Between 2017 and 2019, I interviewed 21 elders over the age of 80 here in Savannah and published the book, Krak Teet, with those oral histories. Only two of the 21 still living, which created a sense of urgency. That led to Krak Teet becoming a movement with a mission to get more people recording they people — whoever they consider they people to be — and to stop code-switching. I’m teaching kids how to do it and I’m still outchea doing it myself. Wanted a corner to krak teet, not just with elders, but artists of all kinds, especially the ones we automatically think of as artists. The already legendary ones...

Trelani Michelle: ...IMPACT Magazine it is. And when Emily and Jon brought y’all name up, it was a no brainer.

Roosevelt Brownlee: We've been through quite a lot together as far as developing cultural aspects in a community.

Hanif Haynes: Way before it was popular. We started a community-based organization that nobody heard of, but you hear the name today. We were called One Love, Inc. And you hear One Love now, and they probably seen that the organization wasn't active anymore, so they just took the name. But One Love was generated out of a need to take cultural activities throughout the year into the communities that weren't able to come out to the centers. We had, you know, activities all over Savannah and people from over on Augusta Avenue.

RB: Rib Hut.

HH: And we just tapped into the energies that was available.

RB: When we started, we went to people houses to do Kwanzaa. Just trying to fill it up and we got a little news headline once. So now they wanted to go to the Hyatt to do it, but leaving out the people who we really trying to, you know, make it available for.

HH: Me being with radio stations, I tapped into station managers, who I mean, there's no money in this involved. Just people doing things because they’re interested in the community. Mr. [Theron “Ike”] Carter, who was a radio programmer at the time, he's from Savannah, and if it's anything about music — any genre of music — he’s right at the top.

TM: I interviewed him a couple weeks ago.

RB: Yeah, he loved you. He told me. He said you taught him some things.

TM: Really?

HH: So you know, people like Mr. Carter, Sister V, you may know her as Vaughnette [Goode-Walker], a brother by the name of Kofi Moyo, I think he's back in Savannah. He lived in Savannah, moved back to New York, and then he came back. But Brother Knowledge, as y'all call him, but Dr. Touré. We started another organization called The Drums that went into the community, not just in Savannah, but up and down the east coastline doing re-enactments.

TM: What were y'all re-enacting?

HH: Black History. We were the 54th.

RB: It's a picture in [Sulfur] studio. Napoleon Wilkerson drew.

HH: You probably see a picture of Gilbert. And I think somebody's got a picture of me also. I don't know if it was Sonya or Napoleon. A huge picture. They won't even sell it to me, you know, of us in full gear. And that's where Dayclean was actually born. And so, yeah, we just felt the need to get this out to the people in general.

TM: How y'all met?

HH: Decades ago. I was studying Rastafarianism at that particular time. I was a student at Savannah State. Don't know how we got together. Let's do this Kwanzaa committee. Ahmed Bem Piankhi was a professor at Savannah State. Sister Joan Green was a professor at Savannah State. Otis Johnson.

RB: Diane Harvey.

TM: You went to Savannah State too?

RB: No, no, when I came from Detroit in '80. That's when we linked up.

HH: Around ’81, ’82. There's another brother, Milton “Kikuyu” Green, he came from New York. Savannah is his home.

RB: Beach High School basketball coach, Olufemi Gordon, it's her father.

HH: He came from New York and, you know, brought in a lot of information that we didn't have at the time, and we disseminated it throughout the community.

RB: And he was a little militant.

HH: He was very militant. Coming from New York for 30 – 40 years, he was very fast paced. When we were moving kind of slow, he'd say "no, we got pick up the pace." And there was no politicians with us.

RB: And everything was on a volunteer, we wasn't asking or going out looking for donations. Everything, for years, was coming from us.

TM: That's love.

HH: But then, like I said, there's a lot of scrutiny behind it. I read in the Bible where it says that a good man is only without honor in his own hometown. So I don't even worry about it anymore. I just persevere on. I'm an average angler, so I'd go out and fish and when we would have the feast, I'd bring all of my fish and this guy [nods to Roosevelt] would do the cooking. All of this was just voluntarily. No money involved. We didn't ask to be paid for this. But then, you know, with a lot of goodness, there's a lot of scrutiny. We never knew anything about lamp lighting or anything like that. People who had the urgency and wanted this information to be disseminated, so they just chipped in. It's just about, you know, preserving the culture and passing it. We did a whole lot of different things. We brought reggae bands down on Kwanzaa. What was the name of the club?

