REGGAEVILLE

Interview by: Justine Amadori Ketola

Taj Weekes is a reggae artist raised on the island of St. Lucia in the West Indies. His music seeps with progressive lyrics, those that explore the failings of the system and those that paint pictures of a universal love that promotes compassion. He and his band Adowa are in the process of completing what will be his third album entitled “A Waterlogged Soul Kitchen.”

Weekes founded They Often Cry Outreach (TOCO) in 2008 to help underprivileged, at-risk and orphaned children in the Caribbean through sport, education and wellness programs. The foundation has provided hundreds of soccer balls as well as numerous team uniforms for children in St. Lucia. Now the campaign has added the significant problem of diabetes to its list of concerns. In 2009, the organization provided 2700 diabetes blood test kits to an island that has more diabetes per capita than any place in the Western hemisphere.

Justine Ketola: How did TOCO go from soccer balls to diabetic kits in St. Lucia?

Taj Weekes: It all revolves around health concerns. If you really check it out, if you bring soccer balls to children, you get them moving anyway. Why we are suffering from it [diabetes] is because of diet more than anything else, but it also has to do with a lack of excercise.

Was it something specific that changed in St. Lucia? Are there changes culturally where people were once more active?

What I think has happened in St. Lucia is that it is actually doing the best, or it is one of the islands that has been doing the best in the Caribbean, for the last 25 years. Dollar-wise we haven’t changed. We have just been $2.75 to the U.S. dollar and in that sense we are kind of choking on fortune’s fuel.

People have become more prosperous in their heads than in actuality, so we all drive and we all eat out. Plus, the American culture has been really well exported to the islands, so we have our Kentucky and our McDonald’s and our Chuck E Cheese. So people have been eating more of that kind of food and not moving around as much as they used to. You know when I went to school, I walked home for lunch but now we are packing lunches and bringing fast food to school. So that has affected it in a way.

What type of system do you have in place to work on the ground in St. Lucia?

We have an informal TOCO base in St. Lucia and quite a bit of volunteers who are willing. We brought down the diabetes testers and we gave them out to the Diabectic and Hypertensive Association as well as some hospitals. They were distributed to some of the community centers around the island.

And how is this all funded?

Some of the testers we paid for out of pocket, most of them were donated. We have some doctors in St. Lucia who are on the board of TOCO: Jacqueline Bird, who is the leading pediatrician on the island, and Dr. Stephen King who is a prominent doctor there.

And you have a team working to put together a documentary on this subject?

We put the word out that we were going to take people down for free, give them housing and travel and treat them to the time they were there, in exchange for making the documentary. The St. Lucia Hotel & Tourism Association was very instrumental in the entire project and helped out by providing room and board. We are in the process of editing right now and hopefully it should be out in the next couple of months.

Does the piece have a name yet?

No, we started with the whole diabetes campaign that was called ‘Sneakers Not Wheelchairs’ but as for the actual name for the documentary, we are still figuring that out.

FRANCE VIBRATIONS

All of this ballooned into getting quite a bit of exposure in other parts, including France, where you were featured on Radio France and the program ‘Boulibai Vibrations’ back in September of last year.

They had a woman come and meet me here in New York and a lot came out of it. I ended up reading poetry from my book that is actually featured on the special. I also played some songs on my acoustic guitar for her.

This exposure resulted in some interest from a French record label?

Yes, it is actually coming to fruition now. They are waiting for the new album. They love the past two albums [Deidem and Hope & Doubt] and we are ten songs down on the new album [A Waterlogged Soul Kitchen] now, so it won’t be much longer before it comes out.

POETRY BOOK: BROWN LAWNS

What are the plans for the poetry book?

The poetry book is called ‘Brown Lawns’ and the name came about from a song I had written about the financial crisis. I was reading some place about the houses falling apart and towns dying. I had seen a picture of one of these houses and the lawn was actually brown because there was nobody there to water it. So I called the song ‘Brown Lawns’ and the book ‘Brown Lawns’ too.

Basically it goes, ‘Brown Lawns, boarded up houses and tumble weeds, for sale shingles, lockboxes of padlocked greed, from starter box houses to gated estates, we have all fallen victim to a sub-prime lending rate.’

