For some time now, Ian Boyne, one of Jamaica's deservedly respected journalists, has deemed it appropriate to launch an unrelenting campaign against dancehall.

Boyne's contention is that dancehall celebrates dons and violence, and that the power of this institutionalised celebration has resulted in a devastating impact on our country.

While Boyne's intentions are fundamentally well-meaning, he unfortunately has chosen to pursue his conclusions with a most misinformed, self-righteous, arrogant and holier-than-thou attitude that serves to profoundly disrespect the people who constitute the dancehall space.

For example, Boyne and other like-minded thinkers fail to fully appreciate the complexities surrounding the reasons why the DJs celebrate dons.

Read Boyne's articles and you will think that it would be real easy for the DJs to immediately stop celebrating dons. While I abhor the celebration of dons and violence, and know only too well how destructive for Jamaica such celebration has been, I also know the issue is not as simple as Boyne would have us think.

First, to ask why DJs celebrate dons is like asking why we celebrate so many of our leaders and people of high social status when we all know of their professional, personal and moral ineptitude and brazen involvement in various criminal activities.

Do we not bestow great honour and fantastic titles on many we know to have repeatedly been in acts of ill repute?

Scandal after scandal has plagued us, billions of dollars from tax-paying Jamaicans have gone missing, yet do we not continue to honour and accord great respect to those powerful people under whose watch these disgraceful acts have occurred? How is that we have not seen Mr self-righteous Ian Boyne, the self-bestowed, esteemed guardian of Jamaican morality, running up to the governor-general on Heroes' Day and demanding that certain people not get awards and titles because it's common knowledge they have been actively involved in the institutionalisation of violence in our country? Yet, Mr self-righteous and his cronies have no problem unleashing with evangelical zeal their hypocritical condemnations of dancehall.

Duppy know who fi frighten!

When Boyne criticises defenders of dancehall he has no problems stating names. He has been unflinching in mentioning my name and other dancehall backers such as Clyde McKenzie, Professor Carolyn Cooper and Donna Hope.

However, Boyne's implied heroism in calling names is actually a ripe instance of his hypocrisy. In his own way, he is also guilty of the very act he so scorchingly accuses the DJs of. Space and focus do not allow for the appropriately detailed explanations of the diverse and interrelated reasons surrounding the celebration of dons in this article, but one primary reason is that of survival.

The worldview of dancehall is based on the worldview of Jamaica. That which we observe in dancehall, to which we express shock and dismay, is actually based on wider Jamaican cultural principles. For example, our Jamaican culture requires that we ritualistically accord significant respect to people of high social status and high power.

Thus, for example, when we're around powerful, high status people, we talk differently, negotiate space differently, sometimes assume varying degrees of submissive postures, give them titles, and we are definitely required to announce their presence in various culturally defined ways when we're at social events.

Break these rules and there are reprimands. If, for example, I should run up to the prime minister in Parliament shouting "yes P J, weh yuh a seh dada? Mi glad fi si di I. Yuh waan si...," I would be immediately pounced upon and likely arrested. Shock and alarm would be expressed at my behaviour.

MPs would express great concern at my insolence and many, ironically, would bemoan the degradation of society that prompted me to offend the revered status of our Most Honourable Prime Minister. My rule-breaking disrespect would cause me to suffer culturally sanctioned reprimands.

Dancehall, being of Jamaica, holds these same Jamaican defined cultural patterns for relating to powerful, high status people, including the implementation of reprimands. Thus, like wider Jamaica, it is a cultural requirement that powerful, high status people from the dancehall milieu be ritualistically acknowledged.

Failure to do so invites violent reprimands. For those of you who do not know, there have been many incidents of entertainers (and/or their kin) seriously harmed and violently stifled in various ways because they failed to 'big-up' an area or a don.

Many a set (sound system) crews have suffered in various ways for not 'bigging up' the high status dons in areas where they play. It is thus generally a Jamaican cultural requirement that the DJs 'large-up' the dons, and failure to do so in specific circumstances can lead and have led to dire consequences for said DJs. Hence, one reason (of several) why DJs celebrate dons is to ensure their continued good health and even their existence. How DJs relate to dons is really a life and death issue evolved from wider Jamaican cultural patterns.

So the question then becomes, if Boyne is demanding that dancehall DJs stop celebrating dons and their violence, and denounce and condemn them instead, why isn't he doing the same? If Boyne is reading this article he will immediately argue that he has in fact been denouncing dons.

However, Boyne's denunciations of dons (including our elected dons and donnettes) are essentially tepid, generalised rebukes that are carefully crafted to ensure his own safety. It is only when Boyne is directly addressing a space like dancehall that he really lets loose with his sad, self-righteous, fake bravery and supposed fearlessness.

For example, he sank real low when he borrowed heavily from another deceiver and protagonist in the art of self-righteous deception when he engaged in a most disgusting hyperbole and referred to dancehall lyrics as weapons of mass destruction.

So vulgar! So ignorant! Journalism terribly inaccurate and insulting to tens of thousands of Jamaicans.
Further, Boyne's so-called "bold" attacks are primarily done from the safety of the Gleaner's pages, while many DJs have to exist day-to-day in the very domains of the dons and their brutal armies.

Since Boyne relishes blasting the DJs for not condemning dons, would it not be consistent for him to, say, attend a dancehall session in a certain area downtown and go on stage and passionately denounce the don of that area with the same vigor and self-righteousness that he denounces DJs in his articles? Of course, he certainly would not. For doing so would likely guarantee that he would become a memory, and he knows it, too! So if he won't do it in order not to jeopardise his and his family's safety, why should the DJs do it?

Boyne does not live and make his living in areas where he constantly interacts with the reality of brutal dons and their armies. But most DJs have to rub shoulders with the overwhelming power and ruthlessness of these said dons. To put it simply, Boyne is just as careful about what he says about dons as are the DJs.

We should also cease giving credence to the ludicrous and unqualified notion that the act of celebrating persons of ill-repute is a phenomenon exclusive to dancehall.

Puhleeezzee! We all do it! And persons who continue to think in such a manner are only engaging in shameless scapegoating of dancehall, while simultaneously decreasing their own accountability for the ills that plague our country.

If you want to know the true ethos of Jamaica, the good and the bad, scars and all, then go to dancehall (with a very open mind). Mutabaruka was right: dancehall is a mirror of Jamaica. But one reason dancehall often appears so "different" is because, unlike many of its critics, it is publicly honest about much of its beliefs (except for some issues relating to sexuality).

Dancehall will openly celebrate dons, unlike many of our people of affluence and influence who conveniently and routinely work with these same dons in various ways but would never admit so publicly. It is thus critically unproductive to continue to blame dancehall for violence in our nation when the violence is not a dancehall problem but rather a Jamaica problem.

Until we can stop blaming "them" and rather blame "us", until we begin to permanently use "I" and "we" statements when identifying the problems of violence, until we truly start holding ourselves accountable rather than only trying to place that accountability on a specific group, we will forever continue to be mired in deadly violence.

Mr Boyne, on behalf of the dancehall space, cease the self-righteous scapegoating, pull up yuh journalistic socks, my yout, an' bus a betta scholarly flex. For if you fail to do so, your woefully underdeveloped discourse on dancehall will remain infantile at best.

Dr Kingsley "Ragashanti" Stewart lectures in anthropology at the University of Connecticut. He has also completed a dancehall CD, Ghetto Oven.

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