Death is big business in parts of the Caribbean. In the Jamaican capital of Kingston, funeral homes with their plastic white Doric columns and gold-encrusted ‘caskets’ are like a poor man’s dream of heaven. The dwindling belief in an afterlife — the consolation that we might ever join our loved ones — has taken much of the old-time religion out of the West Indian funeral. Wealthier Jamaicans may lavish up to US $30,000 on a Cadillac hearse. Now even death wears bling.
Fortunately, mortuary tradition survives in the Neo-African ‘Nine Night’ ceremony, where for nine nights the body remains in the deceased person’s home or ‘dead yard’ and hymn-singing mourners see to its safe departure to the next world. Charlie Phillips, a Jamaican-born photographer, has spent over half a century shooting Nine Night and other African Caribbean rites in his adopted London.
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