In defence of Ragashanti
Published:Monday | August 23, 2010 | 12:00 AM
The Editor, Sir:
If you appreciate our rich Jamaican culture and think the preservation of the most sensitive part of our heritage is of utmost importance for us all, then you will understand that Dr Kingsley Stewart (Ragashanti) is only doing his part as a patriotic Jamaican. He has used the most convenient medium of communication to translate common issues affecting everyday Jamaican people, and turn it into entertainment that we can't get enough of; remember Miss Lou said to "tek kin teet kibba heart bun".
However, Louis Marriott, whose letter was published in the Gleaner on August 20, is only one of few intellectual hypocrites advocating gross disregard for the grass roots of Jamaican life and think, selfishly, that the media landscape should cater to only those of his kind. Well, Mr Marriott, 'Perkins Online' and 'Hotline' have dominated daytime radio throughout the years and adequately serve an audience that prefers the current-affairs type programme you apparently like. yet, the average Jamaican, who is disgusted with all those mutterings relating to politics, etc, never protest and advocate the discontinuance of same.
To the media managers
As a consumer of the vast media products which currently exist in Jamaica, let me inform the media managers who do not yet know that the most successful programmes are those which appeal to the man on the street, or let me say 'those below the intellectual level', which are often classified as the uneducated.
Ragashanti is only next in line to the handful of people such as Louise Bennett Coverley and Oliver Samuels who were also criticised for 'chatting Patois' our beloved language. but yet, they were never intimidated and they prove to the upper-class intellectuals that nothing is wrong with talking in the local dialect.
'Ragashanti Live' is one of the most listened to radio programmes, especially by the local populace and those in upper society who continue listening in order to criticise. I am appealing to News talk 93 FM to keep the programme running, or else risk being narrowed to an audience limited to the walls of the university.
I am, etc.,
LEON PRYCE
Montego Bay
St James