Dancehall reggae and the socio-sexual mores of art

[littlegirltoast]

To say that I am not the world's most ardent reggae fan would be something of an understatement. Lately I have been heard grumbling when anyone puts on the five-song Bob Marley playlist at work, and thinking about what bothers me about his music (which I used to enjoy, two lifetimes ago) has led me to develop the theory that if you will put on Bob

Comments

[juan70x]

For me, it's musical. I love reggae and ska, and plan on visiting Jamaica sometime next year if I can pull some things together. I'm not someone who listens to any Christian music, as I am not a Christian, yet I love and admire the emotion found in certain styles. I love black gospel, I also enjoy good hard rock and metal bands that do it well, and yet there are elements of reggae that is the equivalent of reciting verses, whether it's Christian or Rastafarianism. I have no issues with either, I love Indian classical music and Pakistani qawwaki, the latter of which can be very religious and is spiritual. I'm embracing it for the musical qualities and their means of storytelling.

I'm a huge fan of reggae singer Sizzla, who I became a fan of because he released vinyl singles on a regular basis. My Sizzla collection is at about 500 different titles. Yet as much he was being called out for songs like BLACK WOMAN AND CHILD, he was saying stuff like "Rasta no mix up with homo" in "Praise Ye Jah", or "go fuck a girl and stop fuck yourself". On one end he's singing songs to his mom for spending 9 months of her life to create him, and then the next song he's paranoid about his weed and burning up everyone in Babylon.

As reggae moved more towards being slack, and people like Yellowman were becoming more explicit, then that spiritual vibe became old school,and now it's "roots reggae". Everyone wants to be slack, so it meant being more aggressive, to the point where arguably it wanted to be like their American hip-hop counterparts. There are traditionalists in Jamaica who will tell you that once Jamaican kids started to embrace basketball and hip-hop, and not cricket and football/soccer, things have went downhill. But one also has to ask and maybe question the freedoms that are a part of Jamaican culture, or what the culture has meant in the last 48 years, since independence.

A lot of the lyrics are just raunchy folk tales that have been passed on from time to time. If you want to hear what reggae music sounds like without the slack, you can opt to listen to older songs or the puppy love stylings of Jawaiian music or the reggae that can be heard throughout the Pacific Rim. While you do have weed themes, much of it is very Christian and never does one get rough. A cough is an act of violence.

I guess you get what you want out of it, and you can either stay on the surface, go deeper, or filter out things.