KINGSTON COLLEGE'S DISCIPLINARY CHALLENGES

On Tuesday of this week, the Gleaner newspaper carried photos and videos of students standing outside the closed main gates of the 2a North Street, Kingston campus of Kingston College. According to the published report, these students had been locked out of the institution for failure to comply with the school’s grooming and general deportment regulations. Principal Dave Myrie even penned a letter which has been circulated among the Old Boys community, explaining that this has been a long-standing issue and the myriad of approaches applied to not only address that issue but also the problem of the general indiscipline that the institution faces daily.

Let me state that I do not support the practice of locking students out of school for any reason. I believer that as challenging as it is, schools must find more appropriate approaches to deal with issues of indiscipline as sending kids home must be the very last resort. Let me also point out that this is the second such reported incident involving Myrie, the first being in 2012 under a similar heading. That event prompted much discussion among educators while exposing the non-existence of protocols from the Ministy of Education (MoE) with respect to dealing with discipline and grooming issues in schools. Ten years later, the MoE has the same vacuous approach. While they have a 29-page document entitled “Student Dress & Grooming Policy Guidelines” the document provides neither guidelines nor recommendations but sets out broad statements on the issue while leaving it up to the School Boards and Administrators to write/determine the actual policy at each school.  

I believe that it is important to note that the Ministry of Education has no definitive policy for dealing with discipline issues at these schools. Yet, that same Ministry in its generally reactive approach, is always quick to respond to the sensationalism generated by these incidents with press conferences and releases but no concrete policy proposal that redounds to a correcting of the status quo or provides meaningful help to the affected schools. Look at the number of cases of student-on-student violence, many times resulting in death. Beyond talk the indiscipline continues, with the participants ultimately becoming grist for the criminal mill or cannon fodder for the security forces.

Speaking from the perspective as a Kingston College Old Boy, I am extremely mindful of the current situation in Jamaica with respect to crime and violence and its companion relationship to the galloping indiscipline that strafes the Jamaican society. For starters, the current Jamaica is devoid of any kind of positive Leadership and what we now have is a "free for all" society where anything goes. It is against such a background that Kingston College hosts more than 2000 young men aging from 11 -19 years and from disparate home environments and at a time when they are most impressionable.

As an inner-city youth myself albeit from a different era, I am fully aware of the plethora of negative influences that exist out there. I am also intimately aware of the gang culture and the way its tentacles are immersed and intertwined within the country's social fabric, especially throughout the school system. Kingston College is certainly not immune to this, and I am aware of the major challenge this provides for the school's administrators. They have the unenviable task of providing and maintaining safe and inviting environments for all the students and administration personnel at Kingston College daily. On top of all that, the administrators have the larger task of preparing these young men to become useful well-adjusted men fit to lead our country into an unknown future. Against a background of the current dysfunctional state that Jamaica finds itself in, Kingston College must deliver that mandate that it embraced 97 years ago.

For his part, Principal Dave Myrie has been serving Kingston College for just over a decade and in that time, we have seen the impact of his transformative leadership. We have seen the improvement in the school’s academic results, the quality of teachers and pedagogy. We have seen the transfer of those disciplines onto the schoolboy playing fields where we are now reaping much success. These results did not come from wishy-washy approaches but by demonstrating firm principled management. School after all is the Secondary agent of socialization for kids. This is where disciplines normally taught at home are made operational and where correction principles are introduced and reinforced. If a parent and their child, on entry, accepts those rules, that becomes the blueprint to follow until graduation. It is my view that any parent or child who chooses not to be bound by those rules, then they should find an institution that is more amenable and transfer there. My support therefore is for Principal Myrie.
 

THE REGGAE MUSIC TRAIN MAY BE LEAVING JAMAICA AT THE STATION

 

                                    

THE REGGAE MUSIC TRAIN MAY BE LEAVING JAMAICA AT THE STATION
In 1985 the United States based National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences introduced the Reggae category in its annual Gramophone Awards ceremony.  The award was to be presented to that recording artiste or artistes for quality works in the Reggae music genre to "honor artistic achievement, technical proficiency and overall excellence in the recording industry, without regard to album sales or chart position.” In this regard, the Grammy Award for Best Reggae Recording was presented to artistes for eligible songs or albums. Jamaica’s own Black Uhuru copped that inaugural Grammy in 1985.

