The Virgin Islands’ very own king of scratch, James “Jamesie” Brewster, lives on through hours of footage of interviews, performances and scenes of his everyday life, now available to watch for free on Columbia College Chicago’s website.
Brewster headed the scratch music band Jamesie and the All Stars alongside band members Camille “King Derby” Macedon, Lawrence “Trashy” Mason, Paul Hosford, Wilfred E. “Junie Bomba” Allick, Jr., Sylvester Ivan “Blinky” McIntosh, Dimitri “Pikey” Copemann and Raymond “Hoofa” Richards.
Scratch music — also known as quelbe music —is native to the Caribbean. Documentarian Andrea Leland describes it in a press release as “a form of oral history: its lyrics are used to immortalize significant historical events, spread ‘rude’ gossip about one’s neighbors, and relay the day-to-day trials and tribulations on a small island.”
Leland, a documentarian and part-time St. Johnian who focuses on telling stories in Latin America and the Caribbean, is responsible for the hours of footage Columbia College Chicago made available. She shot the archived footage when making a documentary on Brewster titled “Jamesie, King of Scratch,” released in 2006.
Scratch music sparked an interest for Leland, as she had listened to scratch music performed on other Caribbean islands. However, she said she found it to be less commonplace in the Virgin Islands, which she blames on American “cultural imperialism” in the territory.
“American music and stateside cultural dominance overshadowed the local scratch band music, and I felt that it needed attention,” Leland told The Daily News.
As a documentarian, she aims to highlight voices and cultures that aren’t in the spotlight. Therefore, she made it her duty to “amplify the voices of this Indigenous music.”
When first hitting the ground for the documentary, Leland was immediately directed to Brewster by others in the local scratch band community.
They met for breakfast, where “they spent an hour or more together and at the end of it, he said, ‘OK, you can make a film about me,’ and that’s how it all started,” Leland said.
Filming the movie took three years, during which time Leland, Jamesie and the band traveled to performances in Chicago and Bloomington, Ind., — thanks to a grant Leland received from the Illinois Arts Council — which are both available to view as part of the archived footage.
The performances were deemed a success as “the audiences absolutely went wild for them,” Leland said, adding that Chicago is home to a large Virgin Islands community.
“People came up to him and said, ‘I’ve been collecting your records for years,’ and had him sign it,” she said. “They were all celebrities.”
The recognition meant volumes to the band as they weren’t receiving similar attention from audiences in the Caribbean “because, in the islands, there’s not as much focus” on quelbe music.
“Traveling out of the island, up to Illinois, they got all kinds of wonderful feedback, and I think that was a real boost for them,” the documentarian said.
Her travels with the band provide viewers of “Jamesie: King of Scratch” and the archived footage offered by Columbia College Chicago an “ up-close and personal” view of the band members, showcasing their full personalities, which Leland described as “priceless.”
“That, to me, is priceless, those interviews where [Brewster and the band members are] casually interacting with each other and talking about their music, their history and their relationships, that’s pretty special. It’s very intimate,” she told The Daily News.
The Caribbean sparked an interest in Leland at a young age; during her time at The Art Institute of Chicago, she traveled through the Caribbean studying local artists “and the resources artists look to for their inspiration in their painting and their expression.”
Instead, she found a source of personal inspiration.
Once she moved to St. John, her interest in the Caribbean grew as she became more knowledgeable of the “local cultural expression” through art and music.
“The Caribbean just feeds me,” Leland said.
Leland’s footage is available through a long-standing relationship with Columbia College Chicago. When the school hosted a discussion on scratch band music, she shared her archival footage through their Center for Black Music Research. During the pandemic, the footage was released online for free viewing.
Brewster passed away in 2014, eight years after Leland’s documentary was released. He was born in St. Croix in 1929.
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Publish date : 2024-10-23 04:00:00
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