THE EDITOR, Sir:
I SEE the current rise of dancehall reggae as another classic case of Jamaican worship of otherness. By this I mean we are, as a people, so reverent to the 'foreign' item it is absurd.
Rapper KRS-1 of Boogie Down Productions had long been attempting dancehall reggae in his songs of the 1980s but it was not until 1990 when he combined with Shabba Ranks on 'The Jam' that the genre came to the media centre of North America, that is, being played regularly on MTV, BET etc. as an integration into the hip-hop culture. Note that dancehall songs are being nominated in other categories such as R&B, pop and hip-hop itself at international award ceremonies.
Then, in the mid-1990s came Shaggy who, one can say, is an American over anything else. In fact, before him a Canadian 'Snow' was being promoted over 'true' dancehall artistes from the land of its origin.
Today I see an invasion of 'uptown' Jamaicans into the dancehall culture and, more, into the production and performance of dancehall reggae and I attribute this to the fact that 'foreign' (North America especially) has more than embraced the genre.
Before then, in Jamaica, dancehall was a ghetto lyric, an inner city phenomenon, looked down upon by the 'other Jamaica'. In fact, recently a friend of mine made a statement against the followers of downtown dancehall culture and their idiosyncrasies. A young woman had to point out that some of these 'indecencies' are evident everywhere, even 'uptown'.
My question is: Is the proliferation of uptown into what was a predominantly downtown culture an intrinsically negative or positive thing, that is, is it bringing any unity to the classes of this nation?
I am, etc.,
NICHOLAS ALEXANDER
nic7lex@hotmail.com
