my friend Andréa Ventimiglia wrote this piece on music in jamaica - enjoy.
Many inescapable realities exist in Jamaica; crime, poverty, a burning midday sun, to name a few. But here also, music, glorious, melodious, ubiquitous music is also a constant and integral part of daily life. There is nowhere you can turn without hearing some beat, chorus or refrain. Jamaicans have a tune for everything with lyrics about love, about life, about death. There are songs about selling, songs about telling, even songs about songs. They eat to music, drink to music, pray, work and play to music.
It begins just after dawn with the chirping of the birds. Jamaica has over 300 bird species and as the sun rises, they twitter, squawk, and cock-a-doodle-doo………. “Now wait a minute,” I hear you saying, “that’s not technically music.” Alright, if you insist, then go ahead and rewind the scene. I wake up and pop in a CD, as do the majority of my neighbours. In my community housing block, thin walls and dozens of open windows means I can hear everyone’s stereo as they rise and immediately switch it on. I can smell ackee and saltfish as my neighbours prepare a traditional Jamaican breakfast. Humming along, we all get ready for the coming day.
At the bus terminal, American pop songs float out from the P.A. system and I am surrounded by hundreds of uniformed school children, milling about and singing. Barely old enough to lug their heavy school bags, they passionately croon lyrics of heartache, lust, betrayal. “I remember when my heart broke,” they wail. “It’s too late to apologize, it’s too laaaaaaaate.”
The opinion on this type of popular music is divided. While many Jamaicans are happy to download ringtones from the latest American Top 40, others feel it has no place in Jamaican society. They bristle at the extent to which North American music, retail chains, fast-food and other products have inundated the Jamaican market.
I step off the bus and am nearly forced off the sidewalk by an ear-splitting “HALLELUJAH!” It’s barely 8:30am and giant black speakers are stacked five-high on the corner. They’re well worn, blaring out gospel music each morning (except Fridays when it’s Michael Jackson hits). A man fiddles with knobs on the soundboard set up under a ratty blue tarp. I don’t think it’s possible for the music to get louder but I’m wrong. I nod a familiar hello as I pass this man each day on my way to work. His response is equally invariable, “Mornin’ Darling” he smiles, “Bless.”
The sound of praise follows me up the street. Much of Jamaica is devoutly religious and the diversity of religions is staggering. About 65 per cent of the population is Christian with the five largest denominations being Church of God, Seventh-day Adventist, Baptist, Pentecostal and Anglican. The Back-to-Africa Rastafari movement was also founded here and Bob Marley, Jamaica’s most famous musician, was a convert to that faith. In fact, Jamaicans are fond of telling foreigners that there are more churches and more rum bars here per capita than any other country in the world.
Inside my office, there are two radios playing, set to different stations, ‘Kool 97’ and ‘Irie FM.’ My co-workers act as ‘selectors’, adjusting the volume on each radio louder or softer, depending on which is playing the more ‘vibesy’ song. They do it almost unconsciously; just reaching out to adjust the knob, barely looking up from their work. A popular song comes on. Everyone sings along. No-one is shy or self-conscious about their voice. When I ask about it, they shrug. “Me jus’ feel fi sing” they say. On the surface that means, ‘I just feel like singing’, but their body language suggests something deeper, an inherited sentiment of, “I would rather die than live without music.”
After work I head to the busy downtown junction where the market meets the bus park. It’s cacophony, chaos, discord and harmony at once. Illegal bus conductors shout to attract passengers, while licensed drivers yell for them to clear the road. Vendors hawking wares call out, “Sweet cane! Ripe banana! Fevergrass! Phone card, phone card, phone card!” Horns blare, tires screech, men whistle, women laugh. Underneath it all, there is a soothing reggae beat, sometimes clearly decipherable, sometimes garbled and distant, but always there.
In the evenings there are plenty of options to hear music in a formal or informal setting. At one of the universities or theatres I may catch a performance of Kumina. This is an ancient form of Jamaican music, religion, and dance based on the African tradition of the Congo. Drumming, singing and chanting are meant to call the sprits of the dead so that the ancestors may share their knowledge and provide spiritual assistance. Kumina is the root of rhythm in Jamaica, the fountain from which the rest of it flows.
In cosmopolitan Uptown Kingston, I can join the well-heeled upper class as they sit beside a hotel pool or in a restaurant lounge under the stars. Fairy lights adorn the trees while we bop our heads to light-hearted mento, grooving rocksteady, or smooth jazz. Mento is old Jamaican folk music featuring acoustic instruments like banjo, guitar and bongos. It is similar to Calypso and often tells a funny story. Mento was the precursor of the danceable ska genre, which developed into the slower, laid-back syncopation of rocksteady. This paved the way for the reggae explosion of the seventies. But none of that crosses my mind as I drift along blissfully on the musical current.
If I’m feeling adventurous, I can head downtown, for a ‘session,’ a raw and unadorned street party. The musical star here is ‘dancehall’ a sound that pounds on your pulse and forces the blood through your veins with its throbbing, insistent beat. Each song has associated choreography. Dancers move, the DJ shouts improvised lyrics, and the selector will “pull it up,” starting the song all over again if the crowd reaction is good. To show their appreciation, dancers form a gun with their fingers and raise it to the air in a shooting salute. “Pow! Pow! Pow!” they shout. “Yes mon. Wheel and com’ again ‘pon da replay.”
Often controversial, dancehall is the music of the streets, of the youth. It is not distilled for a wider audience, and its aficionados like it that way. It can either be viewed as offensive, misogynistic and violent, or as a brilliantly realistic and artistic interpretation of ghetto life. You listen and decide.
Time for bed, and as I drift into sleep I can still hear the sounds of a distant party through my open window, along with the hymns of a late-night prayer meeting. Both will go till morning light. And then suddenly it is dawn, the day begins again. And so does the music, like a steady heartbeat, like a never-ending symphony, just another one of Jamaica’s inescapable realities.
