Story of the Song - MoBay made to music

Mel Cooke, Gleaner Writer

Red Stripe Reggae Sumfest 2012 starts today in Montego Bay, St James, the Jamaican city with the longest festival history in Jamaica with Reggae Sunsplash and Reggae Sumfest combined.

Although the city has not produced many popular artistes within its environs (persons from the west, such as Jah Cure and Queen Ifrica, have all got the 'buss' from Kingston), it has its place on record. The songs deal with many sides of the city, from being a resort to the festival atmosphere.

In one of his popular lyrics, Professor Nuts' drunken alter ego Jimmy Bascombe walks around with a cooking gas cylinder. When someone asks him why he has it, Bascombe lists a number of persons he has sold the cylinder to and then stolen it from them to sell them again. In the end, Jimmy is heading to MoBay because:

"Me a go a Sunsplash an' dem a come wid mi

'Cause mi haffi make a money offa couple whitey."

In Welcome to Montego Bay, Queen Ifrica looks cynically at the glaring contradiction of the city's reputation as a tourism hub with the state of its inner-city communities. After establishing her authority to speak about the place as "that's where I grow", Ifrica says:

"Nuff money deh deh but it jus' nah show

Tourism a flourish while the ghetto dem a perish no no."

In the chorus, she names communities and conditions, alternating them with a supposedly tourist-friendly call:

Salem, Flankers

Welcome to Montego Bay

Children nah noweh to play

Welcome to Montego Bay

People fed up inna every way

Welcome to Montego Bay

Then she opens the next verse by pointing out a deficiency in the city's facilities:

"MoBay need a public park

Decorate wid flowers whe family go walk."

Long before the road between the two tourism-centred areas were connected by a modern highway, as they are now, deejay General Trees linked Montego Bay and Negril in song. The title is Gone a Negril, but MoBay gets mentioned in the song about his misadventures taking public transport to the west from Kingston. Trees deejays:

"You want to go to Negril/Or even to MoBay? ..."

And the idyllic promise of the city is on Cocoa Tea's mind in Sweet Life, as he issues an invitation to his lady. He croons:

"Let's meet some special place

Some special time of day

Down in Montego Bay

Someplace where the wind blow

And the seas comes rushing ashore

Down in Montego Bay."

The interest in Montego Bay has not only come from Jamaicans. In 1970, Bobby Bloom sang about the delights of the city in 'Montego Bay', who invited "come sing aloud, come sing me Montego Bay."