BUJU DIASPORA
“IACTUALLY felt like a real Jamaican last weekend,” says Tracey Leemingvick, a Jamaican who visits the island every three months, on average, but stays in the resort towns or New Kingston.
Leemingvick says for the first time, she walked the streets of downtown Kingston and the brawta she earned equates to, “we were not harassed. I have always been told that we could never do this (walk downtown Kingston). Everything must be all-inclusive”.
Like the hundreds of Jamaicans living in the diaspora who flew into the island last weekend in support of Buju Banton’s ‘Long Walk To Freedom’, the hygienist in the US Army, who was also experiencing Hellshire Beach for the first time, credited the concert for instilling a form of unity that can be reinforced among the people.
“Music is universal, and if it took one artiste to bring so many people together in one stadium, it can be done on another scale,” she urged, adding that her trip to Jamaica was worth every penny spent.
And she was only one of eight persons in her office who flew into the island for the event. They were ‘victims’ of the ticket sales website
crash, but say they wouldn’t change a thing.
“When the website crashed, we were told to go ahead and purchase, they would send us a link to print and we did exactly that, trusting every word, because this reunion was not going to miss us.”
The financial benefits derived from the event are evidenced by the buzz that was noticeable in the restaurants, hotels, car rental agencies, homesharing businesses and the taxi operations; even the Jamaican theatre received some of the spin-off. Hospitality Jamaica interviewed June Brown-Davis, an occupational therapist from Maryland in the USA, and her husband Al, who has been a Buju Banton fan since age 15. On Sunday night, along with a party of nine others, they had just left the Centre Stage Theatre, having watched Romi and Julie, a play they would not have known of had it not been for Buju’s concert.
The coupled booked their airline tickets to Jamaica on the day the concert date was announced.
“From he came out of jail we were saying that if he was having a concert we would be in attendance. He is my all-time favourite and having followed his trajectory, even when Jay-Z visited him in jail, I had to be here,” said Brown-Davis.
She said she cried when Buju Banton was released from prison.
Brown-Davis and her husband made their trip here a mini vacation, staying at RIU Reggae in Montego Bay for three days, then moving on to Kingston.
They did Sunday brunch at Terra Nova, partied at Friends on the Deck on Friday, and were checking out the Dub Club on Sunday night after the play at Centre Stage.
Her friend, Joy Robinson, an attorney-at-law who also resides in Maryland, had booked a viewing with a real estate agent on Monday, with the aim of buying an apartment in Kingston.
“Had it not been for Buju, I don’t think I would be considering an investment in the capital city,” Robinson told Hospitality Jamaica.
Spending a week after the show in Jamaica, this Saturday she will be trekking to St Mary for Lanville Sankey’s annual birthday bash in Robin’s Bay, she says.
For 34-year-old, South Florida resident Doran Francis, a graphic designer and recording artiste, the moment he heard Buju had been released and the concert date announced, he booked his ticket.
“I stayed up until 1 a.m. in order to get tickets to the show,” he revealed, having experienced the website crash as well.
Francis bar-hopped, ate at Tracks and Records and organised a photo shoot in downtown Kingston and Port Royal for his latest single, Lead the Way.
“We made sure to eat some Tastee patties and we did KFC, because although it is in the States, it is not the same,” said Francis, who was probably the 1,000th person to say the Long Walk To Freedom concert was epic.
What was glaringly evident was that Buju’s return allowed a type of reunion that Jamaicans living in the diaspora were hungry for.