JAMAICAN GRAMMY SUCCESS
Black Uhuru’s win was a major accomplishment for Jamaica’s music as their selection acted as an acknowledgement by the American music industry and its associates that Jamaica’s Reggae music belonged. It was a fitting post-epithet to the groundwork done by people like Prince Buster, Millie Small, Desmond Dekker, and most importantly, Bob Marley and the Wailers, all of whom had spent the better part of their adult lives taking Jamaica’s music around the globe. The Grammy Award also underscored the creative value of the islands’ capital city Kingston, and the importance of its role in creating a world-music, even if that same music was being treated with slight and disdain by the owners of capital, and the framers of the island’s economic development policies.
Since Black Uhuru’s win, several other artistes have over the ensuing 36 years enjoyed similar success. These include multiple winners, Ziggy Marley, Damian Junior Gong Marley, Stephen Marley, Bunny Wailer, Toots Hibbert, Jimmy Cliff, The Burning Spear, Steel Pulse, Shabba Ranks, Peter Tosh, Buju Banton, Shaggy, Sly and Robbie, Lee Scratch Perry, Morgan Heritage, Inner Circle, and the lone female winner Koffee.
It is significant that we keep in mind that these awards focus on Genres, not country of origin. Further, their results are largely determined through “peer-assessment” and not based on record sales. That notwithstanding, a nomination for a Grammy (if the artistes’ connections are properly plugged-in) could bring positives to the artistes’ career. A Grammy win, would be even more significant as it raises the artistes’ profile (again, assuming the success is carefully managed.)

JAMAICAN MUSIC’S GLOBAL INFLUENCE
Nevertheless, the 37-year successes have not been without issue or rancor and the Grammy’s have been criticized for the persistent Marley-name dominance among other issues. All the time too, Jamaicans at home and abroad have maintained that the quality of the music being produced by our artistes have been below the standards that they have been accustomed to. Jamaican music had for years provided the influence for musicians around the globe. After all, D-J music of the early 1980s spawned Rap music in the USA, Reggae spawned Reggaeton within the Latin American corridor, and Dancehall spawned Afro-beats. The common thread here is that in all instances it has been Jamaican music moving across different shores to influence keen-eared artistes and enterprising music industry operatives in those jurisdictions to incorporate Reggae/Dancehall into their own offerings, creating newer and more intriguing output while broadening the audience base of the music. Steel Pulse is a British based group which has won a Grammy, and no other non-Jamaican group has done for Reggae what U-B40, an all-white British group has done.

REGGAE’S VALUE TO JAMAICAN ECONOMY
From a Jamaica perspective, Reggae music has for decades served to attract millions of visitors to the island and I am curious that if this music continues its pace of development in distant shores, will there be enough of an incentive for potential visitors to trek to Jamaica or to travel to other locales where Reggae’s dominance is being mined? This is the take-away that I have from SOJA’s 2022 Reggae Grammy win. We may have created the sound, but have we really done enough to merit the maintenance of the genre as Jamaican? SOJA has done numerous recording sessions in Jamaica, providing authenticity for their own output. Their win serves to further broaden the audience for Reggae, so it is up to our own musicians, artistes, and industry interests to take advantage of this exposure instead of bawling about cultural appropriation.

YAWNING NEED FOR INVESTMENT
In my opinion, those cultural appropriation arguments are empty and meaningless as Jamaica has hardly made more than verbal investment in developing the industry. Despite the stated importance of music as an integral part of the island’s cultural offering, there are no dedicated arenas for airing live music. There are no Reggae Music Museums or themed parks for visitors and locals alike to connect with the giants of the music’s past or to give ear to the suckling talent. Add to that, a majority of our current crop of enthusiasts are unaware of the music’s history. This is a music that was born out of the bowels of Kingston’s ghettoes in the 1950s but is still treated with the disdain that high society had for its creators and their output. Jamaica’s music industry woefully lacks professional and experienced personnel both at the management and performance levels. In the 1960s there were only a handful of producers operating in a space where there was a plethora of performers. Sixty years later there are more record producers than there are artistes capable of producing quality output as the industry has satisfied the long-held objective of ‘bussing” more personnel, but at the expense of quality.

