Page 96 - Reggae Festival Guide Magazine 2019

surrealistic montage of Marlon James’ A Brief

History of Seven Killings. In this engaging work,
Marcia Douglas incorporates the jump-cuts of

contemporary film, the subjective perspective

that glues memory to emotion and the musical
flow we’ve come to expect from works rooted

in Jamaican culture and the African diaspora.

There is truth contained in fiction, even when

driven by what Ms. Douglas’ heroine Leenah
would call “she-magination.” Jamaican music

calls it “version.”

Not novelistic in the sense of the works of

Charles Dickens or Emily Bronte, this novel is
episodic in the tradition of Claude McKay’s

Banjo or Jean Toomer’s Cane, though it jumps

through time in the manner of Kurt Vonnegut’s
Slaughterhouse-Five. Like the magical realism

of much great Latin American fiction, it is

softly psychedelic and mytho-poetically

structured, evoking impressions as it leaps
from character to character, scene to scene,

slowly drawing together loose threads as it

rolls across space and time in the manner –
and yet, not – of Laurence Sterne’s The Life

and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

or James Joyce’s Ulysses.

The novel involves a journey and a quest that
intermingles fictional characters with real-

life personae, including Bob Marley, Marcus

Garvey and Haile Selassie, in a way that might
make some uncomfortable and put others at

ease. The dream-like quality of much of the

writing is balanced by a gritty grasp of reality
that manifests the qualities that attract us to

the natural mystic of reggae.

Chuck Foster hosts Reggae Central on KPFK in L.A.

and is the author of Roots Rock Reggae: An Oral
History of Reggae Music From Ska To Dancehall

(Billboard Books, 1999) and The Small Axe Guide

To Rocksteady (Small Axe, 2009 revised 2016).
Contact him at cfoster907@yahoo.com.

96 Reggae Festival guide 2019