Ian Boyne, Contributor
WHAT'S ALL the fuss about two dancehall artistes, known for their glorification of violence, simply assaulting each other? And merely with hands and feet? That's soft! They are behaving like ...
We should be breathing a sigh of relief and thanking them for not pumping gunshots into each other for the entire world to see, courtesy of CVM Television's bright idea of a web cast. It's a good thing Ninja Man handed over his gun last year to Reneto Adams at that same annual vulgar orgy called Sting.
I don't mean to disrespect the Don Gorgon by suggesting that he only has one small instrument. But I have no evidence that he has his "Nine", "Sixteen" or "Eleven" and I am afraid of libel. I am not saying he does not have them either, so no disrespect, original Goldteeth bad man, Ninja.
The "shock and awe" being expressed over the little incident which took place at Sting on Saturday morning is unnervingly naive and simplistic and in some cases hypocritical.
The sections of the Jamaican middle class who do not understand the culture of the dancehall have a right to be alarmed by what they saw on television. Television has a way of jolting us and imprinting certain things on our consciousness:
The nastiness, crudeness and promotion of criminality in dancehall culture zoomed into middle and upper class homes across Jamaica, forcing the sanitised to see what takes place below.
OUTRAGE
The Observer newspaper was absolutely outraged. It devoted not one, but two successive editorials to a stinging, blistering, guillotine-sharp denunciation of the Sting promoters. It was first-class editorial writing, laced with passion and forceful reasoning. In the first editorial on Sunday, December 28 titled, "Are the Sting Promoters Shamed", the Observer noted that the dancehall "apologists will claim, too, that it is Jamaican culture, the people's thing. A kind of declaration of self and a sense of arrival by those with little power, who use the opportunity of these shows whether as patron or performer as a time of assertion. In other words, all are on the stage in some kind of real-life reality show, baring their souls and insisting on being recognized." An excellent summarizing of the kind of crap which passes for intellectual thought at the University of the West Indies Mona campus (not to malign the other campuses).
Continues the Observer in its justifiable indignation: "From their middle class, uptown and suburban cosiness, the promoters and marketers sell this notion of Jamaica, the home of 'bad man shotta', to impressionable youth and inner-city community and other young people, oblivious to the deeper damage they do to the society. But why be concerned if they rake in millions while stones are thrown, gunshots are fired and images of Jamaica as a place of unruly violence are flashed across the world." The worldwide publicity was facilitated by the owners and mangers of CVM Television which is not "looking better" for this tragic decision to web cast this show trade-marked for vulgarity, the promotion of violence and some of the worst aspects of Jamaica.
MORALLY CORRUPT CORPORATE BACKERS
The Gleaner in its editorial on Tuesday December 30,"Savagery at Sting", makes an important point which has often been overlooked whenever these incidents of dancehall mayhem and obscenity have occurred: The role of the corporate sponsors and money backers, the same men and women dressed in elegant suits who eat at the finest hotels in this country and lecture the rest of us about declining values and the need for a higher moral order and discipline in the society.
The Gleaner editorial makes the important point that "the promoters of this event including the corporate sponsors must be held accountable. Certainly responsible corporate bodies must rethink the type of events that they choose to promote."
In other words and this is important coming from the Gleaner don't just blame imbeciles like Ninja Man and Vybz Kartel, nor only people like Howard McIntosh who should know better, but also corporate sponsors.
Vybz Kartel, before he reeled off some favourite gun lyrics, told his audience bluntly: "This is not Heineken Startime; it is Guinness Wartime". Wheel! And everyone in that audience-except some innocent visitor to the island who might have been carried along by a relative and friend knows that Kartel was telling the plain truth.
The corporate sponsors don't give a damn once they get to sell their products and increase their marketing position. It's only the money that matters. So, yes, I agree with the dancehall apologists from the UWI and elsewhere who say that the degeneracy is not limited to downtown and the dancehall. The degeneracy is from top to bottom. Sections of the capitalist class are also irresponsible, morally bankrupt and philosophically nihilistic.
These shows cannot go on without corporate sponsorship and they can't get the hype without media support. None of the editorials and media houses mentioned the media's role. The editors of both the Observer and the Gleaner must check their entertainment sections to see the extent to which these purveyors of anarchy and vulgarity called dancehall artistes are promoted by their own papers.
But the electronic media are the main culprits for promoting those who espouse criminality and big up gunmen and criminals. Watch the entertainment programmes and listen to the artistes being pushed by the disc jocks on radio: They are the Ninjamans (or men!) and the Vybz Kartels and Bounty Killers.
HARDORE SLACKNESS
I can't understand those patrons of Sting who were expressing alarm over what happened on Saturday morning. Probably dem lick dem head and figet seh a Sting dem go. Sting is a hardcore, "almshouse" (or harm's house!), shotta thing. Sting is not for the sanitised. Anybody who knows the ethos of Sting knows that it is associated with the crudest, roughest, wickedest elements of the dancehall.
People don't go to Sting to hear Frankie Paul, Sugar Minott, Freddie McGregor or Bunny Wailer, Pablo Moses or any Gentleman, whether from Jamaica or Germany. No. They go to hear hardcore lyrics gun talk, badness and slackness. They want to hear Lady Saw and the "bruk out, skin out" female artistes who can best describe their anatomical make-up. People don't go to Sting to hear Carlene Davis sing about the Lord Jesus.
