Ras Albert Williams accelerated the rehabilitation of dreadlocked persons within the community.
IRVING W. ANDRE – AUTHOR OF DISTANT VOICES
Ras Albert Williams
Ras Albert Williams, was born in Emsworth in the United Kingdom (UK) on June 10th 1962. At the age of ten, he migrated to the Commonwealth of Dominica with his father.
From the age of 12 he became a follower of The RastafarI movement and by age 15, upon graduating from the Dominica Grammar School, he dropped out of society and left the comforts of the town and headed for River Clear, a fruitful valley with a rushing river of clear cool water. There he joined a group of his contemporaries, and attempted to live the lifestyle of the dreads and proclaim the divinity of Emperor Haile Sellassie.
Between,1981 and 2002, his by-line appeared in all the local periodicals in Dominica: The Chronicle, The Tropical Star, The Independent, The Voice of the People and The Sun as a free-lance contributor and columnist of scores of articles, short stories poems and other features. From June 2002 to March 2004 upon receiving a diploma in journalism/Short Story Writing from Harcourt Learning Direct, a correspondence school, he was invited to join Dominica’s oldest and most read newspaper: The Chronicle as a full-time reporter and photographer. While at the newspaper, Albert joined the Media Workers Association of Dominica (MWAD), and served as its secretary for a few months.
Ras Albert is recognised as a talented individual who has show a keen interest in many areas of the fine arts. Besides having written and self-published three booklets of poetry and a collection of short stories, namely: Honourable Natty Dread, (1982,1990&1996); One Dominica-Odes for I Beloved, (1985) and Through The Far Eye ISBN 976-8155-00-0(1996) and Haunted Heritage and Other Stories ISBN 1-4241-0680-X, In 1997, he was nominated for the DBS Radio FAME Award for Best Radio Program for the one-hour, literary radio program that he produced and presented for the Dominica Writers Guild (DWG). The show, Review was aired on the Dominican FM radio station, Kairi FM on Tuesday’s, Thursday’s and Sunday’s. Albert is also a founding member of the Dominica Writers’ Guild (DWG) established in 1982.In addition, to being one of several young persons who founded the Frontline Cooperative Bookstore in 1983.
He has worked with organisations such as the Inity of Rastafari Idren, The Movement for Cultural Awareness (M.C.A.) and the Ethiopian World Federation Incorporated (EWF Inc.) for which he served first as Sergeant-at arms and then secretary. He has also worked along side persons such as Alwin Bully and Ophelia of the Government of the Commonwealth of Dominica’s, Division of Culture; the Black History Awareness Committee (B.H.A.C) and the Roseau Public Library, with which he has organized dozens of public readings, book festivals, African liberations marches and Bob Marley Awareness Days. He has also been called upon to facilitate workshops in creative writing and is also noted as an excellent performance poet. He is married to Memphis-born, Tempie, author of ‘Feelings’ ISBN 1-4241-0706-7. Ras Albert is presently pursuing a MSc in Technology Management at The Open University. In December 2016, he received a BSc (Hons) in Computing and IT also from The Open University.
“Within the decade, the works of a few radical poets gained local attention since they defused some apprehensions about Dreads which had built up in the previous decade. Not only the works of Ras Mo but that of Ras Albert Williams accelerated the rehabilitation of dreadlocked persons within the community. As one of the founding members of the Frontline Co-operative and the DWG, Williams was partly responsible for the resurgence of interest in poetry during the decade.”
IRVING W. ANDRE – AUTHOR OF DISTANT VOICES , POND CASE PRESS (ISBN 0-9699857-3-8) 1996
DREAD, RASTAFARI AND ETHIOPIA (2020). Available at: https://dreadrastafariandethiopia.wordpress.com/ (Accessed: 13 July 2020).
ALBERT WILLIAMS Reporting 