RB: 10,000.

HH: Club 10,000 over on Waters Ave. That's where we had one of our programs.

TM: Waters and what?

RB: Between 41st and... right across the Carousel.

HH: I think there's a school or learning center over there.

TM: So you started learning about Rastafarianism as a student at SSU?

HH: Somewhat. It was already in me. But I got more exposed because now, as a student, I'm meeting international brothers and sisters from Nigeria, Ghana, Guinea, from the whole of the rice coast, I'm meeting people. And now these are political students. There's a festival, it's called African Liberation Day. It's not in existence anymore. We had a group leaving Savannah State, going to DC to celebrate African Liberation Day. Speakers like Kwame Nkrumah. Now I'm seeing and meeting dreads from all over the world. I will say Rastas, not dreads. And now I'm just that much more excited because I'm connected with, you know, African cultured people and foods from everywhere. This gentleman [nods to Roosevelt], he was a big inspiration when I met him. I got to go places that I've never been.

TM: Like where?

HH: Well, when I took my first trip to Jamaica, we just got on the plane to Montego Bay. Everything else is history. We didn't do the tourist stuff. He took me down into the Rasta man camp. And you see these guys eating out of Calabash made out of gourd. I mean, just 100% holistic, natural. We became family.

TM: And when were you introduced to Rastafarianism?

RB: Wow. Oh, I guess my late '20s. Because I was overseas, and it was a different situation. My best friend at the time, he started to dread. I wasn't dreading. I had a lil afro. I didn't want to dread. And Bob Marley came to town — Gothenburg, Sweden — and I had another friend Tony, who was a wild guy. The day before the show, I went up to the window to get the tickets while he was in the car waiting. And they told me “Oh no, no, in the back, in the back.” They thought I was with the band. I didn't have any dreads then. They thought I was in the band just because I was Black. So I ran to the car. I said, "Man, they think I'm in the band. Let's go in the back." So we went around the back. And that's when we met Bob and the whole crew. Ziggy, everybody was there. They were doing the Exodus show. Bob said to me, "Hey, why you don't wanna dread, you know, Rasta?"

When I was leaving Europe, I was in London, when I decided to dread. I saw some Rastas. We went to Brixton and he was saying, “See that dread? His hair is thick, so that's why his dreads like that. Your hair is thinner, so yours won't be thick.” So I had something to go by, other than, I guess the Rasta love because it's about people, you know? Now you can't just say you hate everybody or just that group. You gotta start picking for love.

TM: Bob Marley was my introduction to reggae. Reggae was my intro to Rastafarianism. But initially, like so many, I thought Rasta was just wearing dreads and smoking weed ‘til I read Rita Marley's book.

HH: When we met, none of us had dreads. Like, the song: It's not the dread upon your head that make you a Rasta. When we came along, it was not popular. It was three of us, initially, right here in Savannah that started dreading: myself, Brownlee, and another brother, he's back in Jamaica now, Delroy. But we were the first three to start dreading in the Savannah area, and it was not popular.

TM: One of my elders I interviewed for Krak Teet, Sadie Green, she was trying to say his hair was dreaded like mine, her uncle. He was from South Carolina and lived off in the woods and would let his hair mat down. But she said he was crazy.

RB: Mose. Mose was a Green, but he's also a Grant. He's kin to Kikuyu. He's part of the Grants, Fraziers, and the Greens. His mother died. And it to' him up. He dressed up like Jesus, the clothing. He was going Rasta, but, along the way, somewhere, he kind of ...but he did know the Bible. He was a character.

HH: But he wasn’t crazy.

TM: Shaka Zulu was a warrior, a sometimes ruthless warrior. How you got the name ‘Hanif Shaka Zulu’?

HH: My history professor, Bem Piankhi, formerly Bennie Arkwright, was a history professor at Savannah State. He was promoting Africanism. Out of all of the Black professors, he stuck out. If you go out to Savannah State right now around the little Veteran circle, you will see the monument in memory of Bem. Bem was teaching us to greet each other in an African language. It didn’t matter which one. When we meet somebody: "Jambo, Kwaheri," you know. So, he officially changed his name and I figured I got to have me a name. I took the name Hanif myself. It mean a true believer. But I wanted an African name. So then I went to Bem and he says, “Shaka Zulu.” I said, “No, those shoes are kind of big. I don't know if I can get into them shoes.” He says, “Yeah, you can.” So he made me Shaka Zulu.

