What Out a WHAT, Now?

Gays and Lesbians Protest Capleton at House of Blues



People, you know me pretty well by now.



You know that there is absolutely not a racist bone in my body--at least, I HOPE you know that by now....



But I gotta say this.



It would be much, much, MUCH easier for me to get worked up about the anti-gay, anti-lesbian, anti-woman lyrics of these Jamaican reggae dancehall songs....



....if I had the SLIGHTEST, EVERFUCKING IDEA of what they were actually SAYING.



I have very good hearing. From childhood, I have been able to decipher lyrics that no one else has been able to get. Friends come up to me and ask "What did they just say?" and I can tell them. It's a gift borne of long hours of listening to loud guitars, men with big hair, and lyrics like "BLLLARRARRRRRRGGHHHHH@!!!!!" Hip-hop? Same thing. I can pick out lyrics from almost anything....okay, I have a little problem hearing Twista once in a while, but shit, who doesn't? the man's in Guinness, for god's sake.



But starting with Max-i-millian back in '95 or so, and moving on through Beenie Man, Sean Paul, all those guys who are so popular now....If I can pick one sentence out of thirty, I'm calling it a good day. They could be saying "feed all the hungry children, vote for John Kerry"--or they could be saying "eat a basket of dead babies, we are all good Republicans". I would not have the slightest inkling either way.



LJ (or maybe it's one of his friends) has this movie on DVD, about Jamaican drug gangs--"Shottaz", I think it's called--and the damn thing has SUBTITLES. (Of all the people who I would have expected to catch watching a subtitled movie, I gotta tell you, LJ and the guys were NOT on the list. Not at ALL.) So clearly I'm not the only one who has a problem with Jamaican patois.



So to me, this protest against Capleton and his lyrics is a little bit like protesting a book that advocates terrorism--written in Esperanto. I mean, yeah, sure, the content's there--at least, I THINK it's there--but how many people can understand it enough to absorb the ideas that cause you such offense???