Hume N. Johnson, Contributor
IN ITS stampede to stand as guardians of civil leadership and to install civility in dancehall music culture, corporate Jamaica has exposed its own civic hypocrisy. For the last 30 years, dancehall music, in reproducing and "re-presenting" the socio-economic and political conditions at work in the Jamaican society, has given lyrical endorsement to violence, materialism, narcissism, homophobia and misogyny. For the same time span, it has been corporate funds, which have partially driven the success of many dancehall events and the present hegemony of a negative dancehall discourse.
Today, Jamaican bottled drink, telephone and lately furniture and financial companies are stumbling over themselves to have dancehall artistes add their fame and personality to company brands and products and to lend their talent to the multiplicity of profit-inducing events staged within and by the corporate arena.
Despite public displays of vulgarity, indecent language and lyrics that offend the toughest female sensibility and make a mockery of attempts to rid the society of crime and violence, artistes such as Baby Cham, Beenie Man and Elephant Man remain the voices and symbols of Jamaican corporate firms, too obvious to mention.
Two events/incidents stand out in my mind as evidence of corporate Jamaica's civic ambivalence. The first is 'Red Stripe Reggae Sumfest' and its promiscuous relationship with the event billed on their roster as 'Dancehall Nite'. Having previously expelled 'Conscious Night', which usually displays the talent of artistes of Rastafarian orientation from its roster, Sumfest, a few years ago made way for a double dosage of 'Dancehall Nite'.
DANCEHALL GENRE
This is not because they love dancehall music or wish to interface with its emissaries. But what else attracts the biggest crowds in Jamaica but dancehall music, particularly when it exhibits riotous indecency and vulgarity? It has never mattered to promoters that some of the artistes billed for these events are known contributors to what I call a 'bastardisation' of the dancehall genre. A simple process of sifting and contractual savvy could have prevented the widespread vulgarity displayed by several artistes during their onstage performances at successive Sumfest shows.
One would have thought that such shameful incidents would have sounded trumpets of civility from all sections of society and bellowed to the private sector to check the events they lend their brands to and the values they honour. Instead, corporate Jamaica responded in characteristic silence.
The second is the 'Magnum' Sting Affair of 2003 which saw dancehall artistes wreaking foul language on the ears of citizen patrons of the dancehall and engaging in a public fist fight onstage. Civil society lashed out at the entertainers and the Government and rendered patrons who had the nerve to attend such sessions as supporters of incivility. Some media commentators finally found fodder for their contempt for a sector of the Jamaican citizenship classed as bhuttos. This is while corporate Jamaica once again cowardly retreated in silence.
REBEL SALUTE
The hypocrisy becomes ashamedly blatant when artistes with a markedly positive image are not allowed to feed from the endorsement tree and reggae events, which celebrate the healthier aspects of Jamaica's music product, are hard-pressed to attract corporate sponsorship of the sort accorded to 'Red Stripe Reggae Sumfest'. I draw Tony Rebel as an example. His refusal to sell alcohol or to encourage its consumption at his reggae festival, dubbed Rebel Salute, has resulted in corporate Jamaica turning a consistently blind-eye to this event. I therefore applaud Cable and Wireless and Capital and Credit Merchant Bank for their boldness in the last two years in going against the prevailing grain. I am not here in clique with the 'separatists' who not only make a sharp differentiation between dancehall and reggae but attempt to rank one music genre above the other.
In their pursuit of civility, corporate Jamaica, inhabited by middle class snobs and alongside their counterparts in academia, the Church and some sections of media, has been the biggest separatists of this country's people. For them, the dancehall is a domain inhabited by uneducated bhuttos, lacking in politeness, enlightenment and refinement and dancehall music, save when it issues from the mouths of Shaggy and Sean Paul, is not 'real music'. The marked distinctions some of this elite sect make between Shaggy/Sean Paul and the 'other' ghettoites from Kingston's slums clashes with their desire to be seen among the African elements in the slums at 'Passa Passa' on Wednesday nights. So what should we make of corporate Jamaica's latest stunt to demand civility of others before they display it themselves?
Mind you, the increased levels of crassness, aggression and violence being presented as entertainment by artistes on stage, re-presented to us through media and unreservedly endorsed by corporate Jamaica, is no longer about counting the chickens coming home to roost. It means that there is a radical revolution taking place in our values and the way we order the society. These fundamental shifts in values and behavioural norms are not the reserve of dancehall artistes and musicians but are occurring at all levels of the society, across all institutions and within all social and political domains of our society. This recognition requires that we undertake a re-evaluation of our self-image in line with our changing condition.
The same dynamics of change must also compel corporate firms to re-evaluate their self-image, disable themselves of the sort of 'master race' psychology, which causes them to detach themselves from the happenings in the dancehall body and the society below Cross Roads.
HUGE PROFITS
In other words, to win credibility, corporate Jamaica cannot detach itself from the decadence in an entertainment industry it supports and from which it garners huge profits. It cannot expect to place its dollar to artistes, activities and events which degrade women, celebrate badmanism and glorify violence and then withdraw in moral panic, covering their guilt with a signed memorandum. If the aim is to integrate their defiant dancehall others in a moral community fashioned by the middle class, they would have failed without even beginning. It behooves this private sector realm to understand that this Dancehall genre they distance themselves from possess a significant youth following within which is the source of the greatest value change taking place in Jamaica.
VULGARITY ENTRENCHED
We have long allowed vulgarity and incivility to fester and become an entrenched aspect of our cultural discourse. Where our citizens have not acted, our artistes have rushed in and have become our unapologetic spokespersons. Where our people have been dispossessed of their voice or offer it up willingly, it has been our artistes, (dancehall and roots reggae) which have been our social commentators. In the face of a sedated civil society, our artistes have unconsciously become our political negotiators. We need not romanticise them. Many like myself have found it difficult to locate the artistry in the advocacy of intolerance, hate and violence.
However, let us not pretend that their vociferous rejection of homosexuality is a radical departure from our collective perspective. To call for death, murder and mayhem, whether lyrically, physically or metaphorically is wrong but their generation-old celebration of all forms of violence is merely a reflection of a violent culture and an uncivil discourse in which we are all complicit. However, our historical tolerance for such decay must now be exhausted. This rebellion against ourselves and the society has left a gulf of fear, hostility, mutual misunderstanding and contempt among our citizens.
The solution is not to shun dancehall music. Dancehall represents the vibrancy and confidence of this country and its people. History will not applaud civic sanctimoniousness or acclaim for singers and players of instruments who insist on abusing and misusing their gift. There can be no applause, at least not while the media and corporate power brokers continue to be the master who hold the whip that forces our artistes into these meaningless roles. The negative about our music rings loudly and the objective is not to defend it but because the negativity speaks so loudly and has persisted for so long, we are all exposed as justifiers of decadence.
The quality and stability of our society is likely to be continuously affected by the challenges arising from uncivil elements within our civil society. It is therefore crucial for those of us working for a more 'civil' society to recognise that a civil society cannot exist without civil values and attitudes because civility depends on behaviour, attitudes and institutions that only civil society can create.
Hume N. Johnson is a doctoral student in Political Science at the University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand.
