemann, Chris DeBurgh, Gallagher and Lyle and many other English artists of the 70´s.
We originated advertisments, photography, designs, layouts, posters, streamers, stickers, badges, bill boards, in store displays and any other art which needed to be done to promote the artists and their album.
It was a very creative enviroment originating the album covers in various media from art concept right through to production.
I guess this was an added area which gave me insight into how the originating and production of the Photography and Art work was done. All of that gave me deep insights into how that worked and eventually I used that experience and adapted it to developing Itations of Jamaica and I Rastafari as an IHIdear.
When I went to Jamaica in 1978 and began Itations I started out with the collection of photographs which I expanded each time I was there. I also collected alot of written material, poems, songs and reasonings which formed a large manuscript which I used when editing the Itation words.
I tried to make Itations as creative as possible. Both visually and in terms of the content using all my past experience and information which I had built up over many years in many varied forms through photography, graphic design, typography, layouts and finally in the production of the books with a printer
The Axis Bold as Love album cover especially, and it was that which gave me the direction to go to Art College and do a Graphic Design Diploma.
After College I worked for a year in Advertising and then took a position at A&M Records in London in the Art Department as Assistant to the Art Director Fabio Nicoli.
We did all the album covers and publicity material for artists like Supertramp, Joan Armatrading, Rick Wakemann, Chris DeBurgh, Gallagher and Lyle and many other English artists of the 70´s.
We originated advertisments, photography, designs, layouts, posters, streamers, stickers, badges, bill boards, in store displays and any other art which needed to be done to promote the artists and their album.
It was a very creative enviroment originating the album covers in various media from art concept right through to production.
I guess this was an added area which gave me insight into how the originating and production of the Photography and Art work was done. All of that gave me deep insights into how that worked and eventually I used that experience and adapted it to developing Itations of Jamaica and I Rastafari as an IHIdear.
When I went to Jamaica in 1978 and began Itations I started out with the collection of photographs which I expanded each time I was there. I also collected alot of written material, poems, songs and reasonings which formed a large manuscript which I used when editing the Itation words.
I tried to make Itations as creative as possible. Both visually and in terms of the content using all my past experience and information which I had built up over many years in many varied forms through photography, graphic design, typography, layouts and finally in the production of the books with a printer
Roland:
'Between the publication of each of the three Itations there were long periods of time.
Can you tell us how does this process of producing the books work?'
Mihlawhdh:
'First it is all to do with MONEY.....as usual....everything ruled by that.
People may not know, but those books are each PRICELESS jewels in themselves.....
The Second Itation cost 91,000 Marks in 1991 to print and produce.
I remember passing a Mercedes Benz show window in Munich and seeing the latest convertable SLK230 for THAT price.
I had a laugh because I know I did not want a Mercedes Benz like Janis Joplin.
IHI wanted the Rainbow Throne portrayed in FULL COLOUR.
To see ITATIONS OF JAMAICA AND I RASTAFARI become a living reality no matter what stood in my way.
Many of the Publishers I met in the first five years were more about Black and White.
I would say how can you show JAH Rainbow in Black and White.
Even then as far as I found most of them knew nothing about something unique and outside of the conventional loop.
Even at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 1981, Bob had just passed.
Some editor from a large New York Publishing house did not even KNOW who Bob Marley was when I asked her....dont you know who Bob Marley is, and YOU are a chief editor for a major Publishing house in New York?
I just packed up my folder of layouts and slides, said Thank You and left her sitting there wide mouthed.
However I did meet up with a Publisher from Munich who also was about to publish the Reggae International book by Stephen Davis and Peter Simon.
He liked what he saw and within moments said come at see me in Munich in one weeks time.....
That is what I wanted, someone who had some kind of VISION and could SEE.
Even then when you get to that stage you are CONfronted with a 6% reality to give over your five years of work to them for that percentage while they TAKE 94% wether or not you like it, so it is. Take it or leave it he even said to me.
For me I was not doing Itations as a business anyway and it was more important to see the works get published than sit in a cannister on a shelf and perish......
I am still glad I went with the flow because from the first instant THEY sold out the 10,000 copies in the USA without very much publicity - even though the distributor in New York said to me "I dont think we will sell many of these books" - he had to eat his words years later when I met him. They sold 5,000 copies in Germany and 5,000 in Holland I believe, very easily too.
The Second Itation took NINE years to manifest, it was like a pregnancy in a way.......I knew it would not manifest until I had trod into Ethiopia again and got the pictures in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church which I needed to SELAH the book.....Within months of achieving that the book was ready to go and I flew back to Munich from Miami and began work with a printer there to produce the Second Itation.
My Mother who was an upstanding very Social Colonialist was horrified when I told her that THEY had given me 6% and had taken 94% - but that is downright exploitation she said. Something I had never heard her say before in her very upwardly mobile lifestyle which had no clue about the Allalutta Continua.
Maybe I should give you the money and you produce the books yourself and deal with them so you can do better than they are offering you......and that is how the Second and Third Itations were done through her financial imput.
I was doing everything myself with no help from anyone; the photography, the graphic layouts, the collation of the written words and texts.
I would go to Munch each time and make the arrangements for the film seperations to be done and then the printer would ready the printing plates and move forward with the print run in their time.
With all the Itations I took the pictures over time and times and had an "Image Bank" so to speak - a collection of sildes which were the BEST of the BEST for the Rainbow Throne production......
I knew what I was looking for and how I wanted the LOOK of the imagery and book to flow......Its how I like to work and do things with NO PROBLEM Mahnh.
No fuss an fight, no WAAHRH, seperation, divisionalism or skism; juss One Heart faahwuhdh ever backward never.
Itations was a labour of love and they are still works which give me immense satisfaction just to LOOK at because they are JAH Works, ever alive and allways looking fresh and blooming.
They in themselves are part of my walk into Rastafari and I must Give Thanks for that all the time.....
Rich royal colourfull IHIYHTHZHS of Itations of Jamaica and I Rastafari.'
As a JAHmaican we know Rastafari in dih DUHNGHLE in Kingston
Here we see Nihyahbihnghi in Notre Dame Du Mont, in Marseilles in France,
IF that is not IHIfirmation that JAH is with IHI n IHI then GWAAAAHNH.
majihkh ihimages nexxx one
Roland:
‘A picture can speak a thousand words.
When I bought the first Itations 24 years ago it revealed a complete world to me through the pictures alone.
You are the Itation photographer. What is the MAHJIHKH of the IHIMAGES?’
Mihlawhdh:
‘Certainly images carry powerfull feelings and show worlds which can be a revelation to people.
For me when I started Itations in 1978 no one had ever done a book like what I was going to do from a “Jamaican point of view” - there were some books of Rastafarians in the images; but nothing manifested which was done so “personally” before.
As a Jamaican this was from the IHI n IHI heart to the world because IHI knew that only we knew how to dress and present ourselves as we know how.
With the knowledge I set out to attempt to take pictures which were lush and full of the tropical vibes that had a warm personal Caribbean feeling with Rastafarian images..
I remember one reviewer said “A ravishing kaleidoscope of the Islands human and natural resources; the photographs, mostly full colour bleeds are so well produced, turning the pages produces almost palpable sensations of life and colour” - a good insight as it illustrated the very element which I wished to capture while doing the pictures.
Linton Kewzi Johnson sings in one of his songs “Wih smoke weed fih sharpen wih eye” and once I started into Itations I had the feeling that different elements were at work while I was photographing the pictures.
It was also very much about breath work and getting the focus of the images VERY clear and “sharpening my ihi”.
Having worked at A&M Records and Polydor I had learnt from then that “filling the space” both horizontally and vertically was very important to “catch the eye” of people who were going to be looking at the images and visually reading the pictures.
Alot of people are moved by the depth and warmth of the bredrihnh, sihstrihnh and youths in the book who all seem presented in a relaxed, natural setting - that is very important to have the trust of people first before you even begin to take a picture.
Itations each took years to collect the photography because I did not just go in, shoot pictures and step out immediately.
In some situations I spent days living with some of the ones I took pictures of and that afforded me the chance to take my time and when ready to use the camera in a unobtrusive way. With others I knew them over time and times before I actually took their picture.
After I had finished the first Itation and had a copy of the book in my hand to show people what I was dealing with it became much easier.
One elder I remember said to me “JAH Works speak for themself” I can see what you are doing so you are free here to take any pictures you wish here.
Rastafari is so colourful and interesting image wise that I think it contributed a great element to the soulfullness of the pictures.
Itations with soul’
Roland:
‘You have told me about the self educated Ihidrihnh and Sihstrihnh with no form of “dead”ucation/headdecation who wrote
the most beautiful words, texts and poetry - please tell me about those fascinating people?’
Mihlawhdh:
‘ONE LOVE, HEARTICAL VIBRATIONS, IHI to IHI with IHI n IHI through Rastafari; it was as simple as that.
When I returned to Jamaica in 1978 and Itations started I found that I walked into a situation which I was automatically versed in.
I did not need to “learn” anything because IHI OVERstood the entire Theology right away.
Once I started to trod around and meet various ones the situations were allways one to one or small collectives of Bredhrihnh and Sihstrihnh with whom I sat in and spent time talking/reasoning about whatever came up in the situation.
One of my most favorite areas to travel to first of all was a place in Portland called The Blue Lagoon - there was also a crystal clear mineral pool there and I would go and stay there for days at a time. I allways stayed with an elder fisherman Jahnoh and Ms Daphney who were some of Jamaicas salt of the earth. Jannoh fished in his small canoe and Ms daphney made bead necklaces from the seeds which fell in the forest above them. They did not have very much except their small wooden shack on the mountainside overlooking the Lagoon but they were happy whenever I appeared again after being aah farihnh.
Ms Daphney also made some of the most amazing Search Me Heart bush tea which would go down well with a bulla or hard dough bread and a spliff.
In all such situation I would trod out from there and meet various Rastafari ones. In Windsor Forest there lived and elder Kungoh Dread called Priestman who is in the first and second Itations. He was an elder who lived with his Queen and several children there.
Priest was like a Guru to the people around the Forest area and well respected and he had alot of lyrics to give to people who gathered around to hear WIZZY words in his yard under the “go-ovah” tree.
Having come “from society” and knowing the prejudices of the veranda lizards (those who sit about in the Colonies and pontificate about everything they really know nothing about); one allways heard very negative tales about Ganjah, how terrible it is supposed to be and how it could “mad yuh” - while they lavish on themselves copious amounts of rum and assorted alcohol and dont get “cherry red” just blurr eyed, slurred of speech and stupid. I could never UNDERstand their logic and hatred of Ganjah which to me seemed, and was the total opposite - very wide eyed RED and bushy tailed alive.
Allways in Rastafari circles Ganjah was brought out, cut up on surru boards and spliffs or a chalice loaded and everyone imbibed to set the tone for the reasonings which would flow forward out of the IHIYHTHZHS. IHI was on my trod into The KNOWLEDGE as I came to call it; the complete Revelations of Rastafari within a wordical reality.
Contrary to the mad Ganjah idea I allways found all contact with Rastafari ones to be upful, sober, highly interesting and certainly not mundane and pointless. I can only say that throught all the many encounters of the IHI kind were amazingly intelligent and inspirational.
Many times a one would bring out an old battered suitcase from underneath a bed in which there were countless school excercise books - you could take up any one of those and start reading and truely they could all be published holding the contents which they held. Or they were in the form of many pieces of paper rolled up into a kind of scroll like roll or just written on brown or white paper bags because they had no writing paper.
