Where have all the rebel music gone? Reggae to Ragga: What's left of the Protest ? By Dr Carolyn Cooper The question posed in the title of this article seems to be premised on certain assumptions that do need to be interrogated. First is the issue of whether or not "classical " reggae was and is essentially a music of "protest." Do the origins of reggae lie exclusively with in a tradition of political protest? Or is the ideological field somewhat more textured? Is there not, perhaps, also a politics of accommodation embedded within the music? Second is the assumption that contemporary ragga marks a decided ideological break with the conventions of classical reggae. *********************** The Jamaican DJ Tradition had been involved in the spread of Rastafari during the late 19601s and early 1970's as recorded song. ************************ "Ragga," the fashionable neologism for the preferred Jamaican term, "dancehall music," seems to signify in the very naming a semantic rupture with its reggae antecedent. But the convergent origins of the two words intimate that the "rupture" is some what academic. The 1967 Dictionary of Jamaican English defines "reggae" as "a recently estab[lished] sp[elling]for rege. "Rege-rege" is defined first as "rags, ragged clothing;" its secondary meaning is "a quarrel, a row." The dictionary entry invites readers to compare "rege-rege" with "raga-raga" which is defined as "old ragged ciothes;" as adjective, it means "in rags, ragged" and as verb, it means "to pull about, pull to pieces." Thus both "reggae" and "ragga" share a common ragged etymology. More significant than this lexical coincidence are the deeper ideological under pinnings of the shared "slum origins" of "reg gae" and "ragga." The metaphorical rags clearly signify the common working-class origins of these musical manifestations of a querulous, raga-raga politics of resistance. In Jamaica, the protest elements in reggae music often find less theatrical modes of articulation. Just as Rastafari acknowledged the paradox that "I and I" must find humane ways to live in Babylon until repatriation to Ethiopia is accomplished, even so reggae music articulated, and continues to articulate, a paradoxical politics of both accommodation and ritual protest. Indeed, the preferred Jamaican term, "dancehall music," for the newer "ragga" reinforces the continuities between reggae and ragga as dance music. The articulation of"protest" through the medium of dance music does fumction paradoxically to both mediate the protest and intensify the pathos of the body moving within and against the rhythms of resistance. Thus, Bob Marley's nuanced line, "I want to disturb my neighbour," from the song "Bad Card" on the Uprising album, can be heard as an aggravatory anthem for dancehall culture: the politics of noise. Bob Marley's dis/ concerting noise is not just literal megawattage night music that disturbs a neighbour's sleep. Noise engenders a politics of disturbance and disruption; a destabilisation of the moral majority's complacent rhythms of social decorum: You a go tired fi see mi face Can't get mi out of the race Oh man you said I'm in your place And then you draw bad card A make you draw bad card I want to disturb my neighbour Cause I'm feeling so right I want to turn up my disco Blow them to full watts tonight Ina rub a-dub style "Rub-a-dub style," the noisy idiom of Bob Marleys explosive class politics is also the erotic body language of the djs. In the "rub-a dub" aesthetics of the dancehall two modes of self-expression and social protest converge: one, that of the DJs, is overtly sexual and covertly political; the other,that of the singers, is overtly political and covertly sexual. Both modes of expression are "rhythm[s] resisting against the system," to quote Bob Marley's "one Drop" from the Survival album. Mandingo, commenting on the evolution of the dancehall as a soico economic institution in Jamaical states that Dancehall music was literally music played in the dancehalls. "Dancehall" acquired a socio economic meaning in the seventies because of rampant corruption of the radio DJs. Singers who did not have the money to bribe DJs found that their records got little or no airplay. Sound systems were the only reliable outlet for some music. Mandingo quotes Ewart Beckford / UROY: "'Dancehalls were where the hardcore tunes gained popularity. To hear certain tunes you had to go to the dance halls because radio either didn't have them or refused to play them"' Mandingo notes that "[s]ingers used to pass through or attend dances and would sing over the sounds' mikes." It is clear, then, that traditional reggae, as much as contemporary ragga, is "dancehall music," a music intended