'Still Alive' speaks against HIV/AIDS discrimination

...Tanya Stephens says recording her best live session

Mel Cooke, Gleaner Writer

Tanya Stephens' I'm Still Alive from last year's Infallible album speaks to discrimination against persons infected with HIV/AIDS from the personal perspective, Stephens writing from the angle of a faithful man who has contracted the disease from his wife.

She tells The Sunday Gleaner that she chose that approach because it is not the typical one - and men are not always the villains. So, in the spoken introduction before the song begins, Stephens says:

"Johnny was a good man

Had two kids and a beautiful wife

He loved her very much, she was the pride of his life

He would never do anything to cause her pain

Unfortunately for him though, she never saw it quite the same

Johnny was busy giving her everything he had to give

And in return she gave him a test that came back positive

The news spread like wildfire and pretty soon

Johnny would walk through the door and he would empty the room

His boss said I want to keep you Johnny but my hands are tied

God knows I've tried but nobody wants to work by your side

And you've been an asset to us Johnny I'm indebted to you

So tell me, what would you have me do?"

In the following verse there is the dismissal by and callousness of other persons ("how can you watch me live in pain if your love could heal me/ touch me every day how can you not feel me") added to the literal dismissal by the boss at Johnny's workplace.

There is the feeling of incredulity with "after everything I gave/I can't believe you're all digging my grave/While I'm still alive". And Stephens uses the final four words as Johnny's statement about those who would inter him and a personal statement about his fortitude in the chorus:

"While I'm still alive

With every day I live

I'm alive

With every breath I give

I'm alive

Oh take it from me

I'm still writing pages of testimony ..."

There is another 'live' aspect to the recording, as Stephens says since she has started singing/ recording it is the best live session she has ever done. Among the musicians at Grafton Studios, Vineyard Town, for the session where the tracks were laid were Wayne Armond and Glen Browne (Stephens seems to have a special regard for the latter).

"Me a look round the room and say 'a me a the worst thing inside here'," Stephens said.

Still Alive is part of Stephens' push against discrimination, Do You Still Care?, from the Gangster Blues album in the same vein, addressing racism and discrimination. Performing at Studio 38, Trafalgar Road, New Kingston, on Friday, February 4, before she performed Do You Still Care?, Stephens pointed out that it is ludicrous to think that one can address one aspect of discrimination solely.

"The song is anti-discrimination. Discrimination is one tree," Stephens said, pointing out "you can't kill a tree by cutting off a branch. A country me come from, me know 'bout bush".

• AIDS awareness changes in music

Long before Tanya Stephens wrote and recorded I'm Still Alive, in the early 1990s deejay Lecturer did an extremely popular special for Silverhawk sound system which also spoke to a man contracting HIV/AIDS because his trusted female partner was unfaithful.

In that case, however, Lecturer positioned the man who passed on the infection to his friend's wife as a bisexual. After detailing the back and forth among the three in the explicit song, he concludes: "Jonathan ketch AIDS an' a tell I man/De ongly ting me do me jus' sing one song/I yu gal ketch AIDS den me no response/Me neva tell har fe go f ... wid b ...".

With Jamaica recording its first AIDS cases in the early 1980s, the disease quickly made its way into popular music culture, deejay Ranking Larry and singer King Kong both doing songs entitled AIDS A Go Round. King Kong was especially macabre, reflecting the fatalistic attitude of the time as he sang "when AIDS take you Lord a God only the morgue get to take you".

Later in the 1980s in Punaany Admiral Bailey was rather cavalier in his approach to contracting AIDS, preferring death to forgoing the delights of intercourse as he deejayed "Glimmity glammity woah AIDS haffi tek me/Glimmity glammity woah Slipe Pen haffi see me".

However, by the mid-1990s deejays Buju Banton and Frisco Kid were encouraging men to protect themselves, not through abstinence or sticking to one partner, but making sure they used condoms. Buju Banton gave straight-ahead advice in Willie, demanding "Ragamuffin don't be silly put some rubbers pon yu willie/AIDS a go roun' an' you don' waa ketch ... . Life is precious when yu have it fe live/Make sure yu no HIV positive/Be aware, be prepare think constructive/Doh bother gwaan like say yu no care or yu no business/This is not a soap opera or a mini-series/One life the father give you one life you have to live ...".

Frisco Kid took the personal route, eyeing a lady but being cautious about the unknown. In Rubbers he deejayed:

"Me want a juk offa Jacqueline

But me haffi draw fe me rubbers, for my rubbers

Sex nice but the AIDS thing

Wi make you die like flowers

Die out like flowers"

Still, past the turn of the century it seemed the more things changed musically the more they remained the same - at least in blaming the woman for contracting AIDS. But while Lecturer had his female persona being unfaithful with a bisexual man, in Can't Satisfy Her I-Wayne positions the woman as a prostitute:

"Say she flirt with her boyfriend bredren

Him have money and bling so she go bed with him

Ketch disease now it started spreading

She start to seek penicillin she's dying

Mercy please, for life she begging

When she hear to the morgue she heading ...

One man can't satisfy her"

- M.C.