RECORDING PROCESS

How are these tracks coming together for the new album? Are they being recorded in New York?

We are using the studio we used in New York to record the Diedem album (his last release). We are using Sax and Sound because we love the vibe in that studio.

And why do you love the vibe in that studio?

It makes you feel comfortable as a musician and as a songwriter when you’re in there, no pressure. It’s just the sound of the room… there is something nice, an organic feel about the room. Sometimes you walk into a studio and it is so put together that you know you are going to get that manufactured kind of sound. There is a feeling, a vibe that you get from that studio and it always helps when the engineers are musicians. They can give you an idea or make a difference to what you are doing and they are intersted in the kind of music you are playing. When it is not always about the dollar, when you do something and you don’t have to rush… the kind of studio where we work, the guys are cool. The dollar is not the bottom line but the music is, so it always helps, especially when you are functioning on an independent budget. Its always helpful when you are not rushed and you can actually make the music you want to make.

How do you prepare your musicians and what types of musicians are you using? Are they different from the past?

I like to rehearse before the sessions because then you are not figuring it out in the studio. So we record every rehearsal and we sit as a collective and listen to the tapes. We pick out from the tapes what we think is best for what we are doing. Becase a lot of times you come to the studio and their might be something magical and its always good to capture that.

Basically we are using the same musicians as Deidem, but we plan to have a couple of new people on this project. Everything is already done as far as the solos and everything… most of the solos are from the main band. We are adding some percussion and guitar sounds. I like the collective vibe of bringing all these musicians together. Everybody brings their own little flavor, mix up in the pot and everything turns out nice.

How does this city, New York, and its energy play out in the way that the music is formed?

The collective of different nationalities that you can find here and the ability to bring them in on one project… if I were recording the album in St. Lucia, I would have to fly a man from Trinidad, a man from Jamaica, but in New York, everybody there. So you can get the flavor of a Trinidadian guitar player, bass from a Dominican, the drums from a Jamaican, and everybody comes together with their little flavor. The guy who grew up in Trinidad listened to calypso for the most part. Dominican man will have a little zouk or some kind of kreol music vibe in his thing and the collective vibe works out. That is the beauty of New York. It truly is a melting pot.

HAITI REFELECTIONS

What are your feelings about the disaster in Haiti?

We could say a lot of things but I think at a time like this all we can do is support. My intention is to get down there in the near future with some goods. I am taking down a staff photographer and a documentarian with me so we can capture what it is that we are going there to do. I got invited to go down soon after it happened but from a realistic standpoint, there was nothing that I could have done. What I think is going to be most crucial is after the hype has died down, people have gone home… people will have to go home – the doctors can’t stay there forever – they will have to go home. The humanitarians will have to go home. We will do what we can do to make a couple of children smile and soothe somebody’s pain.

TOCO will be there to help pick up the pieces and given that your non-profit focuses on children’s health, the goods that you might take down there would be to aid children? How can people assist your efforts in Haiti?

People can keep checking www.theyoftencryoutreach.org and they can see what it is that we are doing.

TAJ WEEKES: TOWN CRIER

You are such an introspective person and as an artist amongst many reggae singers that is actually taking action, what motivates you to keep going as a musician? I know you said at one point that you may return to a regular 9-5 in the future. How do you keep going? What makes you stay focused on this mission?

I know people have said this a million times, but I think I am a songwriter 24/7. Even when I think I am going to go back to a 9 to 5 and do something, I find myself writing a song about me going back to a 9-5. The calling is greater than I realize.

In actuality, you are also a record label co-president with Shirley Menard, who also works on your non-profit. How is your busines doing and how do you see yourself in the marketplace at the present time?

I think the reason why we are here is because business hasn’t been terribly bad. It could always be better, because when you function as a record label and as an artist, and as a humanitarian, as an author, as a documentarian, you wear so many hats and there are so many things you have to do… so many things out there. I think for one that is what keeps it interesting.

We would always like things to be a little better but like Joseph Hill says, ‘I sing for my brother, not for the dollar.’  So if I take that perspective, even if business is slow and if I believe enough in what it is that I am doing, then the people willl come… and they have been coming slowly but surely. I almost feel like ‘The Little Engine That Could.’

