Reimagining Jamaican Black National Identity Through the Voices of the Dispossessed: A Counter-Hegemonic Movement by Shaquiera Hamilton

Abstract

Although rarely defined by Black people themselves, for centuries Blackness as an identity has continuously been determined, defined, and redefined. In the context of the Caribbean, these different definitions are used to denote a Black inferiority that justifies the continued existence of various power structures. These structures of authority and control were founded on a plantation system created to advance the capitalistic goals of Western colonial actors. This paper argues that within a Jamaican context, the constructions of national identity that emerged after the slave era are rooted in a state-sponsored cultural hegemony based on colonial practices meant to reflect the realities of a select few instead of the Black majority. The Jamaican national motto, “Out of Many, One People” is used throughout this paper to demonstrate how national symbols are used by different elite Jamaican actors to maintain a colonial legacy that continues to devalue Black identity. This paper proposes that the music of Jamaica, specifically dancehall and reggae are part of a larger Black radical tradition that can be used as a tool to challenge the current system and reimagine a Jamaican national identity that is rooted in notions of Black power and Black emancipation.

Résumé

Bien que rarement définie par les Noirs eux-mêmes, l’identité Noire a été continuellement déterminée, définie et redéfinie pendant des siècles. Dans le contexte des Caraïbes, ces différentes définitions sont utilisées pour désigner une infériorité des Noirs qui justifie la persistance de diverses structures de pouvoir. Ces structures d’autorité et de contrôle ont été fondées sur un système de plantation créé pour faire avancer les objectifs capitalistes des acteurs coloniaux occidentaux. Cet article soutient que dans le contexte jamaïcain, les constructions de l’identité nationale qui ont émergé après l’ère de l’esclavage sont enracinées dans une hégémonie culturelle parrainée par l’État et basée sur des pratiques coloniales censées refléter les réalités d’un petit nombre de privilégiés au lieu de la majorité noire. La devise nationale jamaïcaine, “Un peuple parmi d’autres”, est utilisée tout au long de cet article pour démontrer comment les symboles nationaux sont utilisés par différentes élites jamaïcaines pour maintenir un héritage colonial qui continue à dévaloriser l’identité noire. Ce document propose que la musique jamaïcaine, en particulier le dancehall et le reggae, fasse partie d’une tradition radicale noire plus large qui peut être utilisée comme un outil pour remettre en question le système actuel et réimaginer une identité nationale jamaïcaine qui est enracinée dans les notions de Black power et d’émancipation des Noirs.

Introduction

For centuries Blackness as an identity has been continuously redefined. However, the dominant constructions of Blackness that have historically gained widespread recognition have rarely been determined by Black people themselves. Instead there has been a Black identity denoting inferiority constructed by elite societies – in most cases white people – imposed onto the masses. Blackness became associated with the “Negro” a “negation of African… [which] suggested no situatedness in time, that is history, or space that is ethno-or politico-geography. The Negro has no civilization, no cultures, no religions, no history, no place and finally no humanity that might command consideration.”1 This inferior notion of Black identity was imperative to the implementation of slavery, an instrument used to advance the agendas of European society and the system of global capitalism. This notion of Black people as a “Negro” came to represent divisive differences that were used to construct Black people as an exploitable source of labour; viewed as uncivilized and thus insensitive to subhuman conditions of work. To further the expansion of global capitalism, the “Negroes, were purchased with British manufactures; transported to the plantations, they produced… tropical products, the processing of which created new industries in England; while the maintenance of the Negroes and their owners on the plantations provided another market for British industry.”2 At this point in history, the Caribbean no longer represented a region of the world where local native populations thrived. Instead, as designed by European powers, the Caribbean became a “plantation system” where a labour pool – rather than autonomous citizens – worked as part of a large-scale industry. As abolitionist sentiment gained popularity throughout the world, theorists such as Thomas Holt argued that “abolitionists and policymakers sought to solve the ‘problem of freedom’ by transforming slaves into reliable wage labourers.”3 The construction of nationalism emerged as a key element of this transition. The emergence of a national sentiment within British colonies was “neither accidental nor unrelated to the character [of] European capitalism… they still required the co-optation of their… proletariat in order to destroy their competitors.”4 Nationalism within the Caribbean colonies became a tool used by European colonial powers to maintain the existence of their industrial sectors during the post-slavery transition. However, nationalism was only acceptable within the Caribbean colonies so long as it did not threaten the construction and preservation of global capitalism. Within this paper I will explore how the construction of Jamaican nationalism post-slavery was grounded in a state-sponsored cultural hegemony rooted in colonial practices and ideologies. I argue that within the Jamaican context, to concede to a notion of a ‘Black’ identity that could be a base for Jamaican nationalism would threaten the colonial legacy that exists, resulting in the creation of a national Jamaican identity that reflects a select few instead of the Black majority. To do this I will use the Jamaican national motto “Out of Many, One People” to demonstrate how the state attempted to keep the Black masses in their place. Additionally, I will argue that the music of the region – specifically reggae and dancehall – reflects a counter-hegemonic movement. Finally, I will aim to locate the work of dancehall and reggae within part of a larger Black radical tradition that can be used as a tool to reimagine Jamaican national identity.