TM: As children, what did y'all wanna be?

RB: We'd just went to Johnson, left from Harris Street School to go to Sol Johnson and I said I want to see the world, and they laughed. That was in my head. I wanted to see the world. I used to look in the history book and just see places and say I'd like to go there. I achieved, not the whole world, but a lot of it. But that was my main goal, to see and discover. When I was in Hamburg, I stayed at a hotel with only Africans, but they were migrants, hiding. We paid for a space and a bed. It was wicked, the hotel itself. In order for us to cook, you had to put money in one of the little slots for a hot plate. But I learned a lot of African food that is popular right now that everybody's kind of approved, we were doing that a long time ago. A guy, we called him GI, GI would cook for us. We would give him money because we didn't know if we would have money in the morning. He would go shopping and cook in a lil' pot and bring it to the room, then we would eat. I stayed in a room with a Nigerian and a Liberian brother. They used to be at each other all the time.

TM: What was the common language?

RB: English. Most of your brothers from Senegal and Guinea, they speaking French, but the further north like in Germany and Hamburg and going to Sweden, Denmark, north places, they have more English. I didn't want to be a cook until I was in high school, smelling homemaking. I used to be hungry at lunch time. I said I'ma cook next year. So Jesse Hamilton, Freeman Cohen, and me, we were the first three males to take homemaking. And believe it or not, it wasn't the first marking period, that we cooked. We waited about five weeks before we cooked. We had to learn how to sew, how to take care of babies. But it was good.

And I decided one day, my step brother, and my father and I, we were walking down Price Street. He was a Merchant Marine. He said, "What do you all want to do? Think you want to go to college? So I can start to put something on the side." We said, "No, we going to the Army to get a trade.” Because that's what they were advertising. Go to the Army and learn a trade. So, I went to the Army to cook, and they got my name mixed up with somebody else that turned out to be an infantryman. But they did let me cook. I did cook in Vietnam, but it was hell. I was at an outpost and was the only cook. My job was to meet the helicopter, load, unloaded service, put stuff back on, then I'm a regular soldier.

TM: You feel like everything happen for a reason?

RB: Uh, yeah. Because number one, I survived. That was the main thing. Number two, I got a chance to go to a couple places in Asia, like Bangkok, which became a home after I left Vietnam. I went to Bangkok. I didn't want to leave. And a couple other places like TaiPei, Hong Kong. Five or six days is not the real thing though. You come on a weekend and everything jumping. Now you in the middle of the week and it's kind of slow, but they planning for the weekend, and you gotta go.

I would say after Vietnam, I really started to think about being a cook or chef. I keep saying cook because they always called us cook. They never called us chefs. We was always a cook, but we were chefs. And that propelled me. There's another thing that led up to me going to Europe because I wanted to go and learn to cook, but I was mad at the system here in Savannah. Couldn't get a job. Went to San Francisco on Sunday, Tuesday I was working. Here, my stepmom put me out the house because she figured I didn't put an effort into looking for jobs. But they weren't hiring Vietnam veterans at that time. Went to Europe and, you know, everything was for a reason. Because it made a man out of me, surviving in a foreign country. Don't know nobody. Everything was for a reason.

I appreciate the things that I learned to carry me this far without so much trouble, but I've been in a lot of trouble. And coming from London to New York, I wanted to stay in New York because I had some cousins in New York and also I had cousins in Detroit, but I couldn't take it. All the buildings, no trees. I wasn't used to it, so I went to Detroit, stayed with my cousin there. Got a nice job at the hospital, something I couldn't do in Savannah. Decided after a year to move back home, but, by that time, I was dreading. I had little tiny dreads. And that's when we linked up. I finally got a job here in Savannah at the DeSoto Hilton. You know, that's where we went to do Kwanzaa.

A girl saw us in Club 10,000. She went back and told the man, "You know that man got that beard? That ain't his hair." I’d started wearing a wig, because I couldn't get no job. Having a little dread was one of the reasons, plus I had a goatee. And I was still a little bit militant from the war, but I had cooled down some. This my second trip home. My aunt said, "Junior, why don't you get them things out your head and grow you a Jheri curl?" The lady on Whitaker and Broughton, it was an Asian lady had a wig sto'. Had one on this corner and one on the other. Went and bought me a Jheri curl wig and got the job.