JAMAICA BEING LEFT BEHIND
Artistes and management lack the appreciation for being completely plugged into the industry especially in the areas of publishing, copyrights, intellectual property ownership, marketing, and management. How many artistes are registered to vote in the Grammys? Is the Jamaican market including its Diaspora large enough to support the genre? Are we by ourselves, doing enough to attract more non-Jamaicans to purchase our music? Until these areas are addressed, Jamaican influence in its own creation will shift to other shores while we continue to complain about cultural appropriation.
Last week we were greeted with the news that Billboard had dropped Reggae and Dancehall. This week it is the Virginia based SOJA winning the Reggae Grammy. If this isn’t a clear sign that the train is leaving the station, then I wonder what is.

                                           

 

HAS AFRO-BEATS VIABILITY DISPLACED DANCEHALL?

 

In 2008 I spent three months in London, partly due to an Art Show that I had there, and to give myself enough time to drink in the cultural offerings. During that period, I attended a dance at Kings Cross in London’s West-end. It was a massive session which featured more than half a dozen sound systems. Two of these sound systems had Jamaican origins and of the remaining four, two were British based while the other two identified as Ugandan and Nigerian respectively.
To cut to the chase, the two “African” identified sounds made mincemeat of the others and it was the first time that I had experienced such an infectious beat. It felt like Dancehall and Reggae, but it was sweeter. It mixed well with the 1980s and 1990s Jamaican Dancehall, but it was headier, and it had the crowd in an absolute frenzy. That beat is what is being heralded today as Afro beats.

AFRO BEATS DEVELOPMENT

According to the bredrin with whom I was touring, this beat had been developing since 2002/2003 and he was certain that this was the beat of the future. He intimated then that if Jamaicans did not wake up this African infused Jamaican influenced rhythm would soon displace Jamaican music. He opined further those Jamaican musicians had been missing the mark as instead of developing on what worked, we were too quick to want to imitate the American Hip-Hop sound. In the process we had been abandoning Reggae and Dancehall, especially 80s-90s dancehall which had begun to be picked up by the Latin Americans and being reproduced as Reggaeton. He stated at the time that the members of the African Diaspora had also been consuming Jamaican Reggae and Dancehall and were not only producing their own Jamaican influenced Reggae but was also infusing the African rhythms onto Dancehall which was being presented as Afro beats.

Fast forward to the recent revelation that Billboard had ditched its Reggae Digital Sales Charts and had joined forces with the music festival and global Afrobeat’s brand Afro Nation to launch the first-ever US chart for Afrobeat’s Songs. My response is simple enough “It has been a long time coming.”

THE AFRICAN DIASPORA

The African population is more than 1.2 billion and its Diaspora population is over 140 million with 56 million residing in Brazil alone and another 47 million residing in the USA. In the circumstances, it makes absolute economic sense that Billboard would want to focus on those areas where a critical mass of population resides. After all, music is a big-money business and within the music fraternity, it has been the general view that not only is African music in the ascendancy, but also that it is taking the space of Dancehall music. This as Dancehall seems to have lost its way as the output from most of the current practitioners in the genre is indecipherable from American Hip-Hop and certainly lacking the energy and brashness that was generally associated with Dancehall.

Billboard in their release, stated that the US Afro beats Songs chart goes live on Tuesday, March 29, 2022, and will rank the 50 most popular Afro beats songs in the United States, “based on a weighted formula incorporating official streams on both subscription and ad-supported tiers of leading audio and video music services, plus download sales from top music retailers”.

The fact is that Billboard’s executives are responding to the trend-lines drawn by the Afrobeat as it has grown tremendously as a genre in America but when it comes to dancehall itself, “people are afraid to give it a chance,” the singer Kranium says. Then he reconsiders. “They kill it even before they give it a chance.”

According to Sean Paul in an article published by the Rolling Stones magazine, “There are several challenges facing a dancehall singer hoping to reach the American market. The first and biggest is the way we speak. Most of us sing in patois, which evolves every year, so you can’t write it down in a textbook, you can’t teach it to someone unless they live it.”

UNDERLYING PROBLEMS WITH JAMAICAN MUSIC

Jaxx, the producer, points to another underlying problem: the Jamaican market’s lack of robust infrastructure for international distribution. According to him, “In America, there are major labels that you can bring your artist to and then you have a platform while no parallel institution exists in the Caribbean.” For his part, New York based Ricky Blaze has lamented that, “we don’t have a Def Jam Jamaica.” “It’s very hard for a record to make it far outside of Jamaica without a mainstream label behind it,” adds Linton “TJ Records” White, who produced “No Games” for Serani.

