In the poignant debut of Rootsland, host Henry K reveals the transformative journey of himself and friend Brian, who set out to change the world through their music. Moving to Kingston, Jamaica in 1991, they rented a house in the hills of Armour Heights, turning it into an artistic sanctuary that attracted talent from all over. Amidst this vibrant mix of culture and music, Brian immersed himself in the life of Kingston's ghettos, offering respect and recognition to the disenfranchised, until his untimely death from an overdose in 1997.

The conversation shifts to the origins of the narrator Henry K's love for reggae music, tracing back to his teenage years in the US Virgin Islands, where he discovered a profound connection with reggae. This passion followed him to Washington, DC, where a fortuitous encounter with a reggae CD produced by Doctor Dread led him to an internship at RAS Records. Through vivid storytelling, the episode navigates significant moments: from discovering reggae music's unifying power, experiencing the political upheaval of the Iran-Contra scandal, to finding solace and purpose at Tower Records.

Rootsland "Reggae's Untold Stories"

Home | ROOTSLAND Reggae Music, Podcast & Merchandise "Wear Your Culture"

Rootsland is produced by Henry K in association with Voice Boxx Studios in Kingston, Jamaica.

Introduction by: 

Michelle "Kim" Yamaguchi

Featured Music:

Wayne Armond - "Righteous People"

Maybe we were a little naive, but we thought, we can change the world through our music.

Brian was an aspiring singer living in New Hope, Pennsylvania, with a sweet, soulful voice and a revolutionary spirit.

I was a young songwriter from Long Island, New York, and when I met Brian, I realized I found my voice.

We rented a large house in the hills overlooking Kingston in an area called Armour Heights.

Our place became an artistic sanctuary where an eclectic mix of singers, musicians, and artists from all over the world would mingle with reggae stars and upcoming jamaican talent.

Tucked away in the hills of this lush uptown neighborhood, it was easy to forget that the flickering lights in the distance were coming from some of the most violent ghettos in the world.

Ironically, it was in these same ghettos where Brian felt most comfortable.

Right at home with the ragamuffin, rude boys and disenfranchised street youth of Kingston.

This golden haired, golden voice singer from America gave them something they rarely experienced in their young lives.

Respect and recognition.

But Brian and I learned quickly that broken dreams lie in the streets of Kingston.

I fell in love and stayed in Jamaica, started an independent record label.

And while I know he's in a much better place, and as much as I would love to see his memory rest in peace, something was brought to my attention that has caused me to open up old wounds and stir up forgotten memories.

This is the popular rock band Wean, introducing one of their songs before a live performance.

Oh, this is called Reggae Junkie Jew by Wean.

I was going out with this girl for about a year.

One jarved, and she left me for a reggae junkie Jew.

And that's a white.

A white mafarian.

That is a white dude with golden dreadlocks.

Who'S addicted to heroin.

And while I'm not here to judge the quality of any song or impede on an artist's right to express themselves, this is a song that degrades.

It's a song that bullies.

It's a song that shames.

It's also a song about my friend Brian.

And he deserves to be humanized.

He deserves to be remembered how he lived his life, not how he lost it.

So the time has come for me to stand up for my friend, to tell his untold tale and reclaim his stolen legacy.

Because when you look closely through the fragments of Brian's shattered dreams, you'll find they contain lessons of love, hope, and selflessness that are more relevant now than ever.

In the reggae anthem get up, stand up, the Wailers sing, not all that glitters is gold.

Half the story has never been told.

Brian always dreamed he could make the world a better place.

Maybe by me telling his story, he still can, because righteousness governs the world.

Broadcasting live and direct from the rolling red hills on the outskirts of Kingston, Jamaica.

From a magical place at the intersection of words, sound, and power, the red light is on.

Your dial is set the frequency in tune to the Rootsland podcast stories that are music to your ears.

My friend Libo, he called it the perfect stoner cruise.

You could light a joint as you were leaving my parking garage in Rosslyn, Virginia, and take the last toke on Pennsylvania Avenue as you passed by the White House live.

Grateful Dead would play from the tape deck of my Nissan 200 SX as the shimmering DC skyline would come into view.

On those restless nights when my mind couldn't focus on school, I would take a drive and soak up the Washington, DC vibes.

Even a steamy summer night couldn't keep the tourists and locals from crowding the streets and admiring what President Reagan referred to as a shining city on a hill.

In his vision, he imagined a tall.

Proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God blessed and teeming with.

People of all kinds living in harmony and peace.

And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors, and the doors were open to anyone with a.

Will and a heart to get here.

That's how I saw it, and see it still.

I know I wasn't the only believer.

On any given night, you could see idealistic Georgetown law students drinking rolling rock beers on the steps of the Jefferson memorial, engaging in passionate legal debates.

There were parents and children of all races, colors, and religions, mesmerized by the chisel marbled features of Abraham Lincoln and hushed silence as they read his powerful words engraved in stone.

And sometimes, under the light of a summer moon, I would see the shadow of a lone figure hunched up against the granite rock at the Vietnam Veteran Memorial.

