Buju Banton
Tanya Batson, Staff Reporter
'LOVERMAN a dat she want, a dat she want' is the chant issued by Daddy Screw.
Actually, if a dancehall anthem was to be created (that is, to replace Shabba Rankin's most renown work), it would probably be about the loverman. Of course, the line which follows in the Daddy Screw chorus is 'wukka man, a dat she want a dat she want'.
This redefines the idea of love.
The word love is no stranger to dancehall, whether to the lyrics or the actual parties. A selector or deejay may easily yell "Put up oonu 'an if oonu no love ba--yman!" or "All a di man dem! All a di man dem! If oonu love ooman put up oonu two 'an inna di air!" However, when love comes in dancehall, it often seems to be simply a euphemism for sex and requests for love are usually simply requests for sex.
Additionally, statements of "I love you" seem to lack the punch of "Mi love yuh bady bad".
The celebrations of the female form are countless and despite what detractors may suggest, they are not all either negative or derogatory. Many a deejays make it their mission to describe the female form with a rough, delicate precision, vocally going over all her assests with the same stamina of which they love to boast. The female body is no doubt loved; however, whether the woman who houses this body is loved is quite questionable.
Additionally, there are also several songs which celebrate womanhood. As such you have Sizzla's Black Woman and Child and Warrior King's Virtuous Woman, which speak of love for women, not simply their bodies. However, these songs also speak in abstraction. Womanhood as a group, or rather ideas of womanhood are what are being celebrated. For example, from the title one would assume that Anthony B's You Move Me is a song to a particular woman. In fact, the chorus, does suggest an individual love:
Let me take this time to let you know you're on my mind
You move me
You said man not have been kind, but I say you're divine
Because you groove me, sincerely (repeat)
However, the verses go against this grain as they are a tribute to womanhood, not a song to a singular woman. Nonetheless, even though the lyrics uses several cliches about the beauty and tenderness of women, it does touch on real emotion.
The question, therefore, is whether the 'I'll climb the mountains and swim the oceans, take the stars out of the sky for you' kind of love actually exists in dancehall. The closest we seem to be able to come to this kind of hyperbolic love is Buju's promise at the beginning of Make My Day:
Girl! I'll be your friend to the end like Chucky!
This promise of eternal affection is definitely paradoxical. While the 'friend to the end' portion of the declaration is admirable, the simile that the deejay chooses is a tad disturbing. Simply put, Chucky is not a very romantic figure (for the non-psychopathic that is). To be fair, romantic declarations of love often take on a comic note in local terms. Many schoolchildren are exposed to Louise Bennett's poem 'Love Letter', which was a comic spin on the ode to the loved one, where in the semi-literate lover has to try and draw the metaphors.
In essence, the romantic is seen as a buffoon. The promise to 'climb macca tree fi yuh naked' is met by laughter, not 'oohs' at the romanticism. Additionally, being a fool for love is unacceptable for the macho stance. Being a fool for love causes you to do silly things, such as fight over women. As Scare Dem declared:
Wi nuh fight ova gyal,
Gyal fight over we
Even so - and despite the fact the search for them is usually quite long and generally narrows to Buju Banton's work - there are a few deejays who have expressed genuine ideas of love, as well as the need for love. More importantly, these ideas of love tend to steer away from exaggeration, but are instead often couched in very practical terms.
It is important to note that despite the prevalence of love to be found in Buju's work (a degree which is unmatched by any other deejay) his repertoire far exceeds love. Buju, like his colleagues, also sings about the usual fare of sex, homosexuality and of course there are his myriad of socially conscious and questioning lyrics. As a result, his lyrical heterosexuality (a factor which so many deejays spend their entire careers defending) is quite above question. He is able to therefore risk the label to speak of his need for love with brutal honesty. In I Wanna Be Loved he states:
Wanna be loved
Not for who you think I am
Nor what you want me to be, could you love me for me?
Real love, with no strings attached
I wanna give you me heart
Don't want to take it back
This is my chat - cho
The 'cho' which punctuates this chorus cannot be ignored. 'Cho!' is a brilliant way to concisely express frustration and it does precisely that for the deejay. He is tired of the search and makes his needs clears.
