This has been a tumultuous week for the music fraternity with other sectors of the society putting a negative spotlight on us. The general sentiments which have greeted me in my casual encounters are as follows: “Let me see if you are going to attempt to defend the indefensible in your column this Sunday” and “We fed up ah this Gaza/Gully almshouse; it’s a disgrace and it ah tarnish our international image.”

From within the industry, the main concern is that the media frenzy amplifying the feud harms not only Vybz Kartel’s and Mavado’s international appeal, but the ability of other artistes to tour and earn. Recent concerts have been cancelled because citizen or government pressure is brought to bear on promoters in the Caribbean, North America and Europe who have artistes from either camp on their billing, forcing them to abort their plans.

In Trinidad, students from one school ‘invaded’ another because they defend opposite camps. In the streets of Miami, they say PNP and JLP are no longer relevant – you either defend Gaza or Gully. Some of our elders see Dancehall music as a virus and wish it would quickly fade away. This is simply not going to happen.

In its present form, Dancehall music has been around for approximately 30 years. In its evolution, it has also spawned and continued to provide inspiration for two other very popular musical idioms, hip hop and reggaeton. While we in Jamaica continue to dither on the need to harness its enormous economic and social potential, the rest of the world has transformed it into big business and continue to reap the growing benefits to be derived.

In keeping with our colonial past, we continue to produce the raw material, suffer the psychological and physical scars, while foreigners copy, refine, manufacture, package and distribute it – adding commercial value and reaping the resultant rewards from us the eventual consumers of the finished product.

Here in Jamaica, we spurn dancehall music, just like Ska was frowned upon, seen as corrupted Jazz performed by poor, black Downtown musicians who could not get it right. That was until Byron Lee from middle-class Jamaica started playing it. Reggae, which proceeded it, was too volatile, too potently revolutionary, what with artistes like Peter Tosh, Bob Andy, Junior Byles, Brent Dowe, Freddy McKay, Mikey Smith, Bob Marley, singing the praises of Rastafari, calling for a dismantlement of the neo-colonial system and envisioning fundamental

social transformation.

So from the comfort of our ivory towers and middle-class perches, in the 1980s we began, almost solely, to project and promote the less threatening Dancehall music which implored our people to forget their troubles, shun their values, eat, drink and be merry. To hell with vision, morals and ethics, because making the almighty dollar trumps all other life goals. Instant gratification and materialism has become the order of the day. This is what we bequeathed to the present generation, from which our current crop of artistes spring.

What today’s dancehall lyrics are missing in large part is informed, conscious and progressive world view which so characterised Ska and Reggae at its foundation.

Meanwhile, musician Seretse Small contends that “we have ignored the developmental needs of segments of our society for too long”, citing further that “the Gully/Gaza phenomenon grows out of an environment where music/art is not supported”. Society continues therefore, to provide the social cradle for dancehall lyrics, decadence and violent behaviour. We are all complicit, especially the sponsors, the media and our politicians. Just think back over the years to the dancehall songs which took on new hostile/adversarial meaning because they were incorporated into election campaigns.

To quote Small again, “there are so many artistes who start out writing conscious tunes and because of the lack of support, end up writing slack or gun tunes, as they cause greater controversy and therefore benefit from a lot of free publicity as radio stations, journalists, preachers [even] and lots of other persons talk about them. The more sensational, the better. There are so few opportunities for creative persons to promote/market/develop products that it has resulted in the dominance of extreme buzz marketing to reach and excite audiences.” He referred me to the book titled Buzz Marketing by Mark Hughes and proceeded to teach me that this is a tried, tested and proven marketing tool being employed. “Buzz marketing is based on the ability to get persons to talk about your product. The ability to create a buzz or chatter.”

There are six buttons which can be pushed to create buzz; taboo (sex, lies, bathroom humour); the unusual; the outrageous; the hilarious; the remarkable and the secrets (both kept and revealed).

As Seretse concludes, “if we think carefully about Jamaican music, we realise that the buttons of buzz marketing have been used successfully by our artistes (especially dancehall) to sell music with very little resources or support on hand.”Email: che.campbell@gmail.com