Catcalling through music
Among the definitions of catcalling in online sources is this (gloriously) gender-neutral one from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary: “The act of shouting harassing and often sexually suggestive, threatening, or derisive comments at someone publicly”. That dictionary also has two meanings for puss, cat and girl. I will not go any further in that direction, except to say that making the logical substitution for “cat” in catcalling and then progressing to my proposed Jamaican term, “cattycalling”, leads to rather interesting possibilities.
Speaking of cattycalling, I am shoehorning in the Jamaican term for a young woman (often in a relationship with or being pursued by the man using the word) which some find offensive and others seem to have no issues with. It is a term I have never used orally (no pun intended) or, up to this point, in text. Cattycalling would therefore be a Jamaican man making sexually suggestive or aggressive comments to a woman which are intended to be heard by her and bystanders. And, it is something I have seen done several times through explicit dancehall music, which I do not believe was considered in 2020 when the Sexual Harassment Bill was one of the hot topics and there were strong calls in various quarters for catcalling to be included in the final legislation that was passed by the Senate in October 2021, after going through the Lower House, without the inclusion of catcalling (much less cattycalling). So, if using the voice deliberately is an unaddressed area, what about using music to deliberately violate and demean?
The selector’s appeal to the women in a dancehall with “de gal dem tune” is one thing and, for formerly frequent face-to-face observers like myself, when enthusiastic hotties meet charged up selector and microphone man in a dark place in pre-dawn hours it is a glorious sight to behold. When those same types of “dash out” songs are directed at unwilling women in a public spaces in broad daylight, it is another thing entirely – and I know there is something wrong with my enthusiasm in one setting and revulsion in another for the same content.
How many of us have experienced being at a stoplight with women in the vehicle and a young man pulls alongside in a car, blasting the most sexually explicit song, looking across to see the effect and smiling happily when your car’s window goes up? Going further than that, I first saw what I term aural rape at a gas station on Mannings Hill Road about 15 years ago. A young man was sitting in a car parked some distance from the gas and air pumps playing very explicit music very loudly while staring intently at the young women passing by. There was no mistaking his intention. It was the sonic version of forced sex, as he inflicted the song on his targets in no uncertain manner.
I have seen it several times since then, but with reduced movement because of COVID-19 cattycalling through music had receded from thoughts. I had a rude reminder in the earlier days of this year in a New Kingston parking lot. There was a young man sitting in the driver’s seat of a parked car, window down, dark glasses on and wearing the faux stoic look of the too obviously disinterested hot boy. He was playing a song with liberal explicit catty references as two older women were walking closer to the vehicle, en route to another car. I really expected him to turn it down, but he sat stone still as the cattycalling through music was executed. I got the sense that he was not as coolly disinterested as he appeared.
When I mentioned this act to persons in the past, many said that the persons involved in the act are simply not thinking about their actions. That is cat faeces. Would they blast the crotches songs in front of their mother, staring her in the eye? Or their daughters? I can comfortably say not a blast. This means that there is some thought put into the matter and where there is thought there is deliberate action.
Catcalling through voice is one thing that has not been addressed in our society. Cattycalling through music has not even come up on the public radar, a distant relative being complaints about explicit songs being played at a volume that can be heard in homes well clear of the venue by persons who do not desire that content. The deliberate infliction of highly sexual dancehall content on the public, especially women, by men travelling in mobile mini sound systems. I am a dancehall enthusiast who finds it damned disgusting.
Mel Cooke covered Jamaican entertainment as a print journalist for almost two decades, overlapping with his MPhil research on dancehall and experiential marketing with the Institute of Caribbean Studies, UWI, Mona, where he is now working on a PhD while lecturing in the Bachelor of Arts, Communication Arts and Technology (BACAT) programme at the University of Technology, Jamaica (UTech, Ja.).
