INTERVIEW : PABLO MOSES
Interview by : Sébastien Jobart
Pictures by : Benoit Collin
on Monday, February 18th 2008 - 10 337 views
When Pablo Moses recorded his first track, I Man a grashopper, at the Black Ark, Lee Scratch Perry was only the engineer: the producer was Mickey Chung. This masterly track is the starting point of a triptych of albums ("Revolutionary Dream", "A Song", and "Pave the Way") made by the duo Geoffrey Chung / Pablo Moses.
Like a novel in 10 volumes, Pablo Moses went on to record five more albums, borrowing from poetry and weaving in historical and political references. A committed (revolutionary, he specifies) message, interrupted after "The Mission" in 1995, when Musidisc first left him hanging before shutting the door in his face. Since then, Pablo Moses has recorded enough to fill a new album which should come out, he tells us, later this year.
Reggaefrance / You found yourself at the Black Ark to record for the first time as a solo artist, but you had already formed several bands when you were young…
Pablo Moses / Yes, lots of bands. At school, there was this band that I had put together. I formed others. But I always wanted to pursue an original career, with my own compositions, whereas the other members of the band wanted to record covers. So we split up, and I became a ''lonely singer''. That's what I sing in Lonely singer. Not everyone wanted to follow me and do only original songs.
How did the Geoffrey Chung / Clive Hunt / Pablo Moses team on ''Revolutionary Dream'' come together?
I met Clive Hunt through Geoffrey and Mickey Chung. I met Mickey Chung and Charlie Chung, who was the only real Rasta in the family, and they introduced me to Geoffrey Chung. I was always around, and Geoffrey Chung, Clive Hunt, Robbie Lynn, Wire Lindo, they used to get together at Geoffrey Chung's place to listen to the new releases coming from the United States. We all sat there listening, and I learned. After we recorded I Man A Grass Hopper, we did We Should Be in Angola. Robbie Lynn was on piano, and Tyrone Downie was on organ. Geoffrey Chung wasn't with us at that point. So the company, Sound Tracs, decided to let Clive Hunt be the executive producer. *this track.
Your lyrics feel influenced by African-American intellectuals.
I read a lot of books. First I started by reading novels. And then, when my ''black consciousness'' developed, I turned to non-fiction. I got interested in a book by Kwame Nkrumah, ''The Dark days of Ghana'', books about Kenjatta, Steve Biko, about the American leaders. At the time, there was Malcom X, but it was mainly Martin Luther King and Marcus Garvey. Those readings mattered, just like rhythm & blues. The Drifters, Otis Redding, Nat King Cole, Fats Domino…
We Should Be in Angola was inspired in me at the time of the war in Angola. At the same moment, brothers in Jamaica were robbing the rich to fight against their own poor brothers. I took a sheet of paper and wrote the lyrics. The song said: ''if you want to fight for a cause, you should fight against oppressors, not against your own''. It was also around that time that I recorded Give I Fe I Name. When I started reading, I learned that the name we bore was a colonial name. It was no longer an African name: Henry, Morisson, are not African names! Few Black people knew that their name came from English slave owners. Many of my songs are influenced by those Black power struggles that took place in the 60s and 70s.
There is also a lot of poetry in your lyrics.
I like to write in a poetic turn of phrase. Not just writing rhymes: writing rhymes with meaning. Yet I never liked poetry when I was at school: let's be honest, all you do in middle school and high school is read boring English poetry. But I read everything I could get my hands on. And the more I read (novels, daily papers, magazines, comics), the more I developed my cultural awareness.
All of this is explicit on Revolutionnary Dream.
Most of the lyrics are inspired by a vision I had about everything that was happening in Africa: in the Congo, in Ghana, in Kenya with the Mau Mau warriors... They too had dreadlocks, they were a revolutionary force. Many people might say that you are killing your own brother in the battle. But you too may have to die, if you are an obstacle to the revolution, because you are a traitor. At the end of slavery, after the Civil War in the United States, many Black people who had slaves did not want to free them. Some Black people were so indoctrinated by the Church that they did not know themselves. For me they are traitors. If you cling to colonial culture, then you are a traitor.
