On the Permissibility of Homophobia Within Dancehall from the Perspective of One Diasporic Dyke
“Boom bye bye
Inna batty bwoy head
Rude bwoy no promote no nasty man
Dem haffi dead”
-Buju Banton, Boom Bye Bye
The day I was first bitch-slapped by the recognition of homophobia in the Caribbean was a couple years ago, as I tried to make a playlist for a queer party that was by and for racialized community members. Making it sucked. I knew homophobia was an issue in the Caribbean, but it wasn’t until I tried to make the playlist that the dancehall music underscored just how much of a problem it was. I wanted to share music that I liked, culturally connected to, and grew up hearing at family and childhood church events with those in my community as an adult, but instead, I got to learn that multiple artists who made music I had grown up to enjoy had also expressed the desire to enact violence against people like me.
This was around the time of my own “queer realization”, and it was only after being able to confront myself as a queer person did I truly consider the homophobia being relayed through popular music; I’m not sure straight people ever really think about it.
The matter was not of merely avoiding artists with homophobic views, or who's songs had homophobic lyrics. If it had been that simple, I would have been lucky. Instead, I came to discover that more than one dancehall musician had written lyrics or made statements explicitly calling for the violent murder of homosexuals, largely gay men. You will often hear the names of Buju Banton, Beenie Man, Vybez Cartel, Elephant Man, and the group TOK among the accused, all of whom are not just mainstream performers, but some of the biggest players in the genre.
Stemming from decades of social, economic, and political turmoil in Jamaica, dancehall, along with reggae, calypso, and soca, is one of the most popular kinds of music in the Caribbean (Rogers 32). Though I am not from Jamaica and have never been there (and sometimes have to remind people this), the idea of liming and feteing while fun music plays is something that is common across the islands, and something I wish I would fit in doing amongst the locals. Socializing through music and dancing is culturally important in the Caribbean, just like church is, and the alienation and hatred caused by homophobia is naturally harmful – even deadly, to queer people living there, and to a lesser extent, it’s diaspora.
***
Despite my lack of personal connection there, my sources will naturally skew heavily towards Jamaica-centricity. Jamaica is one of the largest islands in the Caribbean, and St. Kitts Nevis, where I do have ties, is decidedly not large. This leaves a massive gap in nation/location-specific research, and making any specific claims on Nevisian culture is nearly impossible without travelling there myself. Furthermore, while I’d say that the Trinidadian-born genres of calypso and soca are more popular in St. Kitts and Nevis than dancehall, this paper will focus specifically on the issues within dancehall as a genre. With all that considered, I hope that by connecting academic research with personal experiences, I can demonstrate on a small scale that these issues extend beyond one island’s borders to and within wider Caribbean communities (including the diaspora), while still acknowledging the uniqueness and individuality of each island.
My statements are made with the intention to be transparent about my positionality while discussing potential weaknesses of my analysis. I do not, and have never lived in the Caribbean and I do not speak the dialect. While I am Nevisian both by blood and citizenship, I often refer to myself as a citizen-tourist; I am not a part of the Nevisian community culturally, nor am I enmeshed within it. Instead, I am part of the wider Caribbean diaspora.
In the fifth chapter of her book, One Place After Another, Miwon Kwon critiques and responds to both Hal Foster’s essay “The Artist as Ethnographer”, as well as various responses to it, as well as complicating the definition of “community”. While noting the potential for artists working with the idea of building and supporting communities to be exploitative or self-serving, speaking on behalf of a community for personal gain, or even aiding “in the colonization of difference” (Kwon 139-140), she also notes the role of institution/consumer in this as well, through reductionism or forcing a closer identification with a group than actually exists (141-142). Aware of the potential to be misinterpreted or seem as authoritatively informed, I feel it is important to make clear that this paper is not written by a cultural expert nor an immediate community member, but rather someone exploring their own personal relationship and interaction with a certain aspect of their own culture.
