http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20080615/focus/focus2.html
Published: Sunday | June 15, 2008

Like businesses, countries have their competitive advantages, things for which they have a particular propensity. And what Jamaica excels at, or at least seems to expend most of its energy on, are music, sex and murder.

The last is a matter of record. To quote the January 31 Economist - "Jamaica is the world's most murderous country, followed by El Salvador, Guatemala and Venezuela." And we seem hell-bent on surpassing last year's rate of 59 per 100,000.

As to music, well you can't walk 100 yards in Jamaica without encountering a loud song coming from a car or bus or roadside boombox. Of course, music means dance, and there's a weekly session on every street corner these days. With every district having a sound system, and Jamaica probably leading the world in weekly new song releases per capita, this island likely spends a greater percentage of GDP on music-related activities than anywhere else on earth. Poor? Yes. Oppressed? Maybe. Miserable? Not pon weekends!

sexual frequency

National sexual frequency is not easily measured, since anyone can lie boastfully on a survey. But as a friend puts it, Jamaica is either the most sexually active or the most sexually frustrated country on the planet. It's hard to imagine any place singing and deejaying as much about sex as we do. And in this island, what you see and hear is what it is.

Some claim it's music which has made us indisciplined and violent. But in his March 9, 2008 article 'The age of permissiveness', former prime minister and record producer Edward Seaga argued otherwise. And he should know!

"... popular music always reflected the prominent themes created by dominant social and economic issues, not the other way around, if we want to change the musical format, dancehall, it is the issues from which dancehall draws its strength that must first be changed: public sexual explicitness and the crime epidemic."

Dancehall is just another name for the popular Jamaican music of the day. And like mento, ska, rocksteady and reggae before it, dancehall shows the good, bad and ugly of its era.

violence in dancehall

Alton Ellis's Dance Crasher condemned violence in the dancehall over 40 years ago. While young Bob Marley and Peter Tosh celebrated the ratchet knife toting badmanism of their day in songs like Rude Boy Ska and I'm the Toughest.

As to slackness, Prince Buster cut 'Wreck a P__ P__', while Scratch Perry and The Wailers sang 'P____ Galore. Lloyd and the Lowbites had massive selling obscenity albums in the late '60s. And mento was as sexually obsessed as music can get. Obeah was not the main focus of 'Healing in the balmyard'!

When the dancer Bogle was murdered a few years back, a Star editorial casually commented, "Bogle ran with a tough crowd and things have a way of happening around those crowds." No doubt the same could have been said about Bob Marley's near assassination and Peter Tosh's murder. And back then 800 murders was unprecedented. We more than doubled that in 2005.

Songs like Mavado's Amazing Grace have no place in a civilised society. But then, civilised societies don't murder babies and young girls with regularity. Horrible lyrics yes, but 'My war is like no other, when me done you have no sister and no brother' is a nightly staple of our television newscasts.

There are some vicious killers out there, but it's hard not to feel sympathy for our inner-city young. When a 15-year-old teenager, who is still a child herself, gives birth to a son who never knows his father, and has little opportunity of acquiring any discipline or employable skills - well, what chance does that boy have to break out of the vicious cycle he is born into?

Music is the only avenue most ghetto young men have to a legitimate, self-sustaining profession.

Residents of August Town, in an area popularly known as 'Jungle 12', vent their frustration at members of the security forces after they accused them of not doing enough to protect them from gunmen after an incident in April. - Ian Allen/Staff Photographer

The often thuggish 'crews' surrounding stars were once his fellow aspiring artistes, and though he's made it and they haven't, it's still 'one for all, one all for one'. Less than one in a hundred would-be deejays ever 'buss', and this 'long shot but only chance' sense of desperation is one reason dancehall is so powerful. For most inner-city youth, it's literally the mike or the gun.

what do our kids know?

The female side of the equation is girls not only exposed to sexually explicit music from an early age, but encouraged to embrace it. The June 2 Gleaner had a striking story titled "Dancehall putting youth 'Pon Di Edge'."

Lorain Henry, mother of five, none of whom is older than 13, chuckled. "Nothing nuh wrong wid dancehall music. My pickney dem know di whole a di song dem. Dem go a dance and nothing nuh do dem. Is just because is poor people music why dem a try fight it. Nothing nuh wrong wid it!" she said emphatically.

"My big daughter go dance and know di song dem from she start go school," Lorain said. "In fact, mek mi call her. Shaneke, sing one song mek mi hear. Which song a yuh favourite?" her mother asked. The girl said it was a song called Wine Pon Di Edge. Her face lit up as she sang and gyrated. The women sitting on the bench laughed and cheered.

war zone ratings

So our inner-city young men kill each other off at war zone-like rates. Leading to a male peer shortage for girls who are sexualised almost from birth. Meaning an excess of poor yet eager young women. What a big man paradise! No wonder that despite all the pious mouth talk from those who have the power to change things, we see no indication of anyone really wanting to alter the status quo.

Only the deeply cynical believe our politicians and big businessmen actually set out to create the present dynamic. But given the situation that obtains - a virtually unlimited supply of willing female nubility for any man of means - it's certainly not in their interest to clean things up too much.

reduce crime rate

The argument that our Government can't do anything to reduce our crime rate is rubbish. Jamaica's problems are not unique, and what others have done, we can too. But to implement solutions, as opposed to merely talk about them, requires political will. And that is almost non-existent here. Especially since our intelligentsia specialises in theoretical problems for every practical solution.

Compulsory elocution lessons in school so children of all classes can develop the confidence that goes with being articulate in standard English? Linguistic bigotry! DNA-backed paternity registration so fathers can be forced to take more responsibility for their offspring? You must want to embarrass the big man dem! Compulsory reporting, compulsory DNA testing, and compulsory sentencing for all cases of under age pregnancy? Unenforceable!

Three strikes you're out laws for repeat offenders? Racist and classist! More prisons to hold our ever- increasing number of criminals? We can't afford it - though we can build US$30 million cricket cowpens! DNA database registries for convicted criminals and those charged for gun crimes and rape? An invasion of privacy! Increased pre-charge detention limits, so police can hold dangerous suspects while less easily accessible evidence is gathered? Nazi concentration camp fascism! What's good enough to control crime in Britain and America is, apparently, too good for Jamaica.

The great hope on the street is that Bruce Golding, Portia Simpson Miller and Peter Phillips will agree on a politically united 'who get ketch get ketch'tough-on-crime-tough-on the-causes approach. And Dr Phillips' sectoral presentation on crime was quite admirably consensual.

Do the Vale Royal crime talks mark a new beginning? Or will Ernie Smith's sad lyrics of over 30 years ago remain prophetic.

"As we fight one another for the power and the glory, Jah kingdom goes to waste."