A Look Into Kingston :: essays papers

A Look Into Kingston Kingston has been the home to many famous reggae artists. Why do so many artists come from Kingston? Does it say something about the message of the music and or the conditions in Kingston that also encompasses trench town? Background of Kingston Kingston is located on the southern side of the island of Jamaica and is protected from the strong northeast trade winds by the vast Blue Mountain ranges. The city of Kingston stretches for more than 50 mi including 10-mi long harbor. This makes for a diverse community of fisherman as well as street vendors and many unemployed people. Kingston is the largest and one of the most diverse cities in the English-speaking Caribbean. More than half a million people populate Kingston of different decent ranging from African, Asian, European, and Middle Eastern roots. The city's tremendous growth during the 20th century has produced severe overcrowding, persistent unemployment, and violent crime. Poverty has devastated Jamaica's black majority and nowhere is this more apparent than in the ghettos of Kingston. European colonialism set up a society of racial stratification and current residents of Kingston have to deal with historic tensions between the city's black and brown residents. Kingston of today is a direct result of the organized racial and cultural segregation that began more than 300 years ago, when Jamaica was a British colony. Many of the social and political changes that have swept Jamaica since 1692 have occurred first in Kingston, often in reaction to organized political protests. The history of Kingston itself represents the legacy of slavery and the efforts by black and brown Jamaicans to find freedom and equality in a nation haunted by what's left of colonialism. Kingston was founded in the summer of 1692, after a large earthquake destroyed the coastal city of Port Royal. From the beginning Kingston was run by Jamaica's white elite, mostly sugar planters from England. The city was created to serve the social and economic interests of white planters. Residential segregation in the form of a color-class system, beginning in 1692, served to reinforce cultural separation. (Henriques, 32) During the first half of the 18th century Kingston saw an influx of Jewish merchants, white sugar planters, African slaves, and a small amount of free blacks in the colored community. Kingston served as a trading post for the Transatlantic Slave Trade and this was one of their main trades.