If you go to Sting, expect anything! I have absolutely no sympathy for anyone who was injured at Sting. They should thank the Lord they came out with their lives. Sting is an institution patented for gun talk, the 'bigging' up of the gunman and slackness and obscenity. It has a history of violence. Sting is a disgraced institution. In fact, it thrives on that image. It is just that more of its seamy side is filtering into more people's living rooms and as the institution celebrates 20 years it has to do new things for the anniversary celebration.
Next year, if the promoters, as I expect, go on with their show despite their public relations gimmick about this being the last show, they might move on to providing us with live shooting of artistes for CVM to web cast. And thousands of fans will be there indeed, I predict Sting will be bigger next year for its dog-heart reputation is now solidified. It has earned its stripes. Sting is not for the faint-hearted. They go to Heineken Startime!
PERVERSION OF VALUES
For years the UWI apologists have told us that we must not fight down "poor people's culture". That we in the middle class are so arrogant and filled with our sense of self-importance as to want to impose our bourgeois values on the masses and to determine what is right and wrong and what is proper behaviour. How dare us!
After all, we in the middle class are just hypocrites, for we go to the most bloody and violent movies, watch them on our DVDs with large-screen television sets; we have our "dishes" with multiple blue-movie channels which we are watching "Spicing" up our lives; Yet we snub our noses at lady Saw, CeCile and Queen (?) Paula. Hypocrites!
The dancehall apologists are as predictable as they are pathetic. The Observer in its second damning editorial on Monday December 29, titled "The Unmasking of Sting" touches on a theme which has a been a feature of these columns for years, that of the perversion of values through materialistic obsession.
The Observer editorial says the supposedly decent family men who are promoters of Sting "have no or very little respect for Jamaica or Jamaicans". They are, it seems to us, primarily about ensuring their personal family welfare and view the rest of Jamaica as a giant cheque book-means to an end. That end being a good lifestyle." Poignant editorial writing. Courageous stand. Long overdue.
When for years I have been attacking the negative features of the dancehall, my colleagues in the media gave me no support. For years I have refused to bring on the icons of the dancehall including Ninja Man, and Bounty Killer on my television show.
Louisie Frazer-Bennett's dying wish to me was to interview Sting founder Isaiah Laing ironically, a former leading policeman. Just a few days before she died she enquired whether I had contacted Laing for she said he was a good man. But I told her he built an institution which promotes the values which have held back this country in poverty and underdevelopment, and I could not in good conscience invite him on my show, known for a certain quality. (No doubt, I have made some awful choices for my programme over the years but never knowingly and deliberately). I have refused to interview artistes whom I know would pull big audiences because I believe somebody in the media must stand for something other than cheap popularity and money-making.
Now, more people in the media are seeing the mess they have created by promoting people like Ninja Man, Vybz Kartel and Bounty Killer. Sting as an institution of infamy is nothing new, yet Government ministers go to the hotel launch and give their blessings and endorsement.
Big companies sponsor it. Middle class people like Howard McIntosh, the former banker from the failed Workers Bank, add their management skills to it and journalists and radio jocks, some of them bought and corrupt as they come, promote this type of dancehall. Dancehall is not all bad and is not all negative. Let me get that out of the way before the apologists come with their lame rebuttals.
The Observer refers to "a kind of degenerative perversity which, through excellent marketing, they manage to convince too many is right and good." The editorial bears repetition to a wider readership here: "It may have done something for Sting's image as the place for the tough and the hard, but it hurt Jamaica with its reinforcement of the negative stereotypes as a nation of violence and nihilists."
There is a connection between this image of Jamaica and the fact that we are not attracting as much foreign investment as we could; the fact that so many businesses have had to close because of violence and harassment by criminals for protection money and the fact that Jamaica's leading foreign exchange earner, tourism, is fickle and very sensitive to the perception of safety. Sure, the politicians are to blame for much of the state of the country's degeneracy.
MISMANAGEMENT
Yes, the politicians go on with a lot of "slackness" too, and the mismanagement of any economy fosters violence, anarchy and all of that. So, please, spare me the shallow responses. Don't tell me about the use of violence to get rid of oppression in South Africa, Haiti, Zimbabwe, and worse, don't tell me about Bush's violence in Iraq.
Do these people really think that the lyrics of Bounty Killer, Vybz "Tek B... Gal" Kartel and Ninja Man are about revolutionary, transformative violence? I agree with the dancehall apologists: Don't blame the artistes alone. They are products of an unjust, exploitative society. Blame this stratified society and the structural violence which is embedded in it; blame the class system which has excluded so many and which fosters many of our inner-city problems.
Blame the media which reap profits from promoting popular artistes who promote violence and vulgarity. Blame big corporate sponsors and their marketing people some of whom are prominent church people for misguiding their CEOs who listen to Beethoven and Bach and might even like "a bit of Bob Marley" but don't really know what the hell takes place in the dancehall.
We will all soon forget about what happened at Sting and it will be business as usual the media will continue 'bigging' up the artistes you are sure to watch them on Entertainment Report and On Stage and the Star and X-News will continue to push them.
The sponsors will continue making money while the UWI academics and those who write in the media who profit from the music business will continue to provide excuses for vulgar and violent behaviour. After all, who defines what is vulgar and crude, they will ask? (I can hear their tired and trite arguments).
Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist. You can send your comments to ianboyne1@yahoo.com
