Patrina Pink, Gleaner Writer

Witty and remarkably clever could easily escape one’s lips when asked to offer up a short description of Stefan ‘Eva Hype’ Bowes. That is, however, the closest thing to ‘short’ the 6”1 upper sixth-form student will come.

The lanky Wolmerian has his sights on destroying the bar in mainstream dancehall. His catchy tunes have been touted for their ability to connect with the vibes agenda of young dancehall and R&B fans.

Seventeen years old, Eva Hype sees music as a way to channel the emotional energies that come with being an adolescent and has found the right formula with a crisp sound and cultured agenda.

His first video, Lovers Go, also features a fellow school boy deejay, D’yani. It is produced by 2fresh records and is a star track on his newly released mix tape, ‘Music and Her’. In Lovers Go, Eva Hype goes in pursuit of an attractive young female. For the talented young musician, it is a boy-meets-girl tale with a hype twist.

Expression

Instead of just dropping mediocre lines to woo the young woman, he goes for the cranium; “Every time I see you it’s like my fantasies become tangible. Let me take you to where lovers go,it’s more than a physical place, more like a metaphysical connection.”

The young lady’s once-staunch defences are significantly altered after Eva Hype is given room for expression. If this is a sign of things to come, the young Wolmerian will think light of shaking down the burglar bars of the industry’s gatekeepers.

Eva Hype’s optimism is no surprise to those who know him. The young man’s favourite pastime is conversation and this is reflected in a well-articulated vision for the future. His confidence is almost oozing as he declares in his track Overlooked that he wants to take over dancehall by age 20.

Hype believes the big ‘buss’ is at his feet and is honing his deejaying and songwriting skills until that time. He is also taking lessons from various musical giants who act as mentors, whether they know it or not. Musical advisers include younger acts such as Mavado and Drake as well as legends, such as Beres Hammond and gospel sensation Fred Hammond.

Hammond’s music has special significance since Eva Hype lives in a traditional Christian home.

This Christian upbringing has impacted the songwriting choices for the up-and-coming musician.

“It’s very obvious that music is power and I think my music should be positive while still enjoyable,” he said.

Despite a commitment to stay positive Eva Hype is not eager to judge and cast aspersions on those who choose to take another route.

With an uncommon maturity, he scoffed at what he claimed was a pretentious attempt to apply class politics to music.

“The argument about what should be the role of music is dated to me. It’s a conversation that has always had a trace of elitism.”

Eva Hype believes Jamaican music, with its deep dependency on the darker side of life, simply exposes how artistes and others are socialised.

“Who are ‘they’ to decide what a person should like or enjoy? People like that kind of music because they relate to it and sometimes the intensity and the graphic nature of it is a reality to them.”

Eva Hype doesn’t want to add to the chorus of dancehall bashers, but instead believes in transformation through producing more radio- and child-friendly music.

“My view is music is an art and I’m creating. I don’t see the need to do that (sing lewd lyrics). I should be able a take you to a place through the arts.”

He sees music as a space that thrives on unbridled expression. For Eva Hype, music is the art form with the most potential for creating impact.

“Your lyrics are like colours and your beat is your canvas. You have an opportunity to create a picture, but you can go beyond inspiring and be fun youthful and hype.”

Today marks my second day without facebook. I had to quit/deactivate because to be frank, it was fucking up my life. Have you ever watched a movie about crack heads or a documentary on addictions? Well i’m the pale  girl with the messy hair and arms scarred by needle marks.I’m crunched up in the corner and a fat black man in a white uniform is trying to feed me a tray of skittle like meds.

I am a recovering facebook addict and there are times when i’m at my computer and am so tempted to sign in that it hurts, a terrible pang in the pit of my stomach and a boulder on my shoulder (yay that rhymes). My friends(yea the real ones) said i didn’t have time for them.I pretended like i was always stuck on work…like i didn’t go to work just to be on facebook in peace. I wasn’t even paying any attention to the sexy sexy boy, patrina, stupid patrina all because of facebook.

 I was on facebook stalking/fassing/idling/MISSING OPPORTUNITIES/ignoring the sun ‘what the hell was i thinking?’.

 Re:Stalking ex’s on fb

It’s was only then when i read your wallposts that it became clear how you love recognition, being the topic on everyone’s tongue, looking like a hero.

