THE GUNMAN SHIFT…A SOH DI TING SET

 

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to engage with former Third World Band member and current lecturer at the Edna Manley School for the Visual and Performing Arts, Mr. Ibo Cooper on my Sunday Scoops streamed program on yaawdmedia.com. In the course of our discussion Ibo made reference to a tune called “Gunman Shift” which he indicated was the rave within the current Dancehall circuit. The lyrics for the tune was penned by new dancehall sensation “Skeng” and apart from providing him with the proverbial “buss-out,” has been dominating the YouTube charts with more than 8 million streams since it was released on August 23, 2021. Gunman Shift has worked its way into the hearts of many, including some who claim to abhor violence reciting the haunting and violent lyrics.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF WESTERNS
The criminal use of guns in Jamaica, dates back to 1940s gunman Vincent Martin aka “Rhyging” on whom the 1972 Perry Henzell written and directed film “The Harder They Come” was loosely based. It can easily be argued that the proliferation of Western movies including “Gunfight at the OK Corral” an extremely violent flick by the standards at the time which I saw at the Rialto in Kingston where the crammed-in patrons reveled in the violence and braggadocio of the Claytons as much as they regaled the bravado of the two leading men. Months later, Franco Nero graced the Rialto screen in Sergio Corbucci’s Django, and the patrons went wild in response to the cavalier gunplay. The film would open the floodgates for other western flicks which seared Clint Eastwood into the imaginations of many Jamaicans, including the writers and directors of Jamaica’s epic film “The Harder They Come,’ including a snippet of the Django film in its reels.

The significance of these westerns though, was that it served to elevate the value of having a firearm and to glamorize the raw power that a gun holder wielded. One could make the argument that Jamaicans love affair with guns were developed through the images shown on screen. The Harder They Come’s lead character Rhygin (played by Jimmy Cliff) gave more than a glimpse in those early days, of a larger-than-life criminal who saw himself as a revolutionary. That his character was cut down in a hail of bullets failed to transmit any fear of death to real life wannabe bad men.

DRUG TRAFFICKING
It was around this time that Jamaica begun to change as political ideologies presaged the division of communities supplemented with the raising up of political garrisons. Combinations of adversarial ideological politics, serious economic stagnation, and ganja smuggling created the conditions which mass-produced the ubiquitous gunman. Initially they bore the label of “political gunman” but in time they separated from politics to pay more attention to smuggling weed and later cocaine. As the trafficking expanded so too did the influx of guns into the island, a necessity for the protection of turf.
It did not help that since that time meaningful investment in many of these communities disappeared. Itinerant hustlers, including the vending of drugs birthed the “Area Don” who quickly usurped the traditional community leader. The Don had power and a kind of suborned prestige, and in time, most youth not only aspired to be a Don, but even more so, a significant number of these youths in these inner-city communities romanticized about being able to get their hands on a gun.
Guns protect turf-whether it is protection for drugs or the now ramped up scamming trade. The unattached youths are engaged and armed to run the ‘gunman shift” and provide protection- the message of “Gunman Shift”

In 1997, the Jamaican film “Dancehall Queen” was released in Jamaica to popular public acclaim. Apart from fielding a cast of well-known Jamaican faces, the film capitalized on predominantly local themes of social and economic struggles that flayed the average Jamaican, their desire for social and economic advancement and the dream of making it big through Reggae/Dancehall music. It exposed as well, the underbelly of Jamaica, racked by drug distribution and gun running and it placed the spotlight on our biggest deterrent to curbing criminal activity on the island, the anti-informer culture. This was borne out by lead actor Paul Campbell’s chilling line “Walk and live, talk and b****-claawt dead.”
Unfortunately, the Jimmy Cliffs and Paul Campbell’s of my time have long been replaced by more forceful screen characters, all of whom have migrated from the screen and into the communities and are certainly more powerfully armed.

"GUNMAN SHIFT" IS A SPOTLIGHT
As raw as Gunman Shift is, it is nonetheless a spotlight...a recitation of the unmitigated violence that is omnipresent in most inner-city communities every single day. It is a statement of acceptance by not just DJ Skeng who compiled the lyrics, but most youth who resides in that environment, that “a soh di ting set.” Skeng is doing what artistes within similarly affected communities forty and fifty years earlier, have always done. They write and sing about those experiences and in the same way that we may not pray or wish away the violence, Skeng’s lyrics tacitly accepts the state of affairs no less than the average Jamaican has accepted that “murder is a everyday ting.”

I say this against the background of political handwringing and finger-pointing that continues at home while the body count continues to rise. Last month, an average of four Jamaicans lost their lives to the unrelenting violence and over the 11-month period, January to November, a total of 1,285 Jamaicans has been murdered.  It is no comfort that the police have predicted that by year end, they estimate that approximately 1,400 Jamaicans will die violently; a continuation of the reckless abandon that drives murder and the extent to which its omnipresence have made us so numb that we have accommodated the scourge of murder as a part of our daily regimen. It is the Gunman Shift ting… a soh di ting set.


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