This region and us

May 08, 2002
By Bukka Rennie

Bunji Garlin inadvertently may have opened the proverbial Pandora's Box. He, like many other Trinidadians who attended the recently held Jamaican organised "dancehall" concert, may have felt to varying degrees some Jamaican insensitivity.

Bunji, being the no-nonsense personality that he is, struck back in his typical ragga-soca/dancehall style but with an underlying mix of the old-time calypso, "sans-humanite" improvised verbal warfare.

In this manner he remonstrated with the Trinidad crowd on the grounds that they must support their own first and foremost and open their eyes to the reality of how Jamaicans view Trinis as people devoid of talent and how they seize every opportunity anywhere in the world to "diss" Trinidadians.

It reminded me of an incident in Montreal in 1967.

I was invited to a house party by a female Canadian classmate. I took along my Silver Stars steelband LP (the All Stars Hilton LP was by then so beaten up and originally of such poor technical quality that I ruled it not fit for public consumption).

After some time at the party, I approached the Jamaican DJ and requested that he give my LP a spin. He took one look at it and flung my LP like a frisbee over the heads of the partygoers, while he snarled at me: "Allyuh Trini like too mucha noise!"

My reflex, physical response brought the party to its immediate finality. One knows how reckless the youth can be! So much for the jostle for space and recognition, on the international scenario, between various streams of black cultural expression.

Human beings are involved so that one should expect petty jealousies and such occasional confrontations.

But there is always the bigger picture. As I said elsewhere recently, with the technology available, the computer, the synthesizer and the drum-machine, all the popular music had been reduced on the global scale by the capitalist concerns in the multi-billion entertainment industry, first to sterile disco and finally to a soppy pop-genre in which lyrical content and rhythm seem constantly to be at loggerheads, having lost a certain "connectedness".

"Words" as the primary "drums", as instruments, seemed to have virtually disappeared from these soulless, spiritless musical art forms. Soul music, R&B, jazz, etc as medium of teenage political and social consciousness of yesteryear was slaughtered all over, left out of the "loop", to make way for the upswing of soppy pop.

But suddenly as if a Queen Mab waved a fairy wand, there emerged throughout the Black Diaspora a new response harkening back to the very raw power of word as drum. Dub and dancehall (Jamaica), hip-hop and gangsta-rap (Bronx and USA), rapso (T&T). That's is Bunji Garlin's raison d'être.

It is the power, energy and vitality to which the youths all over relate. It is virtually non-existent in today's soppy pop. Rooted in the old, street culture of the "dozens" in America, "rhyming" in T&T primary schools, and the old ways of "signifying", pretty soon there will be little to distinguish "rap", "hip-hop", and "dub" and "rapso".

But already the agents of capital have grabbed hold to exploit the form in their own interest, making many teenagers multi-millionaires overnight, while steering the force of this genre into negative trivia and meaningless lyrical content and trying to paint that as if it were synonymous with the totality of black culture per se.

The question is, can the conscious Trinidadians, Jamaicans and African-Americans put aside their petty squabbles, maintain the integrity of their product and guide and fashion this musical genre in a direction that will eventually save the day?

The "Bird" and the "Trane" done gone, Bob Marley done gone but Exodus is judged the album of the 20th century.

The question is what next?

Bunji, Brother Resistance, Ataklan, Shaggy, Buju, Capleton, etc all must answer and accept responsibility.

Reggae swept the world, so too pan, calypso and Carnival, with chutney, an Indian-calypso hybrid, fast following and addressed directly to the entire Asian Diaspora, ie Indians, Sri Lankans, Pakistanis, Afghans, etc.

You will not be able to tell one from the other when they take to the streets of Queens, New York, dancing to Sonny Mann and Massive Gosine.

What is it about us culturally in this small region called the Caribbean that tends to make the whole world stand up and pay attention?

And how do we go about translating all this into a new basis with which to transform Caribbean political-economy?

How do we utilise all this to bring to fruition the Caribbean Single Market and Economy that we all claim to know is an absolute imperative?

While Bunji, as adventurous and daring youth, was fuming/ singing, albeit with a Jamaican accent, about us being more concerned with projecting others (ie Jamaicans) rather than ourselves, the Prime Minister was suggesting "hassle-free entry to American travellers" as a means to boost tourism, the greater percentage of which, in any case, is regionally generated and stimulated.

At the same time, Panday, in rebuttal to the PM, was discovering, for once in his life, a sudden affinity with Grenadians and such the like, when, tongue in cheek, he remonstrated: "What about Caricom citizens?"

How do we dare to continue to address the whole world when we are so scared shitless to inculcate a regional perspective of ourselves?

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3