Cooper

On principle, I've refused to listen to all the media noise about the Gaza-Gully 'war.' The ongoing clash between Vybz Kartel and Mavado is a win-win situation. The print and electronic media continue to keep the war alive so they can churn out more and more articles and radio and television programmes that basically say the same thing: how awful! And Kartel and Mavado both enjoy a very high profile because of all the hype.

The art of the clash has quite a respectable pedigree. It's an African performance style that celebrates the power of the word in elaborate contests of verbal skill. But in the dancehall, the clash often degenerates into pointless name-calling and verbal abuse.

Dancehall culture gets lots of press only when it's something negative. If it's not the 'filthy' sexual lyrics, it's the deadly gun talk. Or it's the quarter-naked women. Or it's the clashing. Very rarely do we acknowledge the powerful role of dancehall music as serious social commentary.

Indeed, Kartel's appropriation of 'Gaza' is a classic example of the way in which dancehall culture makes connections between local and international politics. Many DJs who might not have done well at 'social studies' in school are now quite aware of global issues. On their travels to perform all across the world, they gain first-hand experience. As Shabba Ranks put it so vividly on his 1991 Just Reality CD, it's dancehall music that made him "fly offa Jamaica map."

part of the everyday language

'Gaza' and 'Gully' are now part of the everyday language of Jamaican culture. It's like Jamaica Labour Party and People's National Party. We're so accustomed to the tribalisation of politics that we carry the either/or mentality even into entertainment. Two weeks ago, as I was boarding my flight in Kingston on my way to the inaugural Alliougana literary festival in Montserrat, I was asked by a mischievous man, 'Gaza or Gully?' I laughingly said, 'Gargamel.'

I'd been invited to Montserrat to host the festival's 'open-mike' sessions, largely because of the experience I'd had with our own Calabash International Literary Festival, which will enjoy its tenth staging in May 2010. I put in a lot of hard work and creativity to transform the 'open mike' into one of the big draws of the festival. Many aspiring writers came to Calabash for the chance to 'bos' on the open mike.

If you read last week's column, "Language Politics", you'll know that 'bos' is the Cassidy spelling for the Jamaican word derived from the English 'burst'. I made a mistake with the spelling of the word, 'tu'. Another error crept into the list of vowels. The upper case 'I' should have been 'i'.

In Montserrat, I also gave a public lecture, 'Sweet and Sour Sauce: Sexual Politics in Jamaican Dancehall Culture', hosted by the Open Campus of the University of the West Indies. I was reminded of the grand regional vision that sustains all four campuses of the University of the West Indies (UWI).

At a time of increasingly narrow nationalism when we hear strident calls for a University of Jamaica, I think it imperative that the Mona campus highlight our competitive advantage as an inter/national institution that enables Jamaican students to gain a first-class tertiary education - if they put their minds to it. I know I'll be accused of 'protectionism'. The truth is often an offence.

rebranding

Then given the long-overdue establishment of the western campus in Montego Bay, it's time for UWI, Mona, to rebrand as UWI, Jamaica. I'm sure a lot of committee hours will be spent on that one. The problem with bureaucratic institutions is that they often find it hard to flex.

On my morning walk, the day after the lecture, I noticed a sign on a concrete water tank: 'GAZA street.' I couldn't believe it. "Don't tell mi dis foolishness reach down here," I said to myself. I asked a woman who lived across the road what the sign meant. "Is di ting dat come from Jamaica."

There was more up the road. Beneath a decorative sign, 'Lionel Baker Street,' were lines of subversive graffiti. In an odd mixture of capital and common letters and with erratic punctuation, a challenge was thrown out to the residents of the street: 'LioNEL! Lionel! Way u SAy GAZA Me SAY.'

In the next line, standing alone, was '1 Love!' Then there was a quite explicit threat: "If you diss D GAZA A danger." More sinister signs read 'GANGSTER FO LIFE,' 'Suicide,' 'shadow' and 'DarkSide.' Nobody I asked could tell me who the graffiti writer was.

One of the young men I spoke to turned out to be Jamaican, with a strong Montserratian accent. As a child, Odean had gone from Clarendon with his mother to the island. After the eruption of the volcano, when the population fell from 12,000 to 2,500, Montserrat opened its borders to Caribbean nationals.

Thanks mostly to Jamaicans and Guyanese, the population has now doubled to 5,000. Odean has come back home only once; he wants to return to Jamaica eventually. In the meantime, he's doing "every lickle ting: baking, body work, construction."

a better message

Jamaican popular music has colonised the world. Bob Marley's One Love might seem to be a better message than the Gully-Gaza clash. But there was a disturbing question Bob really had to ask: "Is there a place for the hopeless sinner who has hurt all mankind just to save his own?" Like it or not, the real war is not between the Gully and the Gaza. It's between the 'have-nots' and the have-gots.

Carolyn Cooper is professor of literary and cultural studies at the University of the West Indies, Mona. Send feedback to: karokupa@gmail.com or columns@gleanerjm.com.