Creole National Identity as a Form of Cultural Hegemony

Throughout history it has been the “bourgeoisie and the administrators of state power who initiated and nurtured myths of egalitarianism while seizing every occasion to divide peoples for the purpose of their domination.”5 This has created a top-down imposition of national identity; one that is typically reflective of those who occupy positions of privilege. The development of a cohesive national identity in the Caribbean is a venture that was bound to face challenges, given that populations within the region consist of “heterogenous ethnicities that were developed in response to European expansionism and the subsequent development of monocrop plantation agriculture.”6 As Norman Manley highlights, “[Jamaica] lacks that hammock of national belonging which cradles a people against historical falls.”7 This suggests that what is fundamental for newly independent states when developing a sense of nationhood is a native-appearing or anticolonial identity. An identity that can nurture a citizenry whose historical reality was based on varying schemes of international capitalism.8 However, the reality that Jamaica – like many other nations in the Caribbean – does not have a distinct indigenous identity to draw from creates a challenge in respect to how the nation can unite under a cohesive identity. The identity that emerged as part of the national narrative, was one of creolization. Capitalist driven goals from the era of slavery and indentured labour brought differing cultures into confrontation with one another. The sentiment of creole as a multiracial nationalism that emerged was a narrow definition of Jamaican identity that reflected the interest of the elite non-Black minorities instead of the Black masses. Hierarchy in the Jamaican slave plantation economy was White on top, Black on the bottom, with Brown people occupying the middle positions. This hierarchy of privileges was manufactured and embedded in society after slavery ended in 1838, providing a basis for the subsequent rise of the brown elite.9 To further reinforce the dominant position of the brown elite, this group tended to assimilate other ethnic minorities (Jewish, Lebanese, Chinese) into their narrative while simultaneously maintaining control of most large-scale businesses. The nationalist sentiment in Jamaica post-slavery, came to embody a cultural hegemony which was strengthened by the election and implementation of the People’s National Party (PNP) in 1938.10

As Antonio Gramsci highlights within his theory of cultural hegemony. The liberal state represents the concrete realization in history of fundamental liberties, but only as they were gained by, and for, a particular class of the bourgeoise… the fundamental principles of civil rights, or the ‘rights of man,’ normally associated with liberalism may very well be universal, but in the liberal state, these rights are secured and protected in a form that privileges the bourgeoise and perpetuates its socioeconomic dominance.11 At this point the minority brown group controlled both political and economic power, becoming a hegemonic cultural force in Jamaica. The nationalist rhetoric enforced by this elite group was not a nationalism that promoted Black nationalism, viewing all people of African descent as having a shared circumstance. Instead, it was a creole multiracial nationalism, “closely resembling classical European nationalism… founded on a common history of culture rather than race, and as in Europe obscured the conflation of class with race.”12 The non-Black authority that existed within Jamaica did so under the veil of creolization, because they recognized that to accede to the notion of a Black identity on which to base the Jamaican identity would threaten both the state and the economic system Jamaica was created to support. Therefore, to invalidate an implied inherent value to Blackness, the emerging elites found it necessary to distance themselves from Black Power and the promotion of Black liberation – something colonialism worked very hard to eliminate. Acknowledging the power of Black people and thus a potentially Black nation could very well enable the underclass masses to rise to a position of power. In hopes of mitigating this potential threat the nation that was designed by the state “via its national iconography had an equal rather than equitable visual representation of the ethnicities existing within its borders.”13 This is further demonstrated by the construction and implementation of Jamaica’s national motto, “Out of many, one people” during post-independence in 1962. The national motto “Out of many, one people” became a state-sponsored tool for the brown elite to ignore the need for equitable representation of the Jamaican population by diluting a Black majority – over 80 percent of the population – down to the same level as the other ethnic minorities. This allowed the brown elite to impose a nationalism that did not challenge the status quo of the formerly colonial country that had been inherited at the time of Jamaican independence. In this regard Jamaica was still colonial at heart. The national motto projects as a way for the state – and by extension the elite minority – to exert control and subordination of the Black masses in a non-violent manner; a method that at times is more effective than coercion or domination by force.14 The national motto was a symbolic way for the state to popularize it’s conception of the nation, by providing an avenue for the state to “imprint its version of the nation on to the minds of the nation it purports to represent.”15 However the colonially influenced notions of nationhood that the Jamaican neo-colonial state tried establishing was directly at odds with the ideologies of nationhood that were being developed simultaneously among civil society.

