Dancehall's Vicious Side: Antigay Attitudes By KELEFA SANNEH
hen the reggae star Beenie Man came to the Hammerstein Ballroom on Friday, he received his usual welcome. There was a frenetic introduction. There was an exuberant crowd of thousands, waving whatever he told them to wave: hands, flags, cellphones. And out front there were about a dozen pickets, hoisting signs and chanting: "No more murder music! No more murder music!"
Over the past month, Beenie Man has found himself at the center of a growing controversy over antigay lyrics in dancehall reggae, the rapid-fire genre descended from reggae. Beenie Man, one of the genre's best and most popular performers, is known for his witty, lascivious boasts (his new album, "King of the Dancehall," includes a great track called "Grindacologist") and for collaborations with mainstream stars like Janet Jackson and the Neptunes.
But his oeuvre also includes a fistful of tracks that denounce gay men (known pejoratively as "chi-chi men'' or as "batty boys," after a slang term for buttocks) and women. And now the British gay-rights organization Outrage, prompted by a Jamaican group called J-Flag (the Jamaican Forum for Lesbians, All-sexuals and Gays), has begun a campaign against antigay lyrics in dancehall reggae.
Beenie Man concerts have been canceled throughout Europe, Outrage is demanding that Scotland Yard investigate him for, in the organization's words, "inciting murder," and he was dropped from an MTV-sponsored performance in Miami. A contrite statement was put out by Virgin Records, Beenie Man's label, then swiftly disavowed by his manager. (Outrage has also singled out Buju Banton, Vybz Kartel, Elephant Man, T.O.K., Bounty Killer, Capleton and Sizzla.)
Beenie Man has certainly drawn focus because of his popularity, but there's no denying that he has given Outrage a wide range of quotes from which to choose. In "That's Right," the infectious chorus begins, "We burn chi-chi man and then we burn sodomite and everybody bawl out, say, 'Dat right!' ''
And in "Han Up Deh," Beenie Man cracks some jokes ("Man a save yuh from drowning is a lifeguard/ Man a watch a man batty, him a batty-guard"), then delivers an antigay party chant, asking listeners to raise their hands if they agree: "Hang chi-chi gal wid a long piece a rope/ Mek me see di han' a go up, mek me see di han' a go up."
Virgin Records declined to make Beenie Man available for an interview, and a spokeswoman responded to queries with an official statement: "The lyrics in question are from songs released over four years ago, on an independent label not affiliated with Virgin Records. We do not condone violence."
Well, not quite. It's true that these songs were released on independent labels (all reggae stars pump out a steady stream of underground singles alongside their official album releases), but "four years ago"? The most charitable explanation is that executives at Virgin Records simply haven't been following the career of their own recording artist. Right now, Beenie Man has an underground hit with "Weh Yuh No Fi Do," on which he announces "batty man fi dead," and"Han Up Deh" was an underground hit last year.
Lyrics like these are nothing new in dancehall reggae. A decade ago, Buju Banton drew protests for his song "Boom Bye Bye," a blood-curdling (and - if we're being honest - brilliant) song with a low, lurching beat and a murderous chorus: "Boom bye bye in a batty-boy head/ Rude boy no promote no nasty man, dem haffi dead."
This new round of protests was inspired by events in Jamaica, where gay residents say they fear discrimination and assault, as well as prosecution, under the island's 1864 anti-"buggery" law. On June 9, the island's leading gay-rights advocate, Brian Williamson, was stabbed to death in his home. Inspector Victor Henry, a spokesman for the Jamaican police, said the crime was a robbery gone awry, but even if it wasn't a hate crime (J-Flag, the organization Mr. Williamson founded, remains skeptical of the police finding), the killing nevertheless drew attention to the issue of antigay violence.
Then came the claim that on the morning of June 24, six men were pulled out of a house and beaten because they were believed to be gay; the men allege that one of the assailants was Buju Banton himself. Inspector Henry confirmed that "someone made a report" that the singer was "among a group of men" involved in an attack, but he said so far "these are only allegations." He added that he expected the police to "clear up" the issue as soon as the singer returned from his tour.
