Super article dans le Gleaner - From Bob Marley to Movado

Voici un article que j'ai trouve interessant sur la musique jamaicaine et la societe jamaicaine

http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/2008 ... ocus4.html



From Bob Marley to Mavado
published: Sunday | February 17, 2008

February has been officially proclaimed Reggae Month; there is much hype over its celebration and a major reggae conference opens tomorrow at the University of the West Indies, Mona campus. But will anyone have the courage to speak the truth about the state of the music today?

From Marley to Mavado: What went wrong? As Marley would say, "I've got so much things to say" on this matter. But I approach the issue with a great degree of weariness, for the quality of the academic discourse on reggae and dancehall has not been of the highest standard, to put it delicately.

Obvious conclusions and interconnections are missed; logical deductions elude some academics, ineluctable inferences glide by and nuances are scorned.

When I wrote in a column six years ago ('How dancehall holds us back') that "it is hard to empirically establish a causal link between murders committed in the inner cities and negative dancehall lyrics", but go on to say, "but it is not hard to show that these lyrics do not help those people who need to learn how to manage their conflicts and bring about reconciliation"; and that is dismissed as a "leap of faith", then how does one proceed with the conversation?

In her book Sound Clash: Jamaican Dancehall Culture at Large, Professor Carolyn Cooper, chief reggae academician at the UWI, dismisses my concerns as being merely "incendiary", adding that "without offering a shred of evidence, Boyne smugly asserts the validity of his speculations, to his singular satisfaction".


Marley - File Poto

There is likely to be much extolling and celebration at the week-long academic conference, but very little critique of where the music has reached, and how it has largely lost its revolutionary and transformative force and has become reactionary.

Prime Minister Golding rightly talked about reggae's historical opposition to oppression, inequality and suffering, and of its articulation of hope and universal justice. But somebody needs to seriously analyse how reggae's progeny is living up to that image, or not.

middle-class despisers

We need to bring a serious social scientific analysis to the music, rather than the emotionalism and the glandular, reflexive defence of dancehall against its supposedmiddle-class despisers.

Dr Donna Hope did not give us much hope in her annual Bob Marley Lecture on February 5. Still, one of the finer dancehall academics in Jamaica (and a personal friend), Hope hopelessly tried to rescue dancehall's image by focusing on a few positive songs from a dancehall characterised largely by the promotion of anarchistic violence, badmanism, misogyny, violence against homosexuals, bling bling, nihilism, crude materialism, infantilism and buffoonery.

Of course, there are positive, uplifting, conscious lyrics in the dancehall. Not even a fool would suggest otherwise. Even some of the patented gangsta dancehall artistes like Bounty Killer have songs which are grippingly conscious and truly represent a critique of oppression. Donna is right: Poor People Fed Up is a gem. Anytime is not just promoting anarchistic violence. I make a strong distinction between anarchistic, nihilistic violence and violence against an oppressive system, though I am personally a pacifist.

uplifting lyrics

Donna does not need to tell me that "survival against the odds, rejection of poverty, deprivation and inequality are threaded throughout dancehall". Not only are there many dancehall artistes who have uplifting lyrics covering important social themes, but some of the very purveyors of social degradation have produced some fine works.

In giving the annual reggae lecture it was far from adequate to big up a few songs like Ninja Man's Protection, Queen Ifrica's Daddy, and then to talk about "dancehall's conscience"; that is an academic travesty and a betrayal of the scholarship of which Donna is fully capable. The presentations at this week's conference must rise beyond that if the presenters hope to go beyond a narrow, well, let me not say intellectual ghetto.

But it was not just in her gloss of the dancehall that Hope is culpable. She praises Babycham's Ghetto Story as a "survival story that traces the life of a youth growing up in the ghetto of the 1980s". She even quotes the lyrics, amazingly, and apparently does not grasp what was really before her eyes.

"We get di ting dem

Dem outta luck now

Mi squeeze seven and the whole a dem duck now

We have whole heap a extra clip cau we nuh bruk now

Rah, Rah, Rah, Rah. (Gun shots for the uninitiated).

In this story, Baby Cham's 'liberation' comes when he has the connections to get guns from overseas and enough money to buy shots to kill people. He gets his rating, his self-esteem, his value as a human being from his ability to inflict violence. Hear him:

"Wi get di ting dem, so dem haffi rate wi

Cau wea tek it to dem wicked of lately

A now the whole community a live greatly

Rah, Rah, Rah, Rah".