Buju is not the only deejay who is willing to put his heart out there. Terror Fabulous makes almost the same statement in Love Me If You Love Me:
I love a woman who love I fi I
Love me to the maximum my bonifide
Ah she a play like she stoosh she need not apply
Miss Squooshy Squooshy haffi tell I bye-bye
Fabulous goes on to explain exactly why real love needs to be sought. He says:
Dem deh kinda flexing deh nuff girls have up
Look out fi dem, dem wi mek you live dangerous
Dem deh kinda people deh I could never trust
Material a go mek dem disrespect yuh nuff
Of course, love is not separated from sexual encounters. This is possibly best expressed in Buju's Only Man. Buju introduces this song with the line 'I love you like Jesus loves us all'. However, there is a different element to the love about which he sings. The courtship is interestingly compared with an attempt to find work. This in itself is nothing extraordinary. However, where Buju earns his kudos in his ability to maintain this metaphor. He begins by stating his career goal and pointing out that he recognises the lack she faces and can fill the need:
I would like to be your honey in you life
I want to be the only man
Real quality time and affection
One man can't run her locked combination
All she's looking, she can see the Mr. Man
Furthermore, he declares that he is so perfect for the job that she need not see any other prospective employees. He says:
Tear up resume, burn up application
One look she take and I fit the position
No matter who is in the way
Run way the little man
Buju have the slam to rock you all night long
Of course, the deejay also recognises that while he is making an offer which she can not refuse it is not simple a physical offer as his heart has come in to play. Nonetheless, he is willing to risk tenderness in order to gain satisfaction:
Woman I see trouble
To how my heart a bubble
Something must be wrong
Juggle me a juggle
Still can hold my hand
However, what he has really learnt is the value of humility in courtship. Not only is he willing to 'walk off' his 'boot heel' and write countless notes to show her that he loves her, but he has been so moved that he has cried. While this belies his assurance of the first verse, he admits that due to his tears over her rejection his 'water well' is now dry. However, he will not stop until she realises that he is a 'nice guy'.
Buju's lack of fear about admitting to tears is clearly expressed in Who Say (Big Man Don't Cry) which he performs with Beres Hammond. In this song, by asking the rhetorical question 'Who say big man don't cry?' he questions the validity of the assertion. He goes further to admit that the loss of his woman was an emotional one due to her importance to him.
Many of his reasons are practical and deal with how she makes his life more comfortable, as he explains what she did for him:
Well she squeeze orange juice An mi eggs well fried Garments well cleaned from mi socks to mi tie
Then he gets to the real crux of the matter, declaring that she was more than that since she was a friend and lover.
Nonetheless, several men who are declared lovers do not allow their pride to be overcome by love. For example, it is interesting to examine the lyrics of the self-proclaimed 'girl's dem sugar', Beenie Man. Beenie Man has many songs which deal with women. They often either feature in his celebrations of his own sexual prowess as he threatens to mark blackboards etc., or as he simply talks about how many women he 'has'.
Thus it is interesting that despite the number of times that Beenie Man has been on the 'girls dem train', he does not seem to have fallen in love with any of them. It is not that the word love is missing, but as mentioned above, it is loving of bodies not the persons within them. In fact, Beenie Man's remix of Girls Dem Sugar with Mya, brings a most interesting take.
Mya: You can take the stars like the sky for you
Beenie Man: Zagga Zow
Mya: There's nothing in this world, that I wouldn't do...for you If I could be your girl
(Beenie Man: Zagga zow, anyhow)
Mya: If I could be your girl
(Beenie Man: Alright, sing again baby) You can take the stars like the sky for you (Beenie Man: Yooo-oooooahhoohh!!!) There's nothing in this world, that I wouldn't do...for you (Beenie Man: Zagga zow, zagga zow zow zow) If I could be yor girl..If I could be your girl (Beenie Man: Yard man screechin...Hey!!!)
Throughout this process, he avoids making any real declaration to her, despite all her promises. However, later in the song, he decides to match her promises in an almost non-committal way. For each of her promises, he states "Me too baby!", but when she declares "I'll do anything for you" Beenie Man's response is "Well, certain tings bad man nuh do."
His stance as a 'bad man' cannot be compromised by love. It is therefore interesting that Terror Fabulous, whose works can also define him as a 'badman' says of love in Love Me If You Love Me:
Love is stronger than pride
Ah the truth it can't hide
Love is stronger than pride
So all pretender please step aside
As such, all those self-declared lovers who are not really willing to stand up to the real test of love but are only interested in 'whapping' them and moving on need to relinquish the 'loverman' title and allow the real dancehall lovers to show themselves.
Becuase they are evidently there and man enough to declare their feelings.
