Dancehall ignorance///February 2009 Letter to the Gleaner

I couldn't help but retrieve letter below to the Gleaner Editor in February 2009. The 'far reaching edict' referred to is the banning of daggerin music and videos on radio and television by the Broadcasting Commission and then later to include soca which celebrates daggerin. Read first and then see further comments

Dancehall ignorance
The Editor, Sir:
For political and aesthetic reasons I have never been a dancehall fan, but am not proud that I don't know enough about it to critique it outside of generalities and subjectivism.
What is obvious to me however, is that the things that dancehall is being accused of by the Broad-casting Commission are driven by ignorance, class prejudice and arrogance, and this is not the way to make public policy.

If I have been able to insulate myself from dancehall all these years so can anyone else and I suspect that the members of the Broadcasting Commission are no less insulated. The truth is that radio stations have been exercising a certain amount of censorship, and sometimes they perhaps could have exercised better judgment.
I'm sure that not everyone is happy with what is played on the air, but it is a far better situation than the heavy-handed approach of the Broadcasting Commission.

Children are sexual beings
This far reaching edict suggests that the commission has an agenda that goes beyond their expressed concerns for public morality and the protection of children. It could never be healthy to preclude children from sexual discourse because children are also sexual beings. Check with any intelligent psychologist.

But beyond that, if the Broadcasting Commission is to prevail on this one I believe that it will take us back to the days when passports were taken away and books were banned and even our national icon Bob Marley had a hard time getting his music played on the air.

The prime minister has so far shown little ability to avoid playing to the gallery. But if, as is reported, he doesn't want to put a chill on creativity, but yet allows himself to be outmanoeuvred by the Broadcasting Commission and other fundamentalists, and lets this edict stand, then history will treat him no more kindly than a Hugh Shearer who has come to symbolize to some, the darker side of censorship and repression in Jamaica.

I'm confident that in due time the people of Jamaica will reverse this madness on the part of the Broadcasting Commission. The question is: at what price?
I am, etc.,
LLOYD D'AGUILAR
lgdaguilar@yahoo.com
Kingston 6

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EDICT  published in newspapers                                                                                                         Following its previous ban on vulgar and explicit dancehall songs, the Broadcasting Commission yesterday placed a further prohibition on the transmission of all soca music with content that displays, simulates or instructs sexual activities or positions.

The commission, last week, banned radio and television stations from airing songs with explicitly sexual and violent content, even if concealed by having bleeps. All dancehall music, which qualified as 'daggerin' content - the rapidly emerging culture of quasi-erotic dances and music - was also outlawed from the airwaves.

Daggerin or Kuma Sutra --- Which one is more dangerous do you think?

Acting under Regulation 30 (d) and exercising powers granted under Regulation 31 of the Television and Sound Broadcasting Regulations, the Broadcasting Commission now requires the immediate halt to the transmission of "any live presentation, audio recording or music video from the soca, hip-hop or any other music genre, which promotes, contains references to, or is otherwise suggestive of, 'daggerin' or which publicly displays, simulates or instructs explicit sexual activities or positions"
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If anyone has any doubts about the Broadcasting Commission's bias against the Jamaican language please read below their published request for proposals to carry out their propaganda campaign against cultural expressions they detest.

Language and Method of Submission

Bidders should submit proposals written in Standard English by 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Standard English huh?

I dare you to censor this Broadcasting Commission

I must confess that I’m still peeved that the General Manager of Newstalk proved to be such a lubricated conduit for the Broadcasting Commission (BC) by instantly firing me because of a complaint by Cordel Green, executive Gestapo director of the BC for my interview with Ragashanti  on March 16, 2011.

My crime was expressing the view that Raga was being unfairly targeted  by the BC; that the BC was engaged in censorship under the guise of protecting children; and, that I allowed Raga to libel the BC when he accused them of having committed a “criminal act” against him. This idea that to describe an incident but perhaps use the wrong word (criminal in this case) as being libelous is laughable. I have commented on that elsewhere, so I won’t waste time responding to that. But it does go to the heart of a bigger issue, which is the question of suppressing the right to use language creatively, and official discrimination against the Jamaican vernacular. I will come back to that.  

The more immediate point, though, is that it was not the BC listener vigilantes who called to complain. (The BC actively encourages people to listen and call them to make reports).  It was Cordel Green, who had cowardly declined to be on the programme,  but who lay in waiting to hear what was being said, who was the one who called the GM because he felt offended.

