CONCRETE JUNGLE... WITHOUT JAH I AM NOTHING.

                  WITHOUT JAH I AM NOTHING AT ALL                                                           

                                  BY NZINGA NZINGA

One may rightly wonder why I have placed this piece, which is essentially about me, in the Bob Marley Section. It is because I am using the Bob Marley songs, or rather performances, as a conduit for the communication of my own experience.

Towards the end of 1993, I fell seriously ill. My sickness was so serious that I lost my bearings. I failed to make certain necessary connections. My whole telecommunication system had gone haywire. Yeah, I was very disoriented for a while back there. Then something in me came through that I should pray. Don’t ask me how, don’t ask me why, and don’t ask me from where. It just did. But could I pray? No. Could I get in touch with the Creator? No way. A void. No response. 

I was uttering sounds but they were making no sense. I thought I was thinking but those thoughts were incoherent. Something happening in me had made me forget how to pray. It had disrupted the prayer process. That realisation hit me as overwhelming darkness engulfed me. It covered the face of my day and it turned it into night. I tried to switch on to something. ‘Nzinga to Jah Almighty’. No connection. ‘Please, God, it’s me, your daughter, Nzinga.’ Still no connection. What a desolation! No power. An abyss. A totally blank field.

Someone or something, at least some ominous force, had short-circuited my prayer connection with Almighty Jah and had plunged my entire electro-spiritual system into a complete outage. Man, I have never felt like that before. Spiritual dislocation. Spiritual disintegration. Spiritual dysfunction. Spiritual alienation. Spiritual separation and isolation. I was simply devastated, to put it mildly. How can I find words to adequately describe the sweeping rushes of panic that were drowning me? The utter misery? The dread emptiness? Lifelessness from within and from without? I had lost the ability to communicate this undesirable state of affairs to others for them to really appreciate my tribulation. 

Let me borrow the first stanza of Bob Marley’s Concrete Jungle that truly relates my experience at that time:

          ♪♪No sun will shine in my day today.

          The high yellow moon won’t come out to play

          Darkness has covered my light

          And has changed my day into night. ♪♪

Here as I write it, the memory is too searing, too burning for me. The water-drops falling on my lap from above are not raindrops but teardrops from my eyes. Verily I am become as a waterspout. But let Bob and Concrete Jungle continue:

                          ♪♪Nowhere is this love to be found, won’t someone tell me?

                           ‘Cause life, sweet life, must be somewhere to be found, yeah

                            Instead of a concrete jungle where the living is hardest. ♪♪

A concrete jungle does not have to be made of stones and the physical oppression of the ghetto. During my sickness I was in a concrete jungle. I was lost like a hungry little breastfed baby that had lost its mammy. Tearfully, I called one by one on the three other members of the household. How sympathetic they were! How they proffered words of consolation! “It will come back. It is because you have been so sick.” “You must exercise patience. By all means everything will be all right. It is just a part of the sickness.” “You are getting better”, they said. They prayed the three familiar prayers with me -- the Ethiopian prayer, the twenty-third Psalm and the Lord’s Prayer. I tried desperately to tune in and though it was no longer total outage, it was still a muddle as if the prayer lines were crossed. I still could not pray on my own.

I knew then that if I couldn’t pray, if I was cut off much longer from God, not only would it be seedy with me, but also that life would no longer be worth living for me. Sometime during that moment in time, I don’t know the precise time, one of my visitors, an art teacher from the Presbyterian Secondary School, a leading boys’ secondary school in Accra, near Legon, came to visit and I asked him to sing Amazing Grace for me. He sat there in my room on that high Blue Mahoe stool, a gift to my daughter from my first primary school headmaster, which I had brought over from Jamaica, and in a voice that I was able to recognise as rich and beautiful, he granted my request. How much it helped to soothe me! 

Exactly how and when the wires, the connections between Jah and me were overtly reconnected, I can’t say for certain because things were still a bit hazy then. But this I know. Of this I am persuaded. The restoration of my prayer line was therapeutic, and healing was rapid thereafter. Thank you, Lord, for that visitor. Thank you, Lord, for you made me pray again. Thank you, Lord, for you made me communicate with you again. Give thanks and praises.

I say all these things to say that it is no small thing when Bob Marley goes before thousands and thousands of people and screw up his eyes, clap one hand over one eye, shake up his body line, jump so high he ‘almost reach Jah sky’; when ‘im dip so or dip so till ‘im bend down low, low; when ‘im rock so and rock so; when ‘m skank so and skank so, like we never seen before; when the Gong flash ‘im locks and declare publicly over and over again, his love, his adoration and worshipful reverence for Jah Rastafari. Of a truth it is no small thing. 

Indeed, it is the biggest thing in his life. He himself declared his relationship with Jah Almighty, HIM Emperor Haile Selassie I, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah coming through the line of King David and King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. And I am presumptuous, or better yet, preposterous enough to put my own commitment to and my testimony of my allegiance to Jah Rastafari alongside that of Bob Marley’s and say that what I draw out of his songs is that without Jah he is nothing at all, nothing at all which the telling of my episode is about. All that I have been saying is to say that without God I am nothing, nothing at all.

One of the greatest benefits I derive from Bob’s music, is the fellowship of prayer and worship, the commission of service to God and the overall communion of a similar religious experience. Bob had the gift, straight from God, of expressing his adoration for his religious experience and at the same time, a nationalistic fervour for his African Motherland and for his people in song and dance like king David did before him in the psalms. 

I don’t sing well enough except for a little child who wants its nursery rhymes and jingles over and over again from anyone who can emit suitable noises. Neither will my dancing receive compliments. Notwithstanding, I do sing vociferously and dance sprightly quite often, in my own way, conduits for my own expression of love of my God, my Motherland and my people, which is to say à la Marley, I ‘lively up’ myself.

One thing I can do and I am doing it right at this very moment, is heartically ( sic) appreciate this inimitable singer Bob Marley and his songs, especially since he is singing my songs!  Thank you Bob. I love you to the max! You are always with me! Selah and Amen!

THE END
 All the images were taken from the Internet and I claim no copyright.