Sing I a Song of Black Freedom

"Sing I a Song of Black Freedom" is a collection of poems and chants by Nana Farika Berhane that record and promotes consciousness of the Pan African vision of African peoples in the Diaspora towards freedom from mental and physical slavery. Her work advocates African self-love and peace within themselves through the realization of their unification with those on the continent and the establishment of a union government in Africa. It is written from the perspective of an African Jamaican woman poet who has sojourned in the Rastafarian, Garveyite, Maroon and general Pan African communities in Jamaica, the Eastern Caribbean and the United States of America. Nana Farika's poetry takes us into an inside journey of the reality of her world. She brings alive the word sound of her island's landscape and the color, vigor and danger of Kingston. She records historical moments that she has witnessed in Black America and in Jamaica, utilizing her background as a journalist to document them through her poetic expertise. Her poetry is illuminated by quotations from the leading Pan Africanists and Civil Rights leaders in her life. She shares through poetry and her essay recorded in her prologue, the cultural resolution that took place in Jamaica during the cultural revolution that took place in Jamaica during the seventies, spearheaded by Rastafari, the eye of the storm in which she found herself playing a leading role through her poetry, plays, fictional memoir (The Story of Sandra Shaw) and media articles. Her poems have influenced the birth and growth of reggae music and have been influenced by the words of singers in that genre. The present collection spans three decades of Nana Farika's poetic work. She began writing the poems in this collection during the seventies while she was preparing for the 6th Pan African Congress in Tanzania. It was a joyful time for activists in Jamaica as the momentum for justice and equaity was given a big push by Dr. Walter Rodney, a teacher of African History at the University of the West Indies, a site that was fermenting students zealous for social change for the grass roots people in Jamaica. The marriage of Pan Afrcanists, sociaists and Rastafari through "the Abeng group" born from the mobilization that the riots against the banning of Dr. Walter Rodney from the island of Jamaica had caused. Mrs. Amy Jacques Garvey, wife of the famous Pan African leader, presided as Queen Mother over this Black consciousness era and a quote from her documents her vision of the role of the poet in the awakening of the spirit of Black peoples towards nationhood. "Sing I a Song of Black Freedom" was first published in 1979, in Palo Alto, California. Many of the poems in this collection were influenced by the Civil Rights and Black Arts movements in the USA as well as the Jamaican cultural revolution of former colonial subjects using literature to express their journey towards breaking the chains that once mentally bound them. The poet's father was a follower of Pan African leader Marcus Garvey. Many of the poems are well known in Pan African circles and are being used to upkeep their quest for freedom, self-determination and to awaken African consciousness among African American people. The book is divided into sections marking the new millennium, the nineties, a section of Black love and poems of the seventies. The book reveals Nana Farika's command of writing readable Jamaican patois as a former student of Jamaican folklorist icon Louise Bennett and of Rastafari speech known as Rastafari Word Sound.