Re:fassing

Yep every rhatid post someone made i had to comment on. I was once told that i could be the editor of facebook because i read everyone’s poetry, comment on every over-photoshopped pic and lie and tell everyone that their newborn is cute. …Your baby looks like a mongrel!!!!!(lol jk)

Re:missing opportunities

     Yes facebook has denied me many including radio interviews and job opportunities. This  post is too heartbreaking to even…

Re:ignoring the sun

   Someone asked me how i look so brown the other day….its not cakesoap…it’s facesoap :-(

The Catharsis

I have severred what’s left of the past and facebook is simply helping to make it official. Anyways…two days clean no more needles…getting some real work done.

-p

Liguanea Club celebrates 100 years

Published: Monday | November 29, 2010 0 Comments and 0 Reactions

Patrina Pink, Gleaner Writer

FOR THE greater part of the mid-20th century, the Liguanea Club was the dominant organisation in the New Kingston area. The club owned more than 100 acres of land which stretched from Trafalgar Road to Dominica Drive. Much of the history of St Andrew is inextricably linked to that of the 100-year-old club. “We were here back in the day when people used to say they were going to country when they visited New Kingston,” Horace Abrahams, club vice-president, noted with pride. Established on November 22, 1910, on what used to be a local hotel, the club offered up premium sporting services, rooms and relaxation to members of Kingston’s elite business and social scene. Currently, it boasts 38 guest rooms, eight tennis courts, meeting rooms, bars and other facilities. The club has also hosted most of the international squash tournaments that have been held on the island in recent years. Its executive is quick to dismiss the view that their organisation, which is a private-members club, only caters to the elite. “We have a tennis programme and kids come from all walks of life to play. It definitely isn’t just for those from the upper echelons,” said Abrahams. The Liguanea Club hosted a brunch recently and received dozens of girls from the St Andrew Parish Church Girls’ Home, after a special service at the church’s Half-Way Tree building. The service marked its 100th anniversary and Club President Desmond Hayle, who is also an architect, pledged its support for the refurbishing of the girls’ home. Owning just a little over 16.5 acres of land, the club has come a long way since the days of virtually owning all of New Kingston. It has leased land to the state-owned Urban Development Company (UDC). Hayle says that the UDC in turn rents to businesses like the popular children’s gaming centre, Putt and Play, and the LIME Golf Academy. This, Hayle said, has contributed to diversifying the New Kingston landscape, a challenge which proved particularly difficult during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Emancipation Park “We gifted the land that is now the grounds of Emancipation Park to the Government for green space, not business enterprises,” said Abrahams. The ground which hosts Emancipation Park was club property as late as 1970. However, in later years, plans were afoot to use the land to build office buildings. These plans were later scrapped, but not before the club and other members of the society challenged the Government. The Liguanea Club’s executive is insistent that the organisation will continue to contribute to national development. With roughly 900 members, Hayle said the club places the development of sporting and relaxation in Jamaica very high on its agenda.

Patrina Pink, Gleaner Writer

Mystic Revelation of Rastafari beat goat-skin drums. With bloodshot eyes, Amina Blackwood Meeks poured libations of white rum for the ancestors, including Count Ossie. Folk dancing came alive with lightning-quick feet.

“Barry dead an’ gone,” the gathering sang, “but him lef’ a house fi di whole a we.”

Saturday night’s wake for thelate Barry Chevannes, university professor and social activist, epitomised much of what the soft-toned but firm academic stood for. Mere months before, Chevannes had helped to organise the wake of cultural icon, Rex Nettleford.

Chevannes’ own celebration, which was done the traditional Jamaican way, was just as friends said ‘Barry’ would have wanted it: revival churches from St Thomas and August Town, goat-head soup, and plenty of white rum.

The Learning to be a Man and a Rastafari: Roots and Ideology author’s wake was planned by the Institute of Jamaica (IOJ), an organisation he headed for 13 years. During that tenure, Chevannes has been praised for his contribution to the popularisation of the institute.

“He was integral to bringing the Musgrave Awards to the people, he held parts of the award on East Street, opened up the institute to the community,” remarked Bernard Jankee, director of the African Caribbean Institute of Jamaica, an organ of the IOJ.

“He told Jamaicans that the institute was a place for them.”

