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For the Reckord | Mysteries of the Maroon explored – Pt 1

Published:Friday | February 1, 2019 | 12:00 AMMichael Reckord/Gleaner Writer
David Brown (centre) speaks on his research on Maroons. Looking on are Dr Amina Blackwood Meeks and Colonel Wallace Sterling.
Special guest at the lecture, theatre practitioner Yvonne Jones Brewster.
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Maroon chief Colonel Wallace Sterling and researcher David Brown gave glimpses into the mysteries of Maroon culture to a packed library at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts (EMCVPA). They heard about esoteric phenomena, reincarnation, spirit possession, and the telepathic transfer of the skill of blowing the abeng.

We also heard about more mundane things, such as the Maroon origins of jerked pork; the recipe for a delicious run-down made from the tough Karcoon bean eaten with yam, sweet potato or dasheen; and the traditional acceptance by Maroon wives of a ‘matey’ for their husbands. When asked about possible domestic conflict, Sterling revealed that the ‘sweethearts’ usually live in different communities.

Some of the information was potentially useful. Bizzy tea can apparently clean the blood of traces of ganja – it also seems able to mask the presence of prostate cancer, Brown said.

According to Colonel Sterling, if you’re ever wondering about drinking from a pool of water in the forests of Portland’s Blue and John Crow Mountains, you should only do so if there are ‘kebe webe’ (spider-like creatures) swimming about. And if the Karcoon bean floats in the water, it is potable. If it sinks, don’t drink.

MONTHLY PRESENTATION

The seminar, titled ‘Maroon Inna All a We’, was organised by EMCVPA orator Dr Amina Blackwood Meeks as one of her monthly ‘Art of the Matter’ presentations. She introduced Colonel Sterling as the elected chief of the Moore Town Maroons, and leader of some 10,000 Maroons; and Brown as director of policy and research for the National Cultural and Creative Industries Council in the Ministry of Culture, Gender, Entertainment and Sport.

“They are here today to help us understand just who are the Maroons, and the part they play in our culture,” she said.

Brown started his presentation with a short video, showing a Moore Town Maroon blowing an abeng (made from a cow horn) and two men conversing in a language which, Brown said, had been authenticated by the Language Department of The University of the West Indies as being the Coromantee of 400 years ago.

Brown said that Maroons (the word came from the Spanish word cimarrón meaning ‘wild’) should not be called runaway slaves. They were “enslaved people” who, when brought to Jamaica, escaped into the hills, and are now in four main communities. The Windward Maroons are found in Moore Town in the John Crow Mountains, Charles Town in the Buff Bay Valley, and Scotts Hall in the Wag Water Valley.

Brown revealed that the Accompong in the Cockpit Country is home to the Leeward Maroons, pointing out that these are modern settlements. Earlier ones existed in Clarendon and Spanish Town, and other areas of the island.

Uprooted between the 16th to 19th centuries from a wide section of Africa – including West Central Africa, Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast, Senegambia and the bights of Benin and Biafra – some 12 to 15 million people, including “kings and queens,” were brought to various areas of the New World.

They came across several other peoples here, like the Black Caribs of South America, and the Seminoles in Florida, with whom they mixed. An early Maroon settlement in Brazil, which at its height had some 30,000 people ruled by a king, lasted for almost 100 years. Brown said that the short, dark Maroons in Suriname, often called “bush Negroes,” have their own language. The majority of the Maroons he saw in there were in a market, with the Maroons occupying one section and Tainos occupying another.

There are Maroons all over the Caribbean, including Cuba, and in Louisiana and Florida in the United States. The black Seminoles make up “one of the largest and most successful Maroon communities in the USA,” Brown said.