76 HUGH HODGES

Johnson observes has the "flame-rhythm of historical yearning/ flame
rhythm of the time of turning."3 It is a tradition in which the act of
telling is both revelation and revolution, a fact that points to a
secondary meaning of the expression "the half has never been told." It
can be used to mean that somebody has got away with something illicit.
Jamaican politics or, as the Rastafari call it, 'politricks' is full of these
untold stories, and the Rastafarian songwriter Buju Banton puts it
concisely,

 With all the 'ike in the price
 Arm and leg we have to pay
 While owa leaders play

 Could go on and on the full has never been told.

The implication is that, if the full ever were told, the tricksters the
leaders, the downpressors, and all the other agents of Babylon would
be exposed, and the trick turned against them. Linton Johnson's
"Reggae Sounds" suggests that music, by telling that untold half, does
turn the trick; it begins "the time of turning." But it's not just music
that does this. Folk proverbs and stories, by speaking from within the
lives and history of the people, also contribute to the telling of the half
that has never been told. Take, for example the Jamaican turn of phrase
"dutty tough." It most often appears in the context of the proverb
"rain a fall, but dutty tough." Rain falls but the earth stays hard. The
proverb usually implies that relief, when it comes, is always too late,
and too little. Bob Marley uses it with this sense in "Them Belly Full":

 Them belly full, but we hungry;
 A hungry mob is a angry mob.
 A rain a fall, but the dutty tough;
 A pot a cook, but de food no enough `

Here the proverb speaks about the apparent inevitability of deprivation,
but it also contains, like a locket, an untold story about the relationship


 : Johnson, "Reggae Sounds" 100.
 Mark Myrie (Buju Banton), Donovan Germain, Handel Tucker and Glen Brown.
"Untold Stories." 'Til Shiloh. By Buju Banton. Poylgram, 314-524 119-2, 1995. The
transcription is from the liner notes to the album.
 Bob Marley, "Them Belly Full," Natty Dread, Island Records, CIDM 9281, 1974.