STORY OF THE SONG - Election songs critical of 'system'

Mel Cooke, Gleaner Writer

Elections are in the air, with the resurgent Jamaica Labour Party under Jamaica's first post-Independence-born Prime Minister Andrew Holness testing his youth against the seasoned campaigner Portia Simpson Miller.

Ironically, two deejays with standout election songs are both behind bars, Ninja Man in Jamaica and Buju Banton in the USA. In the late 1980s to early 1990s Ninja Man did Nah Go Love It, urging peace between supporters of the two major political parties, the People's National Party (PNP) and Jamaica Labour Party (JLP).

He started in true Don Gorgon fashion:

"Well ear dis!

Dis no stop play

All monts an years afta election

day

Now all politician remember

Vote, no fight

Don't do it!"

With the very violent 1980 election almost a decade behind at the time of the record's release and the now-commonplace pictures of green and orange-clad party faithful hugging and dancing in the streets a rarity then, Ninja Man said:

"I want it to be de firs' happen

inna my country

On de days of election

Labourite shake han' wid PNP."

The anti-violence stance in the chorus is definitive:

"Nah go love it, nah go love it

Yu know de politics business nah

go love it ..."

And the naming of the political leaders dates the song:

"If you get up every day an kill

yu black bredda

A talk bout yu a fight fe Manley

and Seaga

Pity yu no know yu commit col'

blooded murda."

Buju Banton zeroed in on the heart of the political process, the casting of the ballot, in Politics Time Again. He asked:

"Well it's politics time again, are

you gonna vote now?"

He advocates for a boycott of the

voting process, saying:

"Fed up of promises and

hopeless hope/ballot box must

be empty, vote house closed."

It was a personal stance which Anthony B took in the ska song Nah Vote Again, singing:

"All dem a enumerate nah

participate."

And he observed:

"All we get a election a death an

problem."

In his famous 1976 Peace Concert speech, Peter Tosh underscored the personal disenfranchisement from the process, saying:

"I am not a politician, but I

suffer the consequences."

Still, the electorate may be well advised to remember the words of Bob Marley in Revolution (and Buju Banton puts a few lines of Marley's Heathen into Politics Time Again):

"Never let a politician grant you

a favour

They will always want to control

you forever."