It is not easy to be queer and of Caribbean descent in the diaspora, but I am very privileged to be able to safely write this.
***
Homosexual relations, often called “buggery” in the Caribbean, is still criminalized in several areas of the region including Jamaica, Grenada, St. Lucia, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, and St. Kitts and Nevis, with penalties ranging from 10 years to life in prison. However, these laws are rarely, if ever, enforced (Handy; “Jamaica”; “UN”). In some of these places, such as St. Kitts and Nevis, these laws apply only to men engaging in same-sex sexual contact. Same-sex couples and queer people in the Caribbean live in what Joseph Farquharson aptly refers to as a “heterosexist” society- one in which the LGBTQ+ community does not maintain the same rights as their heterosexual counterparts (103). Same-sex marriage is not permitted on many islands, but there are a few in which it has been legalized. However, all islands permitting gay marriage and offering protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation are colonized territories of European countries. When France held a vote on marriage equality in 2013, two of these islands, Guadeloupe and Martinique, both abstained, but did not vote against it (Vignal).
In researching this, I came across a couple articles indicating the situation had been changing and moving towards better outcomes in various parts of the Caribbean, so I went out on a limb and cautiously asked my grandmother about how gay people were viewed in Nevis.
I was too scared to ask my cousin a couple years younger than me, lest I out myself.
My grandmother told me that she wasn’t sure there were a lot of them there, but that she also didn’t think many people really cared anymore, besides the unhappy church. Minus “a little snicker when it’s so outwardly manifested (drama queens) (sic)amusing mannerisms”, she said they were generally accepted as far as she knew (Ev.).
This seemed to partially confirm to me my hypothesis that in St. Kitts and Nevis, and likely other areas of the Caribbean, the acceptance of queer people was largely based off their ability to “pass” as straight. Speaking directly from firsthand experience, Nevis is a socially conservative island, where the idea of visually standing out is not particularly embraced and can often be seen as attention seeking or immodest. I am a queer looking person in both senses of the word. I both look weird (but hot), and as some of my friends put it, I naturally flag. Dressing when I visit my second home of Nevis takes more effort. I try to be more intentional and toned down in my appearance, yet my sense of dress is still open for critique, and is often subject to it.
Open queerness and flamboyancy have failed to live up to the assimilationist values of their communities, and are thus not seen as self expressive, but instead dramatic and amusing, often drawing some degree of derision.
However, the degree to which being part of the LGBTQ+ spectrum is accepted or tolerated within the islands seems to depend on one’s social circle or perception of tolerance. In one Human Rights Watch report about St. Lucia and St. Kitts and Nevis, one man from St. Lucia recalls multiple homophobically motivated attacks, one an attempted murder that left him with him with several stab wounds (“UN”). Another young man from St. Kitts and Nevis said that he lived in fear and was unsafe, that “‘You have to hide who you are. Otherwise, they will get physical, shouting things … I was threatened by my own mother…’” (“UN”).
It seems that the attitudes towards LGBTQ+ people in the Caribbean are likely changing for the better, albeit at a very slow pace. Anecdotally, I saw a lesbian couple on Pinney’s beach, and stared as quietly as possible for a rudely long time, shocked to see other gays on the island, open and about- something I never expected to see. I wished I could say hello.
The roots of homophobia in the Caribbean are contested, but I argue that this is largely due to, and in response to, effects of colonialism and the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The Black body, especially the Black male body was seen as “animalistic, savage, and sexually virile”; something hypersexual, brutish, and dangerous on a being to be feared, tamed, and dominated (Rogers 20-21). Simultaneously, as Rogers notes, colonial powers attempted to feminize and emasculate Black men by stripping them of “markers of masculinity” such as power or property in a patriarchal society that rewarded the masculine, or mutilating their genitals and lynching them for perceived acts of sexual aggression towards white women (21).
