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It meant everything that my parents took us to those parties. There were a few reggae clubs in Toronto at this time, but the burden of who would take care of us, their children, was real. While my parents did not know it then, they were creating a sense of community at these parties. Lyrics like, “Get up in the morning, slaving for bread, sir/ So that every mouth can be fed/Poor, me Israelites,” still ring out in my mind as I recall some elder at one of the parties grabbing my arm and forcing me and my sister to dance because they believed that music had to be felt, not just heard. I have vivid memories of hearing Bob Marley, Gregory Issacs, Desmond Dekker, Burning Spear, and so many more for the first time. The upstairs was reserved for tables lined with oxtail and curry goat, rice and peas, as well as white rum for the adults, juice for the kids. Known as ‘bashments,’ these were primarily reggae and calypso-only parties that were accompanied by large speakers that stretched from the floor to almost the ceiling of the basement.
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Because there were few babysitters who would watch Black children at that time, many parents, like mine, brought their children along to these gatherings. These parties mirrored the kinds of parties that my parents and their friends held back home. In the absence of a gathering place, the basements of their homes – many had purchased bungalows or semi-detached dwellings with large basements – became spaces of Caribbean culture, often in the dead of winter. As more people from the Caribbean moved east during that time, they experienced not only pervasive racism and discrimination, but also a dearth of places to gather and enjoy their music and culture, which was primarily reggae and calypso (which became soca in the 1990s). Before the 1970s and 1980s, the suburb’s demographics were majority white. In the 1970s, people from the Caribbean, primarily Jamaicans, left Toronto’s downtown core for the sprawling subdivisions of Scarborough.
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But instead of young people occupying the basement of an elder’s house, it was my parents and their friends holding parties at each other’s houses. This video was familiar to me because my childhood was spent at parties just like it. Eventually, the elder brings the party to a close when the banging on the furnace once again causes him to leave his plate of food. At one point, a young boy in his pajamas joins the party, briefly, until he is escorted out. Throughout the video, camera crosscuts depict a large group of young Black people dancing, tables filled with cooked food, and an unfinished basement with its dim lighting, low ceiling and crates of vinyl records.Īt some point, the elder leaves the table, descends the stairs into the basement, grabs the mic to tell the crowd of young people with his Caribbean accent, “Stop banging on the damn furnace!” On the main floor, he greets an older Black man eating a plate of cooked food at a table while playing dominos with other elders. Directed by Toronto’s own Director X, the video begins with Sean Paul exiting his car in the middle of winter and walking toward a house where a party is being held in the basement. In 2002, reggae artist Sean Paul shot the video for his song ‘ Get Busy/Like Glue,’ in Vaughan.