There are also often constraints on the travel of dancehall artists themselves, most of who may face complicated border control measures when attempting to enter the U.S. According to Stephen “Di Genius” McGregor, who has produced for Sean Paul and Vybz Kartel, pointing to the 2010 crackdown against Jamaican dancehall singers during the Dudus Coke Affair, “Most of the frontrunners in dancehall had those issues in recent years, which strained the entire industry,” McGregor says.

The other unspoken fact is that Jamaicans in the Diaspora do not buy Jamaican Dancehall music, making the genre largely unattractive economically.

 

FIND THE WILL TO TRANSFER THE POCKETS OF EXCELLENCE NATIONALLY

Jamaica is known around the world for the pristine white sand beaches that bolsters its tourism product, as well as its track and field athletes who have contributed to building the island’s reputation as a track and field powerhouse. These are just some of the pockets of excellence that resides in Jamaica. In addition to those two contributors though, Jamaica is best known for its pulsating Reggae music which has carried the island’s flag multiple times around the globe over the last 40-50 years. In fact, Reggae is generally accepted as one of the primary magnets which has served to attract visitors to the island over the years, creating the mystique that singer Tony Rebel maintains that “a Reggae put Jamaica pon top.”

  
The fact is there aren’t many countries in the world where its music has the kind of social and economic impact as Jamaica, and if we needed any reminders, twice the United Nations Education and Scientific Council (UNESCO) made underlining declarations. The first in 2015, when it declared capital city Kingston a Global Cultural City, recognizing the capital’s contribution of six of the island’s eight officially recognized music genres gifted to the world. The second was in 2018 when it announced the granting of “Culturally Protected Status” to Reggae Music.

One would have thought that not only should both announcements have been met with vigorous responses from the Jamaican business and political communities, but also that within the period, the island would have been further ahead in terms of mining the opportunities that lay buried within its rich music history. Instead, the very same biases that beset the music in the pre- and post-Independence era are today still alive and active in the island.

In Track and Field athletics, we laud our athletes when they are successful, their feats are often rebroadcasted, and the excellence celebrated. What may not be as obvious is that these results are the products of systemic approaches to harness and prepare these athletes over the years. While we acknowledge the abundance of talent present within the Jamaica’s athletics cohort, that talent is supported by our primary and secondary education system where sports is part of the school program. This allows for systematic development at all levels. Competition at the prep, primary and the secondary levels sifts out the extra-ordinary and culminates in the National Trials that selects our best to represent us on the National and International stages. Not so within our music community.

In spite of Jamaica’s celebrated successes in music, less than 15 percent of music revenues are realized by artistes. According to Song Embassy CEO, Paul Campbell, Jamaican artistes leaves too much on the table as very few artistes are aware of the US billion $ commercial music market as most have no appreciation for the business-side of the industry. Songwriter Mikey Bennett intimated that there is little or no preparation of our artistes that would gear them towards excellence. Both were speaking on Yaawd Media’s Sunday Scoops program recently.

For decades, our artistes have simply risen from the ranks of the underprivileged and nothing prepared them for individual success or excellence.  Very few of our artistes know how to write a song or how to read music as in the main, only a handful of schools offer any kind of music program. Further, most of our recording artistes have very little appreciation for the business of music and depend on their own efforts and the push that comes from an underlying desire despite the absence of any support system. Add to that is the fact that poor academic results produce poorly prepared graduates, and it is this pool that our artistes are produced.

Perhaps now would be a good time for a collaboration between the Ministries of Education, Culture, and Tourism to look seriously at creating some solid policy foundations upon which we can develop and exploit the full social and economic benefits that reside within the music industry. At the Education level, this would include making music part of the academic curriculum and would not only build a positive domestic attitude towards music, but it would also make more Jamaicans see music as a positive career choice.
At the levels of Culture and Tourism, cohesive and supportive policies could see more Jamaicans participating in Tourism at the entertainment level instead of current practice of importing Spanish speaking acts from Latin America to perform at local hotels.

I believe that the time has come for establishing a Jamaica Music Museum and Performance Centre where local and international patrons can experience live and recorded music and other aspects of our culture seven days a week. This would be a project involving government and private sector interests, including members of the entertainment community as well as securing the public’s participation similar to the approach taken with Wigton Wind Farm. This must be supported by designating spaces consistent with the ‘Creative City’ designation within inner-city communities as zones of creativity where people can practice and refine their artistic and creative skills.