The import of Christianity to the Caribbean by colonizers also had an impact on its views of homosexuality, as Catholicism and various branches of Protestantism remain dominant faith practices. In the Caribbean colonies, teachings on sexuality were much more “virulent...than the metropole”, with various verses aimed to control sexuality being heavily emphasized (Rogers 24).
Even as the days of plantation slavery move further into the past, colonial echoes still persist throughout the Caribbean both socially and economically. The idea of masculinity is important, and this “machismo can be seen as an attempt to recuperate the masculinity that was denied through slavery, disenfranchisement and poverty” (Rogers 23). Heterosexuality and masculinity have also been seen as a form of resistance to colonial thought. Rastafarians, who use Babylon “as the symbol for white oppressive power” also see it as a space of “sexual and moral deviance” (Rogers 25). By using Babylon as a “symbol of political corruption, the oppression of black people, and moral decay”, it is easy to understand how people tie homosexuality to “the white power structure inflicted…from abroad, an effect of colonialism and modern tourism”: a white import (Rogers 26). In fact, homosexuals are often treated as scapegoats for the ills of society at large.
Gay men in the Caribbean, especially effeminate gay men, pose a challenge to these closely held ideals of masculinity, challenging gender norms, the idea that men are naturally supposed to be powerful and dominant, and “the straight man’s understanding of his own masculine self”’ (Rogers 23). As Farquharson notes, “One projects a heterosexual identity by publicly denouncing a homosexual one…which is the same cultural practice embodied in the public performance done on stage by dancehall artists” (107). As a genre frequently using lyrics for “social commentary and rebellion”, dancehall also “provides space for the discursive production of masculinity with its own rules of interaction and negotiation” (Farquharson 107). This sense of masculinity has to be constantly affirmed, often by the aforementioned public rebuking of homosexuals, who are stereotypically seen as inherently feminine, thus further rejecting femininity. While being sympathetic but not excusatory, homophobia can be read as a laterally violent reaction from centuries of intergenerational colonial traumas.
Homophobic lyrics are also therefore used for the purpose of policing the sexuality of gay listeners, with threatening lyrics and call-back chants during performances wishing for their deaths serving as an ironically flamboyant reminder to “stay in line with the heterosexual code (or stay in hiding)” (Farquharson 111-113). Despite being a space that allows for the transgression of social norms, sexual orientation is so often excluded from this space (Farquharson 113).
***
To many people, including myself, the knowledge of such a deeply rooted issue of homophobia is something upsetting. However, some of the most prominent international movements decrying the homophobia in dancehall have been problematic. Two of the largest activist groups around this cause have been Stop Murder Music (launched in 2004 by Peter Tatchell) and Boycott Jamaica, both having faced significant criticism for a lack of nuance and complexity in their activism (Rogers 60). Neither movement was based in the Caribbean and both were led by white men.
The development of gay communities guided by anti-assimilationist politics during the gay liberation movement arguably contributed to the embrace of an “essentialized gay identity” in largely white male dominant spaces (Rogers 45). In their quest to unify a gay identity in order to gain civil rights protection while only focusing on the issues most pressing to themselves, these white men allow space for the presumption that one’s sexual identity is the “most significant of the myriad of identities that one can possess, and that sexual identity is separable from other identities” (Rogers 49). This does a disservice towards queer women and racialized queer people, and “assumes that all gay people have a similar experience of homosexuality” (Rogers 49).
The westernized gay activist movements of Stop Murder Music and Boycott Jamaica can be reasonably said to contribute to negativeperceptions of and interactions with the Caribbean, its cultures, and its peoples, continuing to play off old familiar racist notions of “savage” Black men from the days of slavery. The methods used by both organizations perpetuates the false idea of western superiority and tolerance, as well as the idea that there is little more to know or worth learning about Jamaica (and by extent, other Caribbean countries with issues of homophobia).