I went through hell. Boy, they treated me so hard at the job. "Well dread, you gone, man." I didn't figure things would be that hard. Kikuyu had a saying: “The man know his people, because his people dress like him. When you start dressing like your people, then he'll know you're not him." So I made sho I had something African on all the time, even a pin: I Love Africa, Marcus Garvey, Haile Selassie pin. There was nothing here like that. But Kikuyu made sho. He was very militant. "We don' been named Nigger, Negro, Black, African American." He had a shirt with all that on it. They don' named us all these names.

TM: Reminds me of the Kwanzaa principle, Kujichagulia, we have to define ourselves and name ourselves; it's our responsibility.

HH: Mmhm.

TM: What did you want to be?

HH: Well, I was somewhat different. I grew up with a single mother in a rural area. And fishing, crabbing, and horseshoe was all I seen. The tradition was finish high school, get a job or go in the military. So I finished school in '72. On September 6th, I was in South Carolina at Fort Jackson, sworn in the Army. And once I got in the military, I didn't want to be a soldier. I went in the military to get educational benefits because I knew my mother couldn't afford to send me anywhere. While I was in the military, I was looking at trades that paid money, and I wanted to be an electrician. I got out of military September 6, '74. Go to Savannah Tech. I got my paperwork or diploma from the Savannah Vocational School and I started working as an electrician. And I been in basically all of the plants in Savannah.

TM: That's what you did at Gulfstream?

HH: Yeah, I was an electrical supervisor at Gulfstream. That was last place that I worked. I wanted to get in the electrical union, but they wa'nt lettin' no nappy head, long haired... I had friends, two other Blacks in the union, but they didn't accept my application, so I said fine. I went to Atlanta, took my exam for my Masters for an electrical license. I told the union I didn't need y'all, and started subcontracting and working at Gulfstream. But yeah, I didn't really have no desire, because there wasn't really nothing to look forward to growing up.

After the military, I got a little education benefits. Got a job as an electrician, then I started school at Savannah State. I wanted to become an electrical engineer. And I got in trouble again, because I'm studying engineering and I didn't have no background in trigonometry. I seen an equation and the professor said, "Don't look up in the ceiling, because that's not going to help you." I didn't know what a quadratic equation was. So I dropped the class and go back and get remediated for math and get caught up to date. Now I know what an integral is, and I still can't solve these problems.

TM: Now your people's business, the canning business, they got hit hard from the Depression.

HH: That was way before my time.

TM: But you were discouraged from going into the crabbing industry. Is that why? Because they saw what it did to their people financially?

HH: That was decades before my time, and all of the family worked in seafood, in one form or another. My mom was a professional processor. That's all she did, all her life. But as far as that family business, that was due to the Great Depression. My great-grandfather lost all of his everything that he had, his money. Some of the elders say that it somewhat disturbed him. At that time, Black people money was at the Wage Earners Bank, or what was the other name? I can't recall right now. Where the Ralph Mark Gilbert Civil Rights Museum is, that was the Wage Earners Bank, but it was called something else also. And during the Great Depression, the banks made some bad investments and he lost everything he had. I'm told that he was one of the first Blacks that had a car in that particular era. I mean, a brand new car. Some of the older guys tell me they remember the car being in the garage and all that. My mother's eldest brother would tell me that those guys, the Barnes and Andersons, at that particular time, fed a lot of the white people in that area; they were German immigrants. And they were doing just as bad as we were. And, you know, in those areas, that's where the Ku Klux Klan was birthed. It's an interesting story. But, yeah, I didn't want to gravitate toward the seafood business at that particular time, because it was hard work and we didn't have the manpower to do it.

TM: I think you said in '83, while at Savannah State, that's when you started volunteering for the radio station. Your program was inspired by a brother out of Charleston, who had a radio station there. But that's not what introduced you to reggae though, is it?

HH: No, no, I'd been listening to reggae already. Like, most of us at that time, Bob Marley inspired most of us. I never seen Bob live. Bob was coming to America, that's when he got sick. But my colleague, Sister V was the manager at the radio station at that time. And we were 15 watts or 10 watts or something like that.

They were looking for volunteers. So I did all kind of radio programming. I did gospel, jazz, and blues. Had some real good programs.

TM: Mr. Carter said he ain't a DJ. He's a radio programmer. You?

HH: I'm a radio announcer. I play music and, if there's a commentary, I provide talk, but no, I don't consider myself to be a DJ. In reggae, a DJ is completely different from an announcer or an emcee.

