The Jamaica Star :: Entertainment :: Dancehall's moral conscience finds 'Hope'

Mel Cooke, Freelance Writer

After Vivien Goldman had ended reading from her book 'The Book of Exodus: The Making and Meaning of Bob Marley and the Wailers' Album of the Century' on Tuesday evening, it was time for the main matter at hand on the eve of Bob Marley's 63rd birthday.

Among the songs on 'Exodus', named 'Album of the Century' by Time Magazine in 1998, are 'Jammin'', 'Natural Mystic', 'The Heathen', 'Guiltiness', 'Three Little Birds' and 'One Love/People Get Ready'. Released in 1977, much of it was recorded in London, where Marley went to after the attempt on his life at his Hope Road home on December 3, 1976.

Goldman ended her fast-paced reading, dotted with asides and presented with substantial body movement, to the large audience gathered in the Undercroft of the Senate Building, UWI, Mona, with Marley's observation of people in England with multiple body piercings. Although he said he would not do it, "me love see a man can suffer pain without crying".

When Professor Rupert Lewis introduced Dr. Donna Hope, he said "we are in for a thought-provoking lecture with the intriguing title The Full Has Never Been Told: Exploring Dancehall's Moral Conscience and the 11th Annual Bob Marley Lecture was.

She started with a brief background of dancehall, which she said has been charged at some time with every dastardly deed in Jamaica, from Cout Machuki and Lord Comic through U-Roy and King Stitt.

Hope gave her definition of dancehall, which included being the genre of Jamaican music which originated in the early 1980s and, when compared to reggae, "is more brash in its manifestations and more aggressiveÉ in its lyrical content".

And the first of the five themes Hope outlined in dancehall's moral conscience was rooted in the 1980s, as Ninja Man and Courtney Melody's Protection was given as an example of Contraception/Family Planning. Hope deejayed the lyrics, as there was a technical malfunction, positioning Protection as "an important lyrical intervention into the continued proliferation of teenage pregnancy".

"As per dancehall slang Ninja Man talk de tings dem," Hope said, noting that in 1987 he had equated education and being "roun' computer". Also included in that theme was Buju Banton's 1993 Willie and there were chuckles when Hope explored the name of the song and connotations for the male genitals, noting that "this infantilized willie is not the anaconda of Elephant Man fame or the rattler of Shabba".

The second theme was Anti-Paeodophilia, which Hope said was routinely addressed in dancehall treatise as another sexual deviance which is strongly denounced. Beenie Man's Straight Prison and Queen Ifrica's Daddy were used as examples, Hope noting that unlike Beenie Man, Ifrica proposes sanctions which are more personal and domestic. She also pointed out that Ifrica points out that little boys are also sexually molested with the line "him wi even tek yu son as brawta".

"This discussion is often subsumed under homosexual themes in dancehall," Hope said.

For Anti-Jail/Prison Hope connected Baby Wayne's late 1980's Mama and Busy Signal's 2006 Nah Go a Jail Again. When she explained the term 'spin propellor' used by Baby Wayne ("bad bway have me dung ya a spin propeller") there was laughter at the image of a man spinning a piece of cloth to provide wind for others in the hot cell.

And, Hope said, prison is a no-no as "there is work to be done and fortunes to be made 'a road', not behind bars".

Peace, was addressed through Spragga Benz's song of the same name and Baby Cham, for whom there was a double as his Ghetto Story was used to illustrate Poverty/Survival Against The Odds/Inequality in the Jamaican Society. When Hope sang the opening lines of Ghetto Story many voices joined in and she commented on the line "Mike mother fly him out because she get a loan" that "Mama is present. Mama is always present".

Before, though, a number of Bounty Killer songs were used to underscore that particular theme in dancehall's moral conscience, among them 'Look', 'Anytime', and 'Down In The Ghetto', Hope pointing out that some were written by Dave Kelly but crafted for the delivery of Bounty Killer.

As for 'de tings dem' in Ghetto Story, Hope said that for many of the poor it is the keys to a house, the keys to a car or a degree from the university".

The Squad One Dancers did a 'Tribute To Bob Marley' and the Informative History Man delivered 'Bob Marley Story' to close off a Reggae Studies Unit and Bob Marley Foundation event hosted by Professor Carolyn Cooper.