I believe that these are significantly “low-hanging” fruits that can be reaped without exhaustive cost to Jamaican taxpayers while providing significant benefits to the Jamaican economy. It is not sufficient that each year we regale our Music for a month and then return to our slumber. What is required is finding the correct leadership and the appropriate will. 

Thanks for taking the time to read our blog, please leave your thoughts in the comment section below, we appreciate your feedback. We also invite you to check Sunday Scoops our Jamaican music streaming and commentary program every Sunday from 2-4pm on yaawdmedia.com feel free to share with your friends.

LET'S PUT SOME QUANTIFIABLE OBJECTIVES BEHIND FUTURE REGGAE MONTH OBSERVANCES

As we wind down the clock on Reggae Month 2022, I am reminded that it was in 1951, that the beginnings of the Jamaican Recording Industry peeped out of the proverbial “gate” when Ken Khouri and Stanley Motta recorded and released the first 78 RPM discs. Stanley Motta had recorded Rupert Linley Lyon a.k.a Lord Fly while Khouri recorded Byfield Norman Thomas a.k.a Lord Flea. Not only did this kick-start the recording industry, but it also birthed the biggest grass-roots industry that the country has seen even to this day. This was the birth of Jamaican music, and the resultant gifting to the world by the island of some eight genres of music comprising Dukonoo, Mento, Nyabinghi, Ska, Rock Steady, Reggae, Dee-Jay, and Dancehall. Today, celebrants of Jamaican music loosely apply the term Reggae as a descriptor for all music that comes out of Jamaica, granted that such description is heavily weighted against the Reggae and Dancehall genres.

It has been more than 70 years since the discs from Lords Flea and Fly respectively rolled off the press, and in the course of that time Jamaica’s music has been carried to cities and states around the globe multiple times by various yard-born practitioners from the bowels of Kingston inner-city communities largely on the wings of sheer talent, and the support and belief of an enterprising few with the capital to spare and the guts to match. Any assessment of the history of the development of Jamaican music will show a general disregard for the music by both holders of private capital on the island and government planners who have always maintained a ‘hands-off’ approach.  The result has been one in which the music industry in Jamaica has remained largely, a ‘cottage industry’ in both design and operation where participants look out for themselves only, consistent with the “eat-a-food” mentality that looms large in every sphere of Jamaican life.

In 2008, the Government of Jamaica officially declared February as Reggae Month. The proclamation was supported by a series of events and concerts, mostly in and around Kingston. Ostensibly, the Reggae Month celebrations are organized by the Jamaica Recording Industry Organization (JaRIA), the Ministry of Tourism and the Ministry of Culture, Gender, Entertainment and Sport. This recognition assigned to Reggae came seven years prior to the UNESCO pronouncement naming Kingston as a Cultural City underlined by its acknowledgement of the capital’s contribution of six of the island’s eight genres of music gifted to the world. Three years later the same UNESCO granted Cultural Protected Status of Reggae Music.

Today as we enter the last week of the12^th annual observance of Reggae Month,
 it is in my opinion a good time to assess the accomplishments of the stakeholders not only over those 12 years, but also the extent to which Jamaica and Jamaicans not only value its music, but also the level of value that the industry contributes to the economy. One question that burns into such a discussion is the extent to which Jamaica has capitalized on the global acknowledgement of Kingston as a Cultural city? A second question would go to the degree to which we have made economic use of the classification of Reggae Music as a protected cultural artifact?
At present there is little or no agreement as to the economic value of the Jamaican music industry. This view is supported by Entertainment attorney Lloyd Stanbury who acknowledges in his book Reggae Roadblocks that accurate data on the economic performance of reggae inside Jamaica and internationally has been very difficult to come by.  Any meaningful measure of medium to long term economic contribution must be based on this value. The best estimates that we have are based on a World Intellectual Property Organization 2007 report which indicated that copyright-based industries generated about Ja.$29 billion in producers' value to the Jamaican economy, or 4.8 per cent of GDP. There is an urgent need for accurate measurement if we are going to be able to attract meaningful financial resources into the industry.  

