Latest news with #Rastafarians
Daily Mail
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Peter Andre accuses critics of 'not knowing what they're offended by' after they condemned his Jamaican accent in 'profoundly disrespectful' new movie - as it goes on release in the UK
Peter Andre has slammed critics of his new film for 'not knowing what they're offended by' after it was dubbed 'profoundly disrespectful'. In Jafaican, the Australian singer, 52, sport dreadlocked hair typically favoured by Rastafarians while starring as Gary Buckle, a con artist pretending to be a Jamaican gangster. While faking a West Indian accent, the character must master Jamaican culture in 21 days in order to execute a fraud which will help him pay the £35,000 he needs for his grandmother's care. But the film, which Peter believes is 'funny', was not met with anything like the reception its producers would have hoped for as fans branded it 'tone-deaf' and 'disrespectful'. In his first interview since the film's UK release on Wednesday, Peter has defended his first starring role and accused critics of 'not knowing what they're offended by.' From A-list scandals and red carpet mishaps to exclusive pictures and viral moments, subscribe to the Daily Mail's new Showbiz newsletter to stay in the loop. The 52-year-old told Judge Rob Rinder and Yasmin Alibhai-Brown on the Jeremy Vine show: 'I think there are three types of people. 'There are people that get offended about anything. There are people genuinely offended and their voices should definitely be heard - I always think that - but you've also got an area of people that are offended, but when you ask them what they're offended about, they don't know.' Peter too mentioned the fact that he suffered racism during his younger years as a Greek boy emigrating Down Under. 'I'm a Greek kid that grew up in Australia in the late seventies,' he said. 'We were picked on, we were called greasy s**t. I mean, even our teachers used to call us that. We went through horrific racism. 'Now when I watch a film about someone playing a Greek guy with the curly hair, the big nose, the medallion, the hairy chest, and he's coming up and he's doing the Greek accent, I find that hilarious. 'If someone is saying something horrific about our culture, I find that racist. So for me, I feel things are a bit muddied. You know, this is comedy. I'm acting in a film. I loved it. It's the kind of films that I loved watching when I was growing up.' Peter attended Jafaican's trailer at the Gold Coast Film Festival on May 9 along with his co-stars looking suave in a black tux. The film released in the UK on Wednesday exclusively at Odeon, with Peter arriving for its London premiere supported by his family. Attending the VIP private screening at Genesis Cinema, Junior, 19, and Princess, 17, walked beside Peter and posed for photos on the red carpet. He looked smart in a beige linen blazer, which he teamed with a matching pair of trousers and and a white shirt. After watching the movie, or its trailer, a number of fans took to X to express their views about Jafaican. They wrote: 'Peter Andre pretends to be a Jamaican in his new film Jafaican? Lost for words', 'Peter Andre starring as the lead character of a film called JAFAICAN where he's pretending to be a Jamaican and wearing a dreadlock wig is not something I was expecting to see in the year of our Lord 2025 but here we are...', 'Jafaican is one of them films that is soo bad that is unintentionally can be funny. There was one or two moments that were funny but it was so c**p that it actually landed. The acting was ridiculously awful. Wasn't boring tho. He did it for his dear old man', 'The film was really entertaining funny, well-paced, and most importantly, it respected the culture. No forced clichés, just an authentic vibe. It felt like the team behind it actually cared about getting things right.'
