Money matters provide lyrics

Mel Cooke, Sunday Gleaner Writer

Long before Shabba ranks advised the ladies that they should raise the prices of their favours as "bully beef, gone up gone up/rice, stepping up stepping up" in the late 1980s and Macka Diamond adapted the 'Money Oh!' mantra in the mid-2000s, money matters had provided lyrical fodder outside of the bedroom context.

As an original Wailer, Peter Tosh bemoaned the loss of spending power heralded by a dip in the precious pound sterling's value, Jamaica using that currency up until 1969 when the Jamaican dollar spoke to a longing for financial independence after political independence seven years before.

"This devaluation

It cause an eruption

Oh what a destruction

Prepare for starvation

Cost of living get high

Pound get low ..."

Pound Get a Blow is on the posthumous 1997 Tosh box set, Honorary Citizen.

Tosh revisited the financial theme a decade after the currency changeover, with The Day the Dollar Die on his 1979 Mystic Man album. Still, Tosh started with the British currency:

"I see Johnny with his head hanging down

Wondering how many shillings left in that pound

Cost of living it is rising so high

Dollar see that had heart attack and die"

He moved on to the overall financial situation:

"Bills and budgets are waiting

Finance ministers anticipating

Unemployment is rising

And I hear my people, they're crying

The day the dollar die

Things are gonna be better

The day the dollar die

No more corruption"

More recently, Natural Black has been one of the very few singers to speak to budget matters in song, although the man from Guyana's song did not resonate sufficiently with the public to become anything near a hit. Still, in one of the nervous times before a mid-2000s budget debate contribution by the finance minister, the Guyana-born Natural Black commented:

"It gonna be death

When dem read de budget

Honestly speaking we no need de budget

Dis is gonna be one of the most greedy budget ..."