Green Neon

21 The Aces

Nikos brought his cassette recorder along with a carafe of water and three glasses. They drank greedily. It was hot and even diving made you thirsty. Nikos wanted to put Tom (and maybe himself) in a particularly good light with Sophia. He thought a song performed together would surely impress her.

"Israelites?" he asked Tom who hadn't heard the song for a few days. Tom agreed happily:

"Yes man, Israelites!"

Nikos started the tape and the two boys sang along to the lyrics. Sophia was infected by their good mood and moved to the beat of the music with Tom and Nikos. When the song was over she said:

"What a sad song. What's the name of the singer? He sounds funny."

Tom and Nikos looked at each other in disbelief. Sad? The song was like the soundtrack of their friendship, they both loved it and Sophia was trying to tell them it was a sad song?

"Rewind Nikos," said Tom.

This time they listened without singing along. 'How can you sing these lyrics without understanding them?' Tom wondered, realizing that Sophia was right. The story of the man who struggles to support his family, works hard for his boss and still loses everything, who is afraid of having to become a criminal to make ends meet. Really not a happy song but still a song to dance to.

Nikos sometimes bought an English music newspaper, the New Musical Express, and was therefore able to tell the others about the singer. His name was Desmond Dekker and his band was called The Aces. They came from the Caribbean island of Jamaica, which, like Cyprus and Malta, had gained independence from Britain a few years earlier.

On this island, where there were a few extremely rich white families and a great many extremely poor black families, music was successfully produced, which became increasingly well-known internationally via London. I was called Bluebeat, sometimes Ska or Reggae, depending on whether it was fast or slow.

Some artists from Jamaica were very successful in Great Britain, and thus also in Europe as a whole. It happened again and again that singers from this small island found themselves on the same level as the Beatles, Elvis or the Bee Gees in the British charts.

This Desmond Dekker, as Nikos recounted, was a tailor by profession, but he had been the lead singer of The Aces for a number of years. Now „Israelites" was a No. 1 hit in England. Dekker had been a student in a school perhaps unique in the world. In addition to general and technical content, music was taught there, and many Jamaican musicians who established an international career had attended this Catholic school, which was called Alpha Boys School.

"The Beatles made a song about him, 'Obladi, Oblada,'" Nikos added, singing the opening line. While the latest hits from the British charts were playing in the background, the three youths discussed what opportunities poor people had, especially if they were black, to improve their living conditions. After all, not every black American could become a boxing world champion, or every Jamaican a musician.

Sophia compared Jamaica's situation to that of Greece. Here, too, there was a small, very rich upper class and a large, poor lower class. Unlike Jamaica, racial differences played little role, although Albanian migrant workers and gypsies were not treated particularly well. Most of what was once the Turkish minority had been "relocated" to Turkey.

In Greece, many families were hoping to enable at least one child to attend secondary school and, if possible, to study at university, and the number of schools had also increased, at least in the cities. For students, the problem became more apparent after school or university education, because no suitable job was then available. Many Greeks therefore emigrated, just as many Jamaicans emigrated to Great Britain or the USA given the poor prospects on the island.