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Music, Is it a black thing or just obscenity?

Irreverence and accusation

by Raúl Leis --- raulleisr@hotmail.com

The irreverent song, despite being censored and disputed, has gone out to the whole country, reigning over Carnival and all of its manifestations. The truth is that DJ Black’s reggae tune has attained such a trajectory thanks to three factors: the beat of that genre, the force of an obscene expression that’s repeated more than 60 times, and the content of the song itself. Somehow the piece was able to connect with the spirit of many people, especially with youngsters, who reinterpreted the heavy caliber words and identified with the complaints that it stated. What were they? The song’s messages:

There are many problems in the country. You work hard for a very low wage. Every four years a politician shows up making promises and asking for votes. In the assembly they don’t do anything, they forget their promises and steal money.

You wait for a taxi, and, because you're black, they won’t take you; or on the other hand, you get where you’re going and they ask for your cedula and arrest you.

At Seguro even the doctors go on strike. The diethylene glycol killed a lot of old people. Buses burn and those responsible don’t fall. Transportation, gasoline and food prices go up, but the wages are low, they’re ghetto wages. The country is growing with so many pretty buildings, which are only accessible to those with money. The truth is that the world is suffering and the poor are poorer. They’re fed up, but they press ahead. “Justice for the people!”

The list of bad things that have happened is very long.

Evidently this song’s content is telling us of a great malaise in the society in which we live. The economic growth is not spread around. Politics and government are discredited. The justice system doesn’t work. Citizens aren’t safe. There’s racism and discrimination by ethnicity and class. People are getting ever more tired of all this.

It’s one more sign of the necessity to push for social, political and cultural change, in the direction of wholesome development and a democracy that’s democratic and participatory.

I have always publicly disputed the misuse of this musical genre by some of its exponents, because there are works that express intense sexual, verbal or psychological violence, to the point of advocating crime. They forget that reggae, in its origins in Jamaica, was sung at religious ceremonies and was later transformed into a vehicle of righteous protest against discrimination and inequality, especially as affect blacks and the urban poor, and was carried around the world on the voices of the Rastafarians as a Caribbean socio-religious expression, especially by the great Bob Marley, who left his unmistakable footprint on musical history. There’s nothing wrong with reggae as a musical genre, and you also have works with positive messages, including an urban chronicle that describes the real situation in the poor neighborhoods.

DJ Black made such a chronicle with his song, but unfortunately he unnecessarily saturated it with obscenity.

Also in this section:
Cool Internet Sites

Online books, How to Purchase and Develop Real Estate in Panama

Music, Is it a black thing or just obscenity?