How the CIA refracted Jamaica? Read 'Stir it up' by David Cupples

Scott Gallagher is a young white dread with a near neurotic obsession with Bob Marley.  In Jamaica, he encountered something that shook him to the bone, both mentally and physically. A psychiatrist tries to help Scott overcome his trauma. Little by little he remembers what happened in Kingston, and how he got involved in the (true) facts that happened.   

After the Americans had litterally arranged their affairs in Chili, Argentina and other countries where 'communists' popped up, their eye fell on Jamaica. There, a man named Michael Manley came to power in 1972.  He sought conciliation with Cuba and openly preached a 'third way' between the free American market (which hadn't brought much good to the Jamaican people thus far) and a more social, you can call it socialistic, system, that had eye for the needs of the sufferers. Manley was also friends with Bob Marley, king of reggae, international superstar, rebel and rastaman. His songs told the truth, and that was not to the liking of the CIA either. The allicance between Marley and Manley, two heroes of the people, had to be stopped.  

Scott is the son of the head of the CIA in Kingston, an archetypical bad guy, just like the ones the American government used to send across the world back then. The man gets all the means he needs to destabilise the government: mercenaries, bribes, allied newspapers, drugs (cocaïne) and above all weapons, lots of weapons.  High up in the Blue Mountains they are delivered, on isolated airports, often in exchange for large loads of ganja. Drugs for arms: it was not an exception in the battle against the communists and the revolutionaries. Moreover, the CIA cunningly responded to the historical rivalry between the two political parties in Jamaica, the ruling PNP and Edward Seagas JLP.

Scott himself becomes friends with someone from Bob Marleys entourage and has a good time in the house at Hope Road, until his fathers actions get to him physically, mentally and emotionally. The personal drama coincidentally collides with the murder attempt on Bob Marley and the Smile Jamaica concert a few days later, a turning point in the history of the island ànd in Marley's career. Cupples tells a thrilling story, drenched in the vibes and the patois that we all know so well. The author regards Jamaica with love, knowledge and inevitably with many beautiful and haunting memories in mind.  He knows what weed does to a man, and puts himself effortlessly in the mind of a fanatic teenager or in the twisted brain of a frustrated CIA-agent. Not everything turns out right in the end, if only because Bob Marley dies; but in any case Scott got to know not only himself better, but also the other half of history, the half that seldomly or never gets told.    

David Cupples is not the first author who links the presence of the CIA in Jamaica in the second half of the 70s to the murder of Bob Marley. In the American blower magazine High Times (and for that reason of course never noticed, let alone taken seriously by the traditional media), Alex Constantine posed in 2002 the thesis that some Carl Colby, son of CIA-director William Colby, slipped into the house at Hope Road shortly before the attack on Bob Marley. Just like Scott Gallagher in 'Stir it up', even though the latter is explicitly portrayed as sympathising with Marley and the sufferers.Cupples is admittedly the first author who expresses the burdensome years of Jamaica – simultaneously the golden years of reggae – into a sparkling novel. He knows how to accurately describe in words, thoughts and reflections the meaning and desirability of Jamaican culture to the white americans and europeans in that period, punctuated at the right times with bible quotations and historical information. A must read for everyone who wants to understand the history of Jamaica, reggae, Bob Marley and rastafari, or for everyone who just wants to read a good story about it.