Vaughn Benjamin: "There's no stability on earth without woman!"

Vaughn Benjamin has only been to Jamaica once, on invitation of Mutabaruka. Although the excellent album 'King's Bell' (2011) sounds Jamaican, it has not been recorded in JA. '(Producer) Andrew 'Bassie' Campbell come to Virgin Islands,' Benjamin says. 'We worked with a some legendary men for this album, who in the past have put down some legendary work. But I wouldn't try to categorize. I just make sincere good music. Of course these guys sound classical, but only in respect to your own story and references.'

('These guys' are called Leroy 'Horsemouth' Wallace, Earl 'Chinna' Smith and Squidley Cole. Riddims were built in Jamaica, voicing was done in St.Croix, the capital of the US Virgin Islands.)

Vaughn has just finished sound checking for tonight's concert in De Melkweg, Amsterdam. As usual, the moment we meet, I forget all of the questions that have been roaming through my mind the last couple of days. This man makes me feel humble and even a bit dumb. He seems to have so much more knowledge about the universe and especially about rastafari. I can hardly keep track with his lyrics. Since 'King's bell' Midnite has released another five albums, some 40 odd tunes added to all the others that still are awaiting a thorough analyses. There even could have been more: 'A lot of albums have never come out. I just love to make music. And think of it further: our information was taken away from us. No one knew who we were. How can a few cd's by a small band from a small island be too much in relation to thousands of cd's released every day in the rest of the world?'

So Vaughns lyrics keep flowing, written down partially just minutes before they are recorded, only to be compared with what we know about ancient oracles. 'I just make music straight away at all time. Just look how you feel right now, how you perceive right now and try to stay in precept upon precept and line upon line.'

'All singers in the Virgin Islands are like this. None of them come to the studio with a song. I overstand from other civilizations how they see singing as the emptying out of the spirit, so that Jah can fill your cup. You don't come to Jah with your cup full already. Wha' you ask Him for then? We come to make music right now because we work with vibrations. You know about the string theory and quantum mechanics? The whole thing is built like a musical scale, even the chambers in the pyramids.'

But still: only few people 'overstand' what an oracle like Vaughn Benjamin really means, or even what he'schanting about (one reason why I didn't want to go into the string theory.) 'History show and prove,' says Vaughn, 'that in a time of social imbalance and sensitivities in all directions, you don't give a child a sharp knife and say go run and play. You have to be careful and protect the universe. You don't want people to run off and do something irrational. You haffi keep the balance between who must hear and who must know and who adequately knows enough, and who are the ones in place. They know, and if they don't know, it will be brought to their attention by the mass media. People like you overstand my lyrics after seeing the parallels on the physical earth, after watching the news.'

'There are things which have to be kept. We know that revisionists have removed away certain foundations of history. Nobody know that Judah tribes were up in Syria, sitting on the thrones. Until they find a lion's head in Homs. So when I sing a song that sounds irrelevant or esoteric, then the earth show you it's the truth I'm singing.'

'It's important to put back in place your own people's ancient dignity, by your own doings. It's important to undo lies, even to redeem bad traits and faults within people's selves. It's important to try hard, for your own generation and your own youths, for the world, and for King Selassie I. He is the fullness of the vision. His Majesty spoke of weapons of mass destruction. Who-ever claimed to have coined that phrase should know when His Majesty spoke it first.'

Next to His Majesty sat Empress Menen, who in many of Vaughns poems and lyrics is extensively honored. 'Some foundations never leave. There's no stability in earth without woman. Everybody know that, that's how it go in real life. To me that's no big deal. It's reality straight. Read the book: 'I am the Alpha and Omega.'

Some people, even rasta, say that African people don't need the bible to explain their history and destiny, that they reach back to ancient times, even before Jesus Christ. According to them His Majesty stems from a pre-biblical lineage.

'I just ask one question and then everything get settled: what did His Majesty say? And it's done. How can you distance yourself from that? I man was set astray, in a strange land, with guns and whips, and without institutions and foundations, and still we fine, and still we send this music that was written in the same book. Isaiah 24:15: "Therefore in the east give glory to the Lord; exalt the name of the Lord, the God of Israel, in the islands of the sea." Isaiah 11:11: "In that day the Lord will reach out his hand a second time to reclaim the remnant that is left of his people from Assyria, from Lower Egypt, from Upper Egypt, from Cush, from Elam, from Babylonia, from Hamath and from the islands of the sea."'

'I live in the Caribbean sea, which is the Atlantis region. A Christ consciousness from a fourth dimension level shall show up sometime, come out of the sea, looking like ancient Egypt, dem say. There's a whole chain in the Caribbean. We are talking about a people here, about a last overstanding and redemption, about a better earth for all people. If you see all through the Caribbean and in the world of sports, it's the head of dread, whether they know or don't know. It's taken the whole earth. It is what it is. Marcus Garvey say Africa's redemption blow like a west wind back to the east. It takes these kind of conversations to really realize how parallel the scriptures are with reality.'

'I'm not interested in interpretations. What you see around the world, is the truth. Genesis 49: "The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be." All of the world's pop culture is leaning towards vegetarianism, green power, natural sources… Who has laid the foundations for this overstanding of man? But knowing that doesn't mean we have to blow trumpets all around. We just see that the whole flow is going to where the I say it's going. Everything come in this way, because people must come this way, if they want to survive. The elders carry this for generations, from creation. It don't make sense to have a big ego about it because it just keep going.'

'Also read Isaiah 30.25: "And there shall be upon every high mountain, and upon every high hill, rivers and streams of waters in the day of the great slaughter, when the towers fall. Moreover the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days, in the day that the Lord bindeth up the breach of his people, and healeth the stroke of their wound."

'Babylon was one ziggurat, it was only one tower. You, as a scholar, you take a look at that. And you take a look at Zachariah 12: "Jerusalem shall not exalt herself to Judah." These scriptures teach us how to walk in the future, how to go about with our actions. This is one world, with interrelated oceans, currents and natural resources. In the new age, when the fight start again, hot again, Africa again, because the earth minerals, the majority is in Africa:  coltan, tantalite and cassiterite (ook in het Nederlands, red.).'

But in the meantime Africa, and Ethiopia for sure, is also being conquered, be it economically, by theChinese. Vaughn Benjamin: 'Listen to what the Emperor say: we must become a new race. That is the most revolutionary thought. We must become something that we were not prepared for.'

Has Vaughn ever been to Ethiopia? 'My blood is of Ethiopia. My sound and my voice is of Ethiopia. But I still have to go there, physically. See the churches that were cut out of the mountain without hands. Daniel 2:45: "Forasmuch as thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it brake in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold; the great God hath made known to the king what shall come to pass hereafter: and the dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof sure."'

'I know that in short time everything will be hilarious, will be funny. Even racism. It will all be funny in a minute, because we are all carbon bodies. There's a large percentage of your DNA, they don't know what activate it, what it does. Dem just call it dark matter. Dem don't know what it is. Just like the electricity we use right now. Nobody know what it is. The activation of certain hungers and thirst… The bible talk about people who thirst for their soul, and how the soul pant after (snakt naar, red.) knowledge, it pant after Jah, like a lion panting after water. Humans have these things inside. The duality in human nature is infinite. Infinite in how we consider good and evil, going to any kind of extreme and polarization. White and black, hot and cold, high and low, in and out… One can not be without the other, that's why we are here.'