Reasonings and poems spilled off pages, certainly words from Rastafarious IHIYHTHZHS on many topics, all intelligently well written, and certainly not written from unintelligent people but people who were walking the walk and able to talk the talk. Maybe they were not schooled at the city schools in Kingston or at a University but they could hold their own and more against those realms also.
Of course many times when I took photographs I allways asked if they had any texts of words which they would like to “CITE UP” and give forward as a reasoning in Itations.’
Roland:
‘A picture can speak a thousand words.
When I bought the first Itations 24 years ago it revealed a complete world to me through the pictures alone.
You are the Itation photographer. What is the MAHJIHKH of the IHIMAGES?’
Mihlawhdh:
‘Certainly images carry powerfull feelings and show worlds which can be a revelation to people.
For me when I started Itations in 1978 no one had ever done a book like what I was going to do from a “Jamaican point of view” - there were some books of Rastafarians in the images; but nothing manifested which was done so “personally” before.
As a Jamaican this was from the IHI n IHI heart to the world because IHI knew that only we knew how to dress and present ourselves as we know how.
With the knowledge I set out to attempt to take pictures which were lush and full of the tropical vibes that had a warm personal Caribbean feeling with Rastafarian images..
I remember one reviewer said “A ravishing kaleidoscope of the Islands human and natural resources; the photographs, mostly full colour bleeds are so well produced, turning the pages produces almost palpable sensations of life and colour” - a good insight as it illustrated the very element which I wished to capture while doing the pictures.
Linton Kewzi Johnson sings in one of his songs “Wih smoke weed fih sharpen wih eye” and once I started into Itations I had the feeling that different elements were at work while I was photographing the pictures.
It was also very much about breath work and getting the focus of the images VERY clear and “sharpening my ihi”.
Having worked at A&M Records and Polydor I had learnt from then that “filling the space” both horizontally and vertically was very important to “catch the eye” of people who were going to be looking at the images and visually reading the pictures.
Alot of people are moved by the depth and warmth of the bredrihnh, sihstrihnh and youths in the book who all seem presented in a relaxed, natural setting - that is very important to have the trust of people first before you even begin to take a picture.
Itations each took years to collect the photography because I did not just go in, shoot pictures and step out immediately.
In some situations I spent days living with some of the ones I took pictures of and that afforded me the chance to take my time and when ready to use the camera in a unobtrusive way. With others I knew them over time and times before I actually took their picture.
After I had finished the first Itation and had a copy of the book in my hand to show people what I was dealing with it became much easier.
One elder I remember said to me “JAH Works speak for themself” I can see what you are doing so you are free here to take any pictures you wish here.
Rastafari is so colourful and interesting image wise that I think it contributed a great element to the soulfullness of the pictures.
Itations with soul’
Roland:
‘You have told me about the self educated Ihidrihnh and Sihstrihnh with no form of “dead”ucation/headdecation who wrote
the most beautiful words, texts and poetry - please tell me about those fascinating people?’
Mihlawhdh:
‘ONE LOVE, HEARTICAL VIBRATIONS, IHI to IHI with IHI n IHI through Rastafari; it was as simple as that.
When I returned to Jamaica in 1978 and Itations started I found that I walked into a situation which I was automatically versed in.
I did not need to “learn” anything because IHI OVERstood the entire Theology right away.
Once I started to trod around and meet various ones the situations were allways one to one or small collectives of Bredhrihnh and Sihstrihnh with whom I sat in and spent time talking/reasoning about whatever came up in the situation.
One of my most favorite areas to travel to first of all was a place in Portland called The Blue Lagoon - there was also a crystal clear mineral pool there and I would go and stay there for days at a time. I allways stayed with an elder fisherman Jahnoh and Ms Daphney who were some of Jamaicas salt of the earth. Jannoh fished in his small canoe and Ms daphney made bead necklaces from the seeds which fell in the forest above them. They did not have very much except their small wooden shack on the mountainside overlooking the Lagoon but they were happy whenever I appeared again after being aah farihnh.
Ms Daphney also made some of the most amazing Search Me Heart bush tea which would go down well with a bulla or hard dough bread and a spliff.
In all such situation I would trod out from there and meet various Rastafari ones. In Windsor Forest there lived and elder Kungoh Dread called Priestman who is in the first and second Itations. He was an elder who lived with his Queen and several children there.
Priest was like a Guru to the people around the Forest area and well respected and he had alot of lyrics to give to people who gathered around to hear WIZZY words in his yard under the “go-ovah” tree.
Having come “from society” and knowing the prejudices of the veranda lizards (those who sit about in the Colonies and pontificate about everything they really know nothing about); one allways heard very negative tales about Ganjah, how terrible it is supposed to be and how it could “mad yuh” - while they lavish on themselves copious amounts of rum and assorted alcohol and dont get “cherry red” just blurr eyed, slurred of speech and stupid. I could never UNDERstand their logic and hatred of Ganjah which to me seemed, and was the total opposite - very wide eyed RED and bushy tailed alive.
Allways in Rastafari circles Ganjah was brought out, cut up on surru boards and spliffs or a chalice loaded and everyone imbibed to set the tone for the reasonings which would flow forward out of the IHIYHTHZHS. IHI was on my trod into The KNOWLEDGE as I came to call it; the complete Revelations of Rastafari within a wordical reality.
Contrary to the mad Ganjah idea I allways found all contact with Rastafari ones to be upful, sober, highly interesting and certainly not mundane and pointless. I can only say that throught all the many encounters of the IHI kind were amazingly intelligent and inspirational.
Many times a one would bring out an old battered suitcase from underneath a bed in which there were countless school excercise books - you could take up any one of those and start reading and truely they could all be published holding the contents which they held. Or they were in the form of many pieces of paper rolled up into a kind of scroll like roll or just written on brown or white paper bags because they had no writing paper.
Reasonings and poems spilled off pages, certainly words from Rastafarious IHIYHTHZHS on many topics, all intelligently well written, and certainly not written from unintelligent people but people who were walking the walk and able to talk the talk. Maybe they were not schooled at the city schools in Kingston or at a University but they could hold their own and more against those realms also.
Of course many times when I took photographs I allways asked if they had any texts of words which they would like to “CITE UP” and give forward as a reasoning in Itations.’
Nice interesting and WIZE interview with RAS SCRAM SPEAKS......what you think.....
MAHNH aah speak Rastafari TRUTHS.
Roland:
At that point Mihlawhdh asked me to add a text from a blog he wrote for myspace:
Mihlawhdh:
‘Those were the times when one single moment in such company can be worth an entire year of experiences in Babylon; literally; it is as if a HEARTFILLED reality presents itself before one and the experience of those moments allways held me in awe. The FEELINGS were so HEARTICAL I felt like I had never really lived before nor experienced such close spiritual communion with other people and it has made me appreciLOVE deeper in my spirit than I never knew possible before.
Each of the Bredrihnh joined in to make their reasonings and opinions known on a host of subject matters, and the night was full of controversial topics which were looked into and pontificated upon by each one.
JAH Stone was the elder inspiration as he had been there from the beginnings coming up through the 30..s and 40..s when the Rastaman was totally ostracised and marginalised. He lead the Spirit of the Holy Trinity through Selassie IHIHZHS name in the reasonings and no wonder in some circles it it spoken of as Priests and Prophets....for that it truely IS.....it was not about seriousness though that was a part of the vibes, it was about the Mystic Revelations of Rastafari and IHI who was feeling it KNEW that!
IHI only sought to sit and feel and listen intently because these were my first contacts with “the Knowledge” as I came to see it.
It was vast, powerfull, covering ITES in ITES in IHIYHTHZHS in ITES in ITES in IHIYHTHZHS as if layers upon layers allways going UP.
RIHKXHS upon RIHKXHS upon RIHKXHS, layers upon layers of intricate deep reasoning full of KNOWledge of the truth and experiences of the Rastaman......the curious thing to me was that I could follow it all and OVERstand the lingua franca.....it was as if IHI had “come home” and Rastafari was something I was knowledgeable of all my life....nothing had to be explained to me and if I chose to join in the reasoning IHI could IHIVERSTAND with the other IHI n IHI as if it was something that IHI had been party to all of my life.
That was very curious to me because I had grown up seperated from Jamaica living in the UK from my youth and my contact with Rastafari was very marginal up until those IHIWAHZHS. So we come to hear about Rastafari as an IN-born concept within IHI n IHI, not as something which one picks up and then puts down..
Jah Stone spoke deeply and TRUTHfull about Babylon and all THAT entailed within the Knowledge. Alot of society people think it is all nonsence and want to laugh and jeer, them being the unbelievers; the heathen Bob sang about in his songs.
IHI would say seperate the SENCE from the NONsence and you will come to the Knowledge and if you have an open mind you will have to agree no matter how “strange” it may seem.
He said that IHI n IHI should never have any faith or attachment to the UNreality of Babbywrong because he would say “Wah dehmh duh, dehmh puhtt dih shue pahnh dih eaahdh and dih eaahdh dehmh puhth pahnh dehmh fuhth” - he had a smoothe but rough very deeply sounding Pahthwah speech and I loved to “eaahrh” the way he spoke.....it made such sence within his IHI reality and Rastafari AND it meant to him that IHI n IHI should seperate all things from the Englishness of Colonialism as in fact the slaves from the past did when dehmh spohkh lihkh dahth ihinnah fih dehmh Pahthwah so the English slavemasters could not understand them.
For FAAHDAH STONE Ethiopia was the inspiration and the inspirational IHIYAHRIHKH which was based in the Anglo Saxon Pahtwah should distance itself from all English-ness - total irradication - that is why I/IHI later came to the OVERstanding through his inspiration and deep cultural reasonings with IHI that IHI n IHI should not use the English “I” to reffer to ANYTHING in Rastafari because it is flirting with the enemy and it is a bastardisation of IHIYAHRIHKH; one certainly should not use English to “define” and write IHIYAHRIHKH - certainly it should not be spelled in English as that was a cultural sacriledge to him...
In the second and third Itations the English “I” is replaced by the “IHI” of IHIYAHRIHKH. Similar also to INRI, more RIGHTeous more truthfull.
Many things were based upon reasoning and in depth inspirations gleaned through the KNOWledge and my times trodding through the mystics - it makes sence. How can a language, IHIYAHRIHKH be defined in the Queens English, which IHI n IHI have deep issues with and it truely represent an Ethiopian IHIYHTHZHS?
That also applies to many many other words, if not ALL the words in the English based PAHTHWAH language which need to be reinterpreted and reinstated in IHIYAHRIHKH.....Transformation and spiritual revolution.
How can ISES truely convey the IHIZIHZHS of the deep rootical PAHTWAH speech and intent of the Rastafari IHIsciousness.
IHI KNOW that when IHI heard JAH Stone say in his DEEEEEP rich pahtwah speech; IHIZIHZHS, it did NOT sound like no English written ISES....One has POWER the other one only seems ordinary and nondescript and it cannot capture the richness and startospheric power of the Pahthwah language which is so rootical and EXXXXXXXXXXpressive.....
He said Babbywrong was like the Pharoahs of the time of the first Israelites and that it would never give up that which it should give up to humanity or to Rastafari. That it was just a vampire system sucking the blood of the people and that IHI n IHI should never put any faith in horses and charriots....That the standard Governmental and social attitudes to Ganjah would remain as it is because THEY FEAR the power and enlightenment in the Herb. That that is why the fight is so deep and hard against the Rastafari throught time and times because RIGHTeousness sits outside while the wicked rule in high places.