Boston Globe
15-05-2025
- Health
- Boston Globe
Parents' religious beliefs must be followed in temporary DCF custody cases, SJC says
Advertisement The SJC said it was resting its decision on the state constitution while acknowledging that parents also had a parallel First Amendment right to practice their faith as they see fit. The court said it had never before decided how to balance the parents' 'residual constitutional rights' with DCF's 'compelling interest' to protect the health of children in its temporary custody by getting them vaccinated. The SJC noted Thursday's ruling reached a starkly different conclusion than a The key issue in the current case, the court said, was that placement with DCF in this case - and others like it - was short-term, not a permanent extinguishing of the couple's parental rights. Advertisement 'We are aware of no case extinguishing parental free exercise rights in this context,' Kafker wrote. 'A temporary loss of custody is just that.' The high court ruling came in the case of a child called Eve whose parents The DCF sought custody before Eve was born, and in the Juvenile Court litigation that followed said they were going to have the child vaccinated in keeping with a pediatric standard of care. The parents objected on the grounds that Rastafarians do not rely on Western medicine (except in life or death situations) and would give a child herbs to treat a headache or give elderberries and a bath to a child with a high fever, the SJC said. 'In the parents view, 'you're not supposed to put anything inside your body outside of what nature has already given you because it goes against God's plan.' ' Kafker wrote. The child was vaccinated, but the SJC ruling prevents DCF from going forward with others. In the decision, the SJC noted that state law contains a religious exemption from vaccination for parents whose children are not in temporary DCF custody. Further, while DCF claimed it was acting in the best interest of Eve if she were protected against significant illnesses through vaccination, the child protection agency, at the same time, did not require the three older children to be vaccinated. Advertisement 'The department has not demonstrated that leaving this child unvaccinated would substantially hinder the department's compelling interests,' Kafker wrote. John R. Ellement can be reached at
The Guardian
25-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘They excavated a nightclub!': uncovering Black British history beyond London
When Guardian arts and culture correspondent Lanre Bakare was growing up, he learned the same Black British history as many of us did. It was a series of singular events: the docking of the Windrush in 1948, unrest in Notting Hill or Brixton, the murder of Stephen Lawrence. All important, but all firmly focused on the capital. Now Lanre has written a book about the Thatcher years, looking at the stories that are less often told: those that took place outside London, in Liverpool – with the oldest Black community in the UK – or in his home town of Bradford. There he learned about George Lindo, a Black man framed by corrupt police officers in the 1970s. When he was jailed, Bradford's Black community rallied round and their dedicated action led to him being released and given compensation, which was incredibly rare at the time. In Manchester, he finds a secret history of house music, and a groundbreaking nightclub that defied a colour bar in the city. In Birmingham he looks at the harassment of Rastafarians by police, and an excoriating TV show about the BBC by the sociologist Stuart Hall. It's all part of a rich history that deserves to be heard, he tells Helen Pidd. 'These historic communities that have been established have had a huge impact on the country. They've reshaped the country, culturally, politically and socially.'
The Guardian
16-04-2025
- The Guardian
We Were There by Lanre Bakare review
Lanre Bakare's first book is not just a work of history – it is a necessary and urgent recalibration of the way we think about Black Britain. Too often, mainstream accounts flatten the story, centring it on London, reducing the complexities of life beyond the capital to footnotes. Bakare, a Guardian arts and culture correspondent, challenges this myopia head-on, presenting an expansive, deeply researched work that insists on a broader, richer understanding of Black life. He travels to Bradford, Cardiff, Birmingham and Edinburgh, pulling together art, politics and social movements, with a vision of community life in the 70s and 80s that feels both urgent and long overdue. Bakare opens with northern soul, an unexpected starting point, since it's mostly associated with working-class white youth. But in tracing its rise and the spaces where it flourished – clubs, underground venues, dance halls – and giving voice to its Black devotees, he paints a deft portrait of the social tensions of the time. It's an approach he deploys throughout the book, using cultural moments to explore deeper historical currents. The story of George Lindo, for example, framed for robbery in 1978, is more than an individual tragedy – it is a devastating indictment of Britain's