Deb­bie Ja­cob

The mu­sic we lis­ten to re­flects our in­ner­most feel­ings and our re­la­tion­ship with so­ci­ety, and if so­ci­ety does not of­fer op­por­tu­ni­ties for jobs and a mean­ing­ful life, then mu­sic won't of­fer nar­ra­tives that re­flect hope and op­por­tu­ni­ty for lov­ing re­la­tion­ships and ac­cep­tance in­to so­ci­ety. That is why we have hip hop cul­ture in­fil­trat­ing T&T. That's why so many teenagers lis­ten to vi­o­lent dance­hall and rap mu­sic that ter­ri­fies those of us who lock our­selves away from a cer­tain fac­tion in so­ci­ety.

If mu­sic does have a "re­in­forc­ing ef­fect" as schol­ars such as Den­nis Howard have ob­served, then so­ci­ety must take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for this vi­o­lent mu­sic, not the an­gry youth who lis­ten to it. Mu­sic, movie and TV pro­duc­ers have a choice about the prod­ucts they cre­ate and dump on so­ci­ety. Ra­dio sta­tions have a choice about the mu­sic they play. They feed a vibe; they push a vibe. They bat­ter lost souls with a mind-numb­ing, re­lent­less force that en­cour­ages vi­o­lence and drug use.

As a teenag­er, when I switched on the ra­dio, I heard a va­ri­ety of mu­sic: pop, coun­try, dis­co, rhythm and blues. Many teenagers in the Caribbean don't seem to re­alise that oth­er mu­sic ex­ists.

The fact that there is an in­dus­try to pack­age and pro­mote rage is the re­al is­sue here be­cause it is noth­ing more than a form of slav­ery meant to keep cer­tain peo­ple in their place: at the bot­tom of the so­cio-eco­nom­ic rung. Those movie videos with pimps weighed down with os­ten­ta­tious gold neck­laces feed the imag­i­na­tions of un­e­d­u­cat­ed, an­gry youth.

A young man I'll call Vaughn, who was once con­vict­ed of sev­er­al counts of vi­o­lent armed rob­bery, spoke of what dance­hall mu­sic and rap means to young men in his cir­cle."The Amer­i­can me­dia makes it easy to iden­ti­fy with rap mu­sic and hip hop cul­ture. If you're watch­ing the life sto­ries of hip hop artistes, you'll see they have mon­ey. When we switch on the ra­dio and TV we hear 'mon­ey, mon­ey, mon­ey'. Those are the peo­ple in our world who have mon­ey," says Vaughn.

Vaughn says that teenagers who lis­ten to the mu­sic iden­ti­fy with the theme of suc­cess more than vi­o­lence."To me, dance­hall and rap por­trays the kind of lifestyle that young peo­ple would like to live with the par­ty­ing, flashi­ness, jew­ellery, cars, girls and clothes. Every­one wants these things. The videos show that these rap­pers have suc­ceed­ed. They got all of those things. It might look over the top, but that just sym­bol­is­es suc­cess."

To Vaughn, part of the prob­lem is that peo­ple are bash­ing the mu­sic with­out re­al­ly lis­ten­ing to it. "The words might be ex­plic­it, but the mes­sage can be deep, de­pend­ing on your lev­el of un­der­stand­ing," he says. "The mes­sage is com­ing across in a form you can en­joy. Some­times you laugh at the mes­sage."

These days Vaughn says he lis­tens to rap­per Meek Mill. It's a per­son­al thing be­cause he was locked up. He came out and de­cid­ed he didn't want to go back in­to drugs. He de­cid­ed to use mu­sic as a ve­hi­cle for suc­cess be­cause he had tal­ent.

"I was in­car­cer­at­ed for a pe­ri­od of time. Every­thing got tak­en away from me. I'm try­ing to be hon­est and still do all the things I en­joy so I iden­ti­fy with Meek Mill. Be­fore he was in­car­cer­at­ed, Meek Mill used to do all the things he's do­ing now, par­ty­ing and every­thing, but the funds he was get­ting were il­le­gal. Now, he's get­ting le­gal mon­ey through his mu­sic. That's the mes­sage I'm get­ting from him. Most of the songs bring a mes­sage: Don't let any­one tell you that you can't be this or that," he said.

He al­so lis­tens to The Game for the same rea­sons. "This fel­low, The Game, was in jail. He stud­ied all the rap mu­sic and came up with his own style. To me, rap­pers like The Game and Meek Mill come as as­sis­tance. They help you with your life. They give you a goal: suc­cess. They un­der­stand what young peo­ple are go­ing through."

Vaughn says, "The deep­est way to get a mes­sage out is mu­sic." He al­so says that peo­ple lis­ten to the mu­sic they can re­late to in their own lives. "You're liv­ing a cer­tain lifestyle and you hear a mu­sic that re­flects your lifestyle and you're at­tract­ed to that. I wouldn't say that mu­sic can force peo­ple to be a cer­tain way.

I could tell you from per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ence that if you're do­ing half the things rap­pers are singing about and you're not strong enough you can end up go­ing the full way. I'm talk­ing from ex­pe­ri­ence. But I wouldn't say any mu­sic could force you to do some­thing you don't re­al­ly want to do. I can't bring a cer­tain genre of mu­sic and tell you be like this."

Vaughn be­lieves the biggest prob­lem with rap mu­sic is that it "...trig­gers a sense of di­vi­sion. The mes­sage is clear: There's one way for us and one way for you. All we're do­ing is look­ing for a pos­si­ble way out of a sit­u­a­tion that feels stag­nant. Rap­pers give us that."

There's no doubt about it: For many youths, rap­pers are the on­ly role mod­els they have.