He had been incarcerated like many other Rastafari for carrying their Holy herb in Babylon......he never spoke with hatred but he did speak with his REVOLUTIONARY zeal and that he wished RIGHTeousness to predominate over evil. No one who was honest could deny his feelings; yet many still do to this day.
That night when I said Guava he said “mih nuh waah nuh Guava nuh mohrhe, Colonialenglishism words.
Gih mih aah GOH-OVAH, IHI-OVAH or a JAH-OVAH into Zion. But dont give me no Guava - IHI could OVERS that.
For him no more Pawpaw; gihmmih IHIPAW or JAHPAW because that seemed to him more culturally right instead of cleaving to ANYTHING English.
No more Jackfruit he wanted a JAHFRUIT.
Some call him Radical, IHI say MORE FIRE inspiration is only that shall set IHI n IHI free duhngh yah suh!
He said he did not want no Mango anymore, he was tired of eating Mango; now he only wanted an IHI-KUHMH or a JAH-KUHMH....all I could do was laugh and smile as to the divinity and truth of it all. And that is the difference of having an “open” mind to a closed unaccepting one.
It was late into the night when we were all handed calabash bowls and a “Give Thanks grace” was said.
We were given IHILAHLOO (Callaloo), IHIKEE (Ackee) with IHISUMBAH (Susumba), some rice and pease and several ground foods like yellow yam, sweet potato and dasheen for our meal...there were cornmeal and flour TALKINGplins also.
Sihstah B and Fudgie shurely prepared a rich soulfull Ital feast for the guests that night, it tasted so delicious and sweet cooked with some Coconut milk and oil; I just did not want it to end. The youth had prepared the Ital punch with mango, passion fruit, pawpaw and finally some freshly squeezed sugar cane juice was added to blend and top it off....I had never before tasted such IHITAHLIHTIH before, and IHI still think of those times deep into my living soul even though in these times IHI am still not in JAHMAIHKAH.
The night rolled on into the deep morning until sunrise. Bunguh Fudgie sat there listening while rolling big head conical spliffs that looked like cigars, they were so tightly packed with fresh Ital Ganjah that it took hours to burn through them....it felt like one was drifting on a slave ship across the Atlantic, across eons and times and times of Rastalogical reasonings; ship ahoy, ship ahoy before we reached the
Carry-us-beyond Caribbean again.
I felt like I was ROOTED to the huge mango stump that was made like a kind of stool, as if I WAS ROOTED INTO Jamaica through that IHIKUHMH stump, deep and powerfully linked to Rastafari taking in all the inspiration which was flowing that night. JAH REVELATIONS.
IHI could OVERstand it all, IHIVERSTAND it all; meditating deeply to the wise-mind revelations of the Rastafari reasonings and IHIYHTHZHS reminded me of years later when I took two American friends of mine deep into the interior of St Catherine to meet some other Bredrihnh and spend some time there with them - after we left there Kim said she was so stunned at what they knew and how they knew all of that hidden away there up in that mountain hilltop heartland of Jamaica. She said that THEY should be the ones teaching at the Universities in the USA and scross the world.
People who are open and impartial cannot hear all of that and not agree because IT IS the truth no matter how “curious” or different it seems.
The picture at the front of the first Itation with the PSALM 125; Verses 1 and 2......”They that trust in the Lord shall be as Mount Zion, which cannot be removed, but abideth forever” - that IHIYHTHZHS was taken the next morning as Jah Stone and I trod out of the hills above Kingston from Fudgies and Sihstah Bs gates and FORWARD onto the Plains of St Andrew black to the Constant Spring....’
SELAH; SELASSIE IHI. BLESSED THANKS AND IHIZIHZHS.....EVERYTIME.’
http://www.myspace.com/itations/blog/501954820
At that point Mihlawhdh asked me to add a text from a blog he wrote for myspace:
Mihlawhdh:
‘Those were the times when one single moment in such company can be worth an entire year of experiences in Babylon; literally; it is as if a HEARTFILLED reality presents itself before one and the experience of those moments allways held me in awe. The FEELINGS were so HEARTICAL I felt like I had never really lived before nor experienced such close spiritual communion with other people and it has made me appreciLOVE deeper in my spirit than I never knew possible before.
Each of the Bredrihnh joined in to make their reasonings and opinions known on a host of subject matters, and the night was full of controversial topics which were looked into and pontificated upon by each one.
JAH Stone was the elder inspiration as he had been there from the beginnings coming up through the 30..s and 40..s when the Rastaman was totally ostracised and marginalised. He lead the Spirit of the Holy Trinity through Selassie IHIHZHS name in the reasonings and no wonder in some circles it it spoken of as Priests and Prophets....for that it truely IS.....it was not about seriousness though that was a part of the vibes, it was about the Mystic Revelations of Rastafari and IHI who was feeling it KNEW that!
IHI only sought to sit and feel and listen intently because these were my first contacts with “the Knowledge” as I came to see it.
It was vast, powerfull, covering ITES in ITES in IHIYHTHZHS in ITES in ITES in IHIYHTHZHS as if layers upon layers allways going UP.
RIHKXHS upon RIHKXHS upon RIHKXHS, layers upon layers of intricate deep reasoning full of KNOWledge of the truth and experiences of the Rastaman......the curious thing to me was that I could follow it all and OVERstand the lingua franca.....it was as if IHI had “come home” and Rastafari was something I was knowledgeable of all my life....nothing had to be explained to me and if I chose to join in the reasoning IHI could IHIVERSTAND with the other IHI n IHI as if it was something that IHI had been party to all of my life.
That was very curious to me because I had grown up seperated from Jamaica living in the UK from my youth and my contact with Rastafari was very marginal up until those IHIWAHZHS. So we come to hear about Rastafari as an IN-born concept within IHI n IHI, not as something which one picks up and then puts down..
Jah Stone spoke deeply and TRUTHfull about Babylon and all THAT entailed within the Knowledge. Alot of society people think it is all nonsence and want to laugh and jeer, them being the unbelievers; the heathen Bob sang about in his songs.
IHI would say seperate the SENCE from the NONsence and you will come to the Knowledge and if you have an open mind you will have to agree no matter how “strange” it may seem.
He said that IHI n IHI should never have any faith or attachment to the UNreality of Babbywrong because he would say “Wah dehmh duh, dehmh puhtt dih shue pahnh dih eaahdh and dih eaahdh dehmh puhth pahnh dehmh fuhth” - he had a smoothe but rough very deeply sounding Pahthwah speech and I loved to “eaahrh” the way he spoke.....it made such sence within his IHI reality and Rastafari AND it meant to him that IHI n IHI should seperate all things from the Englishness of Colonialism as in fact the slaves from the past did when dehmh spohkh lihkh dahth ihinnah fih dehmh Pahthwah so the English slavemasters could not understand them.
For FAAHDAH STONE Ethiopia was the inspiration and the inspirational IHIYAHRIHKH which was based in the Anglo Saxon Pahtwah should distance itself from all English-ness - total irradication - that is why I/IHI later came to the OVERstanding through his inspiration and deep cultural reasonings with IHI that IHI n IHI should not use the English “I” to reffer to ANYTHING in Rastafari because it is flirting with the enemy and it is a bastardisation of IHIYAHRIHKH; one certainly should not use English to “define” and write IHIYAHRIHKH - certainly it should not be spelled in English as that was a cultural sacriledge to him...
In the second and third Itations the English “I” is replaced by the “IHI” of IHIYAHRIHKH. Similar also to INRI, more RIGHTeous more truthfull.
Many things were based upon reasoning and in depth inspirations gleaned through the KNOWledge and my times trodding through the mystics - it makes sence. How can a language, IHIYAHRIHKH be defined in the Queens English, which IHI n IHI have deep issues with and it truely represent an Ethiopian IHIYHTHZHS?
That also applies to many many other words, if not ALL the words in the English based PAHTHWAH language which need to be reinterpreted and reinstated in IHIYAHRIHKH.....Transformation and spiritual revolution.
How can ISES truely convey the IHIZIHZHS of the deep rootical PAHTWAH speech and intent of the Rastafari IHIsciousness.
IHI KNOW that when IHI heard JAH Stone say in his DEEEEEP rich pahtwah speech; IHIZIHZHS, it did NOT sound like no English written ISES....One has POWER the other one only seems ordinary and nondescript and it cannot capture the richness and startospheric power of the Pahthwah language which is so rootical and EXXXXXXXXXXpressive.....
He said Babbywrong was like the Pharoahs of the time of the first Israelites and that it would never give up that which it should give up to humanity or to Rastafari. That it was just a vampire system sucking the blood of the people and that IHI n IHI should never put any faith in horses and charriots....That the standard Governmental and social attitudes to Ganjah would remain as it is because THEY FEAR the power and enlightenment in the Herb. That that is why the fight is so deep and hard against the Rastafari throught time and times because RIGHTeousness sits outside while the wicked rule in high places.
He had been incarcerated like many other Rastafari for carrying their Holy herb in Babylon......he never spoke with hatred but he did speak with his REVOLUTIONARY zeal and that he wished RIGHTeousness to predominate over evil. No one who was honest could deny his feelings; yet many still do to this day.
That night when I said Guava he said “mih nuh waah nuh Guava nuh mohrhe, Colonialenglishism words.
Gih mih aah GOH-OVAH, IHI-OVAH or a JAH-OVAH into Zion. But dont give me no Guava - IHI could OVERS that.
For him no more Pawpaw; gihmmih IHIPAW or JAHPAW because that seemed to him more culturally right instead of cleaving to ANYTHING English.
No more Jackfruit he wanted a JAHFRUIT.
Some call him Radical, IHI say MORE FIRE inspiration is only that shall set IHI n IHI free duhngh yah suh!
He said he did not want no Mango anymore, he was tired of eating Mango; now he only wanted an IHI-KUHMH or a JAH-KUHMH....all I could do was laugh and smile as to the divinity and truth of it all. And that is the difference of having an “open” mind to a closed unaccepting one.
It was late into the night when we were all handed calabash bowls and a “Give Thanks grace” was said.
We were given IHILAHLOO (Callaloo), IHIKEE (Ackee) with IHISUMBAH (Susumba), some rice and pease and several ground foods like yellow yam, sweet potato and dasheen for our meal...there were cornmeal and flour TALKINGplins also.
Sihstah B and Fudgie shurely prepared a rich soulfull Ital feast for the guests that night, it tasted so delicious and sweet cooked with some Coconut milk and oil; I just did not want it to end. The youth had prepared the Ital punch with mango, passion fruit, pawpaw and finally some freshly squeezed sugar cane juice was added to blend and top it off....I had never before tasted such IHITAHLIHTIH before, and IHI still think of those times deep into my living soul even though in these times IHI am still not in JAHMAIHKAH.
The night rolled on into the deep morning until sunrise. Bunguh Fudgie sat there listening while rolling big head conical spliffs that looked like cigars, they were so tightly packed with fresh Ital Ganjah that it took hours to burn through them....it felt like one was drifting on a slave ship across the Atlantic, across eons and times and times of Rastalogical reasonings; ship ahoy, ship ahoy before we reached the
Carry-us-beyond Caribbean again.
I felt like I was ROOTED to the huge mango stump that was made like a kind of stool, as if I WAS ROOTED INTO Jamaica through that IHIKUHMH stump, deep and powerfully linked to Rastafari taking in all the inspiration which was flowing that night. JAH REVELATIONS.
