It is instructive that a so-called chutney icon could mention in the media that despite his promise not to sing a "rum" song this year, his fans want it and his fans are everything. Who are these fans, pray tell? Not I nor the many others like myself who loathe this stereotype of East Indians as drunkards in these songs. This degrading labelling of a people is not only prevalent in the songs of other "icons" but in a popular local soap which touts rum, "commess" and "horning" as its signature patterns of behaviour among its characters.
With those who love to identify with such a stereotype, I can have no quarrel, for it is their right to indulge in such self-contempt, as much as it is the right of the many who have become virtually addicted to the now pervasive and sexually explicit "bend over and wine." Such is high culture to which we should never object.
But I do have a quarrel when such songs and such images are foisted upon us and our children in the media, for as the guardian of the people's interests, the media should never discriminate against its children. These songs and images are better left in the dance halls for which they were created and let the participants wallow at their will.
Dr Errol Benjamin
Via e-mail