Dancehall article: NY Times
KINGSTON, Jamaica
--
Every musical style to
NEW SOUNDS: Tony Rebel,
emerge
from Jamaica over the left, one of the first
on
last 35 years has eventually
the dancehall scene to
achieved
international return to the
Rastafarian
popularity. Reggae is
part tradition, emphasizing
of
the vocabulary of every social criticism
in
working pop musician. The
biblical language.
disk jockeys
known as Anthony B., right, a
toasters are now 22-year-old whose
song
acknowledged as the earliest
"Fire 'Pon Rome," an
progenitors
of rap, and ska attack on wealth and
has lately become the privilege, was
banned
favorite of skateboarders
from radio because it was
and
punk bands the world deemed seditious.
(David
over.
Corio)
But the story has
been
different with the homegrown
style called dancehall.
While
dominating Jamaican popular music for most of
the
last decade, dancehall has
remained on the fringes of
pop
consciousness, even though its driving
electronic
beat and sex- and
violence-soaked lyrics would seem to
make it a prime candidate for crossover in an era
in
which the lowest common
denominator reigns supreme.
Now, however, an emerging generation of young
Jamaican
artists is subverting the
dancehall scene and improving
its
prospects for international acceptance by
taking
the music back to its roots
in reggae and Rastafarian
utopianism. Instead of celebrating girls and guns,
the
new breed, led by singers and
songwriters like Luciano,
Anthony
B., Sizzla, Beenie Man and Tony Rebel, urge
Jamaicans to sav their country and their
souls.
The proper function of
the Jamaican artist is to be
"missionary, visionary and messenger," said
Luciano,
the sweet-voiced,
intensely spiritual vocalist whose
stirring songs of redemption and uplift have
become
virtual anthems here in
recent years. "Yes, there are
still
people around who are singing slack lyrics
about
the silly things in life,
like what they going to do to
their
woman. But the pendulum is swinging back the
other way."
----------------------------- If so,
worsening
In Jamaica, new singers
are political and economic
cleaning up the dancehall conditions in
Jamaica
sound and may, as a result,
may be hastening the
make it easier
to export. shift. Growth has ground
to a halt, and in 1997
----------------------------- more than 1,000
people
were killed here, a murder
rate more than three times
that of
New York City. In such an environment,
Jamaicans seem more inclined to reflect than to
party,
and musicians willing to
assume the prophetic role once
played by Bob Marley have enhanced their
credibility
and
popularity.
"We Jamaicans see
ourselves as a powerful world
cultural force, and we can't understand why as a
people
we can't get the economics
right, why the social and
political
conditions can't be better," explained Carl
Bradshaw, the veteran actor and screenwriter who is
now
director of operations for
Island Entertainment
Jamaica, the
country's leading record label for the
last 40 years. "That's why you're seeing this
switch
back to protest
music."
Tony Rebel and Garnet
Silk, who died in a fire in 1994,
were among the first on the dancehall scene to lead
the
way back toward the Rastafarian
tradition, with its
emphasis on
social criticism in biblical language.
But a major turning point was the success of
Anthony
B.'s "Fire 'Pon Rome," an
incendiary attack on wealth
and
political privilege released in 1996.
Quickly
banned from the airwaves
not because of lewdness but
because
it was deemed seditious and libelous, the
song
found a home in the dance
halls, pushing aside more
frivolous
fare and making hits of both "So Many
Things," the 22-year-old singer's debut album,
and
"Universal Struggle," his
recent follow-up.
"Even
before the song came out, we all knew it was
going to be banned, because we named specific
people"
as responsible for the
nation's problems, Anthony B.,
whose real name is Keith Anthony Blair, said in
an
interview here. "But an artist's
role should be to take
leadership
for his people, to be at the front of his
generation and his race, even if authority and
the
people promoting the music
don't think so."
Sizzla, an
even more recent and increasingly
influential arrival, has tried to take a
middle
position, striking a balance
between Luciano's
spirituality and
Anthony B.'s rebelliousness.
Beenie Man, who started as rapid-fire and lewd as
any
rapper and still likes to sing
in a heavy patois so as
to maintain
his roots credentials, specializes in
humorous, cutting social commentary.