And in a time before cell phone cameras and selfie sticks, they would be carefully tracing the name of their loved one with a pencil and paper.

A moment so intimate I would turn away to respect their privacy.

It was a solemn night in the city, but a political hurricane had reached the shore, and DC was in the eye of the storm.

As a justice, student, and political junkie, I was in the center of the eye.

The scene was Washington, DC.

The cast was large.

How can our system of government work if the administration is nothing candid in its answers to the Congress?

I will tell you right now, counsel and all the members here gather that I misled the Congress.

This was my generation's Watergate, one of the most eye opening and revealing political events of a lifetime.

A real spy story that turned the front page of the Washington Post into a Jason Bourne thriller.

A secret cabal involving the CIA, the military, private businessmen, and politicians.

Even a sexy blonde secretary with an amazing eighties hairstyle and an unwavering loyalty to her boss.

Like I've said before, I believed in Colonel north, and there was a very solid and very valid reason that he must have been doing this.

And sometimes you have to go above the written law.

Now, myself and millions of Americans would see and hear the aftermath play out on our tvs and radios.

An up close view of our political system in action, the effectiveness of our congressional oversight.

A chance for our elected leaders to step up and take an ethical and moral stance to uphold the credibility of our constitution.

And today we're going to talk about the United States constitution.

You keep using the horde.

I do not think it means what you think it means.

What?

We got nothing.

Arrogance and grandstanding by politicians on both sides of the aisle.

Party over country.

Ambition over constitution.

Sound bites with rehearsed spontaneity designed to play on the evening news.

And before the gavel slammed to end the hearing, there was already one casualty of the Iran Contra affair.

My faith in democracy and my desire to devote my life to law and the justice system.

Nick's business.

You should thank God they got a chance to get away from this town full of dum dums.

We don't get food again.

I drove by the White House and worked my way down Pennsylvania Avenue.

I had one more stop before heading home for the night.

One last place where I can take refuge in this chaotic world.

Take a ride to tower records.

It's not just a destination, it's a real trip.

Take the ride to tower.

Uh oh.

Can I help you?

I remember my parents taking me to the record store in the mall when I was a kid.

It was one of the very first places they would let me hang out alone while they went shopping.

I felt so grown up, so free.

As I wandered the store, spending hours looking at album covers, what I found was my own musical identity.

And when I became older, I would save my allowance all week and ride my bicycles Saturday morning to Oz.

Rock music on Central Avenue in Cedarhurst.

There I would spend it all on Beatles Records.

I feel bad that future generations will never know the simple joy of walking into a record store and buying an album.

The Tower records in DC is on Pennsylvania Avenue in Foggy Bottom.

It has two floors and a great selection of books, magazines, dvd's, video games, and of course, music.

The diverse DC crowd that shuffles in makes people watching just as entertaining as browsing the music.

Students from all over the world, diplomats and their families, punk rockers and hip hoppers.

An announcement came over the speaker.

The store would be closing in 20 minutes.

I was in the world music department, in no rush to leave.

I was reading the album credits on the back of a reggae cd produced by Doctor Dredd.

Ross Records, Washington DC.

There's a record company based here in Washington.

I thought, wait, there's a guy named Doctor Dredd producing reggae albums here in Washington.

This was a sign.

This was truly a sign.

There was no Ross records in the telephone book, but there was a real authentic sound in Maryland, right outside DC.

I spent all week trying to reach Doctor Dredd, but my messages were unreturned.

Then I remembered my father telling me, if you ever want to reach someone important at a company call on Friday after five.

on Friday, I made the call.

And guess what?

Doctor Dredd answered.

And when Doctor Dredd asked me why a justice student was interested in working for a reggae company, I isn't reggae music all about equal rights and justice?

I thought it was funny, but the phone was silent on the other end.

And then he asked if I'm interested in coming in for an interview.

Ross Records was located in a nondescript office warehouse park, about 25 minutes outside DC in the suburbs of Maryland.

I don't know if it was by design, but if you weren't looking for it, you wouldn't find it.

When I pulled up to the address, there was a large bay door open and I could hear muted reggae music playing from inside.

As I got closer, I could see there was a guy with thinning hair in an oversized sweatshirt stuffing envelopes.

I noticed he looked a little like the New York Mets manager, Joe Torrey.

I walked in with a little attitude.

I'm here to see Doctor Dredd.

He stood up and extended his arm and gave me a fist bump.

I'm Doctor Dredd.

Gary Himmelfarb.

Nice to meet you.

I'm not sure what I was expecting.

Maybe a Rastaman in a smoky recording studio draped in reggae colors.

But this was a very large warehouse, neatly arranged aisles of organized records, cds, and DVD's.

There was a stairway which led up to a suite of offices.

The whole operation looked professional and impressive.

I liked Doctor Dredd immediately.

First of all, any business owner that would spend Saturday morning stuffing envelopes was a real hustler, and I respected that also.

He was very likable.

And the more he spoke, the more I could relate to him.

Well, I was born in Washington, DC, and that's pretty much where I was raised.

Unlike most people in the Washington suburbs who went to college because their parents wanted them to be doctors and lawyers, I got it on an airplane and went to Columbia, South America.