Cowardly Cordel was behaving like the policeman who goes to an adult entertainment event and hauls off an artiste to jail because he says bomboclate.  In a case like this, it is the policeman’s morals who is offended, which is not what the law requires.  The patrons paid their money to possibly hear and enjoy a lot of bomboclates  -- they were not offended. (See video of  Peter Tosh singing Oh Bomboclate below). Indeed, most would rather if the policeman kept away from their event. The policeman cannot substitute his own morals for the people.  And, by the way, no bomboclate was cussed by Raga apart from referring to Cordel and Hopeton Dunn as dutty conqueror. That might have ticked him off  but was legal, and being ticked off cannot be a pretext to corruptly use one's powers to abuse.

So not only was Cordel, the Cowardly Policeman offended, he didn't bother to  follow the BC’s own guidelines by writing the offending party and making a complaint etc. He decided instead to instantly call an apparently familiar, lubricated GM conduit to complain.

Now let’s move on to what is apparently the bigger agenda for Cordel Green, Hopeton Dunn and the Broadcasting Commission. Withiout knowing anything personal about these two gentlemen who are running the Broadcasting Commission, it is obvious that they are of a very conservative political persuasion and they intend to use the power they wield through the BC to carry out their conservative agenda.

Raga in trying to make sense of their politics blurted out that Dunn was once a member of the communist WPJ.  I stopped him short by saying that that was of no consequence. All of these former communists have turned their backs on anything that they once stood for that was progressive, and it is debatable as to what was ever progressive about their politics
.

I recommend a 2007 Gleaner interview by Earl Moxam with Hopeton Dunn. Says Dunn: “we are not a censorship body” (could have fooled me) and, even though “we are about to get very aggressive” (haven't they?) there is no intention “to stifle freedom of expression”: So Dr Dunn:  why at the instigation of Cordel Green was I fired from Newstalk? Not because of censorhip? Not because I facilitated a loose cannon to challenge your quest to be dutty conqueror?  

There can be no doubt that the constant ragging by Raga of these gentlemen, was an irritation and had gotten under their skins and only served to inflame their determination to get rid of him. By collateral damage extension, the fact that Newstalk supposedly lost “confidence” in my sense of balance, meant that I could not be allowed to facilitate another attack on the Broadcasting Commission. In that sense Newstalk was correct. I could give them no guarantee even if it had been demanded. 

Since this happening a few things have become more apparent to me in terms of the various ways the Broadcasting Commission wields its power. A radio station that was interested in hiring me declined after listening to the Raga interview: not because there was anything objectionable in what was said, but once again because they found it objectionable that I facilitated an unbalanced attack on the Broadcasting Commission. Said the sales executive to me:  “We have no problem with the Broadcasting Commission. We make money from the Broadcasting Commission!!!!”

He was referring to an outside broadcast apparently facilitated (paid for) by the BC in which there was a long interview with Cordel Green, portions of which I was lucky to have heard. Surprise, surprise, Cordel came across as a Christian fundamentalist. This missionary zeal to protect the airwaves could only be proven to be wrong, he said, if at Church he ever heard the preacher/Imam/Rabbi/priest (take your pick) use a bad word.  What a bomboclate! If that ever occurs he said, then it would be time for the Broadcasting Commission to change its position! So once again the Church or the excuse of the Church is used as their moral yardstick. God help those of us who couldn’t care less about Church morality. So straight laced is Mr Green he said that he would not like to be walking on the beach with his young child and see anyone nude as is allowed in some parts of Europe. What a calamity that would be.

Cordel’s child I guess has never seen his or her parents nude; has never heard his or her parents cuss a bad word; obviously goes to a school run by nuns and priests; and so WE the people of Jamaica, by extension, adults and children, are Cordel and Hopeton Dunn’s children to whom they have committed themselves to protect from ungodly bad word cussers, from people who make ungodly sexual innuendoes on the air. And if their trap ensnares others who are making critical social analysis then so be it. What a repressive, misguided and dangerous set of individuals.

The Broadcasting Commission is using a great deal of public resources to run expensive ads in the media, and in the process is able to corrupt those media houses who hanker after a shrinking advertising dollar. Don’t forget that 80% of the public believes that public officials are corrupt. It can happen anywhere.

The Charter of Rights has finally been passed. But this Charter fails to acknowledge that Jamaica is a bi-lingual nation and that there is discrimination against patwa speakers. Visit the courts and witness how standard English is oppressively used to deny justice to non-standard English speakers. 
 
The Broadcasting Commission, an arm of the state, practices its own variation of this type of class prejudice and class discrimination. Where employment is concerned, it is a godsend for careerists, overqualified to be street policemen, but only too happy to serve a police role in business suits. Simply put, the Broadcasting Commission is an extension of the Jamaica Constabulary Force, which doesn’t have a good reputation where human rights are concerned. 

But does any one care?