Inspiring his peers

Long-time friend Lambert Brown, with whom Chevannes spent many years as a member of the Workers’ Party of Jamaica (WPJ), lavished in memories of the late professor.

Brown said the bond the two shared went beyond the WPJ, which they both quit over differences with its president in 1988.

“He was the MC at my wedding. We travelled from Jamaica to the Soviet Union together. I can never forget him.”

Anthony Perry, president of the West Indies Group of Teachers, reflected on Chevannes’ role in inspiring his peers.

“He was really important in getting us to participate in projects in the Craig Town area. I helped out with English classes for some of the young men we thought were struggling … . If it wasn’t for Barry, the project probably wouldn’t have gotten off. He was really passionate about transforming lives.”

Chevannes’ funeral will take place at the University Chapel in Mona today at 10 a.m. He lost a battle with pancreatitis on November 5. He was 70.

patrina.pink@gleanerjm.com

Jamaica Lacks Breast-Cancer Screening Policy’      Published: Monday | October 25, 2010

Patrina Pink, Gleaner Writer

THE ABSENCE of a national policy on breast-cancer screening is hampering the island’s fight against the disease, say officials at the Jamaica Cancer Society (JCS).

Speaking at a symposium at the Mona Visitors’ Lodge yesterday, Carol Blair, administrative director at the JCS, said although her organisation had recorded increasing numbers of women being screened for the disease, the drafting of an official, cohesive policy on breastcancer screening would be a game changer.

The Cancer Society facilitated 8,000 screenings in 2009, a 33.3 per cent improvement on the 6,000 who underwent testing in 2008.

Dr Deria Cornwall, president of the Jamaica Association of Radiologists, said nations like the United Kingdom have had an official policy as the fulcrum of its programmes for years, and argued that the war against breast cancer in Jamaica was compromised because women have not been engaged on a national level.

“We need a national breast-cancer screening service that invites women, when they reach a certain age, to come in and be screened,” Cornwall said.

“In the UK, when women are born, they enter a national system, they are sensitised from an early age.”

She also criticised the one-size-fits-all model suggested by a report from the United States Preventive Services Task Force, a group that focuses on mitigating diseases.

The task force’s report has recommended that breast-cancer testing start at 50 years old, but Cornwall said Jamaican women, who are mainly of African descent, are more susceptible to earlier cases of breast cancer.

Said she: “Black women, due to genetic and other unknown factors, are more likely to develop breast cancer at an earlier age, as well as to get a triple negative cancer.”

Triple negative cancer case is a particularly highly developed cancer stage which often leads to death.

The island’s earliest report of breast cancer is 18 years old. There have also been reports of women as young as 23 developing the disease.

“So many of the reasons black women develop breast cancer early is unknown, which is why we need to promote early screening and this needs to be facilitated through a programme not only for Jamaica, but for the rest of the Caribbean,” she said.

The JCS has been operating primarily on the kindness of corporate Jamaica, membership fees, volunteers and other private sponsors.

According to Blair, the Cancer Society’s mobile screening programme is being threatened by a dwindling funding pool.

“We want to go on the road and take the screening to women in the rural communities but we are not able to help enough women due to resource limitations,” said Blair.

patrina.pink@gleanerjm.com

I CAN recall being in a class and forced to listen to one of my classmates, as enlightened as she thought she was, complain about not being able to enjoy the comforts of a restaurant because of ‘sweepstakes boys’. She felt that the restaurant should only be enjoyed by persons of a certain social status and not for the ‘loud and scabby’ bunch of youth that were now frequenting the place.What I found particularly interesting about her comments was not that she was outraged at the means by which these young men and women were acquiring wealth(often through complex conman-ship and bank fraud), but that she was more disgusted at the fact that they were acquiring wealth in the first place. It seems she found the issue of the immoral nature of the thievery inferior to the injustice of having to dine with people from a different class,particularly with a lower class value system.For her, this was the true crime, it was a crime of class.

For her and others of her background, these fast rising ghetto stars are nothing more than the noveau riche, the new money, classless blingers, ghetto rats parading like they are ‘somebody’ while simultaneously exhibiting that same ‘ole nagerism’. Now, one would assume that when one entered The University of the West Indies,Mona one would try to leave behind the prejudicial past and try to embrace the melting pot that is, or ought to be University life. Instead, the campus has not been able to diffuse the thick putrid smell of ignorance and bigotry that characterizes so much of Jamaica and other caribbean nations.

