THE EDITOR, Sir:
I WRITE in response to Alexis Chin's letter, "A drastic loss of culture", featured in the April 15th edition of The Gleaner. Her letter begins with Bob Marley as an example of cultural celebration and 'Jamaican-ness', the rest of Jamaican
musical culture she implies is reduced to Americanised superficial pre-occupations with 'bling-bling' lifestyles.
While it is evident that with global villaging America and other Western cultures are dominant in its influence on our Jamaican identity, I do not accept that there is a "drastic loss" of culture, which undermines our "one-of-a-kind Jamaican features".
Many seem to think that unless our cultural artistes exist in the shadow of Bob Marley they do not create anything new, enlightening or unique. While commercialism is an inevitable result of capitalism and it is not necessarily a positive for our artistes to perpetrate that kind of get-rich-quick mentality that can influence crime, it cannot be proven that there is a direct connection between these kinds of name brand fetishes and crime.
One can safely say such hyped sub-cultures on our cable televisions do not help if the means of acquiring such are too difficult or expensive for the masses. The bottom line is that it is not all of our popular culture, which buys into Black American ghetto fashion. Our musical artistes are rounded for the most part. Dancehall DJs will indulge in commercial stereotypes in order to cross over to the international market and to climb popular charts.
Bob Marley was no different. However, before we cast aside contemporary musicians as noise and 'fad' let us take a moment to actually listen to their lyrics and you will find that culturally they continue to carry Jamaica's flag even when they fuse various genres of cultural expression together. Please recognise that more and more American cultural artistes are also borrowing and adapting Jamaican expressions and language.
For the gurus of Jamaican
culture, Respect due!
I am etc
Ms KALA GRANT
(PhD candidate)
kalanneka@yahoo.com
Centre for
Caribbean Studies
University of Warwick
Via Go-Jamaica