IHI could OVERstand it all, IHIVERSTAND it all; meditating deeply to the wise-mind revelations of the Rastafari reasonings and IHIYHTHZHS reminded me of years later when I took two American friends of mine deep into the interior of St Catherine to meet some other Bredrihnh and spend some time there with them - after we left there Kim said she was so stunned at what they knew and how they knew all of that hidden away there up in that mountain hilltop heartland of Jamaica. She said that THEY should be the ones teaching at the Universities in the USA and scross the world.
People who are open and impartial cannot hear all of that and not agree because IT IS the truth no matter how “curious” or different it seems.
The picture at the front of the first Itation with the PSALM 125; Verses 1 and 2......”They that trust in the Lord shall be as Mount Zion, which cannot be removed, but abideth forever” - that IHIYHTHZHS was taken the next morning as Jah Stone and I trod out of the hills above Kingston from Fudgies and Sihstah Bs gates and FORWARD onto the Plains of St Andrew black to the Constant Spring....’
SELAH; SELASSIE IHI. BLESSED THANKS AND IHIZIHZHS.....EVERYTIME.’
http://www.myspace.com/itations/blog/501954820
Roland:
‘You told me that you adopted a Rastafari Elder, JAH Stone as a Godfather. Living an ancient tradittion of Godfatherhood.
Please tell me about this Cannabis Sattiva Saddhu Ganjah Rastaman as you call him?’
Mihlawhdh:
‘I met JAH Stone through curious circumstances at a small Nihyahbihnghi held around a huge Cotton Tree in the grounds of the Devon House in Kingston.
It was during the time of Michael Manley PNP Government when Jamaica was going through a difficult period of whet he called “Democratic Socialism” that had changed the dynamic of the society and was threatening to turn Jamaica into another Haiti.
It seems that even before I knew who he was he knew just who I was....that shows just how small Jamaica really is.
It turned out that when I was a youth my mother used to take me to the Black Market at Constant Spring near where we lived.
JAH Stones mother used to sell their farm produce there and it was then that he first saw me and knew me as Mrs Ziadies´s pihknih, one of the children of the many women who would go to the local Market on a Friday and Saturday to buy fruits and vegetables from the higglers and market women who came from all part of the country to see their produce there.
That was possibly twenty two years before I actually met him and got to know who he was.
During the Itation years I met up with him, sometimes JA style “just out of the blue” when he was out selling his roots tonic.
Sometimes he came to visit me where I was staying at the time. After I met JAH Stone he came to visit me at my parents home in the exclusive uptown suburbs - I am shure he was never invited into such places allways looking from the OUTside in -
After I met JAH Stone he came to visit me at my parents home in the exclusive uptown suburbs - I am shure he was never invited into such places allways looking from the OUTside in -
I am NEVER a rude person, and I dont deal with all the Babylon foolishness of airs and graces just for the sake of it - when he came through the door into the huge living room he walked across the room and sat in a corner and belched like a Camel, took out his Ganjah and started to roll a spliff.
I thought that was just great within the context and how comfortable he felt with me because by then he was an inspiration.
Sometime I went to his yard and spent time there with him, and the pictures in the first Itation of him in his Ganjah field were taken on some land he had in the hills above and beyond Kingston in the Hermitage Dam area.
In fact the very first picture in the first Itation is of him trodding out of his mountain gates on his way into the St Andrew plains below.
It was a “mutual admiration society” between IHI n IHI and I looked upon him as a great inspiration and keeper of Rastafari knowledge - he was for me everything an elder Nihyahbihnghi Rastaman was.
He knew who I was and respected that I accepted him whole heartedly without any of the usual society attitudes towards Rastafari.
I know that for some when they meet an inspiration in Rastafari they embrace them in ONE HEART and “adopt them” in a spiritual sence as someone who has been a influence in their trod into Rastafari.
He had been through the Allalutta Continue since the days of the English King George when he was charged for treason and having a “draw” of his Sacramant and spent three years in prison.
He was most certainly a Guru Saddhu like Ganjah Rastaman and a very wise man indeed who had been through his Shadrack, Meshack and Abednigo Rastafari Fire walk and was a Fire Dread himself....He was affiliated with a group called the JUDAH COPTIC.’
Roland:
Again Mihlawhdh ask me to add some experiences with Jah Stone collected in his myspace blog:
Mihlawhd:
‘During one of the nights I remember the sweet pungent distinct smell of some Ganjah which was wafting around the area, only this had a kind of menthol scent to it....so I walked around a bit and sought to find out where this aroma was emanating from......soon I came upon this elder seated in one of the huge roots of the Cotton tree and located that this was where the special smell was coming from.....I went up to him and struck up a conversation with him and asked him about his herbs and how it had such a nice aroma.....his eyes where a flame of fire and he was truely RED RED DREAD in his IHIYHTHZHS of Ganjah.
Is IHIHZHSMERRY mih puhtt ihinnah mih GANJAH he said to me....
IHIHZHMERRY I asked wondering what was that!
Yehss Youthman you know ROSEMERRY Herb...is dahth me puhtt ihinnah mih Ganjah fih mask dih smell and give it a cool taste he informed me....It seemed he liked also to crush up small pieces of Frankinsence and dust his Ganjah with that also, which in turn also gave the smoke a nice smell about it - certainly very different anyway....
As we got to reasoning there for some eternal timeless herbal lengths of time I was very taken with him as a kind of wise Saddu like figure sitting there in the roots of the Cotton Tree with his dreadlocks flowing over his shoulders and down his back.....I was enjoying his reasonings and revelations with me.....as I said these were all pieces of my Mystic Revelations INTO Rastafari which I was passing through in the first years of my time working on Itations....and discovering so much about Jamaica which I was not privy to growing up in priviledged Kingston 8 as a youth in the late 50..and early 60..s before I left to go to school in the UK in 1964.......it was good to hear what he had to say about the DOWNpression of the Rastaman in the 40..s and 50..s when he was a younger man coming up in Rastafari and trodding the Rastaman road in Jamaica in the times of British COLONIALism when ones like him were caught up and charged for “posession” of their sacramant....or charged for treason as he was for speaking publicly against the Crown of England for initiating Slavery during the reign of Elizabeth the 1 of England and bringing black people out into the Western Hemisphere as slaves....or simply brutalised physically for carrying the Locks of a Lion Heart and being a Rastaman in his own land....Jamaica at the height of Colonialism must have been a dread place for the Rastaman to trod through physically and mentally and Jah Stone would recount to me many of the incidents which he has lived through....even spending three years in prison for his Faith at the hands of the Colonial Courts of OUTjustice.’
http://www.myspace.com/itations/blog/496419858
Mihlawhd:
‘During one of the nights I remember the sweet pungent distinct smell of some Ganjah which was wafting around the area, only this had a kind of menthol scent to it....so I walked around a bit and sought to find out where this aroma was emanating from......soon I came upon this elder seated in one of the huge roots of the Cotton tree and located that this was where the special smell was coming from.....I went up to him and struck up a conversation with him and asked him about his herbs and how it had such a nice aroma.....his eyes where a flame of fire and he was truely RED RED DREAD in his IHIYHTHZHS of Ganjah.
Is IHIHZHSMERRY mih puhtt ihinnah mih GANJAH he said to me....
IHIHZHMERRY I asked wondering what was that!
Yehss Youthman you know ROSEMERRY Herb...is dahth me puhtt ihinnah mih Ganjah fih mask dih smell and give it a cool taste he informed me....It seemed he liked also to crush up small pieces of Frankinsence and dust his Ganjah with that also, which in turn also gave the smoke a nice smell about it - certainly very different anyway....
As we got to reasoning there for some eternal timeless herbal lengths of time I was very taken with him as a kind of wise Saddu like figure sitting there in the roots of the Cotton Tree with his dreadlocks flowing over his shoulders and down his back.....I was enjoying his reasonings and revelations with me.....as I said these were all pieces of my Mystic Revelations INTO Rastafari which I was passing through in the first years of my time working on Itations....and discovering so much about Jamaica which I was not privy to growing up in priviledged Kingston 8 as a youth in the late 50..and early 60..s before I left to go to school in the UK in 1964.......it was good to hear what he had to say about the DOWNpression of the Rastaman in the 40..s and 50..s when he was a younger man coming up in Rastafari and trodding the Rastaman road in Jamaica in the times of British COLONIALism when ones like him were caught up and charged for “posession” of their sacramant....or charged for treason as he was for speaking publicly against the Crown of England for initiating Slavery during the reign of Elizabeth the 1 of England and bringing black people out into the Western Hemisphere as slaves....or simply brutalised physically for carrying the Locks of a Lion Heart and being a Rastaman in his own land....Jamaica at the height of Colonialism must have been a dread place for the Rastaman to trod through physically and mentally and Jah Stone would recount to me many of the incidents which he has lived through....even spending three years in prison for his Faith at the hands of the Colonial Courts of OUTjustice.’
http://www.myspace.com/itations/blog/496419858
Roland:
‘How was it being in the countryside with those ancient Rastaman living an Ital life in the hills and countryside of Jamaica?’
Mihlawhdh:’’It was another life completely, real wild JAMAICA country LIVITY; ITAL, wild and free, free, free - 360 degrees in total opposition to the life in Kingston which was becoming totally mad because of the amount of cars which had been imported into the country.
In the bush life had nothing to do with Babylon work; no clock, no watch to watch or nine to five DEAD lines, nothing but one endless living One Heart vibe to do what you wished. It was really a kind of monastic life lived deep in the heart of nature.
The utter stillness I remember especially, so quiet and calm and only the sound of birds during the day time and the crickets, croaking lizards and peenie wallie during the night......when it RAINed and POURed you FELT the strength of the natural earth energy just inches away from you. There were no walls or barriers as the lightening and thunder would bbbbbburst like an electric storm above and light up the surrounding fields. It was magnetic almost.
Looking up the heavens seemed much much closer and somehow very clear as if you could touch them.
Most of the elders who I stayed with worked the land planting vegetables and crops of some sort and growing Ital Ganjah free from all fertilizers - just water from the river or spring and the heat of the sunshine. I remember one elder Chinese Dread JAH Chung who had not left from up there for 25 years in the bush.
He lived in a thatched hut with some rocks which was where he cooked whatever he cultivated. He ate out of a Calabash gourd with a Coconut shell spoon - yellow yam and cassava with a hot pepper, dasheen, sussumbah, green banana, cho cho and fried plantain.
There were wild roseapple and some mango tress in the area and he had lime, orange and ortanique trees which he made juice from. Someone brought him a Soursop tree which as he loved when he could make juice from the fruit.
There was a small river nearby which he would go and wash and swim in when he needed a fresh and collect water in a drum to boil for drinking.
Sometimes some of his youths used to come up there to visit and perhaps bring him some basic provisions like flour, matches, sugar, a piece of thick sponge which he put in a hammock and slept on until it disentegrated after years of use.
It was up in the mountains beyond the middle of the Island in St Catherine in a place called Coley District where the bus route stopped when the asphalt road ended and it turned to grass again you could go no further in.
From there you had to take the donkey or walk on foot for another two hours through pure wild bush and valleys to get to his flat piece of land where he had his “tatch hut” and cultivation.
He had a HUGE wooden box and it was strange to see about 50 kilos of Ganjah seeds all in one place, it was like a treasure chest with a GREAT potential. His Herb was beautiful in thick fluffy buds with golden strands between the seed capsules and the smell which was sweet, pungent and very strong. At night time he would make a Ganjah Herbal tee with other wild bushes and once you drank that the night fell away to dreams and deep sleeping slumber.
