DI BLOG

You know dah bredda yah. The man your mother warned you about. The man who will shoot up the dance on Saturday night and pay the school fees for three children on Monday morning. The man who makes your community dangerous AND keeps it safe.

The question this series seeks to explore (and maybe to answer) is, "Why does Jamaica keep doing this?" My theory is that it isn't luck and it isn't talent. It is a reflex. Something we are trained into, generation after generation, by circumstances so specific to this island that almost nowhere else on earth developed it in quite the same way. I call it the go-round gene. And before you get all excited over the use of the word gene, let me stop and qualify what I mean.

Patwa [Patois] isn't just something you speak. It is something you perform. That may be the single biggest difference between Jamaican Patwa and most other languages. Most standard languages are designed to survive on a page. Patwa comes fully alive in the space between two people.

Small on the Map. Massive in the Mind: Celebrating Jamaican Culture Through Fashion I’ve been to places where Jamaica barely even shows up on the atlas. Just a little speck, off to the side, fighting for space with the scale bar. When you’re in parts of Asia, and you look at a world map, we literally “drop off” the map. And yet, just a mention of Jamaica makes people’s eyes light up! They know our music. Our athletes. Our language. Our food. They know we are small. But they a