There is also the issue of the degree to which Jamaicans are confident enough of their culture to not only want to identify with and celebrate this musical heritage but to also invest their capital in it. This may sound strange given the reaction that those of us who live outside the island or who travel internationally receive when the question of Nationality is raised. Everyone everywhere else wants to be Jamaican or wants to visit Jamaica, the island of “cool’ and Reggae music. Jamaican Ethnomusicologist, Dr. Dennis Howard speaking on a TVJ program as well as on yaawdmedia.com's Sunday Scoops refers to this as "a lack of cultural confidence." According to Dr. Howard, "it is by overcoming the post-colonial trauma that will allow us to see in ourselves the power that we have and the value that we can and have created." This is a major step that we have to take as a nation.

I believe that the JaRIA and other stakeholders in the industry need to use its proximity with the Culture Ministry to have music taught in schools starting at the Primary through to grade nine in our secondary school system. This would help to address the cultural confidence issues as well as assist young Jamaican students who wish to obtain a better understanding of how the industry works. From there, those with the desire to pursue a career in music would then continue through to grade 11, with an introduction to the business of music. This is the challenge that I am issuing to the JaRIA and the Ministry of Culture in celebrating Reggae Month. Let us set some quantifiable objectives. There is work to be done.

Thanks for taking the time to read our blog, please leave your thoughts in the comment section below, we appreciate your feedback. We also invite you to check Sunday Scoops our Jamaican music streaming and commentary program every Sunday from 2-4pm on yaawdmedia.com feel free to share with your friends.

WITH LADY SAW'S PLANNED RETURN, WILL DANCEHALL BE NICE AGAIN?

 

“Dancehall a goh Nice again….” screamed the commentaries on social media to news that Minister Marion Hall aka ‘Lady Saw’ or ‘Mumma Saw’ had decided to abandon her social media preaching platforms for the quipped dancehall stage. “To all Christians and non-Christians who’s been coming up against my ministry. Congratulations on your mission to bring me down. You’ve successfully done so. I’ve now decided to step away from my calling in order to fulfill your desires. I will no longer be preaching or keeping the church on any social media platform. May God forgive me,” she said in a post on Facebook on her Minister Marion Hall verified account. Any immediate speculation generated from the initial post that she was merely announcing her end to pulpit sessions that she hosted weekly rather than returning to dancehall, were clarified by a second status update that Lady Saw is walking away from her Christian life, and the short-lived Minister Marion Hall has been put away until further notice.

Marion Hall was born in Galina, St. Mary, Jamaica on July 12, 1969, and attended the Galina Primary School in the parish. At the end of her school years, she held a sewing job at the Kingston Free Zone while dabbling in the DJ business from as early as age 15, with the Stereo One sound system in Kingston. She was particularly impressed by the DJ stylings of an upcoming “Tenor Saw” and in 1987 christened herself “Lady Saw,” and would soon attract the attention of local record producers. Her early compositions "Love Me or Lef Me," "If Him Lef" and Jamaican chart-topper “Find a Good Man," led to her first album in 1994 entitled “Lover Girl,” which featured the raunchy hit single “Stab Up Di Meat.”

The success generated by her first album led to the release of a second album, the sexually explicit “Give Me the Reason.” It was this album which cemented Lady Saw as the most sexually explicit female deejay in Jamaica’s Dancehall, a moniker which she bared on records, dub plates and on dancehall stages across the island and in the international space. Her June 1997 album “Passion” went to #8 on the Billboard charts, spawning the singles “Healing” and “Under the Sycamore Tree.” Her Billboard success was followed by the 1998 release of “99 Ways” which charted at #18. This was followed in1999 by her major US hit “Smile,” a collaboration with Vitamin C, which peaked at number 18 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts which was also a major hit in New Zealand and Canada, which was certified gold with over 500,000 sales.

Saw’s 2002, collaboration with No Doubt “Underneath It All” reached number three in the US and sold more than three million copies, reaching triple platinum certification and snagged a Grammy Award for 'Best Performance by a Duo or Group' The cut demonstrated that Lady Saw was a major contender on both the local as well as on the international stage. By 2014, she had released 7 studio albums, largely punctuated by her brand steamy sexual content. To her audience her stage lewdness was as riveting as it was entertaining and in 2015, after a raunchy performance to close that Year’s Sumfest’s Dancehall Night, the 47-year-old Dancehall veteran DJ Lady Saw walked away from the genre claiming to have embraced religion.