The whole community can live greatly for the shottas don't have to depend on the corrupt, gun-distributing politicians any longer, for they have their own supply. They don't have to be used by any politicians anymore for their have forged their own survival. Should we celebrate this - this type of ghetto story?

informer

Before his liberation, he remembers when "informer Dirks get one inna him face and me nuh get no perks". Hope quotes this without any critique, as though she has bought into the so-called value-neutral, objective , detached scholar who can see no evil and hear no evil for, through a post-modernist prism who can determine what is evil?

Ghetto Story not only recounts a ghetto experience, it glorifies a certain path: The same path that makes Jamaica hold the distinction of being the murder capital of the world bar one; the same path which has turned many of our inner cities into terror zones; which scare off investments and which rob us of GDP and identifies us around the world as not the peace-loving, One Love paradise which we like to project, but as a crime-infested society.

This is what reggae's progeny has helped to engender (not caused, I repeat, not caused, lest some silly response be made.) Our new reggae ambassadors are freely marketing their violent lyrics and bigotry, and are branding Jamaica not the way the prime minister or the governor general who have made this month Reggae Month would like.

dealing with Mavado

Nobody has the guts to deal with these issues. We prefer the fantasy of pretending that we are still dealing with Marley, while dodging the fact that we are dealing with Mavado, 'the gangsta for life' who recommends death to informers who would help us to put away brutal criminals, terrorists and rapists.

Everyone wants to talk about what the music business can bring us; its potential to promote 'Brand Jamaica', etc, and no one wants to face the fact that it is still the Marleys with their universal message who are bringing the glory to Jamaica, not the Mavados who are being banned even from our sister Caribbean islands.

Good music is still being produced and performed. Burning Spear is still in demand around the world. Jimmy Cliff is still here, Israel Vibration is still touring, Luciano still works and some conscious Rastas have emerged. Richie Spice, Warrior King Natty King are doing are burning the fire. I need a whole column on the great Tarrus Riley.

sold out to Babylon

The future of the music belong to these men and to women like Queen Ifrica who are using the music to carry the universal themes for which reggae is recognised in the world. These dancehall perverts have bastardised the music and sold out to Babylon. Not to mention people like Sizzla and Capleton of whom the authentic Rastamen and women should be ashamed.

No academic conference is worth its salt if no searing, intellectually robust critique is issued on the state of dancehall. A gathering just to celebrate and big up reggae has no place on an academic campus. Intellectuals and scholars must not pander to the popular and play to the gallery. Their job is not to issue "amens" and "hallelujahs", but to hold people's feet to the fire.

Make no mistake about it: Dancehall is a reflection of the society - both downtown and uptown . The values of uptown are not essentially different from the values of the ghetto.

It is the uptown people who have sold downtown the ideology of materialism and hedonism; the view that life is about big car, big van, big house, "nuff" sex, pleasure, power, control , and status. Downtown has its own ways of getting the things which bring status, but downtown is playing the same uptown game. It's the same set of values. The decadence of the dancehall is the decadence of uptown: An uptown devoid of any ideology outside of hedonism and atomism; an uptown driven by crude commercial and market-driven interests which also determine that if slackness sells, then that is what should be marketed; if gun lyrics and shouting for homosexuals to be killed will get you the forwards and 'bram, bram', then satisfy the market.

ghetto authenticity

It's the same game being played and rather than our academics' blowing the whistle on the bourgeois game which is masked as ghetto authenticity, they are complicit with what Marx called the "embourgeoisment of the masses".

Not one of the Marxists at the UWI (or is the university depleted of them now?) offered a critique of reggae and dancehall. It has been left to the end-of-ideology academics.

While lectures are being given extolling the virtues of reggae, talking of its revolutionary impact around the world, its tremendous business potential (which is where much of the focus is in this capitalist society), no serious academic attention is being given to what dancehall is doing to our young men and women in the working class and lumpen proletariat.

We are busy holding concerts, exhibitions and talk shops during Reggae Month, without seriously engaging the issue of our music and its impact on socio-economic phenomena. Indeed, Donna, "the full has never been told".

Un autre article ou Ninjaman refuse d'interpreter Borderclash.

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/lifestyl ... RDERS_.asp



Ninja Man defies 'Borders'
Basil Walters, Observer staff reporter [adresse retirée]
Monday, February 25, 2008


NINJA MAN... anything weh too violent, mi kinda refrain mi self from it
In a stunning retreat of his long-standing rude boy image, controversial dancehall artiste, Ninja Man refused Professor Carolyn Cooper's invitation to perform his defining 1990 hit song Border Clash.

The deejay's refusal came during the closing ceremony of the Global Reggae Conference, held at the University of the West Indies Assembly Hall on Friday.