UWI JUST A REFLECTION OF JAMAICA

‘Persona non grata’ at the UWI and former Lecturer and broadcaster, Dr. Kingsley ‘Ragashanti’ Stewart has labelled the University of the West Indies an ethnocentric institution built on upper middle class values centred on exclusion. Dr. Stewart or ‘Raga’ as he is fondly called by his fans, has proclaimed himself the champion of inner-city values and culture and a much needed alternative to the out of touch ‘Uncle Toms’ who have risen from the ashes of poverty and now hold elite positions within the institution.

Raga says that UWI is classist, but is it really? In ‘Cognitive and Behavioral Distancing the Poor’, Lott describes classism as a type of discrimination, much like sexism or racism. “In the case of classism, people occupying lower social class levels are treated in ways that exclude, devalue, discount, and separate them,” he writes.

Do the torch bearers of knowledge at our beloved University only succeed in excluding,discounting,devaluing and separating students? Or are dancehall courses with trips to ‘Passa Passa’ and Palais Royale as well as the encouraging of dancehall defenders like Dr.Donna Hope Marquis, enough to say that UWI is helping to create a shared value system reflective of the entire society?

Raga may be privy to more contact with the University’s administration than I may have, but I think that in order for the UWI to be considered truly classist, it would have to have established classist policies or programmes that openly discriminate against students and staff based on their domiciles or finances.

Interestingly, through the UWI Township Project, and its relationship to August town and various other communities,the UWI has, from one policy standpoint, exhibited steps towards integration. I believe that Raga’s rift confuses the discourse on UWI’s ‘classism’ because his objectivity has been compromised due to personal grudges.Stewart has made no bones about his desire to rant at will on radio, something policy makers at this University have been very clearly against. I for one think that vulgarity is not synonymous with any one class and some of the most obnoxious people I know are from uptown origins.For proof of this take an afternoon stroll past the gazebos at the Juicy Beef store on campus.Not everyone there is what Raga likes to call ‘uptown scabbies’, but you won’t have a problem picking them out.

TAYLOR HALL THE GARRISON, REX THE MANSION

Activities like the UWI Township Project, however, doesn’t mean that the University has been totally blameless. The disparity in the development of halls of residence, particularly the gaps between facilities at the new generation halls and the traditional ones has been and will continue to separate the classes.

Rex Nettleford Hall has been labelled the ‘uptown’ hall of residence, and Taylor Hall, perhaps the post popular hall on campus, has been for years referred to as the ‘ghetto’ of the campus. Taylorites have been unfairly dubbed as sketels by students on and off campus.The relatively cheaper room rates, as well as facilities on the hall have been another point of ridicule. In fact, while at Wolmer’s Girls School I was told not to put Taylor Hall on my application because it was ‘one big ghetto’.This view is still widely held, despite the fact that except in the case of Chancellor Hall’s Block X, there are no great disparities in room rates .

A UWI student occupying a double room in a traditional hall will pay almost $20 000 less per school year than a person living on Rex and almost $15,000 dollars less than a Prestonite, Chancellor Hall’s block X is almost $60 000 more expensive than a single room on Taylor or Irving Hall.

Halls of Residence have an important role to play in order to truly integrate the campus. Since most commuting students come to class and leave, ‘the piece of paper’ the sole thought on their minds, the campus must take radical steps to integrate the classes at the Hall level.

Leveling the playing field by allocating the same resources to all the halls is an important first step.What we need is a campus that will not facilitate halls that act as enablers of the status quo.We don’t need halls that can be wholly described as ‘garrisons’ or ‘mansions’.

It would be unfair to consider the UWI as wholly classist,but it would also be erroneous to absolve its administrators completely.The UWI has pockets of classism fed by background differences and unwavering ignorance on the part of individuals.However, a university campus should be a standard bearer, where the society ignores the issue, the campus should combat it. We haven’t adequately discussed classism in Jamaica or the rest of the Caribbean for that matter and have failed to take a deep look at ourselves. While administrators have embraced marginalized groups and communities, they have failed to embrace the marginalized on campus. While they have united warring gangs in August Town, little has been done to reconcile the differences between halls on campus.