Boycott Jamaica naturally promoted the activist strategy of boycotting in hopes of creating anti-homophobic change. Very aware of Jamaica’s vulnerability as a tourist economy, they called for a sweeping boycott of Jamaica entirely, by suggesting the avoidance of purchasing Jamaican imports and travelling to the country (Rogers 101). This sort of misguided activism ignores the fact that “the tourism industry is kept afloat by the unseen labour of lower-class women” and “neglects to address the political, economic, racial, and even sexual dynamics at work in Caribbean tourism, nor these same dynamics that have helped to forge the uniquely Jamaican homophobia” (Rogers 104). Moreover, Rogers notes that “Boycott Jamaica activists re-enact the literal rejection of foreign goods and invoke the American historical memory of rebellious colonists” (92).
Peter Tatchell’s work with Stop Murder Music is ostensibly innocent with outward activism focusing specifically on homophobic dancehall songs and artists rather than an entire country. One of the more prominent voices against homophobia in dancehall, Tatchell, a so-called human rights activist and Weird White Guy™, infamous for his failed attempt to conduct a citizen’s arrest on Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe, has helped shaped the discourse of homophobia in the western world since the 1990’s (Rogers 70). Despite his much more seemingly reasonable requests for boycotting, it is his bizarre commentary that appears insistent on connecting music and people from the Caribbean to homophobic violence that is problematic, as well as his other tasteless and silly requests, such as requesting that dancehall returns to reggae’s “righteous tradition” of “ONE LOVE” with his failed Reggae Compassionate Act(Rogers 78).
Tatchell’s oft platformed opinions on dancehall, which seem largely against the genre itself, play off of colonial white fears of Black men. During a period of time with notable white scapegoating of Black youth for increasing violence, he stoked the flames of racial prejudice by stating in a 1993 Independent article, “Since ragga, though, it has become impossible for me to sit in my local park without being abused” (Rogers 83). Thus, Tatchell “correlates the appearance of ragga with an increase in homophobia” (Rogers 83). As Rogers writes so concisely, “Peter Tatchell and others ignore the colonial origins of Black Jamaican masculinity and the problem of homophobia, instead attributing homophobia to a general category of black people” (24).
***
With only some of this in mind at the time, I settled down to make the playlist. At one point in my attempts, I genuinely wondered if it was even possible. However, I needed it to be. I like to imagine that making that playlist was a small act of queer-Caribbean futurity, imagining a utopic Caribbean wherein I could find a stronger sense of community.
As noted in the sixth chapter of Cruising Utopia¸ “Utopia is not prescriptive; it renders potential blueprints of a world not quite here, a horizon of possibility, not a fixed schema”, and that it is “a time that is not here yet, a certain futurity, a could be, a should be” (Muñoz 97, 99). In attempting to make a queer-friendly playlist of music from the Caribbean region, I was attempting to create my own small blueprints for the possibility of a more embracing future. Beyond being a “critique of the here and now”, this action was a “deployment of hope”: that one day the Caribbean community at large will value their many LGBTQ+ members and their rights (Muñoz 99).
While my playlist had some music by Elephant Man, who I hadn’t fully realized had homophobic lyrics at the time, I did my best. I wasn’t able to vet every artist to see if they publicly made homophobic statements, so I had to try my best to go by lyrics. Some of the songs I really enjoyed listening to and wanted to share were not ones I felt comfortable playing in a queer space, but I still managed to include a few songs I knew and loved.
These challenges led to a change in my curatorial approach. Rather than choosing mainly from the 2000’s era (give or take) of dancehall and soca, I decided to consciously explore for and include artists that were contemporary, experimental, women, and LGBTQ+ people. In a subconscious hope that the lack of pressure to be masculine would reduce the anti-gay sentiment, I looked especially for women, but quickly remembered Foxy Brown’s lyrics in “Run Dem” that treat gayness as an insult (Brown). Queer artists were the hardest to find, but I managed to find a couple that I love.
