A Tribute to Donna Summer /
Kingston “Soul Boys” and Exploring the High Risk Lifestyles of Those Who Party
Hard.
Donna Summer, "the
Queen of Disco Music," died on Thursday after a prolonged battle with
cancer she tried to keep away from the public. Reports say that Donna confided
in her friends that she believed her illness was caused by 9/11 dust she inhaled.
However, her doctors believed she contracted the lung cancer from her smoking
habit which she maintained for many years. But Donna insisted that her illness
was the direct result of inhaling dust from the debris of the 9/11 terrorist
attacks. People who suffer from terminal illness because of the stress
accompanying the illness often have delusional thoughts .A good friend of mine
had AIDS and before his death he swore on his mother’s grave that it was his
ex-female partner who placed a voodoo spell on him.
Donna Summer’s death comes
on the heel of a string of recent high profile deaths in the American Music
industry Such as James Brown, Teddy Prendergast, Isaac Hales, Luther Vandross,
Michael Jackson and Whitney Huston. I can’t help but to mischievously suggest that
they should have traded place with lowlights such as Rick James, DMX, Ninja Man
and “Vybes Cartel”. On a serious note though people in the Global entertainment
industry are more at risk to die from lifestyle illness such as accidents, drug
overdose and cancer due to the demands made on them by their fans and the
pressure to remain on top of their profession. We seem mistakenly to think that
famous musician’s recent death in The USA is a new phenomenon. Let’s not forget
that Otis Redding Soul singer of the 60s fame died Plane crash in 1967 and famous Rock guitarist/singer Jimi Hendrix died of asphyxiation
from sleeping pill overdose in1970.
The death of mega stars such
as Donna Summer always refocuses our attention to the catastrophic consequences
of the dreaded illness of cancer. According to the World Health organization
cancer is the leading cause of death worldwide it accounted for about 7.6
million deaths globally in 2008. Cancer, known medically as a malignant
neoplasm, is a broad group of various diseases, all involving unregulated cell
growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant
tumours, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to
more distant parts of the body through the lymphatic system or bloodstream.
Not all tumours are
cancerous. Benign tumours do not grow uncontrollably, do not invade
neighbouring tissues, and do not spread throughout the body. There are over 200
different known cancers that afflict humans. Determining what causes cancer is
complex. Many things are known to increase the risk of cancer, including
tobacco use, certain infections, radiation, and a lack of physical activity,
obesity, and environmental pollutants. These can directly damage genes or
combine with existing genetic faults within cells to cause the disease.
Approximately five to ten percent of cancers
are entirely hereditary. There numerous studies published in Psychiatric
Journals confirm the fact that some patients in the advance stages of cancer
like Donna Summer may sometimes experience delusional thoughts, visual and
auditory hallucinations. Some of these psychotic episodes are also as a result
of the side effects from the prescribed medication that cancer patients in
treatment are taking.
A group of us Calabar old boys got together on face book
this week had a moan over Donna Summer’s death and reminiscent about our
Kingston teen age Soul Boy years when we dressed up as John Travolta and
Michael Jackson look alike and dance to the music of these great American Music
icons. For the benefit of my younger readers during the mid-seventies and early
1980s a group of young middle class rebellious teenagers from the prominent
high schools across Kingston Jamaica- spurred on by the emergence of Disco
Music in North America and a Programme called “Where It’s At on JBC” television
started a cultural Movement call “Soul Boys “.If someone urinated on a Zinc fence
and we thought that it was Disco Music we would dance to it.
The cultural craze that took traction among Teen agers
and young adults at the time saw us dressing weirdly in black pants white
shirts rolled up at the sleeves donning ballerina shoes and wearing a hairstyle
called the Napoleon made famous by Soul crooner Lionel Ritchie. Our female teen
counterparts from High Schools such as St Hughes’s Andrew High, Queens, Holy
Childhood, Excelsior etc were called “Disco Girls”. Our Weird dress sense and
dance craze in the 1980s was so frantic that even our parents rebelled against
us. I got the first set of bags under my eyes from having to sleep in the
garden for a few nights when my parents found out that I had sneaked off to a
party in Meadowbrook Estate and passed around a bottle of Red Stripe among a
dozen of us and danced all night until day light.
The Disco Music of that era was so powerful and alluring
that we all were oblivious of the fact that about 800 persons died in the
dreaded political election in 1980. It was either it blew over our heads or we
skipped gunshots to gate crash parties in Meadowbrook Estates, Heaven dale or
Elliston Flats. On weekends we went to day Disco parties held at Exodus, Phase2
or Tropics Club and several dance marathons and day fetes were held across the
Girls High schools in Kingston. By the mid Eighties the soul boy movement waned
and gave way to Jamaica’s real reggae pop star Pinchers who captured the
attention of teen agers and shifted their focus to Reggae and dance hall music.
Pinchers at that time was a self obsessed Young good looking reggae artist with
a greasy Gerri curl and wore baggy clothes he once created a furore when he was
spotted at Holy Childhood High School Gate one day and an entire group of tent
and eleven graders got wind of his where about and mobbed him. This led to them
being sent home and told not to return until they brought their parents.
Pinches went on to self destruct and is an old shadow of himself due to his pre
occupation of songs about his self but he was responsible in the main for
popularizing reggae music among teenagers in Jamaica.
As for us Soul Boys and girls of the eighties we are
scattered over the globe mainly in North America and Europe and we meet up in a
fragmented way on Face book or at Waterfalls club in Kingston. We are an old
shadow of ourselves we are in our late forties and early fifties. Our eyes are
no longer on the Disco dance floor we are eying up our pension package. Some of
us have a beer belly that makes us look like women in their early stage of
pregnancy and the Disco Girls of that era are having regular breast screening
for cancer or having an eye on their grand children. The one thing that we have
in common is an enduring love for old school Disco music of the 1980s.
When we grab our
crotch nowadays its not to dance to a Michael Jackson Disco Music .It’s because
like Donna Summers we are having delusional thoughts of having prostrate or
testicular cancer from the nicotine habit that we contracted as Soul boys of
the 1980s. The last time I went Disco dancing in London I almost toppled myself
on the dance floor. Last year, while in Jamaica I went to Waterfalls Night club
against the advice of my doctor and saw an old KC friend by the name of”
Prendi” with a group of old 80s soul boys squaring off on the dance floor the
almost put me off my supper-seriously they should give up the game. But the
powerful allure of Disco music is a social drug that will be etched on our
gravestones. As a mark of respect for our fallen music icons and the few
remaining one we will be Retuning to Jamaica for the Jazz and Blue festival in
2013 to make a final stand before arthritis set in it gives me about a half a
year to brush up on my “Break Dancing”. For now our thoughts are with the late great
Donna Summer who was and still remain one of our greatest idols with her
Whitney Huston and Michael Jackson heaven it’s no longer a quiet place.
Donovan
Reynolds is a London based Social Worker Human Rights Campaigner. Readers of
this blog are invited to post comments on the space provided at the end of this
blog. Or alternatively, they may e-mail their comments @
dannygerm63@hotmail.co.uk.
