words by Eddie STATS Houghton
Fans of Jamaican music: please take a second to set aside twitter drama and negativity to remember the legacy of Rex Nettleford, who passed away in a Washington, DC hospital yesterday. A tireless ambassador of Jamaican culture he championed it many forms: by co-authoring a groundbreaking study on Rastafari in 1961, founding the National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica in 1963 and as vice-chancellor of The University of the West Indies from 1997-2004. In between authoring numerous books like 1969’s “Mirror, Mirror” he advised several prime ministers on cultural matters and lobbied the British government to pay reparations for slavery in the form of an educational fund. He would have been 77 today.