As a result of the change in mood here, the
twin
pillars of dancehall music --
Yellowman, who led the
initial
shift to lascivious lyrics, and Shabba
Ranks,
who became the movement's
boastful hypermacho
ambassador
thanks to songs like "Wicked Inna Bed" --
are now clearly in eclipse. Other dancehall stars,
like
Buju Banton, whose
anti-homosexual rant "Boom Bye Bye"
became the genre's signature tune, have undergone
a
change of heart and style and are
now embracing
Rastafarian
principles that regard dancehall's emphasis
on sex and materialism as part of the "Babylon
system."
To Dermot Hussey,
one of Jamaica's most respected
musicologists, dancehall has always been an
aberration,
a manifestation of
yuppie self-indulgence akin to the
disco craze in the United States. "The thing has
its
own esthetic, its own body
language and dress, but it
has not
been creative," he said. "It's like a
theater
of the absurd, with a lot
of fat women in expensive
costumes
baring all that skin, like Madame
Pompadour."
The peculiar
flavor of the dancehall scene was captured
in "Dancehall Queen," a feature film about a
humble
Kingston street vendor who,
like Cinderella, becomes
the
mysterious queen of the ball. The movie,
recently
released direct to video
in the United States, is now
the
biggest box office attraction in Jamaican
history.
But a strong selling point
for the film has been
performance
scenes featuring Anthony B. and Beenie Man,
who have criticized dancehall's excesses and
superficiality.
[T] he effort
to transform and reinvigorate dancehall,
however, focuses as much on melody and harmony
as
on lyrics and fashion. Musicians
and listeners alike
appear to have
grown tired of the genre's increasingly
stripped-down and minimalist sound, a product
of
dancehall's fascination with
American hip-hop, which
itself
derives from the Jamaican tradition of disk
jockeys declaiming over instrumental "dub"
tracks.
"I was listening to
something the other day, and I only
heard a drum machine and a voice, so I said to
myself,
What is happening here?"
complained Ernest Ranglin, the
guitarist and arranger who is the founding father
of
modern Jamaican music. "It's a
good beat, but that's
all there is
to it. It's like the dancehall artists
don't want to make changes in the tune. It's all
one
chord, because they have cut
out the piano and
everything
else."
The new breed, on the
other hand, seeks a richer,
fuller
sound and is openly contemptuous of the
limitations that commercial dancehall music
imposes.
Though just as fascinated
with rhythm, they prefer the
purer,
more African sound of traditional
Rastafarian
nyabinghi drumming to
the monotonous beat of drum
machines, and they are not averse to adding
orchestral
ornamentation to a
strong rhythmic foundation.
"Drums and bass are really only for dancing, for
just
playing with surface feelings
and emotions," explained
Anthony B.
"I want to take you deeper into the music
than just dancing, and I can only get at those
deeper
feelings through horns and
strings and keyboards."
Lowell (Sly) Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare, the
drummer
and bass player who have
been Jamaica's premier rhythm
section over the last 25 years, argue that
the
sparseness of the dancehall
sound may ultimately prove
its
salvation and the only way to attract the
American
and British audiences that
have embraced other types of
Jamaican music. At the Mixing Lab, the studio
that
serves as their home base
here, Mr. Dunbar and Mr.
Shakespeare have lately been augmenting
dancehall
tracks with salsa
touches; their latest record,
"Friends," even includes a Latin-tinged
dancehall
interpretation of the
Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction"
with
their old buddy Keith Richards on guitar
.
"There's no set pattern to
dancehall, except for the
drum, and
because it is so free-form, that allows you
to go places," Mr. Dunbar said during a break from
a
studio session here. "This is a
new music that just
needs to
develop, and as soon as a few more colors
come
in, there will be a new surge
to the next stage."
By then,
of course, dancehall may have a new name to
go
with the new image and social
consciousness that the
new wave
seeks to cultivate. Just as mento gave way
to
ska, which evolved into rock
steady, which became
reggae, which
gave birth to dancehall, there is a sense
in Jamaica that something fresh and vital is once
again
taking root. That is the case
even though American
record
companies have been slower to exploit the
new
sound than they were with
reggae.
"Jamaican music is
like a tree, and some branches are
more fruitful than others," Luciano said.
"Dancehall
has to clean up and
become more positive if we are
going to be able to inspire and ignite people again
and
recapture that Bob Marley vibe.
The sheep must return
to the
fold."
Posted: Thu - February 6, 2003 at 06:03 PM