Jeremyah Fasi

Jeremyah "Gorak" Fasi (born 1919), is a Jamaican poet, musician and manager.

Biography

Early life

Jeremyah "Gorak" Fasi is born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1919, the eldest of five children of a Haitian prostitute. At age eleven, Jeremyah started to play guitar in the street waiting for his mother. He was already living in the first rastafarian camp because his mother was seeing Leonard Percival Howell. It fully influenced the young boy. By 16, he was working as a dealer of marijuana in East Kingston and spent 2 years in prison.

Artistic career

After returning from prison in 1928, Jeremyah continued his musical education by playing in small bands for parties. For several years, he lived thanks to small gigs and charity until he met Count Owen, a young mento guitarist. As he was earning more money from gigs, he started to organize parties and worked on the first Owen recording in 1959, Down Jamaica Way. Since then, he took "Gorak" as a nickname taken from an ancient jamaican tale. The Gorak was a ghost pirate whose treasure was hidden somewhere in Jamaica. In 1959 again, he became Francis Johnson & The Mento Makers's manager, a local mento group, influenced by rasta culture.

In early 1960s he lived in Orange's street close to Leslie Kong 's restaurant. He used to play cards with Fats (Lesly's brother), and assisted to Bob Marley's first singles: "One Cup of Coffee" and "Judge Not". At about the same time, he worked for Duke Reid's team he formerly knew as a policeman when both were younger.

As the years passed, "Gorak" became isolated, due in part to his belief in drugs, and despite Marley's support and Francis Johnson's help to save him from alcoholism, he disappeared from the studios. In later life, "Gorak" regretted the loss of those friends.

After having passed long years in a rasta community, he came back in the front scene in 1990 thanks to young artists inspired by the poems he kept on writing throughout the years.In 2005, he was celebrated as the "Orange street living memory of reggae", the street where he's still living.