ANDREW STONE: uplifting women through poetry

It is a placid mid-morning and we’re at Andrew Stone’s St Andrew home. The honey mellow sounds of Neo-soul songstress Erykah Badu serve as a backdrop to the confessional. He is relaxed. His bearing is regal-vaguely reminiscent of an African ancestor. He speaks with love of his childhood and laces his recollections with vivid images of where he grew up with loving parents-the visceral smells, sights and sounds of 1960s working-class Kingston-and the influence they had on shaping the man and the artist he is.

Andrew Stone is a dynamic, multi-talented artist; he is a poet, musician, singer and songwriter. A graduate of the University of the West Indies with a degree in Economics and Management Studies, Stone, after his studies on campus, wrestled with the idea of a “white-collar profession to put food on the table” and a life-long wish to express his creativity. His compromise was to pursue a diploma in marketing. He subsequently worked as an account executive with a career on the rise at the ad agency, Marketing Counsellors, when he resigned his job to pursue his art full-time in 2000. Meanwhile, in addition to the rigours of an extremely demanding job, Stone was involved at the time with a Christian reggae band called Cross Culture, which was busy putting out an album. Eventually the conflicts of band commitments and his job began leaving him feeling frustrated. “It came to a point when I said, ‘I’m not going to do this anymore,’ ” Stone says.

His art took precedence and Stone, a regular contributor to the Observer’s Literary Arts magazine, decided to follow his heart.

“My parents introduced me to art, plays. I grew up loving the stage,” he says candidly, while admitting to an early love and recognition of words on the page before being able to read. The young Stone also realised a keen interest in writing poetry from high school days. It seemed inevitable that he would become an artist.

Stone’s literary and musical influences are varied: from the pantheon of Caribbean literary writers, Spanish guitars, neo-soul, Bob Marley to dancehall music. He writes about things that move him. The artist’s role, he stresses, is that of “teacher, prophet, critic. celebrant… the artist affirms life.” Stone himself is committed to telling the truth about life – it’s gritty bits included. His work is therefore about transformation, about holding up a mirror to society and forcing it to take a long look.

Yet, he does not preach. Ideas embedded in his music and his poems centre around spirituality. “Some people know me in a particular religious context, and they might think I’ve abandoned that religious context,” Stone says, smiling. Indeed, Stone, up until recently, was a leader in his church, Covenant Community, and prior to that an active member of Youth For Christ. But he is now uncomfortable with labels of any kind, especially specific organisation of religions and the understanding of God, and insists that he is still in touch with “the Source” and holds steadfastly to several of the teachings that he grew up with. “People ask me what I am and I hesitate. what I am is a seeker of truth. I am the pastor of a church with one member,” he says meditatively.

It’s perhaps this connection with the source of life that propels him to express his perception of love and romance, themes that also factor greatly into his work. Which makes women an important demographic in his fan base. With lines like:

.you are a land undiscovered-a secret place/

surrounded by noise and hustle. I am your

new initiate/ (“Breathless”)

and

” I watch you come swaying/

the rhythm of your hips/

like the slow stirring /

of a pot on a low fire.

(“Star Apple Girl”)

It’s no wonder that he holds this kind of appeal. He is however unapologetic about the homage he pays to women in his work. He credits his love for his mother and his respect for women in general, as a foundation for the exploration in his work-which he describes as part celebration, part confessional-of what loving a woman really means.

“Life is my process. In living everyday you register different experiences, which affect you one way or the other. I will write stuff out of my own pain, my heartbreak. But I write about the joys, too.”