Music in Jamaica: a reflection of the Black dispossessed

Despite an acknowledgement of the beauty of Jamaica’s physical landscape, the opinion among the general local population – that transcends racial, class and generational lines – since independence is that ‘Jamaica mash up completely’.16 In contrast to an average national economic growth of nearly six percent annually in the late 1990s, uneven income distribution worked to maintain Jamaica’s dependency on capitalist development.17 As George Beckford asserts, “because of the historical legacy, all the people of the plantation society see themselves as inferior and incapable of carrying out major schemes…”18 The colonial tradition of racism implemented values and traditions of consciousness through which the Black masses of this era came to understand their world and their experiences.19 As a result of Jamaica’s colonial legacy, and the dehumanization of blackness due to slavery in the West Indies, there is a sentiment imposed onto wider society that Black is bad, and foreign is better. This complex of inferiority that exists within the Jamaican philosophy is what George Beckford coins as “black dispossession.”20 In protest to the narrative of “black dispossession”, what emerged throughout Jamaican civil society was a counter-hegemonic movement grounded in the mental emancipation of Black people. To overcome conditions of powerlessness and cultural alienation, intellects such as George Beckford have proposed that what is required is a “process of mental liberation through which people would discover their own power based on a belief in themselves”.21 I argue that reggae and dancehall were two instruments that both expanded Jamaica’s Black radical oral tradition and facilitated the mental emancipation of the Black masses. To echo Linton Kwesi Johnson, “not only does the poetry of Jamaican music lament the suffering of the ‘sufferers’ it also asserts their strength and their determination to struggle on relentlessly… Jamaican music embodies the historical experiences of the masses – it reflects and in reflecting reveals the contemporary situation of the nation.”22

Reggae: Jamaica’s Path to Freedom

Various Caribbean scholars have suggested that it was reggae music , not state-driven policy, that facilitated a growing awareness of alternative ways to imagine the Jamaican Black experience and stimulate a new consciousness of racial and class identity. Furthermore, it has been proposed that reggae has helped local Black Jamaicans situate their experiences in an international and sometimes Pan-African context.23 In this regard, reggae music became an instrument for the Black masses to protest the cultural hegemony that was imposed by the non-Black elite minority. Reggae is a realm of civil society that participates in the meticulous process, “of disseminating and instilling an alternative forma mentis by means of cultural preparation… on a mass scale”; actions both Gramsci and Beckford deemed necessary for revolutionary activity.24 This is reflected in the lyrics of Peter Tosh’s “Mark of the Beast” when he says

I see the mark of the beast on their ugly faces

I see them congregate in evil places

Me say me know them a-wicked, Lordy, Lord

Me know them a-wicked

Me say me know them a-wicked, Babylon

Me say me know them a-wicked

What have I done to be incriminated?

