Dancehall music has often been accused of spreading violence with persons like deejay Mavado, a self-proclaimed ‘gangsta for life’, spouting lyrics such as “gunshot inna ya farrid”. However, on the other side of dancehall, there are artistes who speak to justice in the streets through violence against pedophiles, petty criminals and murderers, seeming to urge citizens to take justice into their own hands.
In the 2005 song Gash Dem, deejay Chuck Fendah advocates that the Almighty ‘gash’ and ‘light’ criminals for their actions, seeing fire as the way to pay them back their crimes. He identifies the targets as “a big man like you/rape off a six-year-old baby/a big man like you/pop off yuh gun and put nine pon a likkle ole lady/a big man like you bun dung a school and a talk bout yuh mad sick and crazy”. Fender calls on the ‘Moses Law’, which speaks to an eye for eye rather than leaving punishment to the formal justice system.
Gash Dem came under scrutiny from the Broadcasting Commission, which felt the song was unfit for airplay. However, in a subsequent interview with THE STAR entitled ‘Fendah Won’t Bow’, he said that persons wanted him to change his song to enforce a more legal form of punishment. He said, “Somebody from the RJR Group was saying that a better mi seh ‘try dem an hang dem’ because at least dat more legal, but wi nah change nutt’n. A suh di people dem love it an a suh it come spiritual. Di song nuh have nuh violence inna it. It deeper dan wah dem a think, but from yuh a carry Jah banna yuh a guh get a fight. If dem want mi tek out ‘gash dem an lite dem’ outa it mi nah guh do dat. Is a spiritual fire mi a bun. Dis song is a correction to wah a gwaan inna Earth.”
As a follow-up to Gash Dem, Fendah recorded Freedom of Speech, which begins “a wah dem a try, a di people dem rights dem a try fi deny?” He continues: “I hope unno see it, seh poor people nuh have nuh freedom of speech.”in the 1990s
Long before Fendah’s gashing, in Buju Banton’s early career on the 1990s he hit the dancehall with Man Fi Dead rasping in one version that “man fi dead/tell yuh seh mi nah save nuh lead/gunshot a buss inna petty tief head”.
And after Fendah, came deejay Baby Cham, speaking to survival, crime and how justice is brought to in the streets. In Conscience he cries “what coulda possess a man, fi tun a AK-47 pon a young ooman” and declares “man nuh rape likkle pickney inna Jamaica and nuh dead”. In Wha Dem Feel Like he turns his lyrical ammunition on the police, saying that in the ghetto they have no power. He deejays: “Bwoy go run go station/chat till him blue/ sell information on mi and mi crew/ what uh tink di police can do?/ Wha di hell di police can do?” The last line is borrowed from a popular Echo Minott song of the mid-1980s, that song speaking to domestic violence.
Cham adequately speaks to a lack of faith in the police and the formal justice system. It is a belief that has seemed to increase over the years and has repercussions in the number of mob killings in the island. Mob killing usually occurs when a community takes justice into their own hands for a wrong committed on their neighbour, friend or family. In a report by The Gleaner entitled ‘Mobs cry for blood – Robber killed by angry Gordon Town residents’ it was reported that 20 persons were killed by mobs in 2003, while in 2004, mob-related killings resulted in 21 deaths.
Reacting to the rising level of mob killings, in the article Justice Minister A. J. Nicholson noted, “the necessity for all institutions in the society to give their backing to the forces of law and order.” He argued that, “when mixed signals are sent by groups, inside and outside of our society, constantly denigrating the forces of law and order, citizens are encouraged to break the law.”bringing light
According to Donna Hope, lecturer in the Reggae Studies Unit at the University of the West Indies (UWI), popular culture is used to bring to light issues that are problematic for the people. “I believe the music is a reflection and reinforcement for things that happen. The idea of the informal justice system is more real; what happens around people comes out in the music. There is also a lack of confidence in the formal system of justice. The network of justice in some communities moves much swifter, while court cases takes a much longer time. Informal justice brings for some more satisfaction, even though it’s not a legal framework,” she told The Sunday Gleaner.
Mob killings are certainly not new in Jamaica. One of the more notorious, relatively recent incidents took place in Flankers, Montego Bay, on December 15, 1995, when an American businessman, John Beckett, was beaten after his car hit and overturned a soup cart at a street dance.
Beckett, who was also robbed of his jewellery, was flown to the United States of America for treatment, but died in hospital.
After two trials, the jury failing to reach a unanimous verdict in the first in 1997 and the judge instructing the jury to return a verdict of not guilty in 1999, the three men accused of the murder were acquitted.
It was a rare instance when a case of mob killing actually reached the courts as, in most instances, no one is even arrested much less charged and put on trial. In fact, there are instances where the act is celebrated.
One such came 10 years after the killing in Flankers when, in April 2005, farmers in Mendez Town, Trelawny, chopped and killed two yam thieves. The Gleaner reported in April 2005 that “jubilation ran high and distilled spirits (rum) flowed freely after the killings, as scores of farmers gathered to celebrate the demise of those whom they said have been causing them misery.”pleas
Not everyone was in agreement with the killing and the story continued “according to the eyewitness, he went to look at the men and saw them tied up. He said that he told the mob to wait on the police. But his pleas fell on deaf ears as those who were hungry for instant justice took matters in their own hands by hacking and stoning the men to death.”
And there have been times when the police have actually held back those baying for blood, as occurred in Morant Bay, St. Thomas, on February 27, 2006. A suspect was taken into custody for the killing of five persons from one family, Patrice Martin-McCool, nine-year-old Sean Chin Jr., three-year-old Marshall George McCool, nine-year-old Jesse O’Gilvie and Terry-Ann Mohammed, all from Duhaney Pen, St. Thomas.
A mob descended on the police station and The Gleaner reported: “Him fi dead, give we him mek we kill him,” shouted members of the angry mob, whose boisterous behaviour forced the police to close the doors of the station for more than an hour.”
Mob killing has also spilled over into the realms of higher education, as 23-year-old Ricardo Anglin was killed on the campus of the University of Technology in 2003. Then, on Tuesday, April 4, last year, a man who allegedly made homosexual advances on a male student was chased and saved from an uncertain fate by the police, who had to fire shots in the air to disperse a crowd which had hurled missiles at them as they protected the fugitive
