Dancehall's culpability is clear

Here's a great article on murder music from Guernica Magazine.

http://www.guernicamag.com/features/2180/greenberg_12_1_10/

An excerpt:

"Yet, while many in the dancehall world defend Jamaican performers as simple vessels for the prejudices manifest in Jamaican society at large, it’s more likely that dancehall was what ignited the fuse in the first place. Until about twenty years ago, Jamaicans with whom I spoke uniformly recalled that men didn’t worry about accidentally brushing up against another man on a city bus. Homosexuality was hidden, but not radioactive. That changed beginning the early nineteen nineties, precisely the time when dancehall emerged, with its musicians exhorting fans to spill out of clubs and attack gay people.

"Dancehall’s culpability is “clear—it’s really the one big difference between other Caribbean countries and Jamaica. Other countries have a cult of masculinity and powerful churches but what they don’t have is dancehall,” said Baz Dreisinger, a professor at John Jay College in New York and a prominent popular music critic who has published widely on Jamaican music."

Happy Holidays

May the human spirit prevail.

(n.b.: Jonathan is no relation, nor is the composer.)