This defiant stand by the self-professed "the-gold-teeth-gun-pon-teeth Don Gorgon," could be interpreted as a vindication of the critiques, particularly leading dancehall critic and columnist Ian Boyne, who often chides the genres violent lyrical content - much to the consternation of Professor Cooper and other leading dancehall apologists.

Boyne who did not attend the function, had in one of his recent controversial pieces entitled, From Bob Marley to Mavado, challenged the conference to examine the negative features of dancehall.

"February has been officially proclaimed Reggae Month; there is much hype over its celebration and a major reggae conference opens. at the University of the West Indies, Mona campus. But will anyone have the courage to speak the truth about the state of the music today?," asks Boyne in the aforementioned column.

Interestingly, little did the 'Don Gorgon' realise that he somewhat, not only spoke according to his conscience, but entered a space where an intellectual "clash" was taking place. A clash with the mores of dancehall culture - in which Ninja Man has played a key role - at its core.

Before Professor Cooper's lengthy introduction of Ninja Man, she ended her closing remarks of the week-long conference with a quotation from Bob Marley.

"What is marginal, what is peripheral?" Dr Cooper asked rhetorically before explaining. "Marginalisation is indeed often a sight of enpowering with resistance to and radical transformation of hegemonic institutions. In the words of Bob Marley - We refused to be what they wanted us to be, we are what we are, that's the way it's going to be/ You can't educate I for no equal opportunity, talking about my freedom, people's freedom and liberty, yeah/ We've been trodding on the winepress for much too long, rebel. As we close this historic conference on Global Reggae, it gives me great pleasure to invite Ninja Man to perform his Border Clash classic."

Added Professor Cooper: "Ninja Man's 1990 composition, Border Clash, is the classic articulation of the recurrent motif in Jamaican dancehall culture that demarcate contestation for power in a wide range of phases of interest. In its narrowest sense the dancehall clash denotes the on stage competition between rival deejays and sound systems contending for mastery before a discriminating audience.

More broadly, the clash is not just a performance event, but becomes a trenchant metaphor for the hostile interfacing for the warring zones in Jamaican society where for example, rival politicians, area dons, community leaders and their followers, contend for the control of territory both literal and symbolic."

Now for the surprise of the day, nay, the entire conference. Ninja Man refused to perform Border Clash.

Dressed in his signature dapper style, the Don Gorgon addressed the audience: "Right now, some a oonu a go disappointed. Right now mi take a very serious aim inna di country, and anything weh too violent, mi kinda refrain mi self from it," Ninja Man said and the Assembly Hall on the UWI, Mona campus erupted in a way it never did for the duration of the conference. Everyone, including Cooper, applauded long and hard.

"When yu use dis term Border Clash most of the time, a man feel like yu a deal wid, like sey fi hold borders and boundaries. Well, right now mi cut off all border line, all boundaries and a one God, one aim, one unity, one umbrella we a say inna Jamaica," he added to perhaps the biggest shouts of approval and applause he ever got in his whole career from what must have been the smallest crowd.

Ninja Man was not finished. "And," he goes on, "we waan bring all the youths dem weh inna di fighting inna Jamaica, weh inna di politics ting, di ghetto confusion, di every day gang rival, we waan cut dem outta di violence and bring dem inna one unity. And di only way fi do dat is use the music, and if the music is a thing weh a tell yu sey kill dem and murda dem, border clash, and di yute dem a listen and a shoot after one another, lets refrain from border clash and dem tune deh and do songs like these."

For third time, from resounding applause, the Assemble Hall was shaking like it was experiencing earth tremors before he performed the tune he suggested.

The song Ninja Man eventually did, goes in part:
" Yes it hurts me fi hear di gun dem bark and it makes me happy when ghetto youths a talk, and that's a powerful decision that I want you fi know oh oh oh oh oh...
University oh, mi see some dangerous tools in di hands of the fool
And mi beg di ghetto youths dem fi cool before yu give book and pencil and send dem to school yu give dem a big forty-five dat dem fi rule....
Oh mr politician yu come inna di ghetto with yu guns and amunition
Everyday yu get up yu start issue out weapon people start dead by the minute and second
Dis why I'm on a mission fi tek di ghetto yute dem from di guns dem and amunition..."

Interessant en effet ...

Ca sera difficile de voir tous les DJ abandonner leur gun lyrics mais y'a de l'espoir si Ninjaman donne l'exemple.

Ninjaman a peut-être finalement dit au revoir à ses anciennes addictions ... faudrait que la jeune génération fasse de même et lâche un peu la bouteille et la coke aussi pour commencer à utiliser ses neurones restantes et pondre des textes plus sensés ...

Time will tell ...

OUais, article intéressant ... c'est bien pour une fois de lire la vision qu'ont les jamaicains de leur propre culture musicale ...