Six years later, Saw is re-sharpening her blades for a re-assault on the genre, preceded by what must be seen as a coordinated social media campaign replete with challenges and verbal swipes aimed at current Dancehall personalities Spice, Shenseea, and Jada Kingdom, and with other female veterans like Macka Diamond, and Lady Ann joining into the fray. The reality is that the music business is just that; it is a business where investors who place their monies expect a return on investment. In that context, Lady Saw was once a brand that despite her leaning at the time, commanded a significant following and if she feels that she still has something to offer, it is up to her, her handlers, and her fans to decide her fate. I believe that an artiste with the time and credentials to her name does not need to be publicly suggesting collaborations with names that are yet to be in her league. It is for those artistes to be seeking collaborations with her and not the other way around. Saw just simply need to build a couple of riddim tracks and overlay them with lyrics based on her experience and let that do the talking. It does not have to be a return to the loose or decadent lyrics of the current crop of artistes.

Jamaican Dancehall is today racked by three scourges. The first is the gun and death lyrics that has been with us for decades and currently being partially blamed as one of the causes of our current crime wave. The second is the slackness that has been a part of the genre for decades and of which Mumma Saw was its Empress but no less lascivious than the men in Dancehall. The third question is the hypocrisy that most of us can easily identify-women are judged by a very different standard than men.

Another question that is worth waiting to be answered is whether Lady Say at 53 can go toe-to toe with 19-30 plus year-olds who now populate the dancehall space? The fact is that Jamaicans love the hype, and in the current social media dominated environment, getting a “forward” or accumulating a few million likes on these platforms is the path to stardom, even if it is only for a few weeks or months. That and the fact that Covid 19 has eviscerated the live entertainment industry (the church included) as money has been tight.

Thanks for taking the time to read our blog, please leave your thoughts in the comment section below, we appreciate your feedback. We also invite you to check Sunday Scoops our Jamaican music streaming and commentary program every Sunday from 2-4pm on yaawdmedia.com feel free to share with your friends.

DANCEHALL-THE STONE THAT JAMAICAN BUILDERS STILL REFUSES

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Dancehall in Jamaica is an industry with a value that requires accounting and analysis. A largely cottage industry, Dancehall has long overflowed those banks and has spread to the continents of Africa, Asia, North and South America, as well as in parts of Europe.

In 2020, Jamaica's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was listed at just under US$16 billion. Even if Dancehall's value is estimated as one percent of GDP, this could be worth well in excess of US$100 million, considerably more than the US$20-$25 million suggested by culture minister Babsy Grange in 2017 that all the island's cultural events contribute. What is a fact though is that any such benefit is being sucked into the chasm that comprises the gaping underground economy.

Dancehall's problem is further compounded by the country's sectarian approach to owning its history and recognizing those at the lower rung who are involved in its development. It was born in the bowels of the country's inner-city communities and as a consequence, it has always been met with resistance at every level. Like its big brother Reggae music, Dancehall has been met with the Government's promulgation of night-noise legislation, supported by overzealous policing, to curtail its activities and its growth. We need to acknowledge that the cultural and creative industries of the people of Jamaica have contributed immensely to Jamaica's global image and brand Jamaica, and that contribution needs to be recognized, respected, and appreciated. It is equally important that we remove the stigma attached to Dancehall, including the view that sees the genre and its culture historically as non-professional, non-commercial folklore of the lower socio-economic segments of our society.

In many of our inner-city communities, Dancehall is the backbone and fabric of the resident's survival. Within these communities, dancehall is an industry that extends way beyond the DJ on a recording. The Dancehall industry employs hairdressers, barbers, tailors, dance-hall fashion designers, dancers, caterers, promoters, etc. The industry, while embracing huge tracts of untrained talent, makes the largest use of the talent pool developed through the Edna Manley College for the Visual and Performing Arts, and provides the best representation of Jamaicans with a penchant towards self-employment. It is for this reason that every dollar spent at a dance in a community recirculates within that community for at least a month, touching more people that do traditional employment. Not appreciating these factors means not appreciating the economic value beyond the entertainment value, particularly, their economic value and contribution to gross domestic product (GDP) which has been woefully undervalued, resulting in the sector not being seen as a major contributor to the national economy.

Whether we want to accept it or not, Dancehall has become one of Jamaica's biggest exports except for Tourism, reaching more continents than any manufactured product or service. From Japan to South America, from Central to North America, Africa, and sections of Europe, Jamaican Dancehall is a steadily growing export that no policymaker in Jamaica is prepared to embrace.

Nevertheless, like the phoenix, still, Dancehall rises.

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