Ohene Ifrit is one of Caribbean metal’s most intriguing entities. Having formed the first black metal band in Jamaica, Orisha Shakpana, in 2004, he was the only black metal presence there for years (though a band called Satan’s Anger may have been active there as early as 2009).
As I mentioned in the previous article, while metal chooses some of us, others may just have been born that way, and Ohene Ifrit could be one of those people. Seemingly intentionally enigmatic, there is not too much known about him beyond what he says himself. Possibly born in 1984 by the name “Andy C” (for Conrad) in Portmore, Jamaica, Ifrit now appears to reside in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. While I can only speculate as to why he chose to move, and I wonder if it has to do with the fact that Ifrit considers Orisha Shakpana a failed attempt at starting a black metal scene in Jamaica and may desire to live in a place more aligned with his tastes, a perfunctory google search indicates that Philadelphia is not known for having a black metal scene.
According to his Encyclopedia Metallum page (LINK), Ohene Ifrit is “a 5th generation baba (an Obeah priest) from Jamaica's – and possibly the Caribbean's – oldest Obeah cult that remains nameless due to Afrocentric purposes of not mixing with non-Africans.” This sort of Black centric approach to his life and creation, I feel, is part of what makes the music so interesting.
Now, I don’t know much about Obeah, and I don’t want to be some empty barrel making a lot of noise, so I'm not going deep here.
Obeah is a Caribbean Afro-diasporic spirituality with contested origins. While Wikipedia describes Obeah as a “difficult to define” system of “spiritual healing and justice-making,” many Caribbean people see it as something rather evil, and Ohene Ifrit seems to play into that.
While I cannot make an educated claim that Obeah is or isn't evil, many Jamaicans still see it as such. Criminalized, but unenforced for decades, the practice seems generally looked down upon. Of course, this kind of reputation lends itself well to the idea of metal mystique, but there is more to it than that in Lord Ifrit’s case, in my opinion.
As the article “The Racist History Of Jamaica’s Obeah Laws” discusses, the criminalization and vilification of Obeah is largely rooted in the settler-colonial desire to destroy Black slave culture. Obeah first became illegal in the mid-18th century as a direct result of a slave rebellion, where Obeah practitioners tried to spiritually support the rebels. Moreover, anti-Obeah laws were mainly enforced against poor black citizens.
Beyond just potentially “looking metal” and being illegal, Ifrit’s regard for Obeah speaks to his larger anti-colonial approach. It is a lived example of his refusal of colonization, a refusal to allow the slave trade the ability to strip him of African ancestry and culture.
Trying to listen to Orisha Shakpana makes me feel like I’m in an era of metalheaddom that I am just a few years too young to experience. I found their 2010 album, Spectral Duppyman Black Metal, posted on youtube by someone else, but looking through his “official” channels was a blast to the internet of several years’ past. Their SoundCloud page features a miscellaneous collection of their music, generally unfinished. On Spectral Duppyman Black Metal (side A; no vocals), a user named describes the demo as “good shit.”
And yes, the music is good shit. But despite being a sonically solid tribute to old school black metal (and other subgenres; their album Satanic Powers in Jamaican Hills intentionally played in four different styles of metal), it’s Ifrit’s attitude makes the difference to me. It’s good music, don't get me wrong. While I enjoy it and groove to it, my greatest interest is the semi-historian approach Ifrit takes, the anti-colonial aggression and the mythos of sorts that his work carries.
Orisha Shakpana’s Facebook page offers a lot of excellent insight into his work. Even if his self description as “a Caribbean history teacher on crack” is done somewhat in jest, it is not too far off the mark, given how much one can learn from reading through his thought processes behind his work. In an April 9, 2019 post, Ifrit elucidates both some of his goals with Orisha Shakpana, and the progress he has made in his research by discussing the history of the band’s name:
“When I created the band 12 years ago, I was always aware of our Asante ancestors, but their culture, like Jamaican culture, is a lot more obscure than the mainstream Orisha of Nigeria, which really has more to do with African descendants of Cuba and Brazil. I named the band "Orisha Shakpana” simply because I needed African material to write lyrics about ... My 2 year break was spent on unsolving that riddle of our true past as Jamaicans.”
Ifrit also mentioned in a March 22, 2014 post that he had spent the time learning Twi, in order for him to be able to “write songs in [his] ancestral language of the Akan”.
So yeah, the music rocks, and I love knowing it's possible for black metal to be loved in the Caribbean, but what draws me and what I love the most is the total dedication to pro-Black, deep and aggressive anti-colonialism. Ifrit isn’t afraid to pay covers, or make tributes, but he has his own brand of metalhead evil that could and would absolutely take a machete to National Socialist black metal (aka nazi) garbage.