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Daddy Uroy, 'the talking Gleaner'.Tanya Batson, Staff Reporter
Dancehall's detractors usually separate it from reggae, stating that the lyrics are simple doggerel dealing with slackness. For proof, they simply point to deejays such as Yellow Man, whose lyrics are filled with nursery rhymes and even jingles. His 1982 hit Mad Over Me contained the entire jingle for a tomato ketchup ad.
This view however, ignores a very important function of deejaying and dancehall. The music has been a method of passing on news or engaging in social commentary for as long as it has existed.
In Reggae Roots, writer Stephen Davis has stated that deejays engage in a form of "oral folk journalism". Veteran deejay URoy was often referred to as the 'human Gleaner' due to the fact that his lyrics were always contemporary. In their book Reggae Routes, Kevin O'Brien Chang and Wayne Chen state: "Ghetto happenings that never make the official media become nationwide knowledge through the deejays and some say the Top 40 gives a more accurate reflection than the official media of what's really going on in Jamaica".
This trait seems to have continued through to the present. DJ Ace pointed out that when he is writing his lyrics, staying contemporary is very important to him. "When I'm writing still, I try to keep my stuff real and current," he said. "Everything is about what's going on. What's going on with the girls, what's going on with politics, what's going on with young guys."
This concern with 'what's going on' has been evident in the music for years. One of the most popular examples of this is Lloyd Lovindeer's Wild Gilbert. The song adequately conveyed the water-logged feeling of many Jamaicans after Hurricane Gilbert in 1988:
Water come inna mi room
Mi sweep out some with the broom
Full a bully beef
Full a bully beef
Wi cyaan get no light so
Wi full a bully beef
spoke of the fact that many people had to live on canned goods due the lack of electricity after the hurricane. The song, which dealt with the truly harrowing experience, did the Jamaican thing and 'tek bad tings mek joke'. Thus not only did it reflect the event of the hurricane, but it also showed how Jamaicans often deal with tragedy.
Wild Gilbert was neither the first nor last of its kind.
Additionally, deejays do not confine their topic to local events or natural disasters. When peace was finally achieved between the warring factions of Tivoli Gardens and Matthews Lane in 1999, Spragga Benz's Peace marked the event. Additionally, when Operation Ardent was formed in the early 1990's Buju Banton released Operation Ardent which states:
Turn up the music cause music is strength
Lock it off from the officer say Ardent
What more, what unnu want de poor people do
Every dance when we keep unnu mek it get curfew
While there is significantly less focus on particular international events, some attention is paid to them. For example Amadou Dialo, sung by Bunny Wailer, Kymani Marley and Buju Banton about the Amadou Dialo killing by the police in the United States.
Now I know you don't care about me
I'm just a nigger walking down your street
Amadou Dialo, Reggae music knows your name
Additionally, world politics, and especially apartheid, were heavily addressed in dancehall music. An excellent example of this is Macka B's Devil Dance, which not only deals with apartheid, but suggests that other world leaders (such as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher) were also responsible, as they did nothing to help:
Di sound which a play, Apartheid High Power
Wid di bwoy Botha as di operata'
'Im invite Mussolini, 'im invite Hitler,
Di Klu Klux Klan an di Boston 'trangler.
'Im invite rapist an mass murderer
An anybody who support apartheid in Africa
Nonetheless, the idea of 'what's going on' extends beyond current events. The songs are often laden with sentiments that reflect the concerns and beliefs of Jamaica. Songs such as Papa Levi's My God, My King dealt with the powerless situations in which many Jamaicans are placed through their lack of education. In this song, Papa Levi dealt with the rape, miseducation and poverty which Jamaicans have had to deal with for centuries, having only been taught to say "I's a comin' Massa".
Several deejays have since made it their business to speak about social concerns. At the head of this list is Buju Banton. Buju's Voice of Jamaica album is rife with songs that deal with Jamaica's socio-economic situation, such as Murderer, which interrogated the increasing killings washing the island. He chanted:
Murderer! Blood is on your shoulder
Kill I today you cannot kill I tomorrow
Murderer! Yuh insides must be hollow
How does it feel to take the life of another?
You can wash yuh hands till you cyaan wash no more,
This is like an epidemic an we can't find the cure
Buju has several other songs of this nature. In Deportee he dealt with the increasing number of Jamaicans being deported from the United States and what happened to them when they returned home penniless, while Boom-Bye-Bye graphically depicted the violent and rampant homophobia in Jamaica.
Buju is by no means alone however. Bounty Killer, who cries that "poor people fed up" has also made the Jamaican socio-economic situation his business. The deejays sentiments about the state of the Jamaican population were clearly outlined in his 'Poor People Governor' lecture at University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, recently. "We need more opportunities in the ghetto. We can have all sort of Crime Management Unit, but we will always have criminals if we don't address the problems," he told the packed lecture theatre.
In the song Cyaan Believe Mi Eyes, he deals with the disintegration of Jamaican morality. Here the DJ sings about occurrences that go against the Jamaican moral code. By stating that he "can't believe seh Rasta Man a tun fassy hole", the DJ marks the decline of respect for the Rasta icon, which was once the bastion of morality in Jamaica.
As Cyaan Believe Mi Eyes also depicts by pointing to the wearing of 'tight pants' among those who are supposed to be 'badman', dancehall music is also a good place to find out about sex and sexuality in Jamaica. It is for this reason that the genre is said to be all about slackness. This goes against the views of persons such as university lecturer and author Carolyn Cooper.
Miss Cooper defines slackness as a revolt against law and order. She finds that the disturbing nature of dancehall lyrics is as revolutionary as Bob Marley's statement that 'I want to disturb my neighbour'. The truly disturbing aspect of these songs is usually the explicit detail with which they go into sexual acts, however, the songs actually dictate acceptable forms of sexuality.
Dictates about how men should behave are often pre-empted by the phrase 'bad man no-'. As Beenie Man pointed out in his remake of Sim Simmer, featuring Mia, 'well, certain tings bad man no do!'
There are, of course, several of these things that 'bad man no do', many of which can be found in the songs which proliferated in the early 1990s. Included in these are: 'bad man no dress like girl-', 'bad man no wear G-String-', 'bad man no wear tight pants-', 'bad man no tek back chat'.
Similarly, what it is to be a 'hot gyal' is also defined in many songs. Songs such as Red Dragon's Ku-kum-kum spoke of the fact that very skinny women were not appreciated, while its counterpart, Bu-duf-baf suggested the same for the very fat.
Dancehall lyrics also have other functions. First, they are an excellent source for finding out about the latest dance, or even for checking which dances have been popular. The instructions of how to do several dances can be found in dancehall lyrics. Among these are the Cool and Deadly, Water Pumpy, Bike Back, Della Move, Bogle, Tatty, Butterfly, and most recently, the Log On. This is not surprising, as a major part of dancehall is about dancing and the creation of the right vibe, as the young are quick to point out.
Second, dancehall music also provides a good medium to find out about the latest slang, even if it won't tell you what it means. For example Elephant Man's Shizzle My Nizzle, an adaptation of Snoop Dogg's revitalisation of the 1970's disco speech patterns, has helped to popularise the phrase locally. However, many of the persons using it are not quite aware of exactly what it means, other than the fact that it is a greeting.
When asked what it meant, two young men stated that it was a greeting and that the 'my nizzle' referred to my 'nigger', neither knew what 'shizzle' meant.
As such, it appears that despite an apparent wane in the music's popularity among the young, as long as it retains its relevance to Jamaican popular culture, dancehall will have its place in the Jamaican music scene, as it continues to be a journal of the Jamaican experience from an insider's viewpoint.