racialised criminal justice system. Readers may know Lindo's name from Linton Kwesi Johnson's poetry ('Dem frame up George Lindo up in Bradford town / But de Bradford blaks dem a rally round'); Bakare reintroduces him in full detail, making his wrongful imprisonment a stark reminder of historical continuities in abusive policing. In a chapter on Scotland, Bakare dismantles the fiction that racism was always an 'English disease', focusing on the 1989 murder of Axmed Abuukar Sheekh in Edinburgh by far-right football hooligans. The subsequent activism of the Lothian Black Forum, which pressured authorities to recognise the racial nature of the attack, becomes a pivot point in the country's anti-racist history. From Handsworth, Birmingham, we get a compelling account of how Rastafarians were demonised in Thatcher's Britain. Bakare traces the genealogy of these arguments to the 1950s, demonstrating the complicity of both the state and the press in shaping public fear. One of the book's strengths is that it reads less like a conventional history and more like a documentary, moving fluidly between historical events, cultural movements and personal narratives. The effect is pleasantly cinematic, as if each chapter is an episode in a larger series about resilience and resistance. The discussion of the first National Black Art Convention – featuring figures such as Marlene Smith, Donald Rodney, Claudette Johnson and Keith Piper – is a case in point. Bakare does not simply recount the event; he embeds it in the broader political and artistic scene, making clear its impact on modern art. What makes We Were There particularly relevant is the way it draws attention to the past's ongoing reverberations. A chapter on the Reno, Manchester's legendary nightclub, leads to a discussion of the Fifth Pan-African Congress, an event that remains crucial in global Black history but is barely acknowledged in Britain's national memory. Elsewhere, he draws a direct line from the Black Environmental Network – founded nearly 40 years ago by Julian Agyeman, a British-Ghanaian secondary school teacher from Hull who took his students on field trips to the Lake District – to today's Black-led environmental justice movements. This is history not as something distant and concluded, but still unfolding. Bakare's achievement has been to fill in at least some of the gaps and silences in the historical record, to put Black Britons back where they have always been. They were indeed there: in the countryside, in the nations and regions, in towns and cities, makers of culture and community – even if the popular imagination has tended to edit them out. Sign up to Bookmarks Discover new books and learn more about your favourite authors with our expert reviews, interviews and news stories. Literary delights delivered direct to you after newsletter promotion We Were There: How Black Culture, Resistance and Community Shaped Modern Britain by Lanre Bakare is published by Bodley Head (£22). To support the Guardian and the Observer buy a copy at Delivery charges may apply.
The Guardian
04-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘They didn't call us for Live Aid': the stars behind Black Britain's forgotten charity record
The Ethiopian famine of the early 1980s was one of the defining news stories of the decade, an exposure of the stark divide between developed and developing nations, still referred to at the time as the Third World. It is a received wisdom that the general public in Britain learned about the crisis when shocking images of emaciated men, women and children were shown on BBC news reports. This is not entirely true. In fact, plenty of Rastafarians were already aware of the situation. The east African country was their spiritual home – many in the movement viewed its former emperor Haile Selassie as their messiah – and a place free from the iniquities of the west. 'A lot of Rastafarians went to Ethiopia [before they] came to London,' says the musician and campaigner Leon Leiffer. 'I knew many of them, and there was a rumour going around that things were really bad because of the drought. We heard it like that before the mainstream media. And I had the idea to do something to help before we saw anything on the BBC.' Leiffer, a member of the influential reggae vocal harmony group the Blackstones, is the great social activist you may never have heard of. He was the driving force behind Brafa (British Reggae Artists Famine Appeal), an ensemble that featured, among others, renowned Jamaican vocalist Dennis Brown, roots heroes Aswad and Janet Kay, the queen of lovers rock, that uniquely British strain of romantic reggae. This month marks the 40th anniversary of the release of the group's charity single, Let's Make Africa Green Again, created to raise money for famine relief efforts in Ethiopia at around the same time as another, far more notorious charity single. 