The following is the third and final part of a paper presented by Donna P. Hope, M. Phil., of the Department of Government, UWI, Mona, at the Second Conference on Caribbean Culture, held at the Mona Campus from January 9 - 12, 2002. The entire paper is entitled 'Love P--ny Bad: Negotiating Misogynistic Masculinity in Dancehall Culture'.
Donna Hope, Contributor
CONTEMPORARY and popular claims for high levels of misogyny in the dancehall are questionable since, as argued in the foregoing, the central issue is male identity and male sexuality at the expense of that dreaded other, femininity. The researcher who engages in more than a cursory glance or, as in this instance, outright immersion in the dancehall discovers that male dancehall adherents are not misogynists but actually revere woman as mother and nurturer.
Many are products of single-parent families headed by mothers, grandmothers, older sisters and/or aunts and, therefore, a great deal of reverence is sited around the manifestation of 'Mother'. There are popular examples of Shabba Ranks' consistent praising of his own mother, Mama Christie, in both his lyrical outpourings and his interview sessions. Shabba's rise to superstar status was paralleled by his efforts to improve his mother's standard of living by remodelling her home in the inner-city community of Seaview Gardens, since she refused to move into an upscale residential area.
Bounty Killer, 'the Warlord', is also known for his lyrical exhortations about his mother, Miss Ivey, and at times refers to himself as "Miss Ivey laas son" (i.e., Miss Ivey's last son). Like Shabba Ranks, Bounty Killer's rise to stardom and his access to economic wealth have also been paralleled by his moving his mother out of the inner-city community in which he had been raised and into a modern apartment at the upscale Oaklands Complex on Constant Spring Road. Bounty Killer's perception of his mother, Miss Ivey, and his love and respect for her are encoded in the following treatise of his:
Mama she's not in a good mood
De basket inna mi kitchen running out of food
Papa can't find no excuse, him drink out wi money, gamble and lose
Mama can't find the next dime, she might can buy rice but not the meat kind
Through the wickedest struggle Mama nuh leave us
She stand by mi side, Mama Daddy grieve us,
She make sure say water inna mi Thermos,
So mi know Miss Ivey stand out all purpose
To make dat ooman happy,
I am anxious
And when dat ooman down is
like it mek mi feel nervous
She teach me to be honest
and righteous
And to be educated and famous
Mi nah go push har round like a
clown inna circus
Sincerely love ah give har surplus
An everything mi own har name
wid nuff plus
Mama she's not inna good mood,
the basket...
Mama should get a medal,
that's the way I feel,
She teach me to be honest,
don't steal,
She tek up di Bible pon har
knee wheh she kneel
And to the Almighty Jah
mi Madda appeal
It's real
Mama she's not inna good mood,
the basket inna...
Bounty Killer's foregoing exhortations and Baby Wayne's cries of 'Mamaaa' in the following dancehall hit, Mama, underpins the view of many both within and without the dancehall that Mama, the nurturer, will stand by his side through thick or thin:
"Bout them haunted, kill man an' get wanted
An mi nuh response fi yuh an nuh lawya bizness
Mamaa! Hear murdera a cry,
Ah pure
teardrops and wata come out
a him eye
Mamaa! Hear murdera a bawl,
Deh a courthouse an hear
him name call
Mamaa! Come check mi regula,
Bring mi tootpase, mi soap
an nuh lef
mi dinna...
Mamaaa! Come tek
mi out ya,
Cause bad bwoy have
mi dung yah a spin
propella
The labels of misogyny arise from isolated examinations of specific pieces of lyrics emanating from the dancehall. As outlined in the foregoing, these examinations are themselves essentially flawed, as many are sited only around the language utilised in describing the male attempt to court and/or conquer the feared 'p..ny' and also manifested in treatises about the 'matie' or 'sketel'.
Closer examination of the lyrics themselves, together with discussions with dancehall song creators, disseminators and consumers reveal that these manifestations are symbols utilised by the male in his attempt to court, conquer, subjugate and ultimately defeat that feared other, the female. The ultimate aim in this quest is the ascendancy of the man and the legitimising of his male identity through the upliftment of an intensely heterosexual and polygamous personification.
In this arena, the Mother cannot be viewed as bearer of the sexual vagina, the feared 'p-ny', but rather as the bearer of the nurturing womb a positive space. The battle for male ascendancy and power against the feminine other, therefore, has to be sited in male-female intimate relationships with sexual partner, girlfriend, baby-mother, spouse or wife, i.e., the bearer of the sexual vagina, the feared 'p..ny'.
Therefore, the selective usage of language/lyrics to court, conquer, subjugate and defeat the feared p-ny, i.e., the partner in intimate relationships, on the one hand, is coupled with language/lyrics that revere and uplift the perception of the womb, mother as a site of positive femininity whose role is to nurture and uplift masculinity. This duality of the male-female discourse in Jamaican dancehall music speaks to the simultaneity of the love-hate relationship that is an ongoing part of the masculine engagement with the feminine 'other' in Jamaica.
Kerr's (1963) discussion of the conflicting attitudes of Jamaican male identity identifies forced weaning as one socialising pattern that results in the strong ambivalence that Jamaican men have to their women. This ambivalence is played out in their strong, permanent attachment to their mother and their high levels of promiscuity to their spouses. While this socialising pattern may be partly responsible for this duality of male-female expression, the dancehall discourse speaks more clearly and explicitly to some of the varied masculinities that arise from the cultural split and multiple socialising patters in Jamaica, as well as to the tenuous linkages that different masculinities have with real social and economic power.
The key role of sex and sexuality in underpinning masculine identities at different levels in Jamaican society is still primary and becomes more so in a context where material resources are increasingly denied or inaccessible to particular groups of men. In this framework, the operation of traditional hierarchies of race/class/colour further impact on the creation and representation of multiple masculinities and the extremes of dancehall discourse that simultaneously revere and denigrate the feminine other, the p..ny, in an effort to uplift the superordinate masculine.
Therefore, to label the ongoing discussions in the dancehall as misogynistic is erroneous. Indeed this misogynistic label removes the focus of these male-female discussions away from their true site, i.e., a negotiation of multiple masculinities as part of the lived realities of the actors in the dancehall. Instead, it seeks to reorient it around an invalid/inconsistent feminist discourse on the overt and covert use of violence against women as part of the symbols that are encoded in the dancehall.
