Dear Buju,
You claim to be a target of gay rights activists
around the world. Your management now considers that your ability to perform outside of Jamaica and earn a living is under serious threat. Things must be pretty bad, since you recently posed for pictures in San Francisco with some of your biggest gay detractors. I noted however, that you still refuse to apologise for penning "Boom Bye Bye" and promoting homophobia in your music.
Cobbling together your responses over the years, your argument seems to be that you are expressing a unique [cultural] attitude. From the torturous publicity picture of your San Francisco meeting, your continued defiance is clear. In your head, you are a victim of a campaign by reprobates who wish to emasculate you and your culture. The Jamaican PM, Leader of the Opposition and prominent churchmen agree with you. You covet your premier role as an emblem of Jamaican character - up there with Bob Marley for reggae music and Usain Bolt for track and field. The onslaught on your earnings through concert cancellations after gay protests, affirms your sense of righteousness in the face of evil and wickedness.
For my part, I am committed to your never earning another penny through music again. If I had the chance, I would force you to shave your locks in front of a live TV audience.
I do not credit you with inventing homophobia, because you didnt. But with "Boom Bye Bye", you styled and sexed up the rallying cry for gay murder. Your original intention - that all battyman fi dead [all gay men must die] - is reaffirmed everytime you and your many imitators are given airplay. You have chilled the spine of gay people inside and outside Jamaica. No one can begin to measure the psychic toll of your hate anthem. Above all - and far from being metaphorical - your call to arms has literally been answered time and again. There is a trail of blood that leads to your pen and pipes. For all these sins, you have not begun to pay. You should never be allowed to sing again.
Sincerely,
Bun fi Bun
Dare I say it? Boom shot!
ReplyDeleteHilaire
Could not have said it better myself!
ReplyDeleteWow....
ReplyDeleteVery powerful.
Philip, I really like this last posting. It is appropriately toxic. You are in fine form. The comment you make about homophobia and Jamaican national character ("You covet your premier role as an emblem of Jamaican character - up there with Bob Marley for reggae music and Usain Bolt for track and field.") is, of course, on point. It made me remember when we first mooted this particular issue on our discussion thread in response to Bruce Golding's "Hard Talk" appearance. My response will come in two parts since it is altogether too long for just one posting.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, in full support of your current Acre Lane posting, I decided to cut and paste an excerpt from my email contribution to that discussion... it was a comment you particularly enjoyed, since your gleeful response was: "Mackerel yeye Bruce caan guh skin out pan ice!" (LOL! And I haven't stopped laughing since). The rest of my response will follow this one:
<< [I think that where homophobia is concerned] Jamaicans secretly relish being seen as unreasonable, contradictory, hypocritical and downright idiotic... so it almost defeats the purpose entering into intellectual dialogue and trying to carefully point out the many argumentative fallacies they use when that is exactly what they want you do. Why do I say this? Because Jamaicans crave that space in the international cultural community reserved only for them. They need a defining quality that sets them apart as global citizens and that fires the intercultural curiosity of other global citizens - and homophobia is that quality. If you see the look of bemused fascination on foreigner's faces as they tell you how "crazy" Jamaicans are about homosexuality (and as they encircle you in large numbers at parties to ask you why), you would understand my point. I know a bunch of Jamaican male undergrads at Harvard - all brown and uptown, all former Campion [College] students [i.e., upper middle class boys with elite secondary education] - all clearly smart, with highly developed argumentative skills, but who still loudly proclaim their "boom bye bye" politics and attempt to drown out any logic anyone tries to put to them. No, they are not really ignorant and stupid in a general sense; they just get a special thrill from being seen by non-Jamaicans as having this particular "national quirk" - an inexplicable common sore point or mania that makes them endearingly, incorrigibly, hopelessly, Jamaican. There are many, many cultures of the world that are just as homophobic, if not more homophobic - but it is only Jamaica that attempts to transform homophobia into a form of cultural capital... right up there with Bob Marley, reggae, jerk chicken, ganja and Red Stripe.
Partly the fault of well-thinking journalists and activists, "Jamaican homophobia" has now successfully entered into the lexicon of cosmopolitan chic - one of those things that 'everyone who's anyone knows'.... like how 'everybody knows' that French people are supposed to be snobbish and rude, and English people are supposed to be polite to a fault, "everybody knows' that Jamaicans are supposed to be homophobic to the point of moronity. Voice of a random white girl, with dry Martini in hand, at a Manhattan soiree with an upwardly mobile, college educated, very international guest list: "Oh my God, you're Jamaican? That's SOOOO cool!!! Oh I had a Jamaican boyfriend three years ago, and man, he was maaaaad anti-gay! We couldn't even talk about it!! (she laughs incredulously) I just don't get it! what's up with Jamaicans?!" (and you can see from her smile that she really thinks it's kinda cute)..... and Jamaicans love it!!! Oh the attention and notoriety they receive from liberal foreigners who "can't understand" is intoxicating: wow! they actually know who we are and what we're all about!!>>
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThe position you take above with respect to Buju makes you appear as merciless and unforgiving, as an enemy of artistic freedom and cultural rights, etc., but I think you are correct in your assertion that the "Boom Bye Bye" affair has served to craft homicidal hatred into a revered national trait. The tough pill to swallow, though, is that it was not Buju's song per se that performed this trick, but really the international backlash from gay rights activists that did. Without the brouhaha created by justifiably incensed activists, that song might have burned hot for a while and then faded into near obscurity as did many of Buju's dancehall anthems from the same period (e.g., "Walk Like a Champion" and "Deportee"). What is more, there are numerous anti-gay dancehall hits that came before and since "Boom Bye Bye" that we cannot even remember - which is exactly my point. Unfortunately, it was the tremendous negative attention focused on this one song that spawned a nationalist movement to claim the song as an emblem of cultural resistance to Western liberal democracy and its dangerous, ever-extending tentacles. As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
ReplyDeleteYou might argue that it was the international outrage at the "Boom Bye Bye" song that brought visibility to the issue of Jamaican homophobic violence and alerted governments and human rights interests to something they would have otherwise overlooked. This may be true, but look at what happened back home in Jamaica. The local music industry and Buju himself immediately see the mileage to be obtained by playing the censorship card; then the local media pick up on this and begin to portray Buju as a victim of the contradictory logic of 'free speech politics'; with the issue in the hands of a few aggressively populist commentators, Buju moves from being a censored artist to a subaltern voice, stifled and persecuted by the immoral West; ordinary Jamaicans suddenly feel that all this international vitriol is not so much directed at Buju because of his hateful song, but at them because of their ignorant worldview; then a righteously indignant nation congeals around the idea that economically and culturally powerful outsiders will never be allowed to impose their foreign and perverse moralities on a 'liccle but tallawah' people.... and violà! Buju Banton becomes a folk hero and homophobic nationalism is born and can no longer die.
Just consider the strategic precision of the following snippet from Buju's biography on Wikipedia: "He was the youngest of fifteen children born into a family which was directly descended from the Maroons, a group of escaped slaves who proudly fought off the British colonialists."
Well, this sordid story leaves us in a real dilemma. The war to end culturally sanctioned acts of violence like gay bashing and murder in Jamaica can only be waged from metropolitan 'safe spaces' in Europe and North America. But how can this ever be successful when the rhetoric of Third World national autonomy and cultural rights, coupled with the sheer force of pop culture, can cause this necessary activism to backfire in the most spectacular way, creating an even more powerful, enduring and invincible monster?
And if only Mr Banton read Acre Lane......
ReplyDeleteSend him a link... well said Phil ... he is pure evil in my opinion
ReplyDelete