By MEL COOKE, Freelance Writer
Owen 'Blacka' Ellis performs an item at the recent launch of the Calabash festival. - winston sill
THERE WERE LESSONS in ghetto livity from the final two performers at the September staging of 'Backyaad Crack Up', held at the Constant Spring, St. Andrew venue on Wednesday night.
Kingsley 'Ragashanti' Stewart, one of the new faces introduced at the 19th staging of the comedy series, said that ghetto people are the biggest hypocrites about oral sex. He traced four stages of attitudes to oral sex in the ghetto, the first being the 'dem fi dead' stage.
The second was 'it ok fi know sey odda people a do it. Uptown people dem go a farin an watch de video dem'.
Then it got a little closer home with the 'it OK fi know somebody who do it'.
Now it is at the stage where 'everybody is receiving, nobody is giving'.
"I have concluded that there are some generous oral sex faries flying around in Jamaica, especially in the ghetto," Ragashanti said, summing up the current situation.
"The most entertaining ting about ghetto is when people a cuss," Ragashanti said, giving the example of a legendary tracer from 'down South'. She once told a girl that "de ongly time yuh sinting see wata a when yu step ova it", Ragashanti related, to laughter, adding "an wha hot bout it a dutty wata yu step ova."
He went into song, done to a recorded track, to illustrate the situation in Cuss Cuss. "Me have gun tongue, mek a gal drop ... /Acid tongue a bun bway well hot," he deejayed in the voice of a champion tracer. And there were cheers when the tracer persona said to a woman "yu a real Digicel/any weh yu go inna Jamaica man pick yu up!"
GHETTTO LIVITY
Owen 'Blakka' Elis, who came on after Ragashati and closed the 'Crack Up', also delved into ghetto livity, but on a personal note with the Aunt who grew him up with an iron, but kindly, hand.
"I went to Trench Town Primary School in first grade barefoot and left in grade five in a Tarzan, with a Government scholarship," he said. He went on to Excelsior and, when he left Trench Town a second time, it was in a prominent position. There was applause and Ellis said "Aunty mek that happen with a iron hand".
"She beat yu and feed yu, cause yu haffi strong fi tek her lick," Ellis said.
He said that "the first time I witnessed nudity in the ghetto was not in girlie magazine or blue movie, but when two women cussing and they would disrobe voluntarily," Ellis said, proceeding to mime how they would take off their clothes, removing imaginary garments while throwing the words.
Dance Xpressions and the Creative Boyz provided dance, with Tubeless and British as relatively new faces and Charles Hyatt as a familiar, funny one also performed on Wednesday night's Crack Up. Elva, the night's hilarious host, ran lowest credit, palest person, shortest person and a single, reluctant entrant male best butt contest, also declaring the delights of 'buying a/c' while window shopping on a hot day.
Do
you have a problem? Is something bothering
you? Write to