When I came back to America and someone played for me catch a fire by Bob Marley, you know, I was kind of getting political.

And when I heard that Bob Marley record his message and what he was talking about and being in the third world and sing that, you know, the whole world was in the suburbs of Washington where I grew up.

And that, you know, people suffered.

There was sufferation.

They had to struggle to get their daily bread.

And the music and Bob's message, it just completely resonated with how I felt.

He was just a kid from the suburbs who grew up in a sheltered environment, but had a desire to explore the world and break out of his comfort zone.

He was not going to be happy just observing life.

He wanted to be part of it.

So he decided to take a trip to Jamaica.

Well, I think trip is the wrong word.

It was a pilgrimage, and I was really getting interested in this culture that was coming out of Jamaica.

Think about it.

This small island in the Caribbean has given birth to Rastafari, which is a lifestyle that has gone around the whole world, even in China, everywhere.

And it's not a religion.

It's a way of living.

And then reggae music, all from this little island in the Caribbean.

I didn't decide to do this.

It just happened.

And, you know, Ross means real, authentic sound.

So I had made a commitment within myself to really bring the real, authentic, positive music of Jamaica to the world.

You know, we do what we do day to day to make our lives work.

But, you know, Ja has set a destiny for this brief time we inhabit, you know, the skin, flesh and bones that we're in.

And the more I listened, the more I learned.

As the conversation progressed, he asked me how I got into reggae.

I smiled and said, Debbie Schwartze.

My story also begins in the tropics.

As a young teenager, my family would spend Christmas vacations in the US Virgin Islands, where my uncle had an apartment.

Sapphire beach was an idyllic resort that sat on the east end of the island of St.

Thomas, and Debbie's family, who is also from Long island, had a place there.

She was my first crush, and we really hit it off.

But unfortunately for me, just as friends and the only thing I enjoyed as much as hanging out with her was listening to the house reggae band as they played their nightly shows at the resort bar.

I would literally sit on the edge of the stage and just watch the musicians play all night.

They would begin with steel drums and a limbo show starring a local girl named Jenny and her little brother Coochie.

They would both shimmy under a flaming bar set on two Coca Cola bottles.

By the end of the night, kids went back to their rooms.

The band kicked into pop music, reggae and soul.

I would refuse to leave until I heard the band play the same song I requested every night.

It was a sweet reggae love song called your house, and both the lyrics and music touched me in an inexplicable way.

I was young in love, and the combination of this song, the tropical ocean breeze, and beautiful Debbie Schwartze created a complicated mix of emotions that would leave me with chills up my spine.

One morning during the vacation, my father took me and my brother snorkeling to a local public beach at Koki Point.

It was the holidays and the beach was packed with locals and there was barely any room for us to put our towels.

We were the only tourists on the beach, and the atmosphere was festive and buzzing with energy.

There was an uplifting vibe that made Sapphire beach seem stuffy and boring.

As I walked to the snack bar to get my drink of choice, a virgin strawberry daiquiri, I could hear a familiar song coming from a large boombox that was surrounded by a group of rastas.

It was the same song I requested every night from the band and a tall, skinny guy with long dreadlocks introduced himself as the roots Mandev, that steel pulse from England, he said with a thick island accent.

Then he offered to sell me the cassette for $5.

It was hot and I was thirsty, but I made the decision to spend my daiquiri money on that cassette, and it was the best $5 I spent in my life.

Not only did it have music from Steel Pulse, but an array of reggae royalty, including Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and Jimmy Cliff.

When I looked at the label on the cassette, there was one word written in faded black magic marker.

Rootsland.

I looked at Doctor Dredd and told him that cassette was with me during love and heartbreak, tragedy and triumph, before wearing out.

And even after the tape was long gone, I still had the love for the music.

I totally nailed the interview.

And although I was reminded that getting hired for an unpaid internship is not the greatest accomplishment, I was pumped.

Before I left, Doctor Dredd wanted to emphasize that one of my responsibilities was going to be answering phones and taking orders for their mail order catalog, which is one of the biggest in the country.

But all day long, we get calls on our toll free line from fans not looking to place orders.

They just love reggae and want to talk about music and life.

We get a lot of calls from prisons where reggae is very big and people have a lot of time on their hands.

We get calls from people going through all kinds of events in their life, and reggae has touched them in miraculous ways, and they just want to express it.

There's a cancer survivor from Minnesota who says he was cured by Bob Marley.

This guy in California who believes the CIA is out to destroy reggae.

And of course, there's Brian from Colorado.

And we appreciate their love and passion for the music, but we tell them to call back on our 301 line.

That was the first time I heard the name Brian from Colorado.

But it wouldn't be the last.

When I tell you that times are getting critical I don't want you to worry no, I never want you to fret there is nothing going on that's sadly and difficult only a few old parasites who wanna run things to a wreck but if you think Jaja is sleeping then you better think he would have never make no devil mash them paradise when there's a whole barrage of righteous people out there and we ain't given up no way yes, there's a whole barrage of righteous people in town and we ain't going down no, we never going down no way, no way hear what I say cause you know we're ready.