TM: You named your program The Black Star Line. You're a Garveyite. Two things came to mind: One — Garvey was real big on self-governed Black nations. That made me think of you growing up in Pin Point, which was practically a self-governed Black nation. Then I thought about, too, with the ships Garvey had, like the Phyllis Wheatley, he wanted to connect us here in the U.S. with Black folk in the Caribbean and Africa. Put us all in communication with one another. I was like, technically you're doing that through the airwaves too.

HH: Exactly. I don't know if I took the name or somebody gave me the name. Once again, you know, inspired by Osei Chandler out of Charleston, South Carolina. And he's from New York. That was my inspiration. I had a little radio and there was no reggae and one night [imitates turning a dial and hearing a static sound] and heard some reggae. At that time, they were broadcasting over 100,000 watts and, on the coast, you could pick him up. We were broadcasting from the USS Yorktown and then I started passing it on to everybody else. Listen to Osei Roots Music on Saturday. He came on from 10 – 12 and I was on from 8 to midnight, at that particular time.

TM: So much of Rasta, you can pull elements of it and see that, oh, Nation of Islam believes this too. With all of these different movements going on at that time, what kept you?

HH: I'll tell you the defining point. I think that's what you trying to get to. My great-grand uncle was a Baptist minister. My great, great.

TM: Is he the one who started the church?

HH: Well, that's misinformation. He did not start it. He started the First Beulah Baptist Church. But he was the pastor or the Licentiate of the Baptist church for Ossabaw Island. And when they moved to the mainland, he was also pastor of the Hinder Me Not, but he was not the founder. He was just a pastor. But we had to go to church. It was a must. It was not an elective. We went to church and stayed in church all day long. I didn't too much like that. But I read the Bible a lot, even before I knew anything about Rasta. Because I read somewhere in the Bible that people were Black. That was the deciding factor of Rastafarianism, Islam, Christianity… Blackness. And now I see an image that looks like me. And then studying and studying and restudying, you know, from the biblical perspective.

After reading the Bible, still not knowing nothing about Rasta, listening to Bob Marley music, not understanding Patois, but listening to the music then, all of a sudden, you understand something. Wait, he's singing 'bout the Bible. Run back to the Bible. Okay, this what he's talking about. Now you've made connections and revelations about different things that have transpired. That was the connection for me. When I see someone that was not in the sky, but a physical manifestation of someone looking like me.

About 10 years ago, I went to Addis Ababa to see what we're talking about, went to Shashamane, you know, to see what we're talking about. There's a big thing about where the Bible or where the Ark of the Covenant is right now, today. The Ethiopians say it's in Ethiopia, in Addis Ababa. And when you go to the tombs, the gentlemen will tell you, “If you go past me, you probably won't come back out.” And you see people that don't look like you and me from all over the world — from Israel, Greece, they're in Ethiopia going to these temples, learning about us, and then they going back home.

TM: I noticed the same with the African American History tour to Ossabaw and Pin Point.

HH: Well, you know, and you bring up Ossabaw. Dr. Allison Dorsey — well, Professor Dorsey — when she did the research on Pin Point and on Mustafa Shaw, I did a tour with them. One of the things that was so intriguing and she was adamant about it, she told her colleagues: "You see this historical marker? It doesn't mention anything about the Black people who made this island what it is today.”

TM: I gotta saying in the Krak Teet movement: We All Cousins. No matter where you go in this world, you will see yourself, elements of your culture. Have y'all experienced that traveling the world?

RB: I was raised up in a 'shine house, so my mom sold dinners too. One of the dishes she used to do was the stewed chicken with the red sauce, the tomato-based style chicken. At the hotel in Hamburg, that’s one of the meals we used to make, except with peanut sauce. We also made pig feet and oxtail. I'd never seen it done that way, African style, because it was with veggies. It wasn't just oxtail and gravy like I was used to. When GI cooked that oxtail, shoooot, man. And tripe! That's the other thing. African style, compared to what we ate at home, they did it with peanut sauce. I was cooking African food here, but I stopped because you enjoy it mo’ when you eating with people. And we used to eat it with our hands. It's not the same without that communal part. I didn't have the Jollof 'til we lived in Sweden, and that was like the red rice here.

HH: I remember we were coming from a weeklong music festival, was in the San Francisco Airport with all this luggage coming down the elevator, and there's a family. They got kind of scared, I guess, and got to one side of the elevator. They started speaking. He knew what they were saying and he responded, and their whole demeanor changed.

