Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
There is a very strong socialist movement in Jamaica. I was in Jamaica years ago. All the talk, all day they talk politics. The literacy rate is very low. Everyone is so interested in politics, more than those who can read in the United States.
I wouldn't have become an engineer, I wouldn't have done what I did, had a hand not been held out to me. I have to remember who helped me when I needed help. The people of Jamaica helped me. I can't forget that. I would be ungrateful if I forgot.
I think that anybody, once we leave Jamaica, automatically, any citizen becomes an ambassador for the flag, for Jamiaca. It's a country that's so rich in culture. We even have a bobsled team, and we ain't even got snow. We do everything in extreme.
Technology has changed things, same as everywhere. But the economy has changed drastically. When Jamaica first won independence, our dollar was stronger than the U.S. dollar. Now ours is about 90 to one. That's had a big impact on crime and poverty.
I wouldn't be where I am, if not for Jamaica. My formative years were here. I wouldn't have the confidence that I have if I wasn't born here, because growing up here I knew I could become anybody I wanted to become. There was no ceiling on top of me.
Dancehall has always had a homophobic problem, but you go to dance parties in Jamaica, and some of the biggest dancers are kinda gay, just not outspoken about it. Dancehall was the first kind of music I was DJing, and it was always more about the rhythm.
They basically said that if I didn't show up for school they'd mark me present, they wouldn't send the truant officer after me. At 16 I enrolled in something called continuing education. Once a month I'd go out to Jamaica, but I didn't take it seriously.
Why couldn't there be even a western slasher, or why couldn't there be a serial killer in a kind of pirate buccaneer Caribbean, just someone that's just doing terrible, terrible things in the ports, the sexy ports of Jamaica during the Pirate Renaissance.
Jamaica is one of the most musically influential nations in the world. Throughout the entire globe, there are pockets that are constantly in touch with what goes on in the dancehall community, from Germany to Japan, to different parts of Africa like Ghana.
Although my family is originally from Jamaica, I grew up in a diverse community in south London. As my parents were immigrants they made every effort to integrate and we used to go to a wonderful church where we befriended families from all over the world.
'The Daily Mail' interviewed my friends in Jamaica to find out if I was ever the victim of a vicious homophobic attack because, to them, I'm a gay refugee. But nothing like that happened. So, no surprise, that story didn't appear. I'm really pretty boring.
Even in Jamaica, your own country, coming into youth cricket you need to be from an upscale high school or have a light skin. As you get older you get used to the culture. My club, Lucas Cricket Club, was the only one to accept black people back in the day.
A family holiday to Jamaica in 2004 - my uncle was getting married out there, and it was the first holiday I'd had in Jamaica, which is where my father is from. My friends and I stayed in a really plush hotel, The Ritz-Carlton, so we had a great experience.
My dad came from Trinidad to Jamaica when he was 19. He had to go to Jamaica to join the British regiment, where it was based. After Sandhurst, he returned to the Caribbean as a junior lieutenant, based in Jamaica. He met my mum and became a Jamaican citizen.
I grew up in South Jamaica, Queens, in New York. My parents were very religious churchgoing people. They were very strict. I was never really allowed to indulge in anything vain. Modesty always. I have three brothers and two sisters, so everything was on a budget.
Getting to do what I think was my fifth BBC drama with Nikki Amuka-Bird - we've done 'Shoot The Messenger,' 'Five Days,' 'The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency,' 'Born Equal' and now 'Small Island' - was another highlight for me. And filming in Jamaica was great, too.
'Bloodlight and Bami' is all verite. The director Sophie Fiennes began filming Ms. Jones in the mid-2000s and simply observes her on stage and off. She follows her home to Jamaica, where the diva mellows, almost unconsciously, into a daughter, sister, and parishioner.
As a little girl growing up in Southside Jamaica Queens, if anyone would've told me I'd have my own perfume one day, and be able to inspire young black girls everywhere, to go into Macy's or Nordstrom's and see their face staring back at them - I wouldn't believe them.
For a family to have five kids and to have emigrated from the West Indies, my father from Jamaica and my mother from Montserrat - it's not easy to provide for five kids let alone put three kids in AAA hockey, one being a goalie, and put two daughters through university.
The very best place to be in all the world is St. Mary's parish, Jamaica. And the best spot in St. Mary's is Port Maria, though all of St. Mary's is fine. Old Maker put himself to a lot of trouble to make that part of the island of Jamaica, for everything there is perfect.
I came here from Jamaica as a kid and didn't go to school, really, never had a great education. I was a little bit bad on the street, running around, doing this, doing that, and always getting into trouble. I was completely written off, so boxing has definitely saved my life.
In Jamaica, them always have throwback riddims, recycled old beats, and the hardcore reggae scene is always present. You have faster stuff like the more commercialized stuff, but you always have that segment of music that is always from the core, from the original root of it.
I want to deal with somebody who comes from another country to the United States and has a family that comes. I don't care if it's a black family from Jamaica or a Hispanic family from Mexico. These issues need to be dealt with, but they need to be dealt with in the entertaining way.
The best herb I smoke in Jamaica and Africa. African - Rasclot! Them people cure it in a banana. In a banana skin. A green banana. They wrap it up in a banana so when you get it, it compressed and, I'll tell you, it great! Blood clot! In Nigeria and Ghana, love that herb! Good herb, mon.
Life and Jah are one in the same. Jah is the gift of existence. I am in some way eternal, I will never be duplicated. The singularity of every man and woman is Jah's gift. What we struggle to make of it is our sole gift to Jah. The process of what that struggle becomes, in time, the Truth.
