Tweet
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">The Gleaner published another feature last Sunday, heavily promoted before, which rehashed the usual canard and manifested the diversionary tactics which have become a stock-in-trade among dancehall defenders, academic or artiste. Vybz Kartel, who is one of the most intelligent and articulate dancehall artistes, was on with the usual sideshow argumentation: "All these areas that these Gaza or Gully incidents occur are the same areas that were violent from day one." Excellent point.
But the music, rather than helping these youth with 'upfulness and good livity, further downpress' them with negativity and 'almshouse'. They made a bad situation worse. Youth and youth who were formerly divided, exploited and tribalised by the People's National Party (PNP) and the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) are now being further divided by dancehall, as though the JLP-PNP divide in the garrisons were not bad enough!
guidance and hope?
Hear what Kartel went on to say, tripping up himself unwittingly: "We in the garrison need guidance and hope and a way out and the society doesn't provide the youths with constructive development tools." So, Kartel and other uncritical dancehall defenders, if you acknowledge that the youth need "guidance" and "hope", tell me, how do these songs which promote thuggery, badmanism, violence and "busting bwoy marrow" give guidance and hope?
Can Kartel and Mavado look themselves in the mirror and say that their music is giving guidance to the youth? Then if you, Kartel and Mavado, are not prepared to give any guidance to corner youth; if you are just in it for "entertainment" (what is joke to you is death to youth and youth), then why should others provide the guidance?
What the uncritical dancehall defenders have failed to understand is that it is mainly ghetto youth who are suffering and being victimised as a result of the 'almshouse' promoted in the dancehall. These Gully, Gaza incidents, as Kartel has pointed out, are taking place among the same poor, exploited ghetto youth. It is largely ghetto Gaza and Gully supporters who are being hurt and who can't enjoy themselves at dances. You think when middle and upper-class highbrow and stush youth who are partying in Norbrook, Cherry Gardens, Orange Grove, Stony Hill and Queen Hill, or at Fiction and Plush they can't freely enjoy both Gully and Gaza music?
It is poor ghetto youth who are robbed of the freedom to hear who they want to hear and to support who they want! Uptown youth spray one another with Hennessey and expensive champagne, 'go on bad' and leave safely in their SUVs, while ghetto idiots are shooting up and chopping up one another! The uncritical defenders of dancehall have failed to see that it is the very poor, ghetto people whose cultural expression they are ostensibly defending against people like me who are suffering through negative dancehall.
violence and aggression
I am the one defending the rights of poor, unemployed, marginalised ghetto youth, whom I am saying must have the same right to enjoy their dancehall music as the uptown stush youth dem. The violence, intolerance and bigotry which are promoted in dancehall music foster and nurture a subculture of violence and aggression.
Don't come with your nonsense argument about social degradation deterministically causing the mayhem we are now seeing in the dancehall. Correlation and causation are not the same. While we can forgive Mavado for not understanding that nuance, we can't forgive the academics.
Hear Mavado, not to be outdone by Kartel in the game of sideshow: "There is no work, high school youth a drop out of school, no social development in inner-city communities: a suffocation."
So what you do as a dancehall artiste is to say the people not suffering enough, let me let loose my violent lyrics, lyrics which promote aggression, hate intolerance and tribalism and that will help? Dancehall music is not the source of our problems. Our problems are deeper, more structural and have to do with our inequalities, class antagonisms, plantation legacy, economic structures and low social capital. </div></div>
full article @http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20090920/focus/focus1.html
But the music, rather than helping these youth with 'upfulness and good livity, further downpress' them with negativity and 'almshouse'. They made a bad situation worse. Youth and youth who were formerly divided, exploited and tribalised by the People's National Party (PNP) and the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) are now being further divided by dancehall, as though the JLP-PNP divide in the garrisons were not bad enough!
guidance and hope?
Hear what Kartel went on to say, tripping up himself unwittingly: "We in the garrison need guidance and hope and a way out and the society doesn't provide the youths with constructive development tools." So, Kartel and other uncritical dancehall defenders, if you acknowledge that the youth need "guidance" and "hope", tell me, how do these songs which promote thuggery, badmanism, violence and "busting bwoy marrow" give guidance and hope?
Can Kartel and Mavado look themselves in the mirror and say that their music is giving guidance to the youth? Then if you, Kartel and Mavado, are not prepared to give any guidance to corner youth; if you are just in it for "entertainment" (what is joke to you is death to youth and youth), then why should others provide the guidance?
What the uncritical dancehall defenders have failed to understand is that it is mainly ghetto youth who are suffering and being victimised as a result of the 'almshouse' promoted in the dancehall. These Gully, Gaza incidents, as Kartel has pointed out, are taking place among the same poor, exploited ghetto youth. It is largely ghetto Gaza and Gully supporters who are being hurt and who can't enjoy themselves at dances. You think when middle and upper-class highbrow and stush youth who are partying in Norbrook, Cherry Gardens, Orange Grove, Stony Hill and Queen Hill, or at Fiction and Plush they can't freely enjoy both Gully and Gaza music?
It is poor ghetto youth who are robbed of the freedom to hear who they want to hear and to support who they want! Uptown youth spray one another with Hennessey and expensive champagne, 'go on bad' and leave safely in their SUVs, while ghetto idiots are shooting up and chopping up one another! The uncritical defenders of dancehall have failed to see that it is the very poor, ghetto people whose cultural expression they are ostensibly defending against people like me who are suffering through negative dancehall.
violence and aggression
I am the one defending the rights of poor, unemployed, marginalised ghetto youth, whom I am saying must have the same right to enjoy their dancehall music as the uptown stush youth dem. The violence, intolerance and bigotry which are promoted in dancehall music foster and nurture a subculture of violence and aggression.
Don't come with your nonsense argument about social degradation deterministically causing the mayhem we are now seeing in the dancehall. Correlation and causation are not the same. While we can forgive Mavado for not understanding that nuance, we can't forgive the academics.
Hear Mavado, not to be outdone by Kartel in the game of sideshow: "There is no work, high school youth a drop out of school, no social development in inner-city communities: a suffocation."
So what you do as a dancehall artiste is to say the people not suffering enough, let me let loose my violent lyrics, lyrics which promote aggression, hate intolerance and tribalism and that will help? Dancehall music is not the source of our problems. Our problems are deeper, more structural and have to do with our inequalities, class antagonisms, plantation legacy, economic structures and low social capital. </div></div>
full article @http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20090920/focus/focus1.html
) and i told them that i like Kartel and Movado. they said "yuh cyaan. yuh haffi choose." 
say wah?
a jamaica u can say Gully or Gaza to de worl...knowing whoeva 
Comment