AT­TIL­LAH SPRINGER

Look how the sun now rais­ing up

And the crowd now wak­ing up

The at­mos­phere have vibes

And nut­ting can't break it up

Dif­fer­en­tol­ogy, Bun­ji Gar­lin

The biggest sea­son of dis­trac­tion is al­most up­on us. In the midst of the win­ing, at least we'll have some­thing to take our at­ten­tion away from the big wine-and-jam sand­wich the coun­try is cur­rent­ly un­der­go­ing at the hands of the Gov­ern­ment and the Op­po­si­tion.

Town say Bun­ji's Dif­fer­en­tol­ogy is the tune to watch. And in the mo­ments that I can stand the mind-numb­ing sub-lit­er­ate dri­v­el that pass­es for ra­dio an­nounc­ing, they play the same five or six tunes and Dif­fer­en­tol­ogy is one of them. And I can say, yes; it's a sweet tune in that in­nocu­ous, slight­ly sac­cha­rine kind of way we have be­come ac­cus­tomed to.

It's an­oth­er in the line of easy, sim­plis­tic groovy so­ca of­fer­ings for us to chip hap­pi­ly down the road to. It's nice, in that way that so­ca can be. Non-threat­en­ing and pleas­ant. It has none of the sexy ag­gres­sion of his 2012 hit So and So; that was so­ca sidling up to dub­step and bussing a sweet wine.

When so­ca dares to do that, the world sits up and lis­tens. But this Dif­fer­en­tol­ogy, I'm not re­al­ly sure what's that dif­fer­ent. And now more than ever we need some dif­fer­ence to break up the mo­not­o­ny of the same­ness. There was a time when Bun­ji had the po­ten­tial to be the new hope for so­ca.

Lyri­cal­ly he could be a tick­ing time bomb. But per­haps prod­uct en­dorse­ments keep one on the safe side of po­lit­i­cal crit­i­cism. Some peo­ple say so­cial com­men­tary has no place in so­ca. It's par­ty mu­sic, and so­cial com­men­tary has no place in a fete.

But the com­par­a­tive stan­dard re­mains dance­hall and in the 90s and even the noughties un­til now, amidst the bleached-out, blinged-up slack­ness there are glim­mers of de­fi­ance when some­body dares to say some­thing about Ja­maica's prob­lem­at­ic so­cio-eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion.

Mu­sic has al­ways had more than one func­tion. Mu­sic can be as mul­ti-di­men­sion­al as you want it to be and the last thing we should be do­ing is lim­it­ing our­selves or worse, lim­it­ing our artists. But maybe we're just too hap­py in Trinidad.

Every­thing is nice and we get­ting ready for the road. VAT gone on ba­sic food items and in case you didn't know Am­bas­sador Neil Parsan in­formed us this week that In­di­ans are the nu­mer­i­cal­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly su­pe­ri­or race of the Caribbean.

Every­thing is nice and if you go to Movi­eTowne you get treat­ed to a ten-minute in­fomer­cial about some­thing that seems like a done deal for the cre­ative in­dus­tries with­out any sort of con­sul­ta­tion. Every­thing is nice and we get­ting ready for the road. So it's okay for us to have more of the same. More of the same mu­sic. More of the same pol­i­tics. More of the same voic­es telling us how won­der­ful and blessed we are.

Dif­fer­en­tol­ogy is def­i­nite­ly what we need. A re­al­ly dif­fer­ent ol­o­gy. We ready for the road, yes. But not to fete. We ready for the road to protest. We ready for the road to some ac­tu­al po­lit­i­cal change. The ca­pac­i­ty for tem­plates is high in this coun­try. The ca­pac­i­ty for if-it-ain't-broke-don't-fix-it is sec­ond na­ture.

We, all of us, need to throw away the tem­plates that aren't work­ing and start again. I got in trou­ble with Bun­ji's fans on­line the oth­er day for sug­gest­ing that he was any­thing else be­sides the sav­iour of so­ca mu­sic. I think he could be.

And I not vex with him. Be­cause like every­body else, he just try­ing to eat a food. He could put his wit and lyri­cal gun­ta-ness to mash­ing up all mock­ing pre­tenders fine like chili­bib­bi. He could make politi­cians and gang­sters alike cringe with shame. He could san­ti­man­i­tay the coun­try in five vers­es come up with on the spot. I've seen him do it at So­ca Monarch with ease.

Bun­ji could pret­ty much do any­thing he pleas­es. But what Bun­ji is giv­ing us right now is in­dif­fer­en­tol­gy and we love him for it. Dif­fer­en­tol­ogy is a heavy bur­den for any­one to car­ry. Which is why I guess no one wants to car­ry it. No one wants to re­al­ly be dif­fer­ent in a town that rev­els so much in same­ness that peo­ple take a loan to wear a tiny, se­quinned uni­form for two days.

Dif­fer­ent in­deed. So dif­fer­ent, so spe­cial. Like the rest of us who de­cide to do the min­i­mum re­quire­ments for work, for re­la­tion­ships, for dri­ving. Don't over-ex­tend your­self too much. We like to stay in our cor­ners and bat in our crease.

We could do a lot more. We could get ready for the road to change.

We need a dif­fer­ent ecol­o­gy. A dif­fer­ent psy­chol­o­gy. We need all ki­nah dif­fer­ent olo­gies. Some­body has to dare to be dif­fer­ent. You ready? I def­i­nite­ly ready. What will it take for the rest of the coun­try to be ready?