Caribbean
The Parallels Between Dancehall and Hip-Hop: Are We Devolving?
Flash back to 13 years ago, when C. DeLores Tucker and William Bennett published “Lyrics From the Gutter,” a scathing New York Times op-ed piece that attacked hip-hop for glorifying violence and misogyny and called on music companies to dump the offending rappers in order to forestall “America’s slide toward decivilization.” Such media firestorms come seasonally—”Fuck Tha Police” sparked one in 1988, as did the 2 Live Crew obscenity trial in 1990, Ice-T’s “Cop Killer” in 1992, and, most recently, the Imus scandal last year—but the debate never really evolves. One side blames hip-hop wholesale: During 1994 congressional hearings, Tucker cited gangsta rap as the reason “why so many of our children are out of control and why we have more black males in jail than we have in college.” The other side, represented by elder statesmen like Russell Simmons, defends the music by arguing that it reflects—not produces—ghetto tragedies. University of the West Indies professor Carolyn Cooper epitomizes the Jamaican version of the Simmons defense, delivering metaphorical readings akin to the one that Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates gave on the stand at the 2 Live Crew trial. (Gates argued that Uncle Luke and crew deliver the “sexual carnivalesque”—stereotypes in comically exaggerated form.) At a recent UWI conference, Cooper spoke of dancehall “clashes” as “a trenchant metaphor for the hostile interfacing for the warring zones in Jamaican society.”
“Every time the youths from the garrison communities try to make something of themselves and out of life, [the Jamaican government] try to pull them down,” Mavado laments. “They are trying to blame a problem that they put we in on us. They are turning dancehall into a scapegoat.”
Mavado knows about scapegoats. Born David Brooks in Cassava Piece, a ghetto in the heart of uptown Kingston, he’s affiliated with an alleged gang called the Cubans; because his music and his lyrical personas are separated by a line as thin as the one dividing, say, 50 Cent’s, he’s the eye of the anti-dancehall storm. The cases just keep coming: a 2006 charge for wounding, assaulting police, and resisting arrest; a 2008 charge for possession of ganja; talk that he and his entourage beat up a journalist in March; an arrest that month for two counts of shooting with intent to kill and possession of a firearm. The gun charges were dropped in June—Mavado’s lawyer told the press that her client was innocent and had been accused only because “he’s a high-profile man whose name is easy to call”—but by then, the star had lost his U.S. visa and been banned from various Caribbean countries, including Guyana and St. Vincent. In Trinidad, an editorial blamed a stabbing on “an artiste like Mavado who says he’s a gangsta for life and has the youths emulating that lifestyle.”
“There’s no way gun lyrics affect the youths,” Mavado fires back, plainly pained by his predicament: Visa-less, he can’t perform before an American audience just now learning his name. “You know what affect the youths? Poverty. And hunger. Dem”—he slips into patois as he blasts the Jamaican government—”dem mash up de country! Dem make the youth dem a do crime! How long now people a dead inna Jamaica? Years! Bob Marley and his days right up to now—people never stop die because of politics. And them try fi blame it ‘pon the music.”
Dr. Travis Dixon, assistant professor of communication at the University of Illinois, explains that a causal connection between violent action and violent music is not consistently supported by scientific evidence. “With violent TV and aggressive behavior, there’s no debate—there’s a stronger link there than between cigarettes and cancer,” he says. But with music: “Moderators matter. Context matters. It’s so hard to say that if you listen to a song, you’re going to do X. It’s not just a straightforward link.” Blaming music, then, is an easy way out of an uneasy conundrum.
Lesson #3: Big Brother is watching.
Since Prime Minister Bruce Golding took office in September 2007, his Jamaican Labor Party has taken a stand against violence by, among other things, selectively enforcing the Noise Abatement Act. Their first target was a given: Mavado. At his Kingston birthday party late last year, Jamaican police and soldiers surrounded the outdoor venue, locked exits, and searched patrons for weapons.
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2 comments for “The Parallels Between Dancehall and Hip-Hop: Are We Devolving?”
2 Responses to “The Parallels Between Dancehall and Hip-Hop: Are We Devolving?”
Posted: Aug 7th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
This was an excellent, well-written piece and I wish it would be printed in Jamaica for all to see.
Mavado is totally correct when he says “You know what affect the youths? Poverty. And hunger. Dem”—he slips into patois as he blasts the Jamaican government—”dem mash up de country! Dem make the youth dem a do crime! How long now people a dead inna Jamaica? Years! Bob Marley and his days right up to now—people never stop die because of politics. And them try fi blame it ‘pon the music.”
This article reminds me of 50 Cent’s SPIN interview last year:
Spin:Are you worried about the state of the music industry and that hip-hop record sales are down 30 percent from the time of your last record?
50 Cent: You know what’s interesting to me? If we’re selling 30 percent less records, then really, what’s the problem that people have with us? Why isn’t the violence down? If we’re that fuckin’ influential, you know what I’m sayin’?
You are so right to link Dancehall and Hip-Hop. We must learn from the history of others in order to avoid the same mistakes.
Keep up the excellent work, you have a new fan.
Posted: Dec 30th, 2008 at 11:09 am
Wow. this is some interesting stuff.
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