'We were always singing about Africa, so we thought: let's put our money where our mouth is,' Leiffer, a friendly 72-year-old with braided grey hair, says over tea in his front room in Leyton, east London. He had initially decided to stage a concert to raise money for famine relief but finding a venue and sponsorship proved too difficult, so the fallback position was to make a record, the proceeds of which would be sent to Ethiopia via Save the Children. Leiffer, who came as a teenager from Jamaica to Britain and pursued a career in music, duly assembled a team consisting of several Rastafarian artists, such as singer Gene Rondo, drummer Jah Bunny and bassist Elroy Bailey, as well as vocalists including Leiffer's wife Fay Addison and his Blackstones bandmates Tony Douglas and Ken Kendricks. This was very much a grassroots operation, and word spread of the plan to make a charity record at popular community centres such as Roots Pool in Hackney, east London, where, as Leiffer recalls, you were as likely to see reggae royalty such as Dennis Brown as you were a 'notorious local gangster'. One musician alerted another, and Brafa soon put together an all-star UK reggae cast. Finding a studio willing to give free session time was a problem, but Leiffer and Rondo lucked out through a chance encounter with Eddy Grant, the innovative Guyanese singer who had had a big hit with Electric Avenue. Grant agreed to lend the group his own east London studio, and with that manna from heaven the project motored forward. Leiffer and Rondo combined lyrics from their previous songs, one of which hailed Africa as 'paradise', and they soon had the tune for Let's Make Africa Green Again. 'On the day of the recording I said to everybody: 'Let go of your ego!'' recalls Leiffer. 'Any artist was welcome, all they had to do was come to the studio and take part. And there were people singing who had never sung on a record before. People walked by, like at carnival time, and we'd say come in, we want you to sing on the chorus. It was an open house, a special thing. We had all kinds of folk with us. There were over 200 people involved, including local schoolkids.' Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion That sense of inclusion was pivotal in Brafa. As far as Leiffer was concerned, the priority was for everybody, both in the reggae and wider Black British community, to pull together and do their bit regardless of who they were. Needless to say, Band Aid had captured the world's attention in November 1984 with Do They Know It's Christmas? but Leiffer did not feel they were in competition with that song. However, on the vexed issue of the lack of Black British representation in the aforementioned project and its follow-up concert Live Aid – notwithstanding the presence in the latter of pop-jazz star Sade – he has strong views, and believes the argument that reggae artists were simply not big enough to make the bill doesn't cut any ice. 'I'd say Bob Geldof and Midge Ure have good hearts,' says Leiffer. 'They did fantastic. But to have Aswad in the international charts, and [lovers rock star] Trevor Walters, Eddy Grant, Janet Kay all enjoying major commercial success and not be involved … They didn't call us for Live Aid and they didn't call us for the recording. We had gifted, talented people and we had something to offer, and I think they should have reached out to us. Soon after our record was made, I was coming from the BBC and saw Geldof walking to Radio 1 and I said: 'Wh'appen Bob?' He acknowledged me but made no attempt to stop. I got the feeling of a brush-off.' While Black newspapers such as Caribbean Times and The Voice (who had offered up their office, with an all-important fax machine, for practical help), and music magazines such as Black Echoes and Blues & Soul ran features, there was scant coverage in the national press. Leiffer remembers an article 'the size of a postage stamp' in the Sun, though he has fond memories of appearing on Janice Long's Radio 1 show to promote the single. Despite selling well to reggae fans, the song did not make the national pop chart. Still, Brafa soldiered on and finally was able to hold a benefit concert in Shoreditch Park, east London in May 1986 that featured many of the artists on Let's Make Africa Green Again. It drew a crowd of more than 10,000 people, raising £8,000. Although one headline called it 'Live Aid reggae style', the event also showcased Black British culture in the broadest sense, including appearances by notable sports people such as Olympic sprinter Mike McFarlane and boxer Dennis Andries. The concert countered the largely negative image that clung to Black British youth just a few years after the Brixton and Toxteth riots, which may well have contributed to the mainstream media snub of Brafa. Some recognition did eventually arrive, though. In 2021, the forecourt of the Britannia Leisure Centre on the border of Shoreditch Park was named Brafa Square in honour of Leiffer and his collective. Today, he is still focused on making music and the Blackstones recently enjoyed radio play on US reggae stations with their single Ting a Ling. Looking back, he feels a sense of achievement in what he, Gene Rondo, who died in 1994, and others did. 'We were well received, maybe not on the level of Band Aid, which I understand,' he says. 'We could have had more coverage. Of what we did, though, I am hugely proud. I remember the struggle, and all the good times.'
