Not a column about crime and dancehall music – well, sort of!

Of course, this column is about the connection between a current phase of more intensely graphic violent lyrics in some of Jamaica’s dancehall music and the country’s staggering murder rate. But, unlike so much being written and said on the topic, this is not an unresearched, vehemently stated conclusion about whether or not there is a link, but a suggestion to the government to get very visibly involved in Jamaican popular music now. It will not have an effect on content next month or next year, but as a country we are in this for the long haul – and it has taken us since the latter part of the 1940s to get to this point.

To fully understand the opportunity and urgency of this involvement requires a shift in thinking from seeing Jamaican popular music as entertainment, only, to being a viable method of communication. There is tacit acknowledgement of this in the entrenched positions being taken about the contribution of violent lyrics to crime, but it needs to be clearly stated that in the late 1940s and 1950s the sound system of the lower socioeconomic class was at the core of an alternative communication system to radio which was initially pitched to the upper and middle classes. The music which developed on the foundation of that sound system has to a large extent continued in that vein and with the hands-off attitude of the state got much of its funding from ‘businessmen’, with a very narrow perspective that has often has nothing to do with the collective good outlook – including the much decried and celebrated violent lyrics – dominating some output.

This is a solution-oriented column, which is quite unoriginal in the proposed remedy and much narrower in scope than the one it benefits from. After all, in 1974 sociologist Orlando Patterson recommended that all of Kingston’s low-income communities should have a sound system and dancehall as a matter of policy. I am suggesting a hybrid of previous calls for Jamaican popular music to be compulsory in schools at the primary level and a modification of Patterson’s suggestion. In the long term we should see not only a reduction in violent Jamaican music content, but also fewer foul-ups like the recent School’s Challenge Quiz question about the singer of “Equal Rights”. The responding school said Ishawna, which was correct, but the expected answer was Peter Tosh, which was also correct. The persons who designed the question were looking at equal rights and justice from 1977, while the students were thinking of equal rights and just licks from 2017, for Ishawna’s “Equal Rights” is about reciprocated oral sex.

Still, it would have got more complicated and rib-tickling If the question was “who did ‘Lick Samba’?” in the speed section? Perhaps the buzzer would go on the first word and there would be a chorus of “Shenseea and Megan…!”, before the host completed the title and said, “The Wailers”.

Seriously, though, there needs to be music appreciation and the history of Jamaican popular music on our primary level school curriculum at the very least and a designated space, physical as well as online, for Jamaicans to consume that music in a structured way, supported by the state. And I am speaking on the state making a contribution, being a facilitator, not being in control and a dictating content. The latter would be a disaster.

It may seem like the worst of times for the government to get involved in music that has been extensively criticized recently by both Prime Minister Andrew Holness and Minister of National Security Horace Chang for the violent content of some prominent practitioners of the trap dancehall phase. Note, however, the use of a deejay in the jingle for the Ministry of National Security’s ‘Liv Gud!’ campaign, which also included murals outside Swallowfield on Old Hope Road, Nannyville and a troublesome area of Mountain View Avenue, among others. The campaign was launched in 2019. More recently, the sight of uniformed police officers performing popular Jamaican hits during a streetside concert was striking (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIX2mYC-guM). It was never clear if Supercat indeed had his “gun pon mi” as he declared in that infamous clash with Ninja Man at Sting 1990, but the policeman singing “breaking up is hard to do” in honour of Alton Ellis was obviously strapped. And do not forget Chang’s visit to Boasy Tuesdays in 2019.

Even without considering the lyrical content, a nation of persons who understand what constitutes a song and have been exposed to the music it has produced in a structured way would scoff at much of the really badly produced and delivered compositions which are passed off as “a chune” which deserve support because “if a neva fi music man woulda a step hard outta road” or “is a woman self-empowerment ting”. In a way it already happens, because despite the best efforts of some persons involved in radio, television and newspapers who take money from artistes and producers to push mediocre music on the public and the reliance on YouTube visuals to obscure substandard delivery, the poorly done songs are not lasting very long. And that includes those with extremely violent content.

It is only the government that can put music on the school curriculum and establish a formal structure to facilitate collective listening which offers an alternative to that violent content which has resulted from the sustained input of illegally-gained cash and its glorification of materialism by any means. It is a small but very visible section of our music output and the government would do well to act now, not as a controlling force but a facilitator of quality.

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.).