What have I done to be humiliated?25

Peter Tosh, like many reggae artists of the late twentieth century, generated an awareness of the fact that ‘Babylon’ – Western society – is not only harmful but frankly does not exist to serve or help the Jamaican people. The emergence of reggae as part of the “culture of dread” challenged the cultural hegemony of whiteness – disguised as creolization – present in Jamaican society. Over 40 years later we see this assertion of Black Power continuously reflected in the reggae music of newer artists such as Chronixx. In “Black in Beautiful” he begins with,

We love the children of Africa

Teaching the children

Oh na na anna

La da da da

Black eye, black hair, black skin

Black queen stand majestic with the black king26

This works to acknowledge Jamaican Black ancestral roots. He proceeds to assert that he’s

… never seen a doctor in black nor seen a black pill fi cure no black people

But I’ve seen bush doctors like Tosh and Marley resurrect like a real black beatle

Malcom, Marcus, Martin

When you see Walter Rodney ask him

How you nuh hear about Howell often27

In this song Chronixx highlights the history of his people and his genre, giving legitimacy to the real literature of Jamaica. He emphasizes a pride in African ancestry and culture. Chronixx speaks to an experience that has been denied for the Black masses. Not only does the music of Jamaica speak to the feelings of dispossession, but it simultaneously highlights the colonial violence that is present in Jamaica as demonstrated by Koffee’s lyrics, Parliament tun di paper Fi ghetto youths dem nuh cater That’s why di country nuh safer Hear seh di guns dem pile out here28 Artists like Koffee, Chronixx and Peter Tosh offer alternative narratives that affirm the strength, dignity, and humanity of Blackness in an effort to fill the significant void in the state narrative of Jamaican reality.

Dancehall as A Form of Liberation Rather than Degradation

Whereas reggae has been an oral tradition that is widely accepted as a popular expression of protest and resistance, dancehall has been a continuous victim of critique. Scholars such as David Scott have described dancehall as a “disturbing mirror of contemporary Jamaican society. [That] embodies a set of debased values”.29 Dancehall has been positioned to be reggae’s deviant cousin that in some, if not most cases contradicts the cultural revolution that reggae is trying to invoke. On the one hand reggae has been championed within Jamaican society as a disseminator of African-centered values and traditions; a rejection of ‘Babylon’, a challenge to the system. On the other hand, dancehall’s preoccupation with achieving “the good life” – demonstrated by its celebration of money, light-skinned women, expensive cars, and sex to name a few – has been positioned as the consequence of capitalism’s problematic influence. I argue however, that this conflation of dancehall with impurity and demoralization, is rooted in patriarchal gender norms that emerged partly as a consequence of religious colonial influence.

The Baptist Church played a significant role in post-emancipation rural settlement as land rights became a central theme of both freedom and community for former slaves in Jamaica. The church was crucial to the establishment of “free villages” as a result of their ability to buy and subdivide property for newly emancipated slaves.30 In fact, it was highlighted in the Guinness Book of World Records, that Jamaica has the most churches per square mile in the world.31 Along with the establishment of these free villages, however, was the propagation of new gendered ideologies that supported their view of how society should function post-emancipation. Key to these opinions was the patriarchal view of family and the notion that Black women’s priorities now consisted of marriage, child-rearing, and domestic wage labour on the off chance they needed to work outside the home, although this was highly discouraged.32 This relegation of women to the private realm of family and social reproduction naturalized the roles of women within society instead of creating space for debate, consequently creating a void of female voices in Jamaica’s national discourse. Not only have Black women consistently been removed from narratives of national identity, but their personal character is continuously under debate. The objectification of Black femme bodies has been a topic debated throughout the entire course of history; controversies of existence emerge whenever Black women are present. These controversies are demonstrated in the song “Black Hypocrisy” by dancehall artist Spice when she notes,

