Mel Cooke, Freelance Writer
SEMAJ( left) and Busy Signal - FILE
AS HE started his presentation at last Monday's official presentation of the Western Consciousness 2006 concert's details, held at the Pegasus Hotel in New Kingston, Dr. Leachim Semaj showed how technology has made an impact on culture.
He played a clip of an Internet radio station, Radio Scratch Perry, launched on his 70th birthday. "And the vast majority of Jamaicans have no idea who he is," Semaj remarked.
Perry makes a rare performance at Western Consciousness on Saturday, April 29, at the Llandilo Cultural Centre in Westmoreland.
He soon moved onto a topic which most Jamaicans have more than an idea about, even if it is not something they think consciously about. "What is culture?" Semaj asked rhetorically. "Culture gives you a design for living and a pattern for interpreting reality."
He went through the various levels of culture, popular, national, scientific and universal, saying, "In Jamaica there is a battle between the national and popular culture. Different people want to sponsor the popular and say is them own it."
UNIVERSAL CULTURE
Semaj placed music as being among the things that create universal culture and, as a part of the performing arts, as one of the four pillars of culture, the other three being the mass media, education and religion.
Semaj observed that in Jamaica we now have more media outlets, but less information. "I wonder, do we have (radio) programme directors anymore?" he asked. "Unless we make a conscious commitment to excellence we are making a commitment to mediocrity. Somebody is carrying us wide."
Outlining how information is processed, initially emotionally in the 'First Brain' then afterwards in the cerebral cortex or 'New Brain', Semaj said "the performing artist has first brain impact on the young".
"The bulk of values is what the media and music tell us," Semajsaid. "Alright Mr. Busy Signal, what are you teaching us?" he asked. "Mr. Baby Cham, what is the text of your teaching today?"
"Somebody is going to ask that question one day."
"The same way the cultural artiste says 'we a try teach the people something', every artiste must take that responsibility," Semaj said.
Saying that 65 per cent of Jamaicans lack formal certification, Semaj said that people often turn to 'Plan B'. For the women, that is the reproductive means, a visual clip of a young woman gyrating showing just what that plan is. For the men, it is destructive means, Semaj quoting a source which said that the major problem facing western societies was the unskilled, unmarried, unemployed and unemployable male, before going into Jamaica's crime statistics which showed just how much mayhem was coming from and being done to just that group.
"What role does the music industry play in this? What image are they sending to the youths?" Semaj asked. "We are using our music, our media, to present images to encourage people to do what?"
Semaj gave the statistic that 70 per cent of the prison population is functionally illiterate.
He gave the harsh facts and stats of blacks and crime in the U.S.
"When I complain about the BET-isation of Jamaican culture, what do we see on BET every night? Gangster rap. Bling. Get rich or die trying."
"You sow what you reap," Semaj said.
