Blackwood Meeks
Amina Blackwood Meeks, Contributor
RECENTLY, the Immaculate Conception High School staged its annual dance concert. All things considered, and there are many things to be considered, it was a fairly decent effort. The audience appeared to have enjoyed the offerings including the guest performers, one of whom was the all-male group TOK.
I have seen a few of their music videos and I gather from press reports that they are quite a sensation. The audience at the Immaculate dance concert, a great many beautiful young ladies some supported by their parents, seemed to have been expecting something, well, sensational. I have to describe it.
The emcee, one of the teachers, announced from backstage that it was time for a special guest performance. However, in order not to spoil the surprise, she said she would not name the artistes a la Capleton's "from yu see dem yu wi know dem". More like "from yu hear dem..." The voice of one male hummed a few notes across the microphone from offstage. Loud whoops went up from sections of the crowd. A few of the young ladies were transported from their seats to ringside, so to speak. TOK took the stage. Five minutes later they had completed their guest appearance.
The emcee begged for an encore. Actually what she said was "I'm sure you would like to hear some more". TOK returned. Less than three minutes later they were making their exit again. This time they explained the brevity of their performance. "Unnu dun know, we have nuff more tune, but chu de mothers and the teachers are here tonight... unnu dun know, love unnu". And they were gone. Broad satisfied grins and all. And from some of the young ladies in the audience as well.
I exchanged glances with my brother, whose daughter was one of the dancers. He seemed to be wearing my opinion. I pulled my chair up to the young lady sitting in front of me and asked, "Tell me something, what do you like about TOK?" I have noticed her whooping. She was very demure and very polite: "They just have a vibes". That word fascinates me. It says so much without anything. "What kind of vibes?" I insisted. "The beat and the things they sing about ...."
Ah, there is the rub. The things they sing about could not be uttered in front of the parents and teachers of the girls who "just love the vibes".
From the "nuff more tune" which they claimed to have, TOK could not find more than ten minutes that was worthy of a family audience, and the ten minutes included their spoken explanation about why they could not sing anymore.
New life
Let me confess, TOK intrigues me. I want to dialogue with the younger, new generation of singers/singjays who are gravitating towards traditional rhythms. Why and what they do with these rhythms and forms is for discussion at another time. Mostly, though, I am pleased that through them, the forms take on new life and find a new audience base. So chalk one up for TOK. Chalk up another one that they had the good sense to censure themselves, that, at one level, they honoured that performer's principle about knowing your audience.
But see the problem here as I see it, why should any artist need to censure themselves in order not to be disrespectful or offensive? With all the choices available for lyrical content, why make a choice which we know is going to be in poor taste?
This is not about speaking the truth which leaves some uncomfortable, or condemning corruption in high and low places. It isn't even about defending your political outlook. In fact many artistes make a point of not having any political leanings because that kind of offence would affect their bank balance. And I do not buy the argument about adult content.
All that really means to me is information that a certain age group is not ready to understand or handle responsibly. Like they are not ready to work or bear children or learn how to hold a pencil. Not something we should be embarrassed if they heard or be afraid it might "corrupt their innocent minds".
There is no reason that adult content cannot be respectfully and decently uttered. It is high time we stop confusing adult content with vulgarity and looseness. It is part of the double standard that is destroying this nation. It is the way our children learn that while you are a child you are expected to conform to some code of decency but hurry up and turn big so that you can discard it.
Our children should learn that values are values for all ages and all generations and artistes have a special responsibility to teach that. Otherwise we are no better than the drug dealers who are surrounded by the wealth gained at other people's pain and we survive only because we have joined the market in which moral degradation is a commodity that sells.
So, in front of the mothers and teachers, TOK knew that they had to "behave", show some level of decorum, be respectful of women. By their very own statements, clearly when the mothers are not around the respect does not transfer to the daughters as members of that group called female to whom "respeck due".
Offended
Look here, I was already terribly offended by that which they had deemed fit for airplay that night. Words, (because I refuse to call them lyrics since I associate that with something inspired if not poetic), which attempted to set two women against each other over material things, the one having and the other not having, and the exhortation to have to "laugh after dem" who did not have.
TOK is not alone in this. I have noticed a great many songs setting women against each other, all on superficial issues - "har body nuh ready" "she lose har man or kean keep him" "she ear ole close or borrow somebody own" "matey gane wid har husban an she kean du nutten bout it".....
Without any scientific analysis, my guess is that 90 per cent of these "songs" are written and performed by men. Ninety per cent of those who find that "it just have a vibes" are females. There is something here about lack of respect for self and others. There is something in particular about the lack of value placed on our women.
More importantly, there is something about how some of us take pleasure in the pain of others, how we can only feel like somebody if others are in a worse situation than that in which we find ourselves, something about material possessions taking precedence over human beings and the highest qualities of human beings.
It is not funny and it is not adult behaviour. Nor is it art. It is a display of the crude and crass that we should be shedding at any age but which in particular after 40 years of independence we should certainly want to be free of. And surely the artist has a responsibility to help show us how we can be better rather than just reflect/mimic the filth we are in. We all need to grow beyond cheap popularity that gives us name brand expensive this and that at the expense of somebody's dignity and national pride.
Nor can it be a case of "giving the people what they want". "The people" may want the smut. It is also claimed that "the people" want the drugs.
Somebody has to demonstrate that they know better, expect better of themselves, than simply to give the people what they want.
After 40 years and the trails blazed by our writers, singers, painters, dancers and other creative souls who put Jamaica on the map, those who now wear those labels must do more to honour their heritage.
And it must be done in partnership with this society that must do more to remedy the material conditions which breed the desire that seems to reside among us to have people we can "laugh afta" and feel better than: the poor, the sick, the insane, the emotionally distressed, the physically challenged, people who make sexual choices which are different than ours. We must aspire to better than to pick on those who are perceived to be weak and vulnerable, for cheap laughs, for fun. Joke to you is death to crab.
So my dear sons and brothers, heartically speaking, with all the uplifting choices we can make for ourselves and others, with the talent with which the Divine has blessed us, why make a choice that leaves us embarrassed in the company of ....?
The artistic responsibility must be fulfilled without shame or fear.