A spokeswoman for the singer flatly denied the charges: "It didn't happen - it's totally fabricated," she said. J-Flag arranged for one man who said he was attacked (who wished to remain anonymous) to describe the incident by telephone. He said he and five others were dragged out of the house by about a dozen people, adding that once the assault began, "Nearly 100 people come down when they heard, and everybody was saying, 'Yes, beat out the batty boy!' ''
Beenie Man, on the other hand, has been accused only of rhetorical violence, which is a much more slippery charge. Despite reggae's reputation for sweetness, the genre's history is intertwined with a history of ferocious (and sometimes violent) competition between rival sound systems and crews. This competition kept the music fresh and weird (to attract fans, you needed something new, something different, something great), and the conflicts were often echoed in the lyrics - singers routinely promised to "murder" the competition with tunes.
Even as they portray themselves as swaggering "bad men," reggae stars also present themselves as forces for good: folk heroes, social activists, prophets. (Buju Banton, for example, sometimes calls himself, "the voice of Jamaica.") To be really successful, you have to do both at once, which is one reason vocalists find antigay rhetoric so useful. It gives them a way to gesture to religious and cultural injunctions against homosexuality (in interviews, the stars often cite Scripture) while also reminding listeners of their "bad man" bona fides. With antigay lyrics, vocalists manage to seem simultaneously righteous and wicked.
A prominent reggae music executive, speaking anonymously for fear his comments might hurt the artists he works with, said that antigay lyrics were also strategic. "It's not that the artists wake up and say gay people are taking over the country and we need to stamp them out," he said. "They're doing it because they're saying: 'I don't have a hit, what can I do that the public can't deny? Let me do another record, find another way to say, "Burn batty boy, stab batty boy." ' '' He said D.J.'s and listeners responded to songs like this because "they can't afford not to."
"People could say you didn't respond, you could be gay," he continued. "It's really childish."
This isn't only a matter of reggae rhetoric, though; it's also a matter of the globalized music industry. Reggae stars, who have figured out that there's more money to be made abroad than at home, are now vulnerable to pressure from nervous companies around the world. Buju Banton recently played a Puma-sponsored Olympics party in Athens, but only after being briefed on the company's "zero tolerance policy towards homophobia and other forms of prejudice," a Puma spokesman said.
Not surprisingly, this state of affairs has bred no small amount of resentment among stars and listeners alike, who see something neocolonial in the way Britons are criticizing Jamaican music. After Vybz Kartel, arguably reggae's hottest current star, visited BBC Radio to make an apology last week, the Jamaican tabloid X-News tried to humiliate him by running a photo of the vocalist in a white coat and top hat next to the headline, "Vybz Kartel BOWS to Gay Pressure." It's not hard to figure out why others on Outrage's list might prefer to keep quiet.
Mr. Allison, Outrage's spokesman, said the group wanted stars to stop "advocating violence against gay people." The problem is that violent rhetoric is precisely the way many dancehall acts voice their disapproval of all sorts of things: homosexuality, the competition, cunnilingus (a dancehall proscription that probably merits its own essay), women who borrow one another's clothes.
Frustratingly, gay Jamaicans have been largely absent from this discussion. A J-Flag spokeswoman who would identify herself only as Karlene seemed cautiously optimistic about the current wave of protests. "We hope it won't cause a negative backlash," she said. "But we don't want to stop what we're doing, either. We can't allow the fear to drive us to stop."
At the very least, the protests have clearly got the stars' attention. At Friday's concert, antigay lyrics were conspicuously absent, despite sets from the Outrage targets Elephant Man, Vybz Kartel and T.O.K. (although Jabba and Bobby Konders, the hosts of Hot 97's weekly reggae show, did sate the crowd's appetite with a short set of antigay records). Performers often unleash a barrage of antigay invective when they're in danger of losing the audience, so on this night, everyone had to rely more heavily on another standby: sex talk.
Fittingly enough, Beenie Man put on the night's best show, finding ways to let his predicament work to his advantage. "We are not violent people, we just fight for our rights," he said, striding across the stage in a white and pink suit, adding, "They can't stop dancehall." And by the time he ended his set, with a sped-up but sweet sing-along to Bob Marley's "Redemption Song," it was getting easier to see how so many fans and critics could pin their hopes and grudges upon a brilliant performer with a funny name and a voice heard around the world.