JAH Chung was the elder who said to me once he saw the first Itation “You doing JAH Works so whatever you wish to take pictures of here you are free” - he was another of the wise Saddhu like Rastamen who are living in the secret places in Jamaica.
I spoke about JAHnnoh and Ms Daphney in a past answer.
They lived perched on the hillside right above the most amazing Blue Lagoon below in a most beautiful lush, green part of Jamaica in Portland - from their small stone veranda where I slept you could look out through the breadfruit tree and see the Caribbean in the distance for as far as the IHI could see.
There were times when the tropical storms came up during the day and you could not go out in THAT rain as it was TORRENTIAL - I would sit on that perch, smoke herb, have a meditation, read the Bible, drink Search me Heart tea and just look out to sea with the lashing rains beating upon the water in the distance. Sometimes it would go on like that for two or three days, day and night.
JAHnnoh used to go up into the hills above to pick Guinep and the Search me Heart herb bush which they would hang and dry and use each morning for tea; he would also collect wild beads in different colours which he would bore and string on fishline to sell to tourists and visitors to the Lagoon.
Although the lived right above the main road from Port Antonio going back into St Thomas they were very isolated and quiet people living a very basic frugal life with only the money they made from the bead necklaces they sold and the fish that JAHnnoh caught when he went out to sea for the day in his canoe.
Whenever I had gone back to Jamaica that was my first port of call to go there and spend a week or two with them. It was my favorite part of the Island because it had the sea, mineral springs, the Lagoon and Waterfalls all within distance of each other.
The mystic mineral pool was right at the side of the Lagoon and the water seeped out of the rock hillside from the Nonsuch Caves in the Mountains above - THAT was pure clean virgin liquid crystal water which no one had ever touched, it was allways flowing out into the Lagoon and never the same from one moment to the other. I called it my baptismal waatah and the people who lived around the area would call me “water man” because I would spend hours each day soaking in the cool clear water.
I remember one day sitting there under the huge almond trees looking at the refractions dancing in the water and you could actually see pieces of the rainbow colours rippling on the surface with the sunshine.
Itations as I have said brought forward to me an entirely “other” life which I had never experienced in Jamaica when I was growing up as a youth in Kingston.
During those 18 years of coming and going I saw many varied parts of the country both coastal and in the interior of the Island and it was another very enriching experience to me while doing Itations that revealed to me the natural side of the Heart and Soul of Jamaica itself.
There are still city people who were born and bred in Jamaica who have never ventured out into the “wilds” of the Island from Kingston or Montego Bay and do not know anything about that little Island in the Sun and the treasures which are hidden around every corner once you make a move to see how the other half live outside of the urban crappy areas.
dubbbbb poets anahddah wahnh fih dih ihihnhtahviewh
Roland:
‘Itations included alot of poetry of Dubpoets like Mikey Smith, Mutabaruka, Oku Onuora, Faybiene Miranda, Benjamin Zephaniah,
Farika Birhan. Can you tell me about thes word, sound and power artists?’
Mihlawhdh:
‘IHI think that when I started out into the Itations trod in 1978 Bob Marley and the Wailers and all the other Reggae Artists were going very strong in those times. Reggae was developing into a Global Music and going to the four corners of the IRT.
In the wake of the music there were many many writers/scribes and alot of Bredrihnh and Sihstrihnh who were writing their poetry and verses of the Rastafari Allalutta Continua.
There were many in Jamaica who were not in the spotlight who were just putting their Ites on paper and did not actually have anything published. Those were the ones I spoke about who had works written on pieces of paper or in school excercise books stored under their bed or on shelves in their gates.
Brother Alanzo (Izo) Robinson, I Man Cool, Jah thanks and Praises, who had encouraged me to include poetry works in the first Itation. He was the brother who had a small crafts shop on the side of Oxford Road and I had met him there and would pass through his Crafts Bus and have a smoke with him and spend time there. He was very glad to know about the idea for Itations and as a poet himself I published some of his poems in the first Itation.
There are many ones in the three Itations who all contributed their written words who were not “famous or well known” - like Daddy Mack with Christ Return, a sweet elder Rastaman who had works written from years before. Prof I with Before Invention, “Before comb, sizzors and razor how man used to look? . Jah Stone with Golden Jubilee. JAH Wayne´s Love Jah and Live. Free Rastaman by King Saba, Rastamanlive with love in Jamaica, Rastaman love herb, that is his main meal.
I was in London and had written to Seko Tafari who published the Rastafari Times Newspaper out of Port of Spain in Trinidad.
He was another brother who was writing his own poems and he was included in the Second Itation. He came to London soon after I contacted him and he was living between Trinidad and the UK at that time. He now runs Frontline Books in Chicago.
Through him I met another Trini Dread Brother Resistance and through him I met Sihstah Netifa who grew up and lived in the UK who was working with Resistance doing some stage shows. Through Resistance I met Karega Mandela who had some of his Dub Poetry published in the third Itation.
Sometime around 1989 I met Benjamin Zephaniah before I made my second Journey to Addis. I went to his home in London and spent a day there reasoning with him and showed him the first Itation and the layouts which I had drawn up for the second Itation - like many who SAW what I was doing he was very supportive as an Artist and gave me some of his poems which were published in the second Itation.
Roland:
‘Itations included alot of poetry of Dubpoets like Mikey Smith, Mutabaruka, Oku Onuora, Faybiene Miranda, Benjamin Zephaniah,
Farika Birhan. Can you tell me about thes word, sound and power artists?’
Mihlawhdh:
‘IHI think that when I started out into the Itations trod in 1978 Bob Marley and the Wailers and all the other Reggae Artists were going very strong in those times. Reggae was developing into a Global Music and going to the four corners of the IRT.
In the wake of the music there were many many writers/scribes and alot of Bredrihnh and Sihstrihnh who were writing their poetry and verses of the Rastafari Allalutta Continua.
There were many in Jamaica who were not in the spotlight who were just putting their Ites on paper and did not actually have anything published. Those were the ones I spoke about who had works written on pieces of paper or in school excercise books stored under their bed or on shelves in their gates.
Brother Alanzo (Izo) Robinson, I Man Cool, Jah thanks and Praises, who had encouraged me to include poetry works in the first Itation. He was the brother who had a small crafts shop on the side of Oxford Road and I had met him there and would pass through his Crafts Bus and have a smoke with him and spend time there. He was very glad to know about the idea for Itations and as a poet himself I published some of his poems in the first Itation.
There are many ones in the three Itations who all contributed their written words who were not “famous or well known” - like Daddy Mack with Christ Return, a sweet elder Rastaman who had works written from years before. Prof I with Before Invention, “Before comb, sizzors and razor how man used to look? . Jah Stone with Golden Jubilee. JAH Wayne´s Love Jah and Live. Free Rastaman by King Saba, Rastamanlive with love in Jamaica, Rastaman love herb, that is his main meal.
I was in London and had written to Seko Tafari who published the Rastafari Times Newspaper out of Port of Spain in Trinidad.
He was another brother who was writing his own poems and he was included in the Second Itation. He came to London soon after I contacted him and he was living between Trinidad and the UK at that time. He now runs Frontline Books in Chicago.
Through him I met another Trini Dread Brother Resistance and through him I met Sihstah Netifa who grew up and lived in the UK who was working with Resistance doing some stage shows. Through Resistance I met Karega Mandela who had some of his Dub Poetry published in the third Itation.
Sometime around 1989 I met Benjamin Zephaniah before I made my second Journey to Addis. I went to his home in London and spent a day there reasoning with him and showed him the first Itation and the layouts which I had drawn up for the second Itation - like many who SAW what I was doing he was very supportive as an Artist and gave me some of his poems which were published in the second Itation.
In the late 70´s Third World used to rehearse at a place called Zinc Fence and that is where I met Mikey Smith and thought of him as a friend. He gave me Dub Music and “Mi Seh Mi Caan Believe It” to publish before he was so brutally taken from amongst us when he was rising to greater popularity. I met Oku Onuora up at Bob´s Tuff Gong I think.
The Sihstahzhs I met in Jamaica at that time were Faybene Miranda and Sister Farika Birhan who I have a special fondness for. They both have works published in all the three Itations. I had read Sihstah Farikas “I Man Kingman Dreadman Rule” which I already said in another question was like a personal anthem to me because its content was about my own personal situation.
One day one day - the path of dreadness shall open unto you. Look arung yu. See you not Father Selassie walking into the houses of the rich snatching away dem firs born an teking dem to him bosom? Yess IHI; “I light shall open the right - All men shall feel I might - That I man - I an I man - KINGMAN - DREADMAN - RULE.
That was happening alot in those days as Rastafari was rising from the Ghettos and moving through Jamaican society and out into the Outernational reality in a big way heralded by all the reggae Artists which were on the rise led by Bob and the Wailers.
IHI had arrived in Jamaica at just the right time; ihihnn IHIVIHNHE tihmhe tuh tahpph ihihnhtuh dih vihbhzhs which would lead into the mahnhihifehsstaihshahnh ahvh ITATIONS OF JAMAICA AND IN RASTAFARI.
I had met Mutabaruka at the Bihnghi at Devon House in Kingston and he invited me to a small party at his home quite near to where I lived....the picture in the first Itation set on the REHDD DREAHDD backdrop with the calabash on his shoulder is still ONE of my favorite pictures in Itations for its boldness, its starkness and for its IHI to IHI vibes.’
Roland:
'You have met Prince Emanuel of the BUHBBOH SHANTIH.
Alot of youths are now influenced by them. What was this man like? Can you tell us about your meeting with him?'
Mihlawhdh:
'When I was a youth growing up in Jamaica I travel around Kingston as one did to all parts of the city - in the 50´s and 60´s there was alot of niceness as a youth to be found; apart from school I liked everything else.
It was at those times that I would see Rastas moving around the city, they were all so curious because they looked very different with their dreadlocks and how they appeared.........In those times you would see the BUHBBOH SHANTIH with their wraps carrying very long spider brooms and small hand brooms which they made and sold to the city homes around Kingston.
In my teenage years there were three things which I embraced in my initial experiences towards Rastafari.
The first was the triple set of the Count Ozzie and the Mystic Revelation of Rastafari LP. This was my first cultural experience with Rastafari music.
The second was the Ras Michael and the Sons of Negus Album which was one of the first recorded Rastafari drummers and chanters Nihyahbihnghi music. Ras Michael was the original Binghiman before Bob Marley in my consciousness as it was not until the mid 70´s that Bob and the Wailers exploded on the UK scene in a big way.
The third was a small booklet which was created and distributed by Prince Emanuel and the Buhbboh Dreads who were by then living out at Nine Miles, Bull Bay where their Monastery sat atop a hill in the distance away from the road.
I read their collective phylosophy and looked through the pictures which were enclosed of Prince Emanuel and his Priests and Prophets at the foundation with him. It was very intregueing to me to see pictures and read about them as I was allways fascinated by Rastafarians.
There was an elder Rasta Sihstah featured in the pictures called Empress Elgita, she looked mighty interesting and ANCIENT.
Empress Elgita I though, dahths aah real interesting and different name because up to now I still cannot figure out why people want to name their child one of the names which has been used for the billionth time on this earth in Babylon.
Around them times I met a single Buhbboh Dread called Prophet Moniero a very gentle and humble young man who used to come up to the Manour Park Plaza near Constant Spring where I lived and I would see him there from time to time - once there were two red seam Bhese Bwoih Poor-lice hasseling him so I went up and made my presence felt, sat there with him and asked him "are they troubling you" - that soon sent them on their way as they definately knew I was not one of the Ghetto people.