I open the playlist on an explicitly queer note with the music of Tygapaw. A queer producer from Jamaica, but living in the United States, Tygapaw creates hypnotic, experimentalcrossover dancehall, while also working to create spaces for other LGBTQ+ Caribbean artists (Mashurov). I also made sure to include the great Diana King, the first openly lesbian artist in the dancehall scene that has attained major success, and who came out after her status was attained (‘Yes, I Am a Lesbian’). During my research, I also came across a few more queer artists working in the scene that I hadn’t encountered before, such as Drew Angel, who also contends very deeply with the rife homophobia and lack of queer representation in the dancehall genre (Barnes).
***
Coming away from the playlist experience, I appreciate the new music and perspective I gained, but sometimes wonder if I would go about it differently now. Are there certain songs I would remove now due to various statements by the performers? The origins of homophobia in the Caribbean and dancehall are complex, and the often white, western critics ignore the nuances of colonial impact. To be queer is not something inherently separate from being Black or from being of Caribbean descent, despite the ways various forces have tried to separate the two. It is easy to decry or boycott a genre or country when your only perspective of them comes from touristy exoticism, but for those who have an intertwined cultural connection to these places and activities, the lines are blurred and hard to draw, and will likely remain that way forever.
For a genre that confronts many taboos, I can only hope one day dancehall, and those in the Caribbean as well, will confront the growing taboo of homophobia in themselves.
Works Cited
Barnes, Jordan. Queering Dancehall: Drew Angel. Public Pressure, 23 Nov. 2015,
www.publicpressure.org/drew-strips-the-typical-dancehall-identity-down-to-its-core/.
Brown, Foxy. “Run Dem (feat. Baby Cham)”. Broken Silence, Dave Kelley and Cham, Def Jam
Recordings, 2001, track 10. Genius, genius.com/11497166
Ev., M. Text message to author. 28 Mar. 2021.
Farquharson, Joseph. “Faiya-Bon: The Socio-Pragmatics of Homophobia in Jamaican
(Dancehall) Culture.” Politeness and Face in Caribbean Creoles, edited by Susanne
Mühleisen, John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2005, pp. 101–118.
Handy, Gemma. “The Region Which Legislates Who You Can Love.” BBC News, BBC, 1 Jan.
2020, www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-50822222.
“Jamaica.” Human Dignity Trust, www.humandignitytrust.org/country-profile/jamaica/.
Kwon, Miwon. “The (Un)Sitings of Community.” One Place After Another: Site-Specific Art
and Locational Identity, MIT Press, 2004, pp. 138–155.
Mashurov, NM. “How A New York Producer Is Creating A Platform for Queer Caribbean
Artists.” The FADER, 7 Nov. 2017, www.thefader.com/2016/04/01/tygapaw-fake-accent-interview.
Muñoz, José Esteban. “Stages: Queers, Punks and the Utopian Performative.” Cruising Utopia:
the Then and There of Queer Futurity, by Muñoz José Esteban, New York University
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Rogers, James. “'Killer Vacations' and 'Murder Music': the Discourses of Gay Identity,
Consumerism, and Race in the Gay-Dancehall Confrontation.” Western University,
School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies, University of Western Ontario, 2010.
“UN: Eastern Caribbean States Called Out Over Anti-LGBT Bias.” Human Rights Watch, 21
Jan. 2021, www.hrw.org/news/2021/01/21/un-eastern-caribbean-states-called-out-over
anti-lgbt-bias.
Vignal, François. “Mariage Pour Tous : Le Détail Du Vote Au Sénat.” Public Senat, 20 Apr.
2013, www.publicsenat.fr/lcp/politique/mariage-tous-d-tail-vote-s-nat-366892.
'Yes, I Am a Lesbian' - Diana King. Jamaica Gleaner, 28 June 2012, Jamaica
gleaner.com/power/38180.