Jamaica sound culture has been engaged with the concept of “pressure” for quite some time. Think Hopeton Lewis’s “Sounds and Pressure” (1966) or Prince Buster’s “High Blood Pressure” (1965) and “Sound and Pressure” (1965–66) or the Tennors’s “Pressure and Slide” (1967). Performance artiste Lee “Scratch” Perry contributed with his “Dub Plate Pressure” (1973–79), released in UK in 2010. Then Beres Hammond challenged the pressures in “Putting Up a Resistance” (1996). There are many other artistes who tried to give auditory images to the concrete notions of “pressure.” However, the moods expressed in many of the songs were either obsequiously conciliatory with the system of oppression, escapist in their intent, or otherwise given over to spavined whining and supplication to some inconsiderate God or to the callous oppressors themselves.

On the philosophical level, for me, pressure means to task oneself to find the transparent crocodile. This creature is indigenous to the primordial geospatial waters of a Black person’s mind. To look for this creature inevitably results in the process of invention or of discovering some other forms that have the instrumental efficacy to both express the centuries of accumulated shortfalls of “signifying”—that is, to speak with the languages of the oppressors— as well as by experiential necessities, to rid oneself and one’s people of the pressures of cultural, racial, and economic
terrorism imposed by others.

The complete overview of Omari Ra’s featured work can be found in the Kingston Biennial 2022: Pressure Catalogue, which is available for sale in the NGJ Gift Shop.