Even with my family, I feel sort of 'other.' I'm the only one of my siblings who wasn't born in Jamaica. For a long time, I didn't feel very connected to Jamaican culture, but because I was raised so heavily with that cultural influence, I realized that my inner monologue is a Jamaican woman.
Bob Marley performed the 'One Love Peace' concert in Jamaica with the two different warring political sides. There's always been that in black music and culture in general. It's no surprise because black music is such a reflection of what's going on in black life. It's not unusual for hip-hop.
In England, rain was thin and cold, and made you hunch up inside your coat, walking home from the bus stop. In Jamaica, it was wide and thick and invited you to step into it, and see how wet you could get, and be thrilled that it was warmer than the sea and warmer than your skin; it was abandon.
We don't have all this gay-bashing crime. You don't see that. It's not there. That is not really happening in Jamaica. But because a few artists basically sing it and put records out and the media runs with it, then the stigma becomes big, and now we're trapped with that whole thing. It's really sad.
I believe that many lives around us now can reflect this strange pattern of migration and movement. The question is: are we aware of it, and do we embrace it as a kind of birthright? I do. And yet, I feel deeply connected to at least two homespaces - Jamaica and Ghana, and more recently, South Carolina.
I was born in Jamaica but was educated by, and now serve, prestigious First World institutions, so I believe that I have a unique, dual perspective. To sidestep any biases I might have, I use the objective lens of the stock market to discover which policies actually delivered prosperity to emerging markets.
One of the things we're trying to do more of is not just take money from corporate partnerships, but get more involved in the business side for when I retire. So Puma are going to make me an ambassador for life. I have a clothing line coming out. I am investing a lot in housing in Jamaica, buildings for rent.
I go back five generations in Jamaica. My dad grew up in Port Royal, and my mom grew up in Kingston. My family is from the country like West Moreland and also in Manchester. I've been there countless times. As far as cuisine, there's not really much that comes out of Jamaica that's on a plate that I don't like.
My biggest false steps have actually been when I tried to do very different projects. I found I was getting people saying, 'Why does Whit Stillman think he can do a film about blacks in early '60s Jamaica? Or the Chinese and the cultural revolution?' Those were the two biggest failures I had getting off the ground.
I grew up in uptown Jamaica; I went to a rich school. I was raised by my mother and my stepfather; they made sure education came before anything. I had a good childhood, grew up spending time with my bigger brothers and sisters. My people are good people. I was exposed to a lot of different kinds of people and culture.
I was fascinated by the word 'Rudy,' which is connected to the Jamaican term 'rude boy,' which migrated from Jamaica to London. I was also fascinated by that name, because it exists in Persian culture and Iranian culture. There is actually a place called Rudy in Iran, and there's Iranians that I know with the name Rudy.
I started DJing soundclashes. I used to go to Jamaica a lot. I was like a hip-hop sound boy, where I took the dancehall culture and mixed it up with the hip-hop as well. I kept going, going, and I got real hot in the streets of Miami - you know, doing pirate radio - then ended up doing 99 Jamz, the big station out there.
The great gift of 'Incarceration Nations' is that, by introducing a wide range of approaches to crime, punishment, and questions of justice in diverse countries - Rwanda, South Africa, Brazil, Jamaica, Uganda, Singapore, Australia and Norway - it forces us to face the reality that American-style punishment has been chosen.
So I've got mates I've known since I was five years old. Their children know my children. There's something really lovely about it. When you're an immigrant - my parents were immigrants, their brothers and sisters lived all over the world, Florida, Jamaica, some in Europe - it's a grounding thing. That community is critical.
The whole world is set up so that for places like Switzerland to exist, that are crime-free and with the best care for everybody, you have to have places like Sudan, or Jamaica. But really, there's enough to share, when you check it. It's not that complicated, really. It's probably less thinking and more feeling that's required.
So in Jamaica it is the aim of everybody to talk English, act English and look English. And that last specification is where the greatest difficulties arise. It is not so difficult to put a coat of European culture over African culture, but it is next to impossible to lay a European face over an African face in the same generation.
Stuart Hall was an utterly unique figure. Although he arrived at the age of 19 from Jamaica and spent the rest of his life here, he never felt at home in Britain. This juxtaposition was a crucial source of his strength and originality. Because of his colour and origin, he saw the country differently - not as a native, but as an outsider.
I'm the blackest member of my family. You know, these mixed families produce children of all colors, and in Jamaica, the question of exactly what shade you were, in colonial Jamaica, that was the most important question. Because you could read off class and education and status from that. I was aware and conscious of that from the very beginning.
They used to call me Firefly when I was a little girl, and I always tried to figure out why I was being called a firefly. I was really black, black, black from the sun. After being in Jamaica for 13 years, my eyes were really beady and white, and my skin was really black. I must have really looked like a fly. My eyes looked like lights, like stars.
....the popular music of Jamaica, the music of the people, is an essentially experiential music, not merely in the sense that the people experience the music, but also in the sense that the music is true to the historical experience, that the music reflects the historical experience. It is the spiritual expression of the historical experience of the Afro-Jamaican.
I went back to Jamaica after living in New York and started to work on experimental stuff and basically I grew as a filmmaker. I went to film school; I was a PA on a lot of projects and I worked so hard, you know, you're young and I learned from different mentors. And luck put me in the position to work with amazing people. One of my mentors by the name of Little X, who took me under his wing after I came out of film school and moved to New York. I worked in videos for Jay-Z, Pharrell to Busta Rhymes and Wyclef. I quickly realized how much I wanted to make films instead of music videos.