In the latter part of the 1980s a friend and I were at a joint on Whitehall Avenue talking sports, politics and sex when our ears suddenly became assailed by the most awful DJ 'song' I had ever heard up till then. Obviously overdosed on love for the 'song' and her eagerness to please us, the barmaid pumped up the volume.

The 'song' related to us the DJ's journey from his hill country to town and the hardships experienced while living in the city. It told of his inability to secure a job, a woman and regular sex. Then the punch line came when he made the decision to go back to the country especially to satisfy his sexual desires. In the 'song' he said, not exactly in similar words, that he would be better off returning to the country to 'f..k mi one-teeth granny'.
My late friend Marc Bragg and I immediately shouted down the bartender. Surprised, she turned to us and said, "Mi never know onnu woulda gwan so. Everybody like it."
Although she switched to another tape, so offended were we that we paid our bills and hurriedly left.

Elephant Man

I have never been a prude and I tend to avoid those who are. On the other hand, my circle of acquaintances are never ever overt freaks, homosexuals, paedophiles, drug users or serial killers. Sometimes it amazes me that I can get so worked up over the output from our homegrown DJs. Why am I not like other Jamaicans? Why do I not like dominoes, loud noise and music, gibberish from DJs? Why am I not a fan of carnival where grown men can dance half-naked in the streets in 'nappies' and feel good?

Vybz Kartel

Brought up in a time when lyricists were royalty, Elvis was king, Sinatra was chairman of the 'bored', Nat King Cole was the smoothest and Jazz was the soul which kept them all alive, it is difficult for people like me to listen to even two minutes of American hip hop or 20 seconds of Elephant Man. Even in the 1950s when some songs pretended to be nothing more than lighthearted humour, when Sammy Davis Junior did French Fries Potatoes and Ketchup, when many of the Doo Wop stylists simply crooned nonsense lyrics with superb harmony, one could still enjoy and dance to a song or relax and listen to the musicality of it.
Today, hip hop and Jamaican DJ music seem as if they have set out to infuriate the senses, to be deliberately atonal and to prove that those who came up far short on education and intelligence have earned the right to 'eat a food' rather than providing a discriminating, music-listening public with quality dance music and the type that can be listened to while one relaxes in an easy chair.

That, of course, is the problem. Our public, our people are too easily satisfied. The typical Jamaican goes into a store, purchases something which later turns out to be faulty. He returns to the store, makes his complaint and the owner sells him a line and fills his head with crap. 'No returns, no refund' is pointed out to him and he is stuck.
Our politicians have for years given our people 'a six for a nine' ever since the JLP's Bustamante saw them as illiterate, political chaff and Norman Manley found that his best bet was to talk over their heads. Yet still, our people have been consistent in rewarding our leaders with kudos while their own development has been a bellyful today, same tomorrow and nothing in the head ever.

Bounty Killer

When I listen to Vybz Kartel, Elephant Man, Predator, Capleton, Hawkeye, the violence of Ninja Man and the gravelly discomfort of Buju Banton, I am moved to either laughter or anger because I see it as comedy or unpleasantness. Additionally, I must take it seriously because our people have endorsed it and blessed it as the best that is currently available.
There is no doubt in my mind that in the inner-city areas a time bomb is ticking which, if left unchecked, will overtake this country in another 10 years. In these areas young men take their cues from their heroes: the DJs. They go with what the DJs decide is par for the course.

Where the DJs and the producers are those simply interested in producing something which can make money - quick money, the social responsibility disappears. In fact, why should they care?
A producer and his 'singer' are in the business of making money. If the society is in turmoil and the producer recognises that he has to suck into that turmoil to earn money, then he will. If he has to make his singer 'sing' about 'police bway' and place gunmen in the ghetto as heroes, then he will do it. His responsibility is the immediate, his bottom line.
In a society where we have never been very discriminatory we will take in anything.
I have done many surveys where it has been shown that DJs and druggists are the real role models in the inner-city areas. It is very troubling. When we place that alongside the still increasing rise of the DJs and their constant preaching of violence, is it any wonder that our murder rate is as high as it is?