… I was told I would reach further

If the colour of mi skin was lighter

And I was made to feel inferior

Cah society seh brown girls prettier

Mi love the way mi look

Mi love mi pretty black skin

Respect due to mi strong melanin

Proud of mi colour, love the skin that I’m in

Bun racism, demolish colourism

But the things weh mi a go seh

Yuh might not even have mi back

I get hate from my own race

Yes, that’s a fact

‘Cause the same black people dem seh I’m too black

And if yuh bleach out yuh skin dem same one come a chat33

Within a dancehall context, the activities of Black women that adhere to a dancehall aesthetic – such as practices that involve hairweaving or browning– is sometimes viewed both by Jamaicans and foreigners as a misplaced desire to achieve whiteness or sexual deviation. Society has labelled working class women and their desire to adhere to a dancehall aesthetic as “harbingers of a culture of self-hate.”34 However to contrast this notion, if one were to reinterpret dancehall and its aesthetic outside of patriarchal gender norms, dancehall can be viewed as an environment in which women are able to negotiate their existence on their terms. In this sense, dancehall and the dancehall aesthetic becomes something that is uniquely Jamaican. It can be seen as a reinvention of hegemonic practices, instead of a pathological symptom of racial self-loathing. If we treat the face, hair and body as spaces that are already socialized “we can begin to delink aesthetic or cosmetic practices… from moral or ethnical conceptions” of authentic femme blackness.35 Furthermore, to situate the expression of the erotic found in dancehall music as a form of liberation can transform the perception of dancehall as ‘deviant’ domain. The lyrics:

Me step inna di club a dance rub a dub

An di gyal a come wine up on me

Mi stan so tall back against the wall

And now she start climb up pon me…

The way di gyal a wine is like the breeze a blow

But it hot and the sun shine on me

Di dutty wine my girl dutty wine (whoa)36

speak to sexual liberation and the power of the female body instead of gender politics based on the objectivity of the female body. A woman is dancing, and there is power in her movements. Dance and music become united to create a form of expression that in itself is a form of communal ritual and ceremony. Like reggae, dancehall too can be re-contextualized within an African discourse when the symbolism of African female fertility figures such as Yoruba orishas Oshun and Oya are considered.37 Within the Yoruba tradition these orishas are recognized as the embodiment of the power in the erotic and the erotic in nature. Notions that are in direct confrontation with Western patriarchal norms of the female existence. This is even more true when music by female dancehall artists like Lady Saw, Lady G, Sister Nancy and Spice are held to a higher standard compared to music created by male artists like Beenie Man, Vybz Kartel, Elephant Man and Buju Banton. Whereas female dancehall artists are subjected to critiques similar to that of American anthropologist Obiagele Lake when she states, “given the patriarchal climate, one would expect sexist lyrics emanating from men. Unfortunately, women who have internalized sexist norms add to these negative images. Lady Saw is one such songstress who plays herself and by association, all other women…” male dancehall artists are not held to the same moral standard.38 Although certain male artists have received criticisms about anti-gay rheotoric present in their music, female dancehall artists bear the brunt of reprimands for “harmful” sexually explicit lyrics. These various criticisms ignore how music like “Hardcore” by Lady Saw have become a way to invoke female agency and challenge the status quo thus becoming rebel music just like reggae. Prior to the construction of the “Negro” as a position of Black inferiority detached from its African identity, the “Blacks were a fearful phenomenon to Europeans because of their historical association with civilizations superior, dominant and/or antagonistic to Western societies…”39 Reggae and dancehall are rebel music that champion Blackness and are therefore a fearful phenomenon due to their capacity for mental emancipation. They challenge the very foundations on which Jamaica was created.

