Sounds of the Citizens: Dancehall and Community in Jamaica

3. Dancehall Dilemmas: Sounds from the Disquieted Margins

74 SOUNDS OF THE CITIZENS access to government assistance for additional schooling. However, since he didn’t have shoes to wear to school, he dropped out during the same time period in which the exam was being held. He stopped attending school in the ninth grade even though he was the prefect and the vice-chairperson for the student council. After dropping out he began attending training classes in electronics, where he met some youths that had a sound system while he was learning a trade. In a familiar story, a lack of family resources created a situation in which he could not continue attending school, despite his own interest and active participation in school activities. “Training” is often used as a safety net for children raised in poverty, who often cannot progress in school. The obstacles to poor children’s educational attainment consist of a variety of challenges that might include any combination of the following: hunger; a lack of adequate supplies, including uniforms and shoes; the inability to cover annual fees; a lack of emotional support and discipline; a lack of consistent utilities and adequate study space; inability to travel to school because of periods of violence; or the need to contribute to the household financially. Training is available through many outlets in Kingston , including private enterprises, as in Dads’s electronics training, but also through government-sponsored programs and community and church organizations. Training is usually geared toward the acquisition of a marketable skill, such as construction and furniture building for men, and sewing or catering for women. In Dads’s case, his training in electronics placed him in the company of sound system operators who eventually took him on.18 Through the sound system, he was introduced to the Jamaican music industry , which would eventually facilitate his aspirations to become a member of the black bourgeoisie and to participate in the day-to-day, as well as longer-term, development-oriented patronage activities in Guy Town. Conclusion Patronage practices in communities like Guy Town are rooted in moral economies of giving outlined in the Introduction that provide criteria with which to evaluate social standing through reputation, respect, and respectability. By successfully leveraging social status, patrons and ordinary community members alike are able to initiate relations of loyalty and mutuality that provide both personal protections from violence as well as access to financial and social resources. Historically, Jamaican po- “Give thanks for that man deh fi di place” 75 litical parties utilized patronage relations within this context of ongoing scarcity in order to influence voting patterns. With the growth of the drug trade and concomitant influx of illegal financial gains, the criminal networks that were cultivated by party patronage arrangements became patrons in their own right. Additionally, the perceived failure of government representatives, including MPs, to fulfill the requirements of reputation through sharing resources with constituents, alongside widespread austerity measures that have disproportionately affected poor communities , has created a struggle for community allegiance. The Jamaican government is now seen as alien and intrusive within urban ghetto communities , whereas the patronage practices of local community members including shopkeepers, record producers, and organized criminals have taken shape with a deep understanding of local values involving partici­ pants’ appropriate response to the needs of others and the avoidance of meanness, in the cultivation of loyalty. Here, informal community-based systems of justice and economic redistribution connected to these community -level patrons have in significant ways usurped the activities of the state in caring for its citizens. As state retraction led to greater disenfranchisement of poor urban communities, the state’s illegal but licit partnership with systems of community justice and wealth redistribution intensified as a crucial extension of state governance. Such alliances efficiently created a tenuous stability in areas that could no longer be effectively administered through traditional means because of the state’s lack of financial resources and the shift to a neoliberal style of governance. In the next chapter, I examine the role of Jamaican dancehall music, also a product of Kingston ghetto communities and their elaborate systems of patronage, in order to apprehend the social norms regarding class, gender , and social status expressed by performers and consumers; the special role of street parties within community systems of status attainment; and the controversial positioning of the popular style within Jamaican debates concerning the definition of national culture. 76   CHAPTER 3 Dancehall Dilemmas Sounds from the Disquieted...