Culture, Capitalism and Social Democracy in Jamaica
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DONNA-MARIE MALOTT AND CURRY STEPHENSON MALOTT CULTURE, CAPITALISM AND SOCIAL DEMOCRACY IN JAMAICA There is a long tradition among Jamaican musicians to be active participants in the Islands’ political struggles. The music itself has a history of offering an analysis of the issues of everyday existence, thereby contributing to the public debate. The genre has long been viewed as the historical expression of Jamaica’s working class. Highlighting historically-specific tendencies within the collective consciousness of the people, the music can be viewed as a working-class political thermometer. Around the time Michael Manley took office in 1972 and declared Jamaica a “democratic socialist” country against economic oppression created by Western exploitation and therefore set on improving social conditions, Jamaican reggae was reflecting the sense of hope the times promised. Bob Marley proves to be an excellent example of that context and the active role music played in the political and social struggles of Jamaica and Jamaicans. While embracing that spirit of rebellion and the hope of the times, on his 1973 album, Catch a Fire, Bob Marley sings what can be understood as the boss’ death song in Slave Driver, Slave driver, the table has turned; (catch a fire)/ Catch a fire, so you can get burn, now. / Ev’rytime I hear the crack of a whip, / My blood runs cold. / I remember on the slave ship, / How they brutalize the very souls. / Today they say that we are free, / Only to be chained in poverty. / Good God, I think its illiteracy;/ It’s only a machine that makes money. / Slave driver, the table has turned, y’all. While many contemporary Jamaican musicians continue Marley’s legacy of music as social protest, the social reality engendered by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund Structural Adjustment Policies (discussed below) have rendered life for the majority of the islands’ inhabitants more desperate and impoverished than when the Whalers were at the height of their musical campaign to change the world one song at a time, to paraphrase the late Bob Marley. As a result, the collective consciousness of the Jamaican people tends to reflect these increasingly conservative times. Serving as the peoples’ political thermometer, contemporary Jamaican musicians therefore transmit both hegemonic and counter-hegemonic messages. What has become more obvious in this grossly unjust era is thus the dialectical relationship between culture and society—both influencing and determining the other. However, it is only the hegemonic tendencies—tendencies that merely B. Porfilio and C. Malott (eds.), The Destructive Path of Neoliberalism: An International Examination of Education, 157–169. © 2008 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved. DONNA-MARIE MALOTT AND STEPHENSON MALOTT reflect the larger global context—that critics of popular culture tend to focus on. While there are many sub-genres of reggae, such as dancehall, the critics tend to generically point to the music’s sexism, homophobia and romanticization of excessive materialism and accompanied self-centeredness as just cause for damnation. What tends not to be underscored is the larger context the music is situated in as well as the counter-hegemonic messages embodied in much of the same music. Buju Banton serves as an exemplary example of a counter-hegemonic artist laying waste to neoliberal capitalism in many of his songs while simultaneously unapologetically homophobic. Another artist embracing the urgency to fight against the bosses demands, veteran and thus cross-generational reggae artist, Tanya Stevens, not only uses her music to entertain, but to shine light on contemporary issues effecting the so-called “third world” reality of the everyday existence of Jamaica’s working-class. Providing insight into the conditions suffered by the majority of Jamaica’s populace, in her song, ‘Turn the other Cheek,’ Stevens confronts Jamaican politicians with the struggles of the people. She writes: This is to you from all of us/ providing no jobs and telling us stop the crime is like beating a child and telling him not to cry… Contextualizing her position highlighting the contradictions within the mainstream political system Stevens goes on to say, We just a look a little help prime minister/ Do you expect me to turn the other cheek? / taste my tears and admit defeat? / do you expect me to listen when you speak? / you never ever practice what you preach/ do you expect me to come out and vote? / no matter what happens we’re always broke/ and the people say their tired of being poor… These lyrics seem to reveal that the struggles Bob Marley sang about four decades ago not only persist today, but continue in a dramatically intensified form, therefore rendering the peace and hope of the 1960s in not only Jamaica, but globally, largely undermined and replaced by cynicism and rage. Although Tanya Stevens addresses the Prime Minister in her song, the policymakers that she may want to address are those that head the International Monetary Fund and other lending organizations associated with neo-liberalism, for they are the true policymakers in Jamaica. In our efforts to regain hope for real structural change, an ontological human need (Freire, 1999), we will focus on this larger international economic governing body. That is, only by addressing the root causes of material suffering is there hope for transforming the basic structures of power—the relationship between those who sell their ability to labor for a wage less than the value it generates and those who accumulate the wealth of unpaid labor hours in the form of profit/capital. What follows is therefore a critical examination of the international, neoliberal executive governing body represented in institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) (Chomsky, 1993) situated in the economic and social context of Jamaica. *** 158 .