'Pon You Head' continues male-female debate

Mel Cooke, Gleaner Writer

Gender power issues form an enduring subtopic in Jamaican music, from the deejay debate of Legal Rights between Papa San and Lady G, through to the Bigger Boss quarrels of Shirley McLean and Dwight Pinkney.

Late last year, the on and off discourse made its way into the generation of performers raised in a more explicitly expressive era of Jamaican popular music, in the double entendre of Chino's Pon You Head as the sentiments of Shabba's Dem Bow meet The Meditations' Woman is Like a Shadow.

It starts as well-heeded advice:

"From me a likkle yute

A one ting me mother tell me

She say don' take up whe yu caa manage, nothing heavy

So me listen to what me mother said, me listen clearly

Me never go roun' me mother teaching cause she never fail me

She say no put no woman pon you head"

Then the deejay in turn becomes the advisor:

No little youth, take in you education

And you no fe make no woman stray you meditation

Yield not to many temptation

No follow everything you see pon the television

Me know da topic ya is a delicate one

But me can't make the youths mash up them reputation

Never said that you fe be a celibate man

But some woman have some thing that mash up many great man ... "

The implications are not to be missed as Chino says:

"No bow to the system for any name brand

Do the right and no penetrate wrong

No put no woman pon you head

No make no gal res' pon you min'

No bother put the thing under dress pon you mind

Positvity you should be investing you time"

And, close to the end, he repeats:

"Little youth, keep you head up high"

Chino tells The Sunday Gleaner that Pon You Head, produced by his brother Stephen 'Di Genius' McGregor, was written and recorded in late 2009.

"We did a thought-provoking song. It is a song with two meanings, so you have to pick one and run with it," Chino said. "One meaning is straightforward. Then one is, in a nutshell, don't take up what you can't manage."

Source of advice

While he would not identify exactly where he got the advice from, Chino said, "every Jamaican man, I think, get that advice directly or indirectly. Everybody can relate to it".

Pon Yu Head was written and recorded at Big Ship in Havendale and first performed a year ago at Sting 2009, when Chino closed with it. He had popular songs before, including Never Change, Protected and Rough it Up, "so the momentum was building". Chino said when he dropped Pon Yu Head at Sting "me get the big, four-corner ital forward".

And he said that when he performs Pon You Head, the women turn the gender in the lyric around, singing "no put no man pon you head".

"It is a fun song. It is always a fun song when I perform it," Chino said.