We always spent awhile reasoning when I met him and it was one of my first casual contacts with a Rastaman.
Setting out to do Itations I knew that there were certain people who I definately wanted to reason with and include in the works.
Of course Prince Emanuel had to be specially featured because even from then it was known by many people that he was an important figure in the Rastafari movement and I saw it as imperative that I at least try to meet him and appeal to him for his support to be included in Itations of Jamaica and I Rastafari. He was a cornerstone in the consciousness as we know it even today.
One morning very early I left from Constant Spring in the North and went down into the depths of the filthy Kingston shitty to catch the Rocket Bus going to the Eastern side of the Island to St Thomas; passing by Nine Miles, Bull Bay where I alighted and looked up to the hill in the distance where I could see the Red Yellow and Green painted Monastery and their Ethiopian flags flying at their International Foundation as it was called.
It was still early as the sunrise began to come up as I reached the gate to the foundation.
I was called into the recieving chambers where several Priests and Prophets enquired what my mission was there. I explained that I was working on a book project about Rastafari and wished to meet with Prince Emanuel to ask his permission if he would be included in the works.
There was great debate amongst the Brehdrihnh and at some point I was cautioned that it might not be possible as the Prince was not allowing foreign journalists to take any more pictures. I could only appeal that my request be presented to Prince Emanuel and that I would wait....
Some time later one of the Priests returned from deeper in the camp to tell me that "The Prince aah wash him wool" and if I would wait in time he would recieve me. By then it must have been about 10.00 when I was told. I would have waited all day as for me it was a very important and special reality to be included in Itations.
Around 1.00 the call came through that I was to accompany an Elder up into the camp to be recieved by the Prince. We walked through the foundation and up some steps to a yellow painted wooden cottage that sat deep inside the compound. There was a chair on the veranda and I sat just at the top of the steps out of respect and waited for him to arrive while laying out my slides and the design format traced upon paper.
Suddenly, silently and statesman like his tall figure slowly appeared from out of the house clothed in his robes holding his high wooden rod which was painted and adorned followed by a young boy dressed in saffron robes and a small turban.
Prince Emanuel sat in the chair and the youth sat on the floor beside him.
I thanked him for recieving me and spoke with him at some length about my own life and situation, having left Jamaica as a young boy and being taken to England and my experiences there which had brought me to that point.
I opened up my folder of layouts and the many slides which were in slide holders so it was easy to hold them to the light and look at them.
I showed him a general format which the book was going to take. I explained that I realised he was a very important figure head within Rastafari and that for me it was crucial that he should be included in the works because of his statue and RASpect in Rastafari.
He listened to what I had to say intently and sat there in a very quiet and humble way, serene almost, silently listening attentively to what I had to say.
At one point in our reasoning I stopped to explain that I had had a very out of the blue dream experience about him some years before when I was in England and I began to recount the dream to him.
For me it was rather unusual to actually have a dream about Prince Emanuel, and to this day it still seems unusual.
The dream was set in a very large field like orchard amongst many many fruit trees, I think they were actually apple or pear trees.
My consciousness during the imagery of the dream seemed to me above the situation looking down on the scene almost like into a film from above.
Prince Emanuel stood with his back to one of the trees as if leaning upon it and in the entire orchard there were many many Sihstrihnh all in wraps and long skirts, all using hoes to mull and work over the soil as they went up and down the orchard.
That was all that the dream was, nothing else.
While he sat there I took some close up pictures of him and the youth during that time. I was offered some fruit juice and some fruit while he looked through the drawings and layouts as I concluded my presentation to him.
He then spoke and said that he would accompany me out into the TAHBAHNAHKHLE and grounds of the camp and that I could take whatever pictures I wished there with his blessing.
I followed him outside and we moved about taking the various shots which I did, some of which are in the first Itation.
There is a shot in the TAHBAHNAKHLE included in the second Itation and the shot of the youth on the veranda with him is in the third Itation.
I thanked him for his kindness and felt positive vibes that I was allowed to meet with him and be able to take the series of pictures which I did. Especially as I was told that it might not be possible.
I returned through the entrance chamber and walked back to the main road to wait for a transport into Kingston.
The evening was by then drawing in and up above a violet blue sunset was bursting through the skies as it ripened into golden orange and a fiery red. KRIHAIHSHAHNH JA colours for days.
Yes it was a positive Itation and one which IHI was thankfull for being manifest.
It was FULLFILLING and an important achievement.
GIVE THANKS.'
rrrrrrrastafari in my life
Roland:
‘What is the role of Rastafari within your own life?’
Mihlawhdh:
‘Abbahjahnhoi behsehmaihth yehmentihnhor sihmihyih kihdduhss mehnghistah tihmhtah fahkadah.
Within days of being born I was baptised at the very English Up Park Camp Garrison Church into the Church of England´s Anglican Faith.
It was where all the British soldiers were garrisoned on there deployment to Jamaica, their Crown colony in the Caribbean.
Fourteen years later I was to go to England to a very priviledged school and we attended a small Norman Chapel near my school.
It was in those environments that I discovered out of the blue that I was suddenly cosidered a Nigger, a Wog, a Spook, a Coon, a Kaffa and a Darkie - names I had never heard of in Jamaica; charming names of the Europeans for those of US from their Colonies no matter how well educated or socially well placed we were.
The older West Indians of ALL the Islands were always in AWE of King, Queen and the GREAT Motherland, they fawned upon it, LOVED it, it was the centre of their world MORE than their own countries. Everything about Great Britain, the land, the Monarchy and Europe was paramount in their psyche to be looked up to and adored (no worshipped) beyond belief.
When I went to live in England and experience that so called greatness I wondered seriously what the hell all that fuss was about; for quite the contrary I found a place which was certainly not as advanced humanity wise as where I came from. And within society there was nothing which we lacked down there in Jamaica.
Perhaps they had the Bank of England, Bukkingham Palace, St Paul´s Cathedral, Oxford and Cambridge, hallowed institutions and their well positioned upper classes who no doubt gained their wealth from the “common” wealth and other third world countries ; but what existed below that in their “masses” was certainly quite backward and of no great import.
Contrary to West Indian opinion that we were all an EQUAL part of Madams “common” wealth, we certainly were NOT considered equal nor English and anyway what did I have to do with the Church of England´s Anglican Faith, and BEING in England to boot.
Instead we were all seen as immigrants and auslanders and there is a speech which was given by the poli-tricks-man Enoch Powell in the 60´s which is know as his “rivers of blood” speech in which he “prophesied” that all the immirgation to the UK from its colonies would lead to social catastrophy in the future.
It was in those environs that I totally rejected any LOVE or AFFECTION for the Motherland, or JOY to go to that Church of England Chapel for one hour each sunday morning. In fact I despised the very idea of that as I only felt totally alienated in its arena.
Like ALOT of people of “My Generation” amongst the youth in the 60´s I had absolutely ZERO interest in anything called Church LIKE THAT, “bored to death” and could not care less about some Vicar standing at the front of the Church leading a “service” for one wasted hour.
Now I know its just another one of the dead Babylon Churches leading the people astray.
By dead I mean in contrast to what I discovered in His Imperial Majesties Ethiopian Orthodox Church when I first went to Ethiopia in 1982; where I found the real true and LIVING Church.
Like alot of people of my generation in the 60´s I was looking for “something” in the total dont know darkness.
Lost for years and living between the worlds so to speak. With no one to turn to and ASK, no where to KNOW where to look like many I blundered through the years 1964 into 1978 keeping an open mind and allways seeking that illusive “answer” - Johnny Nash even said it in “There are more questions than answers” - and the more I find out the less I know. FAR IHI that was before RASTAFARI.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTHBfWcikmY
I was seeking that “something” though, looking, enquiring, wondering, THE ANSWER; anything that would make sense of it all and release me to feel soul satisfied.
Popular Youth Culture was on the rise, music was inspiring, we were enquiring all the time. I had started smoking Cannabis Sattiva, Ganjah in 1968 - that blew out all my CONceptions and MISconceptions throwing me about like a small trawler tossed upon the ocean of confusion, doubt and concerns to find a personal SOULution.
Those were the beginnings of my personal revelations, my “brainwash” which before JAH I was sinking. RASTAFARI.
Once on a summer holiday to Jamaica my cousin took me into a Ghetto to buy some Ganjah. There was a youth living in a small ramshackle hut smoking Herb and asking me “Yuh know who yuh FAAHDAH ihihzz” which I found very curious and rather strange because that is all he said time after time after time - now I realTRUTH he was asking me if I knew that Selassie I was IHI n IHI FAAHDAH.
When I started Itations in 1978 it did take some years for me to realTRUTH that the penny had dropped and that EVERYTHING I had been seeking for OUT there in Outernational I found right there under my nose in my own bahkhyaahdh.
EVERYTHING fell into place so silently and easily, and before IHI knew it, it had instated itself in my soul; it is so ironic now to know that but that is just part of the irony of life and the fact that to get to “heaven” you have to go through alot of hell paying dues to “get over” - and so it was that really something which had laid dormant in my soul for so long suddenly sprang to life like a Ganjah seed that had fallen on rocky ground before it recieved the nourishment it needed to explode into real life.
People often ask “when did you become a Rasta” and IHI feel that the statement “Rastafari was allways inside” is very true. I see it like a Lotus Blossom that was closed until at some point it began to open and bloom as a flower. Suddenly all my questions fell away and walking the FIRE walk of Shadrack, Meshack and Abednigo was the process by which I walked into Rastafari and found my TRUE revelation. No man can give that and no man can take that away either, JAH Knows.
I have never looked black since then as the years go by. Certainly after I made my two Journeys to Addis that process was multiplied and quantified several fold; FORIVAH.
I said earlier I dont wish to have anything to do with the Anglican Church of England but I know that I would attend daily services in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and LOVE every amazing ALIVE, LIVING moment of it.
Everything I missed in the “other” I found in the Church of HIM which His Imperial Majesty was FAAHDAH and HEAD of.
Rastafari is a daily everyday thing in my life, it is the beginning and the end. It is all the FULLfillment IHI need. LOVE JAH and LIVE.
It is as simple and as final as that.’
Roland:
'What are your feelings on the forming of different sects within the livity and the division which it brings to people?'
Mihlawhdh:
'BABYLON is about DIEvisionalISM and SKISM. Death in life.
RASTAFARI is about UNITY and IHINITY with IHI n IHI. Life in life, seen.
As a collective of Brothers and Sisters how would it look for us to be warring factions dealing with my group and your group just like the Babylonians.
In and out fighting, controversies, seperationalism, warrinatiousness - NO - that cannot be right; in a way it has been a vibration which has plagued the psyche of the Caribbean region since the days of Slavery.
Still shackled to the European dievide and rule ethic by which they maintained the Colonial Plantations only now is Modern Slavery...
Of course over the years I have seen AND felt some negativity in the arena but IHI dont support any of that because for me anyone dealing with that vibe aint dealing with JAH LOVE.
Ancient JAH STONE was dealing with One Love, he did not look upon peoples outside and say you cannot come in.
The true Rastaman is intelligent, wise, impartial, perspicatious like HIM and a lover of truth and rights.
IHI AM one of the mixed multitude race upon this planet; born out of the intermixing of the past 400 years in Jamaica......
I dont even deal with "pride" concerning anything because JAH JAH show us that "after pride cometh a fall".
