Goo Goo Gaza, Gully Goons

Vybz Empire

Have you ever seen a more disingenuous set of Jamaicans? Entertainer Vybz Kartel blames the society and says that music doesn’t influence people to act. OK! So he doesn’t believe that his music has an impact! Then why does he produce CDs? For his own pleasure? His comments are as honest as his skin is originally coloured, but I think this grandstanding is unbecoming of the bleachers. I always wondered why he called himself Kartel since he is only one man. But less puzzling is his first name, since he has constantly been having “vibes” with everyone; from Ninjaman, to Bounty to Mavado et al. He calls his clan the Gaza Empire, ostensibly with him as the Emperor.

The last two persons in charge of Black populated empires were Queen Victoria and Haile Selassie I, and he certainly is not Jah Jah! Even so, didn’t he claim ‘victory’ at Sting?

Gully god

On the other bank or hand is a young man who is monikered the “Gully god.” This is a youth who is apparently named after a watch that has no number on its face. The original word movado, means “always in motion.” But he needs to stop and think. He is no God and! Perhaps he doesn’t intend to “watch no face.” By the way, is he Mavado because it is one of those Jamaican misspellings and mispronunciations, such as; “flim” and “corporate” as “we live good,” or is it one of those Jamaican words such as “venticate?” Or is it from the Spanish malvado, which means evil?

A serious impasse has blown up between the followers of each camp and the Prime Minister on Sunday declared, “The gully-gaza conflict is just one example of the negative influences that destabilize us as a people and destroy our confidence in ourselves.” Is he real? How many thousands of Jamaicans died on the altar of JLP/PNP politics?

Plantation Legacy

Indeed, Vybz and Mavado are the products of the legacy of the plantation history. We know that the purported Willie Lynch Letter is a hoax but its instructions for the control of Blacks are absolutely true. The fictional Lynch, a White plantation overseer, writing in the 1700s, outlined a perfect divide-and-rule strategy that fostered baseless mistrust and hostility. This effectively kept the Blacks in subjection until the present. I don’t care if there were a real Willie Lynch, what is important is that his dictates are fact, “distrust is stronger than trust, and envy is stronger than adulation, respect or admiration. The black slave, after receiving this indoctrination, shall carry on and will become self-refueling and self-generating for hundreds of years, maybe thousand.”

Victims and Violators

Still, Vybz and Mavado are as much victims as they are violators. We have never been a united people, race or nation. It was division among us that allowed light-skinned Black Norman Manley to prosecute Marcus Garvey here and also keep him out of the Municipal council in 1929. Then we created two major political parties to deepen the sore and widen the chasm. Ghettos were created by the unequal economic development of the post-World War II period, but garrisons are the handiwork of the PNP and JLP, who like the plantation overseers seemed to have an interest in keeping the poor blacks ignorant, and uneducated, so that they could be controlled.

Our propensity to violence; anti informer culture and anti-gay sentiments are not recent phenomena but are direct consequences of our plantation experience. Look out for future postings as this will be explored and explained.

Furthermore, there were always isms and schisms in the music. Few remember that Prince Buster and Derrick Morgan had their vibes as well in the 1960s. As others sang Rude Bwoy lyrics in that era, Alton Ellis had the presence of mind to sing more lovers-oriented recordings.

Long Time Slackness

The slackness is not new either. Who remembers, Clancy Eccles’ I love you Fatty? Check General Echo, Welton Irie and Madoo who did sexually explicit songs of the 1970s and the 80s, Yellow Man was slackness king, Shabba Ranks’ Love Punany Bad and Needle Eye Pum Pum literally can’t dun. Go on You Tube and search for Buster’s 1966 Wreck a Pum Pum and see if it is any less graphic than Romping Shop, which I actually like very much. Did you know that producers in the past, and perhaps present, pushed entertainers to sing profanity? Ask early 1990s DJ Tumpa Lion, who did songs such as Tight like a virgin, A Di Glue Weh She Have and Yes Indeed. I interview him this week.

However, in an era when there are multiple sources of media; cable, ipod, mp4, CDs etc, our youngsters are constantly bombarded with positive and negative influences. Entertainers have powerful control over what people do especially the young and impressionable. These two DJs are doing exactly what we learned on the plantation and are behaving just like the overseers.

Violence Back at the Teacher

Hopefully they will come to their senses, have a reasoning and give a united front against the malice between them. This is so reminiscent of the pointless feud between Tupac Shakur and the Notorious BIG between 1996 and 1997. Just a word of caution to Vybz and Movado. Our little boys with guns live in the country that had the most slave rebellions per capita during the epoch of slavery. Furthermore the NYPD and LAPD, two better equipped police forces than the JCF, could not stop their murders. You think that you are both bullet- proof or immune in the murder capital of the world?

If they had studied literature in school they would have learnt from MacBeth in the eponymic Shakespearean tragedy. “Bloody instructions which, being taught, return to plague the inventor.”