ABSTRACT
In 1993, Carolyn Cooper, a noted Jamaican author and literary scholar, published a seminal text, Noises in The Blood: Orality, Gender and the ‘Vulgar’ Body of Jamaican Popular Culture, an examination of the growing Jamaican popular cultural expressions. Describing the popular dancehall, with its vibrancy and vulgarity, as noises in the societal blood, Cooper posits that there are creative energies and resistances that are inherent in Jamaican society, yet repressed and silenced, which must be acknowledged and respected. Cooper’s analysis applies to Jamaica’s archival memory. Rooted in British colonialism, the foundational records of the Jamaica Archives and Records Department serve to silence the memory of the majority population whose foreparents were enslaved labourers. Reflecting on the early years of Rastafari – an indigenous Jamaican movement and religion, this chapter will muse on the silences in colonial records concerning Rastafari adherents. It will propose that the noise of the masses are indeed the memory of postcolonial Caribbean nations.