If you are lucky enough to be getting or to have had an education, then you should use that knowledge to open other doors, which will give you a true education. When you go to university, you develop in a certain way: the way they have decided. You will sit exams, but that doesn't mean your horizon has opened up. You have to use that academic knowledge to open other doors, to read other books. That is what will give you an education. This song is very significant for me.
After the album ''Revolutionary Dream'', there is ''A Song''.
After finishing recording ''Revolutionnary Dream'' I went to the Jamaican School of Music. I wanted to acquire more of the fundamentals. What interested me most was meeting people with diverse experiences. You have a jazz department, a rock department… I learned all these musics, I integrated them to create a certain type of reggae fusion. It was in that context that ''A Song'' came out; it was the discovery of a new facet of Pablo Moses in the sense that many people might have thought that ''Revolutionary Dream'' was the work of an aggressor. But no, even if I am a revolutionary, my revolution is verbal, not physical.
I tried to build my albums like a global statement, developing from album to album: a revolutionary comes with his dream (''Revolutionnary Dream''), materialised by all his songs. These songs serve to pave the way (''Pave the way''), so as to move towards the future (''In The Future''). A future with plenty of tension (''Tension''). Because I think the future will be terrible, and that's what I sing about on this album. Many people thought I was too excessive, too extreme, but I'm right. The situation may not be that terrible here, in France, but it is in Africa, in the Middle East, in Jamaica… And to eradicate this tension, we must learn to live to love (''Live to Love''). We must refuse the path that TV programmes show us, what the BBC or CNN want us to believe.
You wrote several songs about repatriation.
For Rastas, repatriation is not only something physical. It's something cultural. You must first repatriate your mind and your heart. To know where you come from is to know where you are, and it's the only way to know where you are heading. If you don't know where you come from, you are nothing, like a stateless person on the whole planet. And that's what they did to many of my brothers and sisters. Not only Africans, but also Native Americans, the Indians of South America…
In France, young Algerians were taught the history of Vercingetorix…
Some of the things happening right now, like the war in Iraq, are happening because of things that some people did in the past with the Europeans and against Africa. Because some took part in the slave trade. White slaves were exchanged for Black ones: they took women to Africa, and brought men back. They mixed, divided the tribes. And today we see the tensions that result from it.
In southern and western Africa, we know that villages lived as communities, sharing the land, the resources… People look out for one another. Same in Jamaica. I grew up with my uncle and the whole community. If the harvest had to be brought in, everyone went. If something happened to someone, people chipped in to help them. Like a family. But the influence of Europe arrived even there and taught people to be more selfish. When they arrived in sub-Saharan Africa or even in the Caribbean, and people offered them gifts and took them in their arms, they couldn't believe it. These people were too kind to them, which is why they robbed them.
Today in Jamaica, because of the influence of the USA and Western companies with their televisions, a brother can kill you for money, for cocaine… Did you know that the Indians of South America used cocaine as a medicine, without processing it? It was natural. When the white men discovered this plant, they saw a way to make money and brought it back to Europe and the United States.
Unfortunately, cocaine keeps a lot of people alive.
But what do you do with corrupt money? It will only bring even more corruption. That money pushes young people towards laziness. Cocaine money makes my sisters look like prostitutes, because of their clothes. Cocaine money, which flowed freely in the 80s, destroyed a lot of roots music. It paved the way for dancehall. Cocaine is fast money: you'll live fast, and you'll die fast.
How do you see the young roots generation in Jamaica?
There are some good roots artists like Tarrus Riley, I like him. There are a few Sizzlas who aren't bad. Luciano too… but he's too ''nice''. As a rastaman you have to be more aggressive. A Rasta is a revolutionary force. A Rasta is supposed to speak for those who suffer. Asking the Almighty to give him strength, fine, that's nice. But where is everything else? The system adores you when you forget those other things. I don't want the system to love me. If I'm a Rasta, I want the people to love me, not the system.
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