Songs next to the Sea
A brown glass bottle sits sweating on the table next to crumpled napkins and a plate with a clean picked fish skeleton swimming in a coconut cream sauce. My fingers absently flip a bottlecap, the serrated edge catching under my salty fingernails, the metal creasing between the words Red and Stripe. Eyes nearly at half mast, legs shaky after a week at sea, I sit with my chin in my hand grinning at the bizarre gargoyles on interior columns and through the glassless windows overlooking the East Harbor of Port Antonio. The place was empty when we arrived but the music is getting louder with each new patron crossing the threshold. Young women in short colorful dresses and sandals, men with thin muscled frames under athletic shirts fill the bar.
The TV screen above the DJ flashes pictures of sunsets and smiling blond women superimposed with flowing letters. It is time to sing.
A man steps up to the microphone. Long dreads, a floppy knit cap, a worn but warm face, he opens his mouth and I drop my jaw.
"Oh baby I love your way...Every day." I have to giggle for the memories of middleschool that come to mind whenever I hear that song (standing against the wall hoping Brandon will ask me to dance, sitting smug in the office eating candy with my other ASBers, doing the butterfly and running man when the fast songs finally come back on) but I am soon back in the present in a weird gothic building and I can think nothing else but DAMN! as this man belts out the lyrics.
Instantly I am in love with his voice and the gargoyles and the young crowd swaying and clapping around me.
I am in love with the notion that I am sitting listening to karaoke in a bar called Ambiance on my first night in Jamaica with a Red Stripe in my hand and head full of welcomes from throughout the day.
I am in love with the fact that I sailed here on a boat, threading the Bahamas, running past a very dark Cuba by moonlight, ending the journey through a mangrove and coconut lined passage into a calm lagoon. The water was still but the air was not. It was filled with music from every angle. Welcome to the Caribbean where songs drift over green hills and cut through the narrow streets of small but bustling port towns. Where the music fills every day of life in church hymns sung on street corners or hummed by shopkeepers, dance tunes blasted from cars on the beach, reggae as a religious and political movement, and of course, that new worldwide religion: karaoke.
Color, sound, sun, movement. The Caribbean as I see, hear, feel it.
"Oh baby I love your way... every day."
The TV screen above the DJ flashes pictures of sunsets and smiling blond women superimposed with flowing letters. It is time to sing.
A man steps up to the microphone. Long dreads, a floppy knit cap, a worn but warm face, he opens his mouth and I drop my jaw.
"Oh baby I love your way...Every day." I have to giggle for the memories of middleschool that come to mind whenever I hear that song (standing against the wall hoping Brandon will ask me to dance, sitting smug in the office eating candy with my other ASBers, doing the butterfly and running man when the fast songs finally come back on) but I am soon back in the present in a weird gothic building and I can think nothing else but DAMN! as this man belts out the lyrics.
Instantly I am in love with his voice and the gargoyles and the young crowd swaying and clapping around me.
I am in love with the notion that I am sitting listening to karaoke in a bar called Ambiance on my first night in Jamaica with a Red Stripe in my hand and head full of welcomes from throughout the day.
I am in love with the fact that I sailed here on a boat, threading the Bahamas, running past a very dark Cuba by moonlight, ending the journey through a mangrove and coconut lined passage into a calm lagoon. The water was still but the air was not. It was filled with music from every angle. Welcome to the Caribbean where songs drift over green hills and cut through the narrow streets of small but bustling port towns. Where the music fills every day of life in church hymns sung on street corners or hummed by shopkeepers, dance tunes blasted from cars on the beach, reggae as a religious and political movement, and of course, that new worldwide religion: karaoke.
Color, sound, sun, movement. The Caribbean as I see, hear, feel it.
"Oh baby I love your way... every day."
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