to make listeners dance, whateverthe message. Bob Marley's archetypal protest song, "Them Belly Full," from the Natty Dread album, with its moving exhortation to dance,exemplifies the existential hybridity of the reggae sensibility: Them belly full, but we hungry A hungry mob is a angry mob A rain a fall but the doti [earth] tough ******************** SLACKNESS NOT MERE SEXUAL LOOSENESS THOUGH IT CERTAlNlY IS THAT. SLACKNESS IS A METAPHORICAL REVOLT AGAINST LAW AND ORDER. ************************ A yat a yuk but the yuud no nough [A pot a cook but the food no [e]noughi You're gonna dance to Jah music, dance We're gonna dance to Jah music, dance Forget your troubles and dance Forget your sorrow and dance Forget your sickness and dance Forget your weakness and dance The isolation of "protest" as the singular, definine element of traditional reggae diminishies the vital function of dance itself as organic therapy. In addition, dance is decidedly eroticised in Jamaican dancehall culture. The long established "lovers rock" tradition in reggae music exemplifies the attenuation of "protest" in a process of necessary accommodation to everyday rituals of survival. No matter how much the pressure drops, one must find the means to daily live within a dehumanising culture that does demand protest Sexual!ity as a therapeutic means of dancing out despair is the essential message of "lovers rock" as of contemporary dancehall music. The genealogy of this overtly sexual dimension of reggae can be traced directly to a long established, indigenous musical tradition: mento. Mento music, which shares elements of the Trinidadian calypso, particularly the penchant for sexual double entendre, is an undisputed progenitor ******************************************* THE JAMAICAN DJ TRADITION HAD BEEN AS INVOLVED IN THE SPREAD OF RASTAFARI DURING THE LATE 1960S AND EARLY 1970S AS RECORDED SONG. ********************************************* of contemporary ragga/dancehall music. The overtly sexual body language and modes of (un)dress of the contemporary dancehall, as much as the metaphorical cloaking of social commentary in verbal play, are the key elements of dancehall music that make it difficult for the uninitiated to recognise the political agenda of the genre. The major "problem" is the fact that the modern Djs favour both a rhythmic, sing-song mode of address and an extremely high-speed rate of delivery of lines. It is sometimes so difficult for the untrained ear to "unscramble" the words that the assumption is often made that the word - intelligi bility of utterance - is unimportant in this perfor mance genre. And even when it is conceded that the words do matter, the obvious focus on sexuality and on playful, verbal inventiveness seems to efficiently mask any latent social commentary. The "protest" gets lost in the play. Cultural theorist Paul Gilroy, writing from the perspective of Britain, traces the genealogy of political commentary in Jamaican roots muslc from the 1960's to the 80s in his facetiously titled book "There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack" Gilroy, himself, warns against a simplistic polarisation of "revolutionary' singers and "reactionary" DJs, particularly in the l960s /70s Rastafari heyday of reggae. But, of the late 1980's peri and combined in complex fashion. Though I do concede the obvious shift of 1980's and 19901s dancehall Iyrics to rituals of gun violence and sexual themes, I nevertheless propose an alternative, Politicised reading of the body erotic. The DJ slackness that is critiqued by Gilroy as a political can be reconceptualised as representing a radical, underground confrontation with the patriarchal gender ideology and the pious morality of fundamentalist Jamaican society. In its invariant coupling with culture, slackness is potentially a politics of subversion. Left of centre, slackness is what1s left of the protest. Slackness is not mere sexual looseness though it certainly is that. Slackness is a metaphorical revolt against law and order, an undermining of consensual standards of decency and good taste. It is the antithesis of middle-class,upper-case Culture. In my 1989 study of the Iyrics of the Djs l identify five thematic categories into which the songs can be classified (1) songs that celebrate DJing itself, (2) songs that vigorously invite participants to dance (3) songs of social commentary on a variety of issues, for example, ghetto violence and hunger, (4) songs that focus on sexual / gender relations - by far the largest number in the sample; (5) songs which directly confront the Slackness / culture dialectic. Eschewing respectability, the DJs operate subversively at the low end of the scale of accepted