Artistes stay away from trouble

In the 1990s, after a tremendous start on the sound system circuit with a double handful of records that were summarily banned from airplay, Bounty Killer soon adapted the 'Poor People's Governor' moniker and had one of his most enduring hits with Poor People Fed Up:

"Well poor people fed up

To how yu system sheg up

Yu issue gun fi we pickney buss

poor people fed up

To how yu system sheg up

Well every day ghetto youths dead up ...

Long time de MP him no come near ya

An all de one whe claim she a councillor

Rob 75 per cent and gi we quarter ..."

The toll road, among many other issues, came up on Kartel's lyrical radar on Dem No Like Wi.

However, Jamaican entertainers were remarkably quiet on the huge international issue of the United States (US) invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq after the September 1, 2001, attacks on the US. In Warn Dem, where she takes a searing look at crime in Jamaica, Tanya Stephens deejays:

"When war a gwaan inna Iraq

Me no have no time fe penne dat

Me a watch de yute dem pon de block

A rise de SK an' de Glock"

In his symposium address, Mutabaruka said that with the desire to internationalise music, Jamaican artistes and producers were making too much of a compromise "We want to internationalise the music so much. We cyaa talk sey Black people a suffer still in the Caribbean and Africa," he said.

Influence

Clyde McKenzie acknowledges the influence of persons outside Jamaica, in more ways than one. "We have seen where our artistes have to conform to international dictates. So there was the large non-response on record to a then increasingly unpopular war on Afghanistan and Iraq after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the USA.

"We saw some artistes pay some heavy prices, like the Dixie Chicks. They were riding high and because they spoke their mind they were ostracised," he said.

In a 2003 concert, ahead of the Iraq invasion, at a London concert, the US group's lead singer Natalie Maines said, "we don't want this war, this violence, and we're ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas". They suffered not only concert attendance decline in the US, but also there was a public invitation to have a crushing of their CDs by a bulldozer.

McKenzie said "one could argue if that could happen to them, what can happen to people who need visas? Nobody wants to lose that". That is underscored in the recent WikiLeaks series run by The Gleaner, in which the psychological importance to Jamaicans of having a US visa is emphasised.

Plus, in George W. Bush's case, the line was starkly drawn.

"Sometimes people don't understand nuance, analysis and observation. In Bush's time, it was you are with us or against. That did not accommodate any shades of grey. It was you agree with us or you don't," McKenzie said.

"A lot of our artistes understood this and went for the safe issues of going under ladies' skirts."

Mutabaruka spoke to a safe issue at his symposium address. He said that "spliff appease everybody", this in the context of a deluge of marijuana songs and relaxation of laws and penalties against the plant in some countries - a far cry from the socio-economic context of Peter Tosh's Legalise It album in 1976. Famously, on the album cover Tosh is shown in a marijuana field.

"It (marijuana) is a safe issue here," McKenzie said, though noting that he believes it will come under international scrutiny due to particular legal procedures.

"In Jamaica it is one of the safer things to talk about, even though it is illegal."

- MC