Memories of Mortimo

Bob Marley mentor Mortimo Planno, who passed away on Sunday last, is being remembered by overseas-based reggae authority Roger Steffens as a complex giant, physically imposing, but generally good-natured.

Marley documenter and discographer Roger Steffens remembers Planno’s imposing figure which created some amount of initimidation.

“In 2001 I was brought by Andrea Davis to Kingston to do my Life of Bob Marley multi-media show for the first time in Jamaica, at the University of Technology.

I was nervous enough to be bringing the Marley story to Bob’s hometown crowd, many of whom had personal knowledge of the reggae king, but you can imagine how I felt when, just before I was to begin, Planno came in and sat directly in front of me in the front row. The man who had written Selassie Is the Chapel, especially for Bob, who had taught him much of his Rasta overstanding, had come to check me out.

About half-way through the programme, I played a 20- minute supressed documentary about the 1976 attempt on Bob’s life. I had just stepped backstage for a moment when a bredren came behind the curtains and grabbed my sleeve. “Roger, mon,” he said anxiously. “Planno outside. Him want fe see you right now, mon!”

It was quite dark and difficult to see, but as I drew closer, I could see that it was Planno, smoking the biggest spliff I’ve ever seen. His face was a mass of round and brutal bruises, his lips puffed and scrabrous.

Smiling broadly, he pointed to a slender man seated in a wheelchair beside him, a man who was missing the bottom half of his body.

“Do you – know – who – dis – mon – izzzz?” Planno drawled, his syllables seemingly stuck in molasses. “I think so,” I answered. ” It’s Brother Tata.” “Yes, Mon!” Planno roared. Then, turning to Bob’s friend (real name: Vincent Ford), who was given the writer’s credit for No Woman No Cry, Planno demanded sternly, “Tata! Show de mon how you dance ‘pon your stump!” With great effort, Tata boosted himself on the arms of his chair and wiggled his torso a couple of times before collapsing back into th e chair.

“See,” said Planno, laughing, “De mon do de cripple skank fe you!”Photographer Gordon Parks

Born in Cuba to a Jamaican mother and Cuban father in 1929, Planno moved to Jamaica with his parents at age three and grew up in the ‘Back-o Wall’ area of Western Kingston.

Gordon Parks, 93, described as a true renaissance man if there ever was one, died in New York City on Tuesday.

Parks, born into poverty in Fort Scott, Kansas, was a photojournalist for Life magazine (the first black man to be hired as such by the magazine) for 20 years before turning to film making in 1969.

His initial Hollywood project, The Learning Tree, was adapted from a novel he wrote about growing up poor and black in 1920s Kansas. He became the first black to write and direct a major studio production when Warner Bros commissioned him to adapt the book to the big screen.

In 1989, the film was among the first 25 to be deemed culturally and historically significant and was preserved in the US National Film Registry for future generations.

But as far as most people are concerned, it was the 1971 movie Shaft that brought Parks fame as a director. Starring Richard Roundtree, Shaft also spawned a hit song, the Oscar-winning Theme From Shaft by Isaac Hayes.

A remake of the film, in 2000, starred Samuel L Jackson and was directed by John Singleton.

In a documentary for HBO called Half Past Autumn:The Life and Works of Gordon Parks, he said the two Shaft films were hard to compare.

“There was a lot of humanity in the first one that was lacking in the second one,” he said. “People probably want more violence now and so on.”

During his landmark career with Life magazine, he covered everything, from fashion to sport, but was best known for his photo essays on poverty and the civil rights movement.

Over the years, not only did he write volumes of poetry and fiction, he also became an accomplished pianist and wrote a ballet about the life of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., titled Martin, which aired on the PBS.

Gordon Parks had been in failing health, said his nephew, Charles Parks, who lives in Lawrence, Kansas.

Mali bluesman Ali Farka Toure

Ali Farka Toure, best-known overseas for his 1995 collaboration with American guitarist Ry Cooder on Talking Timbuktu, which netted him his first of two Grammys, died Tuesday in his native Mali after a long illness. He was in his late 60s.

Mali’s Culture Ministry said Toure died at his home in the capital, Bamako, after a long struggle with an unidentified illness. He was known to be battling cancer.

One of Africa’s most famous performers, Toure, who played a traditional Malian stringed instrument called the gurkel, was one of the original progenitors of a genre known as Mali Blues. He was featured in an episode of the recently screened PBS series, The Blues, which was recently shown at Red Bones Blues Cafe in Kingston.

His passing was mourned across the nation, now one of Africa’s poorest. Radio stations suspended regular programming and instead broadcast Toure’s signature lilting sounds.

Toure won his second Grammy this past year in the traditional world music album category for his In the Heart of the Moon album, performed with fellow Malian Toumani Diabate.

Toure was born in 1939 in Timbuktu. Like many Africans of his generation, the exact date of his birth was not recorded.

Toure learned the gurkel at an early age, later also taking up the guitar. He cited many Western musicians for inspiration, including Ray Charles, Otis Redding and John Lee Hooker.

He once said in an interview that his songs examined education, work, love and society, according to the Website allmusic.com. He released at least 10 albums and toured often in North America and Europe.

Toure spent much of his older age in his childhood town of Niafunke, which has become a pilgrimage spot for many music-loving Africans and tourists.