Dear Editor,

The recent uproar surrounding producer Stephen “Di Genius” McGregor’s reimagining of the iconic
Hilly and Gully rhythm has once again exposed Jamaica’s long-standing habit of selective outrage, cultural hypocrisy, and class-based attacks on dancehall culture.

Media personality Fae Ellington recently took to social media to express what she described as a “state of disbelief” over the use of the legendary folk-inspired rhythm for songs she considers vulgar and sexually explicit. She spoke passionately about Jamaican folk music being a sacred heritage, rich with storytelling and social commentary, and lamented that transforming it into what she views as vulgarity leaves her “numb”.

But here is the uncomfortable truth many in Jamaica’s upper and middle classes refuse to acknowledge: Dancehall is also storytelling. Dancehall is also social commentary. Dancehall, like folk music before it, reflects the lived realities, fantasies, frustrations, humour, sexuality, violence, joy, and contradictions of the Jamaican people.

Why is one cultural expression viewed as heritage while the other is treated as contamination?

For decades, Jamaica’s political elite, media gatekeepers, and bourgeoisie have weaponised dancehall as a convenient scapegoat for every societal problem imaginable. Crime? Blame dancehall! Moral decay? Blame dancehall! Violence? Blame dancehall! Yet the same society glorifies political tribalism, rewards corruption, tolerates abuse, and remains largely silent on the daily suffering of ordinary Jamaicans.

Where is this same fiery passion when children go missing? When women are being murdered? When young people are crushed by unemployment and hopelessness? When communities are ravaged by crime and politicians continue their endless performance of promises without transformation?

The outrage always seems loudest when poor black youth from inner-city communities express themselves too unapologetically.

And let us stop pretending that Jamaican folk culture has always been squeaky clean and morally sanitised. Many of our traditional folk songs were filled with double entendre, sexual innuendo, and cheeky vulgarity. Songs like Hol’ Him Joe and numerous mento classics often danced around sexuality in ways that were playful, provocative, and unmistakably suggestive. Louise Bennett herself chronicled the rawness, wit, and social realities of Jamaican life without pretending the culture existed in some pristine moral vacuum.

Jamaican culture has never been one-dimensional. It has always been rebellious, expressive, sensual, political, spiritual, and controversial all at once.

What is particularly troubling is the tone of cultural gatekeeping that often emerges in these conversations. There is an implication that dancehall artistes are somehow intellectually or morally incapable of handling traditional Jamaican material responsibly. Yet dancehall has consistently carried Jamaican culture globally more than almost any other modern art form. These artistes are not outsiders to Jamaican culture, they are products of it.

One can absolutely debate lyrical content without descending into elitism and coded attacks on an entire genre and the people who create it. Criticism is fair. Selective outrage is not.

If folk music tells the story of Jamaica, then dancehall tells the continuation of that story, louder, rougher, more explicit, perhaps, but no less authentic.

Jamaica cannot continue celebrating culture only when it is polished, comfortable, and approved by the elite. Culture does not belong to one class of people. It belongs to the people who live it every day.

Jerome Burke

burkej1712@gmail.com