Rest in Power, General: A Lecture on the Life of Fantan Mojah Delivered by Fabian Stennett, Chief of Furry Town Maroons Gather close, my people. Gather close, because today we are not simply remembering a man — we are studying a life, the way an elder studies the roots of an old tree before he tells the young ones how it grew so tall. Today's lesson is on a General. Not a general of armies, not a general of guns — but a General of Voice. A General of Spirit. Owen Lennox Moncrieffe, whom the world would come to salute as Fantan Mojah. Let us begin where every root begins — in the ground. White Hill, St. Elizabeth. Jamaica's breadbasket, they call it — and is it not fitting? For out of that same fertile soil that feeds a nation's body came a boy who would one day feed a nation's spirit. Born the fifth of August, 1976. Before this child had even reached ten years old, he was already standing before crowds, already letting sound escape him that a whole parish would stop to...
A Lecture in Tribute to David "Kukudoo" McDermott Delivered by Fabian Stennett, Chief of Furry Town, on behalf of the Jamaican Maroon Community Good afternoon. I want to begin not with sentiment, but with a question worth serious study: how does a nation preserve its spiritual memory when so much of that memory was never written down? For the Maroon people, and for Jamaica's Revivalist tradition more broadly, the answer has always been sound — song, rhythm, and voice functioning as archive. Today I want to examine one man's contribution to that archive: David "Kukudoo" McDermott, born and raised in the March Pen area of Spanish Town, St Catherine. First, consider his origin. Kukudoo did not begin in a recording studio. He began at a nine-night — the "dead yard" gathering where communities keep vigil for the dead — when a church band's performance was captured on tape by an engineer present that evening. This is not incidental biography; it ...