You are truly a griot in that sense: a troubador, singing these songs of freedom, not to sell some sort of agenda but to teach things to people… things that I don’t think a lot of people have actually ever been taught in song. They may have scratched the surface in progressive radio or read a little bit in Mother Jones or thought about these things by watching Rachel Maddow, but you can give it to people on a higher level, an artistic level that is unique in its reggae form and certainly unique in mainstream pop. It’s Bob Dylan. It’s that time in music when people were taking risks.

I always tell people that I consider myself a town crier because the music that I listened to, including Dylan, was the music that taught me something. I remember hearing apartheid in the ’70’s and not knowing what it was. And then it was Peter Tosh… hearing, “We are going to fight against apartheid.” I have taken on the tradition of oral storytelling through song, so that is what I do.

The funny thing is that I say to people, when I sit down to write a song, I don’t try to write a socially-conscious song… a socially-conscious song comes through me. I think only socially-conscious people can only write socially-conscious songs. You know this is the fruit that you bear ’cause this is the tree that you are.

The word “social” means being involved in society. It doesn’t mean going into this Talibanesque diatribe about ways of life. There are so many choices and ways of life and if you don’t understand that, you are not living in society. What do you say to those in the reggae community from the place that you are sitting?

What I have a problem with and I don’t mean to point fingers at anybody, but I find that the silence is deafening. When something happens that requires the reggae community and nobody shows up… you know, nobody showed up for Katrina in the reggae community. Are we not seeing… have we been blinded by the blinging things? I hope somebody shows up on Haiti.

CHILDREN’S BOOK

Let’s talk about your children’s book. Is it going to be out soon?

The children’s book… it’s almost there. It’s a way of teaching children about what is happening in the world, but in a children’s way. The publication of the book is being worked on now. I am not done with it completely. There are a lot of things that I needed to say, so I am spending time with my little boy just asking him some questions.

BACKSTORY

Your background is very unique in this world of the Diaspora. Can you tell a bit about your Ethiopian heritage?

My great-grandfather is Ethiopian. He was a merchant marine. It’s a story that my father never really talked about until he was dying. He was really looking like a starving Ethiopian and I was telling him this and he was cracking up. My mother is very light skinned… her mother is completely white. I am the last of ten children with six brothers, including myself, and four sisters.

How did you end up coming to New York?

I stopped in Canada along the way. We did music in St. Lucia, my brothers and I. We had a band and we sang in every little stage show. I really got heavily into the music and writing because I had my own radio program when I was thirteen. I would be in the studio and I would be there among all these records. I would go up to the studio even when it wasn’t the day of my program just to pull the lyric sheets out and read them. I played and sang for my school band. When I graduated from high school, I went to Canada to do some more schooling, living in Toronto for five years and then I came across to New York.

CLOTHESLINE PROJECT

We are doing the Clothesline Project in St. Lucia in March, which is International Women’s Month, and this project is about domestic abuse, Caribbean domestic abuse. We try not talking about it and pretending that it doesn’t happen. So we are doing this, for the most part for women who we know are abused, and we are giving them tee-shirts so they can write what form of abuse they are going through… ’cause we live in a closed society and everyone is afraid to say what ails them domestically, so we are trying to get them to say, ‘Well, my man is beating me,’ and then we plan to hang those tee-shirts in a public square.

It is not an original idea. It has been done before. I just picked up on it ’cause I went to play at a college and saw these tee-shirts on the wall and there were things like ‘Love Does Not Hurt’ written on them. I thought I would love to get to have St. Lucian women do this. I came with what I thought was an original idea, but it wasn’t. I was going to call it ‘Dirty Laundry,’ as in ‘airing your dirty laundry.’

It really is the Clothesline project. I thought it best to tap into something that was already happening. We are taking down a couple boxes with us and I am taking down a makeup artist for the women who are abused. We are going to make them up and give them a boost to make them feel good.

UPCOMING APPEARANCES

What are your springtime performance and summer festival plans shaping up to be thus far?

We are doing the Festival International de Louisiane in Lousiana and we are doing the Houston International Reggae Festival. I am planning a trip in April to France… we are working on a promotional tour for about a week there. I will bring my acoustic guitar and play some music.