TWELVE Nations of DNA flowing through my veins - I AM a human being first then a race after that - I dont belong to any one Tribe or Nation yet all of them is part of me through that JAHMAIHKAHNH Motto "OUT OF MANY ONE PEOPLE" - seen.
I dont even have to defend for that because its not a seperation for me but a plus that I stand as Multi IHIMANSIONAL, MULTI CULTURAL and a MULTI LIVITY human being.
IHI shall never stand for seperation or warrinatiousness because when IHI MAHNH aah guh tuh Waahrh is going to be total anhilation, bluhdh slaughter running down Swallow Field....
So IHI preffer first "reasoning" and coming to a sensible humanitarian agreement; after that JAH Knows.
JAH JAH is about One Aim, One Love, One Heart, ONE PEOPLE, One Destiny; not One Seperation or One Hate.
IHI and IHI cannot be seen to be dealing with the vibrations of the enemy, how would that look?
Many used to ask me when they saw me "Are you a Twelve Tribe" - I would say NO I am dealing with RASTAFARI North South East and West.
Of course I am from the Tribe of Benjamin as a Piscean but that is only a name to me not a seperation or division its a Unity within ALL Tribes as One People and it should not enslave but FREE IHI n IHI UP.
His Majesty, the King, FAAHDAH JAH the Head of Creation himself stood for unification "Not until the phylosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally discredited and abandoned. Even HIM has said it.
If various ones want to cleve to various different organisations and groups every man to his own vine and fig if that is their choice.
If that is what some people feel comfortable with then so be it, let it be.
For my part RASTAFARI is RASTAFARI and if you a TRUE living Ambassador of RASTAFARI then that is one undivided principle.
ONE PEOPLE is ONE PEOPLE.
St Matthew Chapter 7 Verse 1 - 3.
JUDGE NOT; that YE be not judged.
For with what judgement ye judge, ye shall be judged; and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.
And WHY beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brothers eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
So be YE wise and careful how you walk awhnh yah.'
' 
(In my house there is a picture on the wall, Haile Selassie I in Mihlawhdhs's temple)
haile selassie i kewstchahnh
Roland:
‘Can you tell me about Haile Selassie I, what is he to you?’
Mihlawhdh:
‘His Imperial Majesty is IHI n IHI FAAHDAH and King in His Righteous Character.
72 nations bow when he recieved ALL titles belonging to the Conquering Lion of Judah, JAH Bright and Morning Star, The Lilly of the Valley, Melchizedek, King Alpha and Queen Omega.
Sister Judy Mowatt sings “WE exault our Conquering King
Some may not see his physical self but in our hearts his presence is felt.
He has assured us that there is a home
He is calling us to come on home
Message recieved, over, tell them you are calling mother.
We are told that he holds ALL the titles for Je-sus as Incarnated in a NEW NAME and when he came again he would come again in a NEW NAME and that name would be Rastafari.
He is a symbol and point of reference as inspiration, revelation and guidance in my life; he came into my “vibration” to lead me forward out of my own personal wilderness into the land of milk and honey through the sonship and adoption of Ethiopia as my spiritual homeland..
I have been to that Mountain top and IHI have seen what I need to know; No man revealed it to me and no man can take it away from me because it was inspirationally guided, given and revealed to IHI spiritually by HIM and HIM alone.
To recieve you have to ASK and there has to be a point of reference through which everything passes.
The earth quaking, earth shaking FEELINGS I felt in Ethiopia in the Ethiopian Orthodox Faith I have never felt in any Church here in the West, that in itself is enough proof that POWER and GLORY comes from Ethiopia thorough His Imperial Majesty; FAAHDAH of Ethiopia.
IHI FELT IT and we all know the saying “He who FEELS it KNOWS it”; that is enough IHIfirmation for me because it means IHI AM in touch with the LIVE wires.
It is an exceptional experience being there and IN JAH PRESENCE; for me that truely was an overwhelming acceptance and acknowledgement of a reality I never knew before, or which I had never experience like that before.
I did not need any more confirmation after that or direction as I felt as if I had come home.
I dont need to question that because its a daily LIVING truth for me; LOVE JAH and LIVE.
Haile Selassie I, The POWER of the Hola Trinity became a big part of my life not because I went out looking for that but because through the works that and so much more became a positive part of my life and Faith.
Ethiopia and His Majesty is an adoption, transformation and spiritual IHIbirth into those IHIYHTHZHS.
SELASSIE IHI; SELAH.’
Roland:
‘Can you tell me about Haile Selassie I, what is he to you?’
Mihlawhdh:
‘His Imperial Majesty is IHI n IHI FAAHDAH and King in His Righteous Character.
72 nations bow when he recieved ALL titles belonging to the Conquering Lion of Judah, JAH Bright and Morning Star, The Lilly of the Valley, Melchizedek, King Alpha and Queen Omega.
Sister Judy Mowatt sings “WE exault our Conquering King
Some may not see his physical self but in our hearts his presence is felt.
He has assured us that there is a home
He is calling us to come on home
Message recieved, over, tell them you are calling mother.
We are told that he holds ALL the titles for Je-sus as Incarnated in a NEW NAME and when he came again he would come again in a NEW NAME and that name would be Rastafari.
He is a symbol and point of reference as inspiration, revelation and guidance in my life; he came into my “vibration” to lead me forward out of my own personal wilderness into the land of milk and honey through the sonship and adoption of Ethiopia as my spiritual homeland..
I have been to that Mountain top and IHI have seen what I need to know; No man revealed it to me and no man can take it away from me because it was inspirationally guided, given and revealed to IHI spiritually by HIM and HIM alone.
To recieve you have to ASK and there has to be a point of reference through which everything passes.
The earth quaking, earth shaking FEELINGS I felt in Ethiopia in the Ethiopian Orthodox Faith I have never felt in any Church here in the West, that in itself is enough proof that POWER and GLORY comes from Ethiopia thorough His Imperial Majesty; FAAHDAH of Ethiopia.
IHI FELT IT and we all know the saying “He who FEELS it KNOWS it”; that is enough IHIfirmation for me because it means IHI AM in touch with the LIVE wires.
It is an exceptional experience being there and IN JAH PRESENCE; for me that truely was an overwhelming acceptance and acknowledgement of a reality I never knew before, or which I had never experience like that before.
I did not need any more confirmation after that or direction as I felt as if I had come home.
I dont need to question that because its a daily LIVING truth for me; LOVE JAH and LIVE.
Haile Selassie I, The POWER of the Hola Trinity became a big part of my life not because I went out looking for that but because through the works that and so much more became a positive part of my life and Faith.
Ethiopia and His Majesty is an adoption, transformation and spiritual IHIbirth into those IHIYHTHZHS.
SELASSIE IHI; SELAH.’
Roland:
'You went to Ethiopia before the second Itation came out.
In it we see alot of beautiful photographs of ceremonies, ancient drums and even two Batawi Monks.
Did you meet these dreadlocked mysticmen of Ethiopia?
How was it to be in the cradle of mankind?'
Mihlawhdh:
'The first time I went to Ethiopia in 1982 it was a long pilgrimage and Journey to Addis.....
I went from Munich on the train through the Dolomite Mountains between Italy and Germany to the North East Italian port of Ancona where I got a ferry boat to Alexandra. I went into Cairo and spent a day there then I flew through Khartoum and into Addis Abebba.
The paranoia of the Menghistu Comminust regime was at its height and it was a very dangerous and "CONtrolled" time; guns and military men were to be seen everywhere and it was impossible to get ANY permission from the Dergue for anything.
They even took away my Reggae tapes when I entered the country and I was not allowed to do any internal travelling or what I wanted.....in a way it almost seemed like a waste of time.....however at least I was able to get aquainted with the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.
I was staying with an Ethiopian family and I got to go to Georgis Cathedral with Tesfaye´s older brother Alemu and find my first Mystic Revelations of Rastafari.
Apart from me being mesmerised by all the Iconic painting on the walls and the Frankinsence and Myrr it was the entire setting in that Ethiopian Orthodox Christian Church which affected me very deeply to my ROOTS.
Remember I was on my research and discovering "The Knowledge of Rastafari" through all those seminal times.
There were several incidents which happened over the time that I visited Georgis Cathedral and Selassie I Church.
Those were my first experiences having returned "home" and after I left there and returned to the West I realTRUTHED the immediate impact it had on me internally, spiritually and mentally. It was a massive and overwhelming experience which was totally new to me.
After that I KNEW I would never enter another Church of England because there simply was NO comparisson to me - one was the LIVING Ethiopian Orthodox Church and the other, I will say it again with no apology, is the DEAD Church of Babylon. Lifeless.
The apex of my experiences was being transported by THOSE DRUMS, and the sound, the sound, the sound of THOSE DRUMS.
Those DJUHMHZHS; etheral, mystical, ponderous, massive, hypnotic, magical, atomic, explosive, deep bassed, earth quaking, earth shaking as if they could chant down the Walls of Jerico - I just stood there transfixed, swept up into a far away new unknown contemplative meditation I had never heard, or knew existed before.
YOU have to hear it for yourself and FEEL IT for yourself and experience that in your own physical temple to KNOW what I am talking about here - I cannot explain it in words which cannot "capture" the POWER and the MASSIVE Vibrations which flow through your mind and spirit then - its like a baptism into your "New Birth" like being lifted up into Mount Zion and its heavenly realms and dwelling in that power and glory.
Again I never knew it before, I never experienced it before and no man telling you that it is so will make any impact until YOU go there to STAND in JAH presence and FEEL it for yourself.
I said in a past question that I will not, IHI cannot go "back" into the Church of England into which I was baptised in 1950 in Kingston, Jamaica because after Georgis Cathedral in Addis Ababa in 1982 I will never be the same and I cannot return to "death after LIFE" - its curious to say it like that, but that is what IT IS, that is really what it was/is to me!
It was truely IHI home coming as it was my first time there and it was all very new experiences to me.
It helped me to realTRUTH the spiritual sonship IHI n IHI have with Ethiopia and IHI can say that IHI know what that means not as an "idea" but as a personal reality.
I lived with an Ethiopian family and was fed by them daily so I got to eat Ethiopian food and experience the culture from inside an Ethiopian home. They were just like Jamaicans. I was given my own room and bed and Alemu slept in the hall on a small cot bed. They would take nothing from me and they gave me everything that I needed during my stay with them. They even took me to the huge Markato to a tailor and had him make a Tafari Suri the National costume of Ethiopia for me and bought me a Shamma trimmed with Red, Yellow and Green.
Before I left they asked me to wear it one evening and Tesfaye said "Now you look like a true Ethiopian" so for me that was a very personal confirmation of the reality.
The second time I went to Ethiopia the Mengistu regime was still in power and we were not allowed to travel outside of Addis. However I made several approaches to the Patriarchs Private Secretary at Arrat Kilo and was eventually given "the piece of paper" which I had to show went we went to the Churches in and around Addis.
It was really my wish to show the reality of His Imperial Majesties Church of which he was Head and Father to anchor the Itation vibration in that powerhouse first after which all else can follow.
We arrived about two weeks before the Maskal Celebrations; the Finding of the True Cross and that was were some of the pictures were done on the large ground just in front of Georgis Cathedral. There they display all the regalia of the Church, the Tabots and the Huge Ceremonial Maskal Crosses and the Priests drum and chant and clash their prayer rods above their heads as they do in the Church Services.
