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Local authorities last summer reinforced a dormant law which outlaws the use of curse words during public addresses and performances. This was as a result of a ‘last straw’ on-stage clash of words between two rival DJs at the annual Reggae Sumfest festival, which spurred widespread bottle-throwing and a stampede resulting in a premature end to the concert.
Since reinforcing a ban on the popular “F” word among other expletives, many dancehall artistes who once thrived on the use of ‘bad words’ to add venom and energy to their performance have been crying foul.
The move to, under the Town and Community Act, ban expletives from being used by any performer on local soil sparked debate until last summer when several artistes were for the first time fined for the use of profanity on stage.
While the ban on ‘bad words’ is embraced by one sector of the society, which sees this as a step in the right direction to clean up a filthy dancehall, the others have sided with the guilty artistes.
Several DJs, including Capleton, Risto Benji,
Sizzla, Mutabaruka among others from the Rastafarian faith, sided with the view that bad words should be allowed to be used during performances on stage.
Dub poet Mutabaruka in his defence told Reggae Times that he saw the law as a stupid one.
“A word cannot be bad in its essence. What people have to realize is that it is how a word is used that makes it offensive,” he said. “I use expletives during my performance but it is not used in any other way except to reflect the deep emotion I feel or want the people to empathize when they listen to me. I just see the whole law as being stupid.”
Top DJs like Elephant Man, Bounty Killer and Beenie Man have also cried foul at the reinforcing of the law.
“This is just another ploy by persons in authority to shut up artistes who are bent on speaking the truth even if it was in a provoking manner,” Bounty Killer told Reggae Times recently.
Bounty who has deejayed some of the biggest songs over the past decade, including (Poor People) Fed Up, Look and Anytime, songs that were eventually banned from most radio stations, admitted that the tone and choice of words used by some artistes can influence a fine or ban but… “we can only speak in the language that all Jamaicans can understand”, he said. “If we try use big words and speak too stoosh, most a who we want fe hear we not going to understand. Furthermore, if we select words to express a view that mean the same thing but don’t sound as raw, them still goin’ find one reason or the other to ban the song or fine we when we perform it live. For all I care the next thing them (the authorities) going to do is make it illegal for us to perform using patois.”
Elephant Man, who is renowned for explicitly bashing homosexuals and praising ‘bad man’ in his songs, said he will just have to pen more lyrics that are fitting for airplay. “Them fine me already and my head noh tough so me can deal with clean songs. Songs against gays can’t stop though. The fire haffe bu’n fe dem same way cause is father God start it when him bu’n out Sodom and Gomorrah so we haffe continue fe bu’n it, even if them (the authorities) a force we fe pretty up how we bun them,” he told Reggae Times.
Interestingly, it is not only DJs who have come out in defending the use of ‘bad words’, prominent figures in our local music fraternity have also shed an interesting light on the controversial matter.
Lecturer and head of the Department of Literatures in English at the UWI, Mona Campus, Dr Carolyn Cooper argued that the executors of the Act should first distinguish between expletives such as the “F” word and coded jargon once used by our slave ancestors.
“The problem I have with the Town and Community Act is that it does not spell out what a ‘bad word’ is. And I beg to seriously question the notion of words being ‘good’ or ‘bad’ in the first place,” Dr Cooper told Reggae Times.
“I think these ‘bad words’ - as they are called - have their place and that it’s just
©
Copyright 2004 Reggaetimes.com
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