By Silja J.A. Talvi

arijuana is "brainfood," explains internationally-acclaimed dancehall reggae singer Everton Blender.

"Herb is a clean part of life," he says emphatically. "Jah made the earth from a longtime ago—and [he gave] us three things on the face of the earth to live by: music, the earth, and the herb."

For Blender, a dedicated husband and father who still makes his home in Clarendon, Jamaica, the criminalization of marijuana is tantamount to fighting against the "natural way of the earth." Like most Rastafarians who smoke or ingest marijuana, Blender's consumption of cannabis sativa is primarily viewed in a spiritual, not recreational, context.

"The Almighty put it on the earth to keep 'I and I' together," he says, employing the Rastafarian term which serves as shorthand for unifying, spiritual framework that can bind human beings together across linguistic, cultural and regional differences. "Herb is not just something to roll up in a spliff and smoke. It has a certain power onto it." With his finger on the pulse of modernized dancehall rhythms, Blender has made it the focus of his artistic endeavors to recapture the positive and often revolutionary messages of Rastafarian reggae artists.

On his latest album, Visionary (Heartbeat, 2001), the forward-thinking Blender delivers poetically populist and pacifist material on songs like "Why Do We Have to War" and "Ghetto People Song," alongside clever put-downs of aggressive, dominant behavior in "War Monger Man" and "Slackness," in collaboration with fellow Jamaican singer Beenie Man.

U.S. reggae audiences first got to know Blender through two well-received releases, including his '94 debut full-length album, Lift Up Your Head, and the '96 collection of singles, A Piece of The Blender. Blender's artistry matured further with the '99 release of Rootsman Credential, Live at the White River Reggae Bash (Heartbeat, 2000), and last summer's Visionary. Taken together, the albums have all but cemented Blender's role in the vanguard of what has come to be known as 'cultural' or 'conscious' dancehall music.

"You haffi keep singin' good songs so that you can elevate the people," says Blender, "to take them out of the dark and put them into the light."

The one-time carpenter, construction worker and decorator, Blender was born in the Jamaican parish of Clarendon, but grew up in the tough environs of Kingston 13. Blender made his first recording in 1980, and then again in 1985, with the encouragement of leading Jamaican singers Garnett Silk and Tony Rebel. But, for a time, concerns about how he could feed and provide for his family overrode artistic ambitions. For the family-centered Blender, the fear of subjecting his wife and children to a life of economic deprivation kept him working in blue-collar trades until one day in 1990 when, he says, a kind of divine instruction changed his life.

"I just heard a voice saying, 'Everton Blender, I give you a voice to sing and you're doin' this kind of work? I will take [your voice] away if you stay here.'"

Success was hardly immediate, Blender is quick to explain, and his family fell on hard times until the 1992 release of the autobiographical "Create a Sound" made Blender an overnight Jamaican sensation.

In the years following, Blender struck up recording agreements with Jamaican and U.S. labels, finally launching his own label five years ago, Blend Dem Productions, to be able to promote the release of more cultural dancehall in Jamaica and abroad.

"I make sure my spirituality is over my physicality," says Blender of the principles that guide his personal and artistic decisions. "We're not here to judge anyone, but we can see the reality with our own eyes."

That reality, Blender adds emphatically, includes the understanding that marijuana can serve an important purpose as a medicinal, therapeutic and enlightening herb.

The notion of marijuana as a drug on par with heroin, cocaine or speed is preposterous, Blender insists: "You plant the herb from a seed and it manifest. How can you call it drugs if you don't add anything to it, you don't mix anything with it, it just start from a seed and becomes a big, pretty collie bud?"

"Things would be better today if [we] could free the herb," he says. "Why can I carry in six bottles of rum and all the spirits mi can think of, but mi can't carry two pounds of herb? Alcohol and cocaine kill the spirit—but herb is the healing of the nation."

08.24.02