To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

?It seems as if the tide is ris­ing against the dance­hall artistes and their threat­en­ing and ob­scene lyrics that are said to be lead­ing young peo­ple down a road of perdi­tion.

Re­cent­ly, the Gov­ern­ment in An­tigua made it clear that such artistes will not be wel­comed there. In Ja­maica, the home of dance­hall, the Broad­cast­ing Com­mis­sion has banned from the air­waves all sex­u­al­ly ex­plic­it mu­sic, and so too lyrics which de­pict vi­o­lence. Dag­ger­ing–a dance which seeks to sim­u­late the sex­u­al act on the dance floor with­out any at­tempt at dis­guise–has been par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­con­cert­ing to the Ja­maica Broad­cast­ing Com­mis­sion and to large seg­ments of the pop­u­la­tion in that coun­try. In ad­di­tion to the sex­u­al­ly ori­ent­ed lyrics of the mu­sic, the en­cour­age­ment to vi­o­lence by the dance­hall artistes in their lyrics is al­so of deep con­cern to the Ja­maican au­thor­i­ties and to those in An­tigua and oth­er parts of the Caribbean where the mu­si­cal genre has be­come pop­u­lar over the last decade and more. In T&T, dance­hall artistes have been es­cort­ed off stage for ob­scene and of­fen­sive lyrics. Re­cent­ly, Boun­ty Kil­la, a high priest of the form, was pre­vent­ed from get­ting past the Im­mi­gra­tion De­part­ment at Pi­ar­co–the of­fi­cers at the port of en­try deem­ing the Ja­maican artist a sub­ver­sive risk to the coun­try and more pre­cise­ly its young peo­ple.

A few years ago, shocked by the lyri­cal con­tent of the dance­hall mu­sic be­ing played in maxi taxis that take teenaged stu­dents back and forth, laws and reg­u­la­tions were put in place to con­trol the vol­ume at which the mu­sic can be played in ve­hi­cles used for pub­lic trans­port. Notwith­stand­ing low­er­ing the vol­ume of the mu­sic, the dance­hall and oth­er de­riv­a­tive forms are still be­ing played here in pub­lic trans­port ve­hi­cles. And if the com­plaints heard from par­ents, teach­ers and par­ent-teacher groups are cor­rect, the mu­sic and lyrics are still "lick­ing-up" the youth and lead­ing them in­to sense­less vi­o­lence and more. So too do those who com­plain claim that the dance­hall mu­sic is be­ing used to in­duce and se­duce young fe­males in­to promis­cu­ous habits and even­tu­al­ly in­to dan­ger­ous lifestyles. As­so­ci­at­ed with the neg­a­tives of the mu­si­cal genre is the spread of com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases, HIV be­ing the great­est threat. In this re­spect, pro­fes­sion­als and agen­cies work­ing in the field of HIV and Aids have at­trib­uted the in­crease in the spread of the virus amongst young fe­males to some of them be­ing en­gaged in sex­u­al re­la­tions with old­er men who are part of the dance­hall cul­ture.

It would on­ly be fair to say that dance­hall is not sin­gu­lar in re­spect of the claims about it be­ing ob­scene and ca­pa­ble of lead­ing young peo­ple astray. Our own ca­lyp­so and so­ca songs have been said to be re­spon­si­ble for ini­ti­at­ing young peo­ple in­to dan­ger­ous lifestyles. There would be those lo­cal­ly who would point to the sub­tly of lan­guage of the ca­lyp­son­ian, his wit and easy fa­cil­i­ty with dou­ble en­ten­dre and say the two forms can­not be com­pared. Those who heap scorn on dag­ger­ing may al­so have to an­swer ques­tions as to the dif­fer­ence be­tween what we see on Car­ni­val days and the sex-sim­u­la­tion ex­er­cis­es of the dance­hall artistes. In Ja­maica, that con­tention raged for some time when the ban was im­posed on the dag­ger­ing lyrics, with seg­ments of the Ja­maican so­ci­ety say­ing that the so­ca lyrics were as neg­a­tive­ly in­flu­en­tial as any­thing that the dance­hall artistes could sing.���

Fact is that norms and val­ues are chang­ing, but so­ci­ety still has to main­tain lev­els of ac­cept­able be­hav­iour to mit­i­gate against the most neg­a­tive of sub­cul­tures pos­si­ble. T&T has to face the chal­lenges of the sub­cul­ture mu­sic and the ways in which it is eat­ing away at the core.