Reggae under the microscope

By Leighton Williams, Staff Reporter

Tekla Mekfet (left), author and campus administrator at the Wesley Campus of Brown's Town Community College, speaks with Ronnie Burke, former promoter of the defunct Sunplash, at UTech during the forum on 'Rastafari-Reggae and Dancehall Culture: Roots of the Sound Clash and other Cultural Confusion' put on by the Rastafari Centralisation Organisation in association with the UTech on Friday evening. - Michael Sloley

DANCEHALL AS music and an industry came under scrutiny from members of the rastafarian and academic communities on Friday evening when they met to review its development over the years.

Dancehall, the derivative of reggae, has been under scrutiny since Reggae Sumfest 2001 when a bottlethrowing incident on Dancehall Night brought a premature and chaotic end to the night's activities. On Friday evening the Rastafari Centralisation Organisation (RCO), in association with the University of Technology (UTech), presented a forum on the theme: 'Rastafari-Reggae and Dancehall Culture: Roots of the Sound Clash and other Cultural Confusion'. It was a presentation and discussion forum where both the positive and the negative aspects of dancehall music were highlighted.

The main speaker for the night Tekla Mekfet, author and campus administrator at the Wesley Campus of Brown's Town Community College, carefully traced the history of the music and clashes from the times of Africa to the present day. He said clashes in former years were friendly and "in a 'sound clash' or 'cutting war' of the African tradition, the community is always victorious in a re-vitalising music of expressed oneness."

Mekfet added that the absence of spiritualism from the dancehall has made the music merely entertainment. "The absence of a central message and function converts DJ's into clashes for constituencies of stardom, conveyor-belt 'superstars', as little gods of alien ancestors". His one- hour long presentation sought at times to compare dancehall music with hip- hop where consumerism was the order of the day rather than promoting positive messages.

Mekfet's comments were given some credence by Sunsplash promoter Ronnie Burke who said the cultural part of the music disappeared in the early 1980s and was allowed to reach this point since the public wanted to hear the more crass and boorish side of the music.

"The values of the music have changed. We are now apeing what the Americans have created. The dance has gone out of dancehall, the clash between the deejays signifies the decline of the real music," Burke said.

But while some members of the crowd lamented the decline of the music, others such as Cecil Gutzmore, Clinton Hutton and Clyde McKenzie sought to show that positives were still in the music.

Hutton said dancehall was more Afrocentric than reggae since it sought to communicate in dialect as opposed to reggae that used English. "In dancehall speech is emphasised over melody and it is a kind of poetry," he said.

Gutzmore said there was still a positive side of the music with the like of Tony Rebel, Capleton and others championing the cause of rastafarianism and the African culture.

The forum, which had a lively debate, saw all presenters and members of the audience highlighting the power of the music.

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