So, in time for the genre’s warm-weather close-up—on American airwaves, at the West Indian Day Parade on Labor Day, and, especially, at the premier Irie Jamboree show in Queens on August 31—I humbly offer five bits of advice to the dancehall massive: artists, listeners, critics. This wisdom comes not from me but from dancehall’s close relative, which has been there and done that, enduring many a beating from pundits and cultural gatekeepers yet still maturing into a multibillion-dollar industry: hip-hop.

Lesson #1: Monitor the beef.

Beef has been a staple of the reggae diet since the ’50s, when legendary sound-system pioneer and proud gunslinger Duke Reid went viciously sound-to-sound with Studio One’s Coxsone Dodd. And while dancehall feuds, from Super Cat vs. Shabba Ranks to Bounty Killer vs. Beenie Man, were once entirely lyrical, that’s no longer always true.

A rough timeline: In January 2005, Gerald “Bogle” Levy, an iconic Jamaican dancer, was shot dead; the posse of John Hype, a rival dancer affiliated with Beenie Man, was suspected. Controversy soon settled on the Alliance, a crew of ferocious DJs led by “the Warlord,” Bounty Killer. When slick-talking DJ Vybz Kartel left the Alliance in late 2006, he feuded with the posse’s remaining members, especially the rising superstar of the group, Mavado, whose most famous song, on his 2007 album Gangsta for Life, is about marrow flying and bodies being sent “to the grave park.” The beef between Mavado and Kartel produced some wickedly biting tracks—and, allegedly, several high-profile shootings in Kingston. Then, in February, after Jamaican tabloids ran a photograph of Kartel and another artist seemingly modeling a gun collection, Operation Kingfish—the Jamaica Constabulary Force’s gang-dismantling task force—requested an interview with the artists, who’d been unleashing lyrical ire at another Alliance DJ: Busy Signal.

“Yes, every now and again, fans that’s following me and fans that’s following another artist have a quarrel,” Busy Signal acknowledges to me during an interview in a Kingston studio. “But at the end of the day, you don’t have a death—a blood violence—because of music and because of followers.” Sporting camouflage pants and a matching cap, the baby-faced 25-year-old—whose album Loaded hits stores in September—smiles earnestly when asked if dancehall could ever produce its own Biggie-and-Tupac tragedy. “Me nah think so.” Pause. “Well, it could happen—it’s not impossible.” Pause again. “We do need to take more responsibility for our actions.”

At Sumfest last month, Bounty Killer blasted longtime rival Beenie Man throughout his performance, but Beenie, onstage, laughed it off and kept on dancing. And last year, Mavado and Kartel took a page from hip-hop’s PR book and staged a press conference to formally end the beef between them. (Think 50 Cent and the Game, in patois). Mavado, 27, never quite believed the drama would reach tragic proportions because, as he tells me: “Me nah inna de dead thing!” But Biggie, Tupac, Jam Master Jay, and plenty of other hip-hop stars initially weren’t, either.

Lesson #2: Take responsibility, but don’t be a scapegoat.

February 2008 was officially declared Reggae Month, and newspaper editorialists seized the opportunity: “The dominant trend in dancehall represents a betrayal of reggae; the tragic case of the child doing violence to his mother,” fumed Ian Boyne in the Jamaica Gleaner. Historian Kevin O’Brien Chang followed suit in the same newspaper, lamenting the “dancehallisation of Jamaica” and asserting: “We are already about as violent as a state can get without descending into actual warfare.”

That would translate for Jamaica into a $29 billion write-off in central government debt to the US, a small portion of the near $500 billion of foreign debt the island is carrying, Jamaica’s finance ministry figures show.

Policy to be pursued

While Obama himself did not reveal that plan for the region, his foreign policy adviser, Dan Restrepo, told the Government and tourism officials attending the Caribbean Tourism Organisation conference here that this is one of the policies to be pursued by Obama if elected to office.

“As you all well know, the poorest countries in the world, including some in the Caribbean, suffer under the weight of enormous external debt. Barack Obama wants to see a 100 per cent debt cancellation for the world’s heavily indebted poor countries, including all such countries in the Caribbean,” he said.

Jamaica’s debt

The USAID is a a major conduit of US financing to overseas countries and groups.

Jamaica’s breakout of its US debt shows that it owes the agency $5.6 billion.

The country is more heavily indebted to the US Department of Agriculture which it owes $7.7 billion and the Federal Financing Bank, which holds $14.6 billion of the country’s US debt.

Restrepo also spoke about Obama’s intention to facilitate trade between the US and Cuba, saying that the Democrat would personally lead direct diplomacy with Cuban officials.

He said the presidential hopeful also understood the unique security challenges of the Caribbean and that the issue of trans-national crime was of great importance to the region.

He has, therefore, promised to restore funding for drug control programmes that were cut by the George W. Bush administration and to put an end to the illegal gun trade in the south.
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