ISLAND SPIRIT

Downtown Kingston is in the throes of a creative rebirth, while across the country, Jamaica's farmers and fishers are carving a new path, with enterprises such as a floating clubhouse and waterfall retreats. Six decades after independence from the British, this Caribbean island nation is looking to a brighter future

- STEPHEN PHELAN

Reggae singer and tour guide Ricky Chaplin greets me at Tuff Gong studios with a fist bump and the word “Rastafari”, affirming his religion in lieu of a hello.

He wears his dreadlocks coiled up inside a baggy tam, crocheted in the colours of the faith — yellow for the gold of Ethiopia, green for Jamaica’s mystic forests, red for the blood of the slaves transported here to Jamaica. His Trenchtown Lions football shirt has Bob Marley’s name on the back.

Trenchtown is just down the street. Marley got his start in that Kingston ghetto, from which “heavy vibrations” still emanate, according to Ricky. Marley’s former home isn’t far away, either, at 56 Hope Road. The house is now a museum that draws crowds of pilgrims, as does his mausoleum, near his birthplace in Nine Mile. But if the singer’s sainted spirit is anywhere to be found, you might just as well seek it at Tuff Gong.

“His energy is still right here,” says Ricky, standing amid dormant musical instruments and unplugged amps in the very rehearsal room where Marley and his band The Wailers worked on some of their best-known songs, including One Love. Ricky tries to reconstruct their process: “Sitting and strumming over there, Bob Marley sings ‘one’. The next one in the circle sings ‘love’. The next sings ‘one heart’. Then they all sing ‘let’s get together and feel all right’,” he says. “That one-two beat is the sound of your heart, and that chicka rhythm of the guitar is the blood pumping through your carburetor.”