Don't get me wrong here. I am not blaming the murder rate on the DJs. But I must recognise that where the DJs have the clout to 'minister to' the 'shottas' in the ghettos and they have in fact done the exact opposite - that is, the DJs have encouraged the rot - I must place some responsibility at the feet of the DJs.
Quite apart from the 'fact' that DJs neither have the brains nor the 'socially responsible' acumen to deal with criticisms such as mine, what galls me is that they insist that they are 'giving the people what they want'. What this means is, they feed the people crap, the people don't respond, they feed the people more and more crap because they and their producers' brains are about the size of a pea grain, then in time the people respond because there is no alternative.

When Vybz Kartel, who seems to have either an affinity or a phobia for penises, for six weeks had three 'songs' on the top 30 which had 'buddy' in the titles, he demonstrated that he has a brain either empty, entropic or seriously flawed.
At the university we have persons like Carolyn Cooper who find it difficult to admit that there is a difference between crap and art. She needs to have a ready-made set of guinea pigs to give credence to her studies so she cannot tell them to deal with creativity because they are convinced that they are into it anyway.

Where is the creativity? Where are the nuances? If as one DJ said to me the other day, 'A jus' life me sing bout', should that mean that if one DJ 'sings' about having a bowel movement, I should consider that a 'song' about life?
Too few of us in this country are willing to admit that sections of the society are sick to the core. Too many of us go out and shout and applaud to these gibberish-spouting stage troubadours and in the process we make them feel as if they have attained the highest level in entertainment. Why should we therefore blame them for believing they have become superstars?

In my teenage years, the 'worst' that we could listen to was Bob Marley. He was considered 'bad', 'rude' and a lot of uptown discos did not want to play his music. If in my youthful days that was my 'badness', must we now assume that persons like Capleton and Elephant Man will be the Marleys of tomorrow? Perish the thought!
In those days, of course, the confession must be made that the times of the early 1960s were much gentler and more suited to the 'controlled burst' of socio-political thought and intellectual energy. At that time there was much social and economic inequity in the system and it seemed as if the anger and ferment of 1938 had been for nought, in that, too many of our people were still locked into preconceived notions of where they were going and the little they could attain.

Where our political leaders of the time inspired us only to the extent that it fooled us into giving them dictatorial power once every five years, and our authors of books found that their radical thoughts were lost on a nation of too many functional illiterates, it was left up to the pop genre to speak the language of the common man. Bob Marley and Peter Tosh came along as icons of protest, but unlike in Trinidad where social commentary and protest in music (calypso) was the norm among many, in Jamaica we saw the super stardom of the few while failing to grasp and deal with the message.

When Bob and the singers went, laziness entered. Where talent struggled to find a niche in a society hurriedly moving towards fast-food mediocrity, the DJ took centre stage because it was much easier to talk and chat rubbish rather than spend years honing a voice and massaging sensible lyrics.
As the politicians, business leaders, teachers, policemen and preachers failed to impress the angry young men in the depression and hopelessness of ghetto-land, the druggist, the shotta and the DJ became the new role models. No one has ever held a gun at the head of a DJ and said to him, 'You are a role model, clean up your act and be responsible'. That, of course, would be quite stupid. But at some stage, as the subculture within the culture shifts, one would have expected that, of their own volition, the DJs would have sensed that much more was expected of them.

Instead, Elephant Man 'pranthes' on stage and can't explain to anyone what he is doing, Ninja Man moves from bail to another case, Vybz Kartel still tries to convince us that his 'song' Tek Buddy Gal was done to steer girls away from lesbianism, and Bounty Killer cannot make the grade into the international arena because, talented person that he is, he seems to have a preference for anger, bile and confrontation with the authorities.
Those who believe that I may have come down too hard on DJs will probably say that they are what the people want. If they are indeed what the people want, they, the DJs, have a wonderful opportunity to tune up, shape up and recognise that an entire nation of gullible youngsters are buying into their every output.
If they have all of this power, it is time for them to listen to themselves and move beyond the hype, the gibberish and the atrocious behaviour, on and off the stage.

observemark@hotmail.com

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