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Winston's Blog
Winston Cole a.k.a King Cole, a.k.a Winston George
The following article was writen by Wendy Glauser about Winston Cole. It has been first published here on May 25, 2005.
On a sleepy downtown street in a small Canadian town, the smell of ganga and the sound of roots reggae float up from the basement of a store called "Well Charged."
"Get your THC levels up! We're going!" Aloz, the band's keyboarder, calls out. Winston Cole, the band's Jamaican front man and only non-white member, passes around the joint he rolled using Bob Marley papers. "Give me some belly on that gee-tar," Cole yells at 18-year-old Mike, mirroring him while playing air guitar. "Whop, whop, whop," Cole chortles from the back of his throat. Cole's dreads hang down to his waist, and the one that hasn't been lopped off in car doors or "what have you" goes past his kneecap. As he sings, Cole stomps his feet, twists at the shoulders, and throws his arms up and down, as if he's trying to rile up a crowd. When he's not singing he pulls away from the mike and doubles over like he's laughing. "When we're rocking you, peeeople, peeeeople, we're rocking too," he bellows. At the end of the song, he goes around to the band members, pounding fists with them.
Cole has been trying to turn white townies into Jamaicans since he moved to Guelph, Ontario from Toronto six years ago. Cole first came to Canada in 1967, after being chosen by the Jamaican Federation of Musicians to play reggae at the Expo. After the Expo, he toured as the front man of his band, People's Choice, from Freeport to Miami. "They ate it up," he remembers. It was during the multicultural boom of the Trudeau years, and people like Cole were needed as cultural purveyors for the many Jamaicans immigrating to Canada. After growing up a block down from Bob Marley and sharing stages with reggae greats like Byron Lee and the Toots and the Maytals, Cole thought he'd make it big like some of his childhood friends already had.
Instead, at 59, Cole sells their paraphernalia in a university town of about 100,000. His store is "a chicken feed store" compared to the other stores that line the downtown street, but Cole keeps it open mainly as a meeting and jamming place. The emanation of Jamaican culture is a mission for Cole, and it can be traced back to the sixties in Kingston, Jamaica, post-independence.
With the proliferation of Americana in Jamaica, rude boys like Cole began asserting themselves against what was then seen as the white man's culture-materialist and oppressive imperialism known as "Babylon." The rude boys embraced local musicians and set up sound system parties on Kingston lawns with huge speakers that would boom all night. "You could be two miles away and the picture frames on your mantle would vibrate," Cole remembers. This phalanx of youth in Kingston, perpetuated by rural youth coming to the city to find jobs, had major cultural sway. They made sure any new developments in the music would be uniquely Jamaican.
Now, you'd have to be living under a rock not to have heard Bob Marley, and teens everywhere are sporting dreads and the Rasta colours. But Cole still feels a cultural responsibility. He doesn't want the movement lose its roots. He gets irate when Mike tells him about a band he saw that played trance and advertised itself as Jamaican dub. "A Jamaican would have asked for his money back," Cole says, but Mike's still learning. Before Mike met Cole, Bob Marley was the only reggae he listened to. Now he listens to everything from ska to dub, John Holt to Jimmy Cliff. Cole also introduced bass player Jake to Jamaican culture. "Winston's always got his Jamaican movies and music going, and you get the Jamaican food. No where else in Guelph can you get the patties, or the Jamaican curry and goat…and he introduces us to people he knew from back home," 34-year-old Jake says. Cole teaches his band how to dance like Jamaicans. Reggae is a "body thing" he tells them. "Reggae makes you feel Casanova-ish, like sexy and stuff," drummer Clayton says.
Clayton, 30, wearing a Maple Leaf's toque and hat, is the newest edition to the band. He's also the one that needs the most work. "Remember, you're a Jamaican when you're playing with us," Cole often reminds him.
During the practice, Clayton plays a spontaneous drum roll at the end of a song. Cole sees the rock and roll stunt as completely artless, a major interruption to the band's groove. He tries to explain to Clayton that you don't do something like that in reggae, that it's not about showing off. "Everything has to have a spiritual reason behind it," Cole lectures, drawing out his words. He's trying to think of a concrete way to explain when the band's keyboarder, Aloz, pipes up: "Always think about sex." Cole nods his head, "and always think about the fluidity of life."
Born a Rasta man, Cole has always been spiritual. But he differentiates the Rasta spirituality from that of organized religions. Since it has no bible or church, Rastafarianism is more of a lifestyle than a belief system. Rastas live simply. Most are vegetarians, and almost all see marijuana as a way to connect with their god, "Jah". Money, on the other hand, is seen merely as a tool. Cole lives in the woods outside Guelph, and bikes to and from his store. In his store, Guelphites of different descents come together to watch Jamaican movies, eat Jamaican patties, play dominoes and share stories. "Rastas believe the more you are together, the happier you should be," Cole says.
Rasta men tend to talk indirectly, in analogies and examples, so it's sometimes hard for the band members to understand Cole. "Winston has these sayings from Jamaica that none of us know. He refers to the way he was raised by his mom a lot, and you're like, 'what?!'" Clayton says. When Cole teaches Clayton he says things like, "You gotta feel it, don't hear it," or "what you're really saying to yourself is chook bah, chook bah," or "don't over run it." He'll start sentences and stop them halfway through, trying to think of a quick way to explain, sputtering, frustrated. Aloz or Jake will sometimes translate: "He's saying don't let it get away from the tempo."
When Cole can't express in words what he wants to hear, he sits down at the drums to demonstrate. He leans in close to the drums and his shoulders move up and down with the rhythm. His eyes stare off ahead somewhere, as if he's not even thinking, he's just doing. He doesn't miss a beat. Clayton nods his head and then takes over the stool, his shoulders further from the drums than Cole's. He's concentrating, counting, tense. One of the sticks breaks, flying out of his hand.
The next week, Cole is behind the counter in his store, complaining to his friend Buadi about how difficult it is "take this Canadian person and flip them around to be a Jamaican." Buadi suggests that maybe reggae isn't a white person's music.
"Naw, it ain't got to do with colour," Cole says.
"Are you kidding me? It's not about the colour!" ripostes Buadi, who likely has the darkest skin in Guelph.
"It's a spiritual thing," Cole says, and he passes Buadi the joint.
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