TM: What language was it?

RB: Swedish.

HH: And I mean, their whole demeanor changed after that. It was different. And you see yourself in different places. I mean, even in Jamaica, you know, you talk about physically, I mean, we seen people that we thought we left here in the States yesterday and they in Jamaica tomorrow. No, it can't be.

RB: I want a hug. What you doing? You didn't tell me. Excuse me, brother, I'm not the one.

HH: I mean look exactly. Spitting image.

TM: I seen a video of some young brothers in Tanzania saying their name in their native tongue. I'm looking at their faces like these are my students. This is crazy. That’s why I want to take them out of the state and ultimately out of the country to show them that there's nothing wrong with how you talk or how you look. Can’t be, because it's everywhere. How you eat, dance, worship, talk… it's everywhere.

HH: Growing up, that was something else. When we spoke Gullah or Geechee, it was shunned. Even the word Geechee itself was actually a negative connotation for our people. But throughout the years, you know, we’ve learned. I remember being in the military, I couldn't say "theater." I'd say "theta." And this guy from Mississippi, I'll never forget. "Oh, you Geechee. Get on back to Georgia. It's 'theater,' not 'theta.'" From that point, and that was over 40-somewhat years ago, I don't say "theta" no more. I say "theater."

TM: He made you put on a Jheri curl wig.

[Everyone laughs]

HH: Now I didn't have no problem with that. When I locked, I locked.

RB: Dizzy Gillespie, we were somewhere in France and, you know, we were around talking. Some call me Cookie, some just say "Hey, Cook." Anyway, they were talking and asked, "Where you from?" And I said “Savannah, Georgia.” I used to be proud saying I'm from Savannah like people knew where it was. They said "Oh, you a Geechee." "I ain't no Geechee." They started laughing and it made me madder. And he was from South Carolina.

HH: But they already knew.

TM: How you meet Dizzy?

RB: Well, when I started off cooking, they invited me to Switzerland, just to cook for the musicians, because they wanted soul food. They were tired of the French and European food. My boss was Jack Jordan. He was Josephine Baker’s road manager. He'd made a deal with the director of the Montreal Jazz Festival in Switzerland. It was the day I graduated from the school.

TM: Culinary school?

RB: No. Swedish. Because they would always tell you, you can't speak Swedish. You can’t read the recipe or menu. Well, I went to school. That was my last shot. I was working but working under the table. I wasn't legally and finally later on, I finally got legal. But I came home and the letter was on the bed. It was American Express, like a telegram, telling me go to the airport and pick up a ticket, call Jack, and he'll explain to me.

They set me up in the hotel and we became vendors. We’d never vend in our life. I was cooking only for the musicians. I think I got that picture. And it was the bicentennial celebration, so all of the big music heads, everybody was there. And you know, I just got to know a lot, I mean a lot, of musicians. When we would go to a town or another city, they always do sound check at maybe 11 o'clock in the building, and I happened to be in a couple of the places where the kitchen was. And they was sound checking in that auditorium and just sitting around shooting the breeze. You know, guys talking. That’s when Dizzy asked me where I was from and called me Geechee.

TM: When did you start proudly saying, "Yeah, I'm Geechee"?

RB: To tell you the fact truth, I would say, for me, '85. Because Mrs. [Rosalie F.] Pazant... She was in charge of the first Gullah festival in Beaufort. The Pazant family, Daughters of the Dust...

HH: That's the family that the movie is based on, the movie Daughters of the Dust. Even though it's filmed in Georgia, mostly on St. Simon's.

TM: I wonder if Mrs. Pazant was volunteering too.

HH: Well, she started it. And she was old at that time. She was about 70. She was a professor at Savannah State. She also taught Remedial English out at Savannah State.

RB: I begged Mrs. Pazant to let me do devil crabs from Daufuskie. They didn't want anybody selling food except that one vendor. And she had everything, but there was pork in it. And you know we just starting Rasta and we ain't eating this and that. And not only us, there were lots of people who came by and asked "You got pork in that?" Or they'd see it and turn away. "No, that's alright." What I told her was, you know, we have a variety of things from the other islands. 'Fauskie do crab, Sapelo do fish. Everybody had some kind of specialty. Frogmo' stew, even though they were closer, but that's why they never did the Frogmo' stew. But she said "Okay, you can do it." So the next year I brought devil crab from Sallie Ann [Robinson] mama, Ms. Bertha. She only gave me 12, and I paid her $50 to sell 'em. The thing was, I gave Mrs. Pazant one for free.

