Kingston Noir Quotes

“A lot of people say they want to leave this city to go somewhere else. Not me. I love this place for what it is. Ugly and pretty. Rough and tender. Chaotic and smooth. Loving and murderous. All of it.”
― Kwame Dawes, Kingston Noir

“Soft-Paw did sound almost sad when he tell the bwoy-dem that he had a feeling he would love to always see August Town through the lens of the white gyal’s camera because he see things that he never see in all his twenty-nine years – a kind of loveliness in the people and the place.”
― Kei Miller, Kingston Noir

“A larceny and a missing. Me ears-ring missing and she larcen it. That gal just buss ‘way like kite. She is a little duty gyal, that one. Never take no instruction from her mother. From she born, me say, this little one, this little one going turn slut like her auntie. Sometime me wonder if is fi her own or fi me. Anyway, she gone from Wednesday morning. Leave out before the sun even rise and is not the first time neither. But this time she take me ears-ring and me Julia of Paris shoes. Me no business bout the shoes. Imagine, she take off to go school from four in the morning? I mean to say, who love school so much that they leave four hour early? Me can smoke in here?”
― Marlon James, Kingston Noir

“You see this dub thing, I was the one who invented it in 1965. People think it came later. But sometimes when I got a song to mix I used to just rub out the lyrics and remake it, and add in all kind of echoes and reverb and all that. Cause to tell you the truth, that is how I was seeing myself–like somebody whose voice got rubbed out.”
― Colin Channer, Kingston Noir

“Yes, I am a fat man, but don't sorry for me. In Jamaica a woman like a big man. She can see he is prosperous, and that he can be in charge. People call you "boss" before they even know who you are. "Big man," "Boss," "Officer," "King," and my favorite, "My Lord." When a woman call you, "My Lord," that is a sweetness.”
― kwame dawes, Kingston Noir