Rooting Jamaican nationalism and identity in its music

The only models of nationhood available for newly independent states to emulate are the ones from which they seek independence. This is a problem because the nation-building experiences of emerging colonial powers are not applicable to the experiences of their colonies. This results in an attempt by colonies to recreate situations that are not grounded in the local experiences of their populations. However, an identity that does not recognize a major section of its population and its history cannot be considered a national identity. The Jamaican situation exemplifies one of the most contentious aspects of nationalism, regarding “whether and to what extent a national movement led by minority classes… has the potential to implement… measures which benefit the broad majority…”40 The Caribbean represents the only region in the Western world where nations exist that have a Black majority who control state power. However, within the Jamaican context, it took over fifty years after independence for the first Black man to be elected as Prime Minister.41 The Black bourgeoisie rose to a position of political power with the emergence of P. J. Patterson as head of the PNP, resulting in a stronger recognition of blackness. However, the Black nationalism that emerged as a result was one diluted by the desire to work within the system of global capitalism. This included an adherence to harmful structural adjustment policies and an increased desire for foreign investment – evident in the overwhelming presence of Canadian banks. The Black bourgeoisie of this period welcomed the neo-colonial, paternalistic presence of “the Big White Brother” embodied by Canada’s extensive Caribbean banking network.42 In fact when the financial economy collapsed in 1998 “only three financial institutions emerged unscathed. All were foreign – the local branches of… the Bank of Nova Scotia, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and CITIBANK.”43 Instead of working to alleviate the financial burden on civilians following the crisis, the government chose to bail out foreign investors, sparking a mass deterioration of support. What the government and Black bourgeoisie failed to recognize was that “the dominant class… must accept that the government apparatus cannot always assert their corporate interests narrowly and directly.”44 The Black bourgeoisie ignored the fact that they cannot rely solely on the power and material force provided by the government, particularly when it excludes the masses. Don Robotham suggests that “the Black Jamaican wants blackness as an identity, but a blackness understood as modern… urban, not rural… educated and professional not folk, a blackness able to hold its own in the white world of global capitalism.”45 Dancehall and reggae can be a means to facilitate the emergence of a modern Blackness. This is evident in the popularity of these artists, and their distinguishable recognition on the world stage. Reggae and dancehall artists give Jamaica an international name, especially when one considers how distinguishable these artists are. There are artists like Koffee – who was not only the youngest person but also the only woman to win a Grammy for Best Reggae Album in 2019 for her album Rapture – achieving monumental feats on an international scale.46 These artists highlight the Black excellence that is dancehall and reggae; that is Jamaican culture. The worldwide recognition of dancehall and reggae demonstrates a continuous contradiction with sentiments that “anything black is no good and that better is always found elsewhere.”47 To ground national Jamaican identity in reggae and dancehall music would not only work to bring the voices of the unheard masses into the national narrative, but it would do so in the name of Black excellence.

Conclusion

From the mid-sixteenth century and onwards it was an African tradition that embodied the collective resistance by Black people to slavery and colonialism, which is what made the Black radical tradition manifest.48 When slave labour was transported to the plantations, contrary to popular colonial belief, these people brought with them African codes of being and social existence. Reggae and dancehall artists embody a collective resistance, and it is this resistance that locates them firmly within the Black radical tradition. To recognize this is to recognize the oral tradition that is inherent to reggae and dancehall music. Within this oral tradition is a Jamaican history, a history that can be used for true Jamaican liberation. As Chronixx notes, Preacher is preaching good God the things that he preaches I wonder who taught him to preach Teacher is teaching where did he get his degree Now it is no mystery who taught us black history49 Reggae and dancehall are Jamaica’s true teachers, they are a counter-hegemonic force that amplifies the true experience of the masses and can be a revolutionary assertion of a unique and true cultural autonomy.

Works Cited

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Johnson, Linton Kwesi. “Jamaican Rebel Music.” Race and Class 17, no. 4, April 1976: 397-412. https://doi. org/10.1177/030639687601700404. Koffee. “Raggamuffin,” Released 2019. Track 5 on Rapture. KOFFEE Music, March 14, 2019, Debut Extended Play.

Leight, Elias. “Koffee Makes History With Grammy Win, Signs With RCA.” Rolling Stone. February 07, 2020. https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/koffee-grammy-win-rca-signing-946992/. Matterhorn, Tony. “Dutty Wine,” Released 2006. Track 1 on Dutty Wine. VP Records, 2006, CD.

Riley, Ingrid. “Thoughts As Things – Jamaica Is Bleeding, Someone Pass Me A Bible!” Jamaicans.com. April 10, 2015. https://jamaicans.com/thoughts-as-things-jamaic/.

Robinson, Cedric. Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/mcgill/detail.action?docID=475202.

Robotham, Don. “Blackening the Jamaican Nation: The Travails of a Black Bourgeoisie in a Globalized World.” 2000, 1-49. Spice. “Black Hypocrisy,” Released 2018. Track 1 on Captured. Spice Official ENT, November 2, 2018, Mixtape.

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Thomas, Deborah. “The “Problem” of Nationalism in the British West Indies; or “What We Are and What We Hope to Be”.” In Modern Blackness: Nationalism, Globalization, and the Politics of Culture in Jamaica, edited by Irene Silberblatt, 29-57. Duke University Press, 2004. https://doi-org.proxy3.library.mcgill.ca/10.1215/9780822386308002