Dear Editor,

I was literally bowled over when I learnt of the EME awardees for 2010. The EME is deemed the most prestigious music and entertainment award in Jamaica – the local Grammys. Correct me if I am wrong, but weren’t we, as a nation, trying and still trying to clean up the lyrics of quite a few of our local artistes? Have we accomplished this goal? Are the artistes in question even trying to sing uplifting, edifying and conscious lyrics?

Music is a very big and influential arena in Jamaica and the Gully/Gaza phenomenon can attest to its great influence. We cannot improve a negative construct if we continue to reward and attach importance to the construct in its negative state. Rewards and recognition influence entrenchment, continuation, furtherance and prolongation. In other words, if we reward a child for brushing his teeth and tongue the child will go to lengths to maintain a clean mouth. The converse is also true. If we reward a child for keeping a dirty mouth he will make no effort to clean it. Why then would we reward and acknowledge artistes that flood the music industry with violent and sexually explicit (dirty) lyrics? If we are trying to clean up our music, we should not just have a category for artistes with positive lyrics but positive lyrics should be one criterion for nomination.

Making positive lyrics a criterion for EME nominations will not clean up the lyrics of our artistes, but it would definitely send a strong message that we are serious about the music diet we want Jamaicans to be fed. It has already been established that the social fabric of Jamaica has decayed and our music contributed to that decay. Cleaning up our music can significantly help in the reweaving of our social fabric, but rewarding artistes who continue to write and sing distasteful lyrics will only push us further into the moral and social decadence suffocating Jamaica, land we love.

Tennisha A Morris

literacyadvocate.com