Soca music has created reinforcement of some negative behaviours in our society.
This was an argument put forward by Dr. Sueann Barratt during the panel “Where we going with Soca? Evaluating An Art Form Through Machel Montano’s music” at a Carifesta symposium.
Dr Barratt has a PHD in Interdisciplinary Gender Studies (IGDS).
The panel was part of Carifesta’s Journey Round Myself Symposium held at the University of the West Indies’ Department of Creative Festival Arts Main Hall on Monday.
Barratt, referring to the criticism lobbied against Farmer Nappy’s ‘Hooking Meh’ in Barbados earlier this year, said many times songs we enjoyed often provided an undertone which supports abusive behaviour in relationships.
Critics had claimed that the song and its video promoted toxic masculine behaviour in relationships and encouraged domestic violence.
“Within that song we have that tension, that inherent contradiction between a social relation between genders that are idealised, romanticised and even exoticised. The erotic is made palatable,” said Barratt, “But at the same time, we have a root message about violence in that I am entitled to you and where that entitlement is not met, you are at fault and thus create a problem. Now a lot of people miss that.”
Barrat said she was taken aback when some of her students stated that some people want to be “a trophy” as Nappy had sung in the song, as she could not overlook the restrictive message of the song.
“Some people definitely recognise you want to be appreciated you want to be valued and intelligible but you do not want to be an object that is contained and controlled. You do not want to be placed on a shelf without freedom,” said Dr. Barratt.
She said, however, ‘Hooking Meh’ was not the only song guilty of having subtle messages which empowered toxic attitudes.
“There are obvious hedonistic messages, ‘gyal bend over let me jam yuh’ we know why that is over, let me slam you up. That’s obvious, we know what that is about and I could do a gender analysis of that,” she said, “But then you have those that rest at that moment of tension, we have to contemplate. The obvious we can easily resist or comply with but those that are subtle and make the invisible more invisible creates norms around troubling things like violence and control be they in relationships or not.”
She said with this subliminally fed to us through our music we cannot be surprised when it translates into music.
“As we listen to our culture, we often have moral panic at the end of the festival. Oh my God why do these things happen all?” she said, “What troubles me mostly as I look at the lyrics of music is that in that message we reinforce the very things that we find problematic. It’s ok to act upon somebody else’s body without consent, remember the whole stress when you say you can’t ‘whine’? We’ve been negotiating it for years and we’ve been negotiating it without trouble. So I think I would love if we could reflect upon that.”