TM: That was honorable.

RB: Well, not for Ms. Bertha. Ms. Bertha wanted her money. The next day, I needed a lot mo'. She wanted her money and I shouldn't have given away that crab. I say well, I pay you $50 just to be a part of it. Well, the next year, I sold my own crab. And it was history from there, for me. But it was because of that. She only wanted to have that one vendor, then I opened her up to other food vendors coming in. Brother from Jamaica, he was doing the jerk chicken. He had the little steel drums but they was stoves.

He was doing really well. And she would make sho she put me with Queen Quet when she was doing modeling, and she would sing. She did it at the Gullah Festival. Where I set up was the dressing room. But she would let me, the Jamaican guy, and the original lady who was selling the soul food, but now she toned it down. She didn't put pork in a lot of her stuff. She toned it down. Me, I was only doing devil crab and shrimp gumbo without meat.

See that vase with the book on top? I was making a bunch of them and selling 'em, and oyster shells. We'd hang out. It was nice going to Beaufort for the Gullah Festival. From that, I went to others but there was nothing like the Beaufort one. Finally, Emory [Campbell] let me come to Penn Center. They'll freeze you out. I went to Sapelo, same thing. They put me with Mr. [Allen] Green. And all the ladies was under the tent, doing they thing. Because I was a stranger in town, they set me on the side, and I did all right. Wherever they put me, I used to always do good. It didn't matter.

TM: You consider yourself an artist?

RB: I used to, but I haven't in so long. This African brother taught me how to do that [pointing to a vase].

TM: That's basically tabby but with another material.

HH: I think we all are artists, not drawing and painting. But, you know, in his chef work. I mean, that's artistic, the way you put together a meal. So I mean in some form or fashion, I think we all are artists.

TM: I agree, especially when we think about art from a traditional African lens. It was functional and it was spiritual. It wasn't just something pretty that you'd put up somewhere solely for decoration. What's some of your favorite expressions? Ways to express?

HH: I met DJs and announcers from all over the world. And people from all over the world, they listen to the Black Star Line, because and, like you said, when I started at the station, it was a lady by the name [Beatrice] Barnes, she used to be an announcer at WSOK. I did not like Ms. Bea at first.

TM: Why?

HH: Because... I didn't know her.

TM: Was that enough not to like her?

HH: Yeah. Because I thought she was arrogant, but she was not. And before we could go on the air to talk, we had to submit a tape and she had to go through it. And people asked me how long you've been doing radio. I mean, when did you go to school for it? I’d say “I had a lady by the name of Bea Barnes who did jazz on WSOK. Years and years ago, I used to listen to her. Told me how to pronounce and how to speak on the mic. And everything else was history.”

RB: You came in. "You can't play that on the radio!"

TM: Why? Cussing?

RB: Peter Tosh, “Legalize It.”

HH: “12 Days of Christmas” was the one they didn't want me to play on the radio. ‘On the first day of Christmas, Ganga gave to me.’ They were talking about weed. They tried to ban me and I kept playing it. They almost took me off the air, but people were listening. I just stayed off of there for about two or three weeks. I wouldn't record and people were wondering what happened to the reggae program.

RB: They used to monitor albums. Record companies send in albums, you know, to play. She had to see it first, and she would confiscate 'em. Hanif said one day, "Man, I found all my albums!” So he rerouted ‘em to his house instead of the station.

TM: She was basically customs.

[Everyone laughs]

RB: Yeah!

TM: Art is storytelling to me. What people, what places, and time periods show up in your music?

HH: Well, with the music that I play, generally, it was intentional. Being a Rastafarian, I want to play conscious music. There's a lot of music. But there's a lot of not so conscious music.

TM: How do you define conscious music?

HH: Music that's uplifting and motivating. When DJs came on the scene in the mid ‘80s, all of the revolutionary rush that came out of the ghettos of Kingston and surrounding communities was gone. You know, Bob don' died out. Not all of the DJs, we got younger DJs who are very conscious. Like Sister Lila Iké, she impressed me very much at this year's music festival. But music that's uplifting and dealing with truth and light. That's the difference between consciousness and slackness. Slackness is something devoid of emotional and spiritual uplift.

TM: Well, this conversation sho felt like conscious music to my spirit. I appreciate y’all beaucoup.

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