There is one picture in the second Itation of a Batawi Monk who looked as if he had stepped right out of the wilderness. It was at Entoto Marriam on the hillside several miles above Addis Ababa. Our friend Hohete Hizkael had arranged for a taxi to collect us that morning at about 1.30 and we drove up the side of the mountain passing many many pilgrims clad in shammas making their own way towards the Church.
As we got there we realised that there were hundreds of people if not thousands of pilgrims who were laying on the ground waiting for the service to begin at 3.00. Hohete led us through the throng until we got to the door of the Church, inside we had to pick our way across bodies of people who lay on the floor and had been there from hours before.
At exactly 3.00 a single solitary small school bed sounded and in unison everyone arose and stood up for the first chants of the service to begin. People may not know this, but a service in the Orthodox Church goes on from 3.00 until 1.00 the following afternoon, for just about TEN hours. Where would THAT happen in the Western Churches?
Later in the morning everyone went outside the Church and stood for two hours while the Patriarch gave a speech. The tabots were there also and at the end they started going around the circumference of the Church seven times.....it was at one point I noticed the batawi Monk standing there on the edge in the midst of the crowd of people....I did not see or know HOW I was going to take his picture because he was mostly blocked from view as I walked around with the priests and deacons.....then at one single point as I got almost up to where he was standing, something truely amazing happened, right on cue, the wall of people blocking him parted like the Red Sea and he was standing there in all his Batawi glory for ONE clear shot of him, that is all I got; but it was enough.
I spent almost two months there and was able to get the pictures which I needed for the second Itation which I knew would not manifest until that was completed.....within a year, and nine years since I had started the second Ites Itation two was born.
In April 1991 the day I recieved finished copies from the printer in Munich I heard on the radio that the Communist Regime of Mengistu Marriam had been toppled. Selah.
Rastafari.'
Mihlawhdh:
'When IHI close my IHIHZHS and ARISE on DUHBHWIZE into my IHIRIHTH IHI FEEEEEEEEEHLH a tension and Zion wire vibes which I cannot really put into words - its like when IHI LOOK upon the Ethiopian Red, Yellow and Green flag, you know THE ONE with the
LION OF JUDAH holding the HOLY STAFF - IHI FEEEEEEEEHLH IT again, visually, as a mystical stirring in my soul feeeeelings which no word can IHItain/CONtain for they are BEYOND words and into the BLISSFILLED STATE of IHI.
IHI dont REALLY need to put them into words; but for the sake of this ITESTERVIEW with IHILAHNHDH VAN REENEN IHI shall try to put some of my feeeeelings into this KEWHSHTCHANHNH:'
Roland;
‘HOW DOES JAH MANIFEST HIMSELF TO YOU?’
Mihlawhdh:
'First IHI wish to give DEEEEP IHIZIHZHS unto IHI FAAHDAH and SAVIOUR HIS IMPERIAL MAJESTY and THANK HIM and JAH SAINTS IHImortal with deep gratitude for BEING HERE within IHI, for opening unto IHI this IHIGICAL wonderfulllll feeling and for bringing me forward out of which I was born into into other IHIYHTHZHS..
IHIYHTHZHS which are as much a part of my life now as that life before was my life then from my birth until IHI embraced the IHIYHTHZHS of RASTAFARI and RASTAFARI embraced IHI.
IHI would like at this point to include a song from Ethiopia by a Sister Aster Awerk singing KABU - I dont know one of the words which she is singing; but IHI know that what IHI FEEL through this song is that MAGICAL reality which inside of me IHIHZZ IHITIHYOPIAAH.
EVERYTHING is subjective and PERSONAL unto each; everything can be debated forever and never arrived at a point of truth if we let that happen.
No man can judge another one except JAH HIMself.
IHI like to KNOW for myself that what IHI have discovered through JAHZHS magnificent VIHSTAHZHS is something more precious than all the tea in China or the Gold of this world; its simply very sacred and true and for me only tears of THANKS can come near the personal JOY which I FEEHLH when IHI TOUCH that vibration, HEAR that vibration or SEE that vibration.
Remember we are told, Let those who have ears HEAR and let those who have IHIHZHS SEE.....
IHI could write reams of words here which may intone some of what this question means to me.......
IHI will write some of those words and leave the rest in my own "suitcase under my bed" because this could be a never ending story which would be endless to IHISCRIBE/describe here.....
Once "before" ALL this IHI lived in another reality.
After all of that IHI now live in an IHItinual stream of IHINIHSS.
JAH shall never forsake his own and not one of his seed shall sit on the sidewalk and beg bread.
Due to some things which IHI have not even touched upon in this IHITESVIEW IHI just MIGHT not have been here to tell this terrible and dreadfull tale in Babylon.
A tale of internicine psychological warfare even from those in my own "fleshy" family who IHI have HAD to seperate myself from for the sake of walking this path with HIM.
IHI gladly do that because we know JAH nuh partial.
It is a tale which "could" have seen me disposessed and thrown to the wolves; living on the streets with NOthing to my name.
It is a tale for the WIZEmind; a tale to LOOK into and sight up what could have been; but by the Grace of JAH has not been.
And for that IHI have to GIVE HIM GREAT IHIZIHZHS and THANKS.
No man can know anothers tribulation and every man think his burden is the heaviest.
But lets cut to the chase.....
Without the Grace of JAH; IHI could never have manifested Itations, THAT is for shure.
Without the Grace of JAH; IHI could never have manifested Itations, THAT is for shure.
Without HIM everything which IHI have today is due to HIM.
He has brought me through ALL OF THIS and IHI must Hail HIM everytime for food, clothes and shelter and for paveing the way.
JAHZHS manifestation to me is so personal that it has been as if MAGIC was part of my KEYS - to open, to sight and see those who TRIED to dig pits for me which instead THEY fell into them.
He has been there to open which no man can shut and to shut that which no man can open.
IHI have been a "witness" to all of this.
None of it is an extrapolation or juss tchat.
It is a walk which IHI walk and a talk which IHI talk, it is coming through very personal experiences and revealtions which have illustrated to ME personally that HE IS HERE.
It is not something which IHI even have to speak about because many themselves have confirmed IT for me.
There have been actual times when I have not known HOW it would work out, yet with JAH IHI was not sinking but standing on firm ground when all around was tumbling down.
It has given me a KNOWLEDGE and strength which cannot be removed, even if the entire Universe were to fall upon the ground; within IHI MAHNH still stand.
So IHI have NO FEAR.
IHI have witnessed when "things" which I did not know HOW they would work out, worked IN and IHI was once again on hallowed ground; miracleously taken care of.......a chant sent out into the ethers and an answer to IHIRAYERS returned.
Even in this interview, something as "small" as the "incident at Entoto Marriam with the Batawi Priest" guided by JAH. Many like that.
How do we translate Heavenly intervention upon this earth - well in concrete terms, personal situations which have been taken care of - how IHI dont know, and neither do IHI question them for IHI am simply thankfull to be aided and abetted by HIM.
Many claim this and that.
They run to Churches on a Sunday and sit for a moment.
Rastafari is a every day every hour, every moment reality called 24/7 LIVITY.
That to me seems more like The Church of the Most High than just any hour on a Sunday.
But everything is subjective and personal and IHI would never point and say anything to anyone who CHOOSES that; perhaps that is what they know and that is enough for them.
IHI Thank HIM every day, all day and LIVE UP.
IHI wish to give HIM everything 24/7/24 because for me that seems RIGHTeous.
IHI would like to seal this with another Ethiopian Music by an artist called Mikiyas - it is nothing to do with understanding what he is saying because IHI dont speak Amharic; for me its more OVERstanding the FEELings and being touched within my heart by the riddimz, his song and how he is singing it with the instruments.
Its also why IHI so LOVE the Drumming and Chanting with the Koborro Drums in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.
Although IHI was born in Jamaica IHI somehow feel very Ethiopian in my soul.
IHIGHZIHYAHBHERE YIHMAHSAGAHNH JAH. SELAH.'
Roland;
'DO YOU HAVE A MESSAGE FOR YOUR READERS?'
Mihlawhdh:
'WAKE UP and LIVE!
The time is later than you think and we are living in very peculiar times.
The musical prophets have come and blown their horns, the seals have been opened and the prophesy is on the way.
The UPRISING of Rastafari and the International Global Experince which manifested with the Arising of Bob Marley and the Wailers, Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailer, Third World, Israel Vibration, Dennis Brown, Steel Pulse, I Jahman Levi, Misty in Roots, Pablo Moses, Augustus Pablo, Aswad, Black Uhuru, Burning Spear, Culture, The Abyssinians, The Gladiators, Sister Judy Mowatt, The I Threes, Norman Grant and the Twinkle Brothers, The Congos, Ras Michael and the Sons of Negus, Black Slate, Jah Shaka, Count Ozzie and the Mystic Revelation of Rastafari, Wailing Souls, Lee Scratch Perry, The Ethiopians, Mighty Diamonds, JAH Youth, Prince Fari, U Roy, Gregory Isaacs, The Ethiopians, Linton Kwezi Johnson, Mutabaruka, Toots and the Maytals and latterly including Morgan Heritage, Ziggy Marley, Luciano, Mad Professor, Sizzla, Capelton; there are COUNTless other Musicians, Artists and DUB Warriors who carried the Universal message and the Ethiopian Red, Yellow and Green ITES of JAH all over this planet speaking about this RASTAFARI Vibration; a consciousness movement to free the people from Babylons Mental Slavery.
They set the Gihddian bringing soul words to the planet to feed hearts and minds and to inspire people to GET UP STAND UP - there are many who have taken the Conquering Lion of Judah´s Red, Gold and Green vibration to heart all across this planet - if you were wise and aware then you are like the seeds which fell on fertile ground and took the message to heart - they inspired MANY of us all across this earth who have been "seeded by that inspiration" in the FOUR CORNERS, North, South, East and West.
Itations was building upon that HEARTical inspiration flashing the colours of the Rainbow Throne of His Imperial Majesty to give the people an IHIsight of the IHIMAGERY and fascination which is RASTAFARI through the pictures and wordical Itations.
The three Itations sought to give a flavour and vibration of all those beautiful colours of Jah creation and the people trodding in this time following on from the musical message of the musicians and reality which is Rastafari.
We all see in these times; years later where even MORE prophesy is bursting out all over the globe - reality getting more and more KRUHSHAHLH everyday.
HAHTHTAH HAHTH, REHDHDAH REHDH, DREAHDHDAH DREAHDH as Sihstah Farikah wrote in her poem FIHYAH BUHNH BABYLON.
We all have been warned and there can be no excuses; apart from each one teach one, each one of us will have to be ready to overcome on that day when the goats shall be seperated from the sheep.
WATCH and IHIRAY and BE PREPARED.
Everything has already been said - the words have been spoken, those who should know will already know how to seperate goats from sheep.
The idea of "my message" is a massive idea in itself which cannot be contained upon paper in words - IHI TRUST that who even came into contact with the three Itation books were sufficently inspired and touched to seek for themselves; to look into themselves and stand to the challenge of time and motion to step away from the plasticity and format of life as it is today to really seek find their own IHIYAH IHIYHTHZHS of LIHBBAHRAIHSHAHNH.
To free themselves from everything which is LIMITED and become UNLIMITED through the LOVE and Inspiration which is Rastafari.
SELAH.
Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts.
The earth is full of his Glory.
Let JAH be PRAISED.
SELAH.'
One Love Roland van Reenen
(Roland is the author of One Love, works as a manager for an organic food (Ital) company, a trainer in natural healing, drummer and writer in the Netherlands)
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