The Other Jamaica: Music and the City in Jamaican Film

Abstract

to camp whe' di thugs dem camp at Two pound a weed inna van back-Damian Junior Gong Marley, Welcome to JamrockDAMiAn JunioR gong MARLey 's gRAMMy-winning song Welcome to Jamrock1 creates a paradigm shift in representation of place. The song plays phrase Welcome to greeting traditionally extended to visitors to island, which is endlessly played upon in tourism industry. Marley proclaims, Welcome to substituting name which Jamaicans at home and in diaspora affectionately, and sometimes ironically, use to refer to their country. Marley's switch directs our attention to often gaping discrepancies between image of offered by tourism interests to lure visitors, and realities experienced by those on ground. Welcome to Jamrock describes in ways that would scare off most intrepid tourist: in this song is envisioned as a site for violent crime, drug trade, poverty, civil unrest, thuggery and political violence. For public commentator Ian Boyne, song inserts Marley into the classic role of prophet who disturbs, afflicts and tortures comforted with pictures and images not in concert with vision of ruling class. The song lives up well to its genre of protest music, Boyne states, jolting complacent who would soon forget other Jamaica.2The notion of the other Jamaica invites consideration of politics of representation. Welcome to Jamrock was a controversial song and many Jamaicans, as Boyne reports, objected to Marley's characterisation of country. The reasons for such protests are complex. Although Marley's version of is a shameful one that may not accord with either formal representations of or lived experiences of upper and middle classes, there are few who would deny that at least some aspects of this other exist. The success of song locally - and, significantly, beyond Jamaica's shores - indicated, however, that in struggle over representation of place, this version of Jamaica, which privileges perspective of underclass, those margins of society, was gaining a high degree of public attention and therefore some measure of dominance.The transformative representation of place that occurs in Welcome to Jamrock and controversy that it created speak to ongoing tension that arises in and around construction of place as competing points of view struggle for dominance and, further, disturb idea that local point of view is a homogenous or unified one. Welcome to Jamrock, therefore, is a useful point of departure from which to begin exploring these issues in Jamaican cinema. The paradigm shift in representation of place that occurs in Marley's song is also evident in a number of Jamaican and is frequently produced in these texts, in part, through use of popular music. In this essay I comment project of reclaiming place in Jamaican fictional film and specifically address a grouping within that body of work - what I refer to as city films - in which project of reclaiming place is urgent and compelling.3 I identify use of popular forms of Jamaican music in this group of as a key component in articulation of a local cinematic voice. I argue that although extensive use of popular music plays an important role in films' commercial viability in overseas markets, it also endows with transformative possibilities, and is fundamental to construction of perspectives which privilege experiences of marginalised Jamaicans.In their early seminal work The Empire Writes Back, Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin identify concern with place and displacement as a major feature of postcolonial literatures. It is here, they suggest, that special postcolonial crisis of identity comes into being, often expressed as a concern with development or recovery of an effective identifying relationship between self and place. …