Dancing to Caribbean Music at the Norfolk (Virginia) Cottage by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Dancing to Caribbean Music at the Norfolk (Virginia) Cottage by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget 

While my family read through magazines and tried to distinguish between who would buy gin versus cognac, we would listen to CDs of reggae music from Jamaica and Chicago Blues. 

One of my favorite songs remains 96 Degrees in the Shade by Third World, which sums up the experience of colonial Americans with regard to England for both black and white Americans.  (Anyone who did not give the king his taxes was in trouble.)

I played Bob Marley, of course, but also Third World, Jimmy Cliff, Steel Pulse, and Peter Tosh among my reggae favorites from my college days at the University of Chicago.

When I was over 21, my friends and I from the University of Chicago would go out to a reggae nightclub in Chicago called The Wild Hare and the Flaming Armadillo.  We would dance for 5 or 6 hours and drink rum and Cokes – a cocktail otherwise known as Cuba Libre (Free Cuba).

After dancing, we would drive down Clark Street and eat things like Mongolian hot pot (beef slices and turnip slices that you dunk in hot oil), Korean bulgogi, or a beer, weisswurst (veal and pork sausage), and braised red cabbage from various Eastern European cultures.

Then, we would go to the Smart Bar and drink a Bloody Mary or Screwdriver (orange juice and vodka.  Vodka can be made from potatoes or wheat).

Clubs operate for a profit, so I gave them cocktail money for providing dance music and a dance floor.  I ordered cocktails first and knew what the cocktails were, so I would not waste a cocktail waitress’s time.

We would dance for another 3 or 4 hours here to many songs by up-and-coming bands played hardened DJs.

Then, we would drive to another Clark Street destination to a Sonic-like place that served fast-food breakfasts like scrambled eggs, hash browns, whole wheat toast, bacon strips, and large cups of coffee with real cream.

If we were rich, we would go to Anne Sather’s  Swedish Restaurant for tons of muffins: banana-walnut, chocolate, boysenberry, and bran-honey with lots of sweet butter.  (I made these items in Norfolk for Florence and explained ‘secret’ protein-combinations that vegetarians use for these items.)

We would get silver-plated coffee pots full of coffee with pitchers of real cream and bowls of cinnamon-and-raisin oatmeal to eat at this restaurant, too.

I worked while going to school as a salesman and offered to buy my own drinks, muffins, gas for the driver, and even took my boyfriend out for his birthday to a nice restaurant like Hatsuhana for sushi, Thai 55^th for Panang Curry, or Gin Go Gae for Korean bulgogi.  I worked when I was in Norfolk, too, and could do these things for my husband.

I played tons of Chicago Blues music in our Norfolk-Virginia Beach cottage, too:

My friends from the University of Chicago paid tribute to Chicago’s strong Blues tradition and went to bars like Theresa’s, Blues Chicago, and the Kingston Mines and tried to do Rolling Stones’ sightings.  Buddy Guy and Koko Taylor were my favorite Blues musicians.  I worked with the sax player from the Sunnyland Slim Group.  

I also went to Deny's Den, a Greek nightclub with seats climbing the walls like a Greek village that was run by the Greek Pasok Party.  The bazouki music and singing was in Greek, so it could have been Greek blues.  Who knows?  

My Greek roommate told me her dad was a Greek Pasok member who was the travel consul for Chicago.  Her dad got a photo in the paper with Prime Minister Papandreiou, and we thought we were going to have to hide him from gold diggers.

I would dance through the seats with a white napkin like Zorba the Greek with my friends following me in a line, too, while eating moussaka, pastitio, and tomato-and-onion salads seasoned with rigani vinaigrette (like oregano). 

Laurent was Mr. Serious in Norfolk-Virginia Beach, but I would dance with Florence to reggae, Blues, and various ethnic music all the time to have fun and stay in shape.

I also played music for Florence by other artists or bands whose concerts I attended in Detroit and Chicago with my white friends and broke down the barrier between white-only and black-only concert arena shows that still existed in the 1980s for artists  such as:

-Michael Jackson
-Prince
-David Bowie
-Police - Sting's original group
-Luciano Pavoratti
-Run DMC
-Stevie Ray Vaughan
-UB40
-Johnnie Clegg and Savuka
-Wynton Marsalis
-U2
-Joan Armatrading
-The Cure
-Jean-Michel Jarre
-Ravi Shankar playing ragas - no Beatles music
-Beach Boys with our Japanese exchange student
-Tina Turner - I went in my gray suit from the work, because I took the El to the concert.  The suit got ruined from sweat from dancing.

I was on the Major Activities Board (concert board) at the University of Chicago for 3 years and listened to everything as a possible concert choice as a possible concert choice from Bow Wow Wow to the Pat Metheny Group.  They both played to sold out shows.

The music I played for Florence at home, though, included Rai - North African club music (Khaled and Rachid Taha), Bhangra DJ Mixes and Videos (mostly by Bhangra Empire from the Bay Area), and "Latino" music by Mana, Ozomatli, Selena, and Ricky Martin.

My friends and I went to many shows of the film Stop Making Sense by the Talking Heads and would get the entire theatre dancing as if we were at the concert.  

"Dance like David Byrne, and you'll stay slim," I would shout.  These days, Bhangra dancers could use his moves in the song Life During Wartime as a warm-up to practice their moves.  

I am sure you can still buy CDs and films by the Talking Heads.  CBGB nightclub in New York played Life During Wartime every night supposedly the hardened DJs at the Smart Bar would tell us.

These days I am listening to Eros Ramatozzi in Italian, Spanish, and English.

When I listen to radio now, it's the Hippos in Monterey, KCRW in LA, and World Village in Santa Cruz.  Florence listened to all these stations as we drove to and from school and on field trips.

We had fun in our brick-withstands-hurricanes apartment in Norfolk.

By Ruth Pennington Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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