NARCISSISIM AND DANCEHALL

Groundins

By: Charles H. E. Campbell

In the main, over its lifetime, Reggae Music, musicians and artistes have had the commendable, unique characteristic, among all pop music genres, of not promoting or succumbing to narcissistic tendencies.

Reggae has thrived, penetrated numerous other world markets and cultures, and has sustained its world wide popularity. At our core, Jamaicans are a cosmopolitan people, given the cross-fertilization and ethnic assimilation, inherent in our cultural background and traditions as well as our geographical location, at the cross roads of world trade for over 500 years. This has bequeath us with a continuous window to the world and a constant pulse on global trends. We are famous for our ability to empathise with the struggles of peoples from far-flung countries with whom traditionally, we have no direct cultural links. This world view has served us well, with an innate ability to interpret our national or personal life-challenges and strife in such a way that it has a karmic connection with peoples and nations of all creeds, nations and religions.

At its dawn, the evolution of our modern Reggae Music was significantly influenced by other musical idioms which were current in that era, including Mento, Ska, Jazz, Rhythm and Blues/ Soul and Rock and Roll to a lesser extent. Essentially, our songs highlighted, voiced concerns and even sought redress on issues such as national, class and race discrimination, prejudice and oppression. They became clarion calls for justice, peace, universal love and harmony. Early dancehall music maintained this progressive formula and approach.

In the 80’s, one of the international markets places that eventually came under the influence of Reggae/Dancehall’s militant anti-establishment stance was the alienated Urban North American youth, who were experiencing the twin evils of racial and class stigmatization and victimization. Their collective self-worth especially among young urban males was very low. Therefore, when they began to interpret and adapt the music from their cultural perspective, Hip Hop was born with all its negative features such as narcissism, vulgarity, crudity and misogyny.

In the 90’s, as Jamaican Dancehall acts began to obtain distribution contracts with American record companies, some A & R executives used undue influence to encourage our artistes to borrow from and infuse this Hip Hop beat and lifestyle into their music. Before that we did not call our women ‘hoes and bitches’ nor did we call our bredrin ‘dawg.’ What we are left with in Jamaica today is a poor imitation of Hip Hop music as the sound track to what we still euphemistically call Dancehall music.

The irony is that while our local media remains, to too large an extent, focused on this segment of the industry, internationally, from a marketing standpoint, Dancehall music has seemingly reached a plateau, and therefore this has not been an effective long-term marketing strategy. In fact, what we are observing in the international market place is a resurgence of requests for overseas performances and tours by those Dancehall Acts who came to the fore during the 70’s, 80’s and early 90’s.

Meanwhile, based on their publications and programming, our local media appear to be totally oblivious to these current trends. Their daily restrictive diet and corrupt payola practices continue to stifle local creativity, diversity and Jamaica’s once proud position of being the market leader in Reggae Music.

Email: che.campbell@gmail.com

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/entertainment/Narcissism-and-dancehall_11109148

Let us expose them

Groundins

By: Charles H.E. Campbell

I’m very grateful, and accept the invitation of Mr. Vernon Davidson, Editor of Publications, to use my fortnightly column to elucidate issues afflicting the music industry.

Since JaRIA’s meeting last week Monday with the editorial committee of the Jamaica Observer, the issues of reasserting the importance of respecting the artistes’, musicians’, composers’, authors’, publishers’ and producers’ legal right of attribution and royalty payments for musical works, as used in public places and by mass media; Payola and a more balanced and diversified airplay of Jamaican music have generated a lot of other media coverage, especially from the electronic media houses here and abroad.

These are very timely and appropriate, coming out of a very successful Reggae Month this year, in which JaRIA, through its weekly series and Awards show has demonstrated to the world the wide range of music being produced and recorded in Jamaica. It is the feeling of the music industry that payola has had a tremendously debilitating impact on our airplay, generally.

Many of our artistes, song-writers and producers express extreme frustration about the lack of airplay that their product receives on Jamaican radio. While there are notable exceptions, too large a segment of our radio programmes is devoted almost entirely to dancehall music, to the exclusion of other forms of music such as roots reggae and ska.

In previous eras, Jamaican airplay was the gauge which the international media used to know what was happening in our cultural landscape, and this used to have a significant influence on what disc jockeys abroad played on their programmes in their own countries. Unfortunately, since our local airplay has become so restricted, they no longer have this to use as their barometer.

In fact, one has to travel to Asia, Europe, North and South America to hear a better representation of the great music still being produced in our local studios. For some time, there has been a severe disconnect between what we hear on local radio and the vast breadth of music being generated out of our local music industry annually.

The inter-connection between payola, attribution and royalties, therefore, must be addressed at its root. The Broadcast Commission Act needs to be strengthened in order to hold programmes managers of radio stations accountable for how and what music is broadcast on their station. We, in the industry, are calling for a reintroduction of music libraries at all radio stations, so that all new tracks are first submitted, vetted and cleared by these station libraries before they get on air.

Secondly, the act must ensure that playlists are submitted to the library prior to the programme being aired, to prevent the current practice where we hear one reggae track, produced by a colleague DJ, taking up fifteen minutes or more of any one programme. In this way, the immoral behaviour of some of our radio disc jockeys may be mitigated by better monitoring by the management of these stations.

It is time for those of us in the music industry to demand fair play in the media and provide JaRIA with the names and evidence so that we can expose those who are sabotaging the ability of our creators to get their due recognition and earn their royalties and attribution rights.

Email: che.campbell@gmail.com
or
Read at: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/entertainment/Let-us-expose-them-_11000019