The firestorm created by the dancehall hit Rampin' Shop and its subsequent banning, along with all daggerin' songs, by the Broadcasting Commission has already yielded a remarkable consensus.

From ardent, hardcore dancehall supporters to dancehall artistes themselves as well as ordinary Jamaicans, there is now common agreement that certain songs should not be played on radio. In this fractious place called Jamaica, all strata of society now agree that our children should be protected from certain material. This consensus achieved in so short a time of this recent phase of the controversy over dancehall must not be taken for granted, and represents a major advance in the struggle for decency and good taste in media.

What is now seen as egregiously irresponsible and reprehensible is that our electronic media had failed to police themselves and had to await the edict of the Broadcasting Commission to pull up their socks, as it were. It is refreshing to hear even the staunchest supporters of dancehall now begin their discussion on the Broadcasting Commission's decision by acknowledging that certain songs should not really be played on radio.

payola activities

We all know that corruption in the media accounts for some of its decadence and laxity in upholding standards of decency. Some people in media play what they are paid to play and what they can get away with. The Broadcasting Commission has narrowed the range of payola activities and so now all the daggerin' artistes can find other uses for their money rather than corrupting our children and polluting our airwaves.

We have also achieved consensus that certain lewd songs should not be played on our buses - again, this is a major victory, for while the state had spoken on that matter we did not have the level of societal agreement that this should be non-negotiable. I have not heard one dancehall supporter defend the sacred right of bus drivers to have dancehall songs dagger the ears of our children, senior citizens and conservative citizens.

So we are agreed that our airwaves and our public transportation should be liberated from slackness. Now, what about those poor, innocent and decent ghetto people who are trapped in communities where they are constantly assaulted by the most vulgar, the most lewd, the most crass dancehall music blaring from sound systems and people's homes? That is the next front in this battle.

I see the Jamaica Council of Churches (JCC) has, however belatedly, joined the resistance and has unleashed some artillery. The JCC has called for the banning of street and community dances which play these songs.

While this might strike some as going too far and infringing on people's right to enjoy themselves, my question concerns the right of citizens not to be offended by other citizens exercising their 'rights'. In other words, your right should not impede mine.

What makes your right to enjoy yourself and to 'have fun' higher than my right to a peaceful sleep and to conversation unpunctuated by bad words, vulgarity and obscenity through your music? What about my right to grow my children without subjecting them to the most coarse, the most obscene, the most crude expressions and profanity through sound systems and so-called community dances?

What percentage of people from these communities are at these 'community dances'? Using purely democratic principles, what gives the minority in any community the inalienable right to organise a dance whose music offends the sensibilities of the majority in that same community? The fact that other people, including from uptown, come to that community to spend money and buy services from community members does not justify this community violation.

My question to uncritical dancehall defenders is this: If you agree that children ought not to be forced to hear certain songs or should be shielded from them in the media, then why is it acceptable for them to be forced to hear it through community dances and sound systems?

The hundred-stab deejay Aidonia in a Breakfast Club interview in which we participated last week uttered the nonsense in response to my point about the pollution from sound systems that children should be in their beds by 9 o'clock.

I had to remind him that in many inner cities, sound systems and home systems play day and night and some cannot get their sleep because of the pounding in their ears. These people who are making their money from dances in violation of the Noise Abatement Act don't care one bit about anybody else's right.

In the name of democracy and rights alone, let's put some controls on what can be played at sessions where citizens are not insulated. I am not a killjoy and don't care if there are multiple dancehall sessions across the country urging people to 'dagga dat' and to give the hundred stab in the Rampin' Shop as long as they are not disturbing others. I'll live and let live - but don't interfere with my rights while talking rubbish about my denying you yours.

dancehall defenders

There are some standard diversionary arguments offered by uncritical dancehall defenders, and they irritate me. For example, people ask who gives these uptown people the right to dictate values to the masses. Who appointed these middle-class hypocrites like Boyne, Tyson and Blaine to dictate morals and to be Ayatollahs?

Just a question, dancehall defender: Do you honestly believe that the majority of people in poor communities are social radicals who see nothing offensive or lewd about songs like Rampin' Shop, Hundred Stab, Tek B ..., etc? Forget about uptown. Think about ordinary ghetto people, many of whom go to church and, even if they don't, are conservative socially. Do you really think their sensibilities would not be offended by some of the songs which the Broadcasting Commission has banned? So it is not that uptown is imposing values on these people - except to the extent that they accept them through 'indoctrination'. These are the people's accepted values. In fact, uptown people are more liberal and libertarian than most poor people in the ghetto.

So stop this nonsense about uptown people's dictating values to poor people. Who are more conservative socially than poor people? (Yes, a lot of 'bruk out' people live in ghetto but they are not the majority).

Then soca and carnival are usually brought up and I agree totally. I am on record, for years, as 'burning fire' on slackness in soca. There is no way the Broadcasting Commission can wink at carnival gyrations being carried on television while banning daggerin'. No sir, one law for all. No hypocrisy on this one because soca is big people 'suppen'. But usually people raise the soca argument as a means of escaping the force of the argument against lewdness in dancehall. That soca can be just as lewd as dancehall is not a reason to ignore dancehall's violations.

the serious issues

Is the concern over morality and issues of sexuality just prudishness and trivia? Is that just a diversion from 'the serious issues' of crime, economic decline and the crisis with our dollar, unemployment and social stagnation? No. Indeed, issues of sexuality are bound up with those matters. It is sexual promiscuity which has left so many of our youth fatherless and which has fostered poverty in female-headed homes; phenomena associated with our high crime rate and the waste of our human resources.

Our exchange rate is constantly under pressure and we are not competitive with even our regional partners, let alone with third markets, in part because our sexual promiscuity and dysfunctional family structures have handicapped us. Our poverty and underdevelopment bear some relationship with our sexual looseness.

We need a moral revolution before we can have any economic revolution in this country. Our concern over issues involving sex is not a diversion from "serious issues", as some would think. Former media executive Marcia Forbes has done some very important empirical work establishing the unequivocal link between the representation of sex in the electronic media and irresponsible sexual behaviour in young people.

In her PhD thesis for the UWI she says, "heavy viewing of videos (over one hour per day) influences Jamaican adolescents into a culture of sex!" In one of her sections titled 'Boys at Risk!' she says based on her extensive research:

"The more music videos in general boys watched the more likely they were to hold permissive sexual attitudes and engage in sexual types of behaviours, especially risky sex such as many different partners and not always using a condom."

She found that 98.2 per cent of adolescents watch music videos, noting that "Adolescent boys in general, but especially 10-12 year-olds, are at the highest risk of engaging in sexual activities."

You don't build an economy and promote peace and stability when large numbers of children are having children and when men engage in hit-and-run sexual behaviour. (Incidentally, we have to be concerned about hip hop and R&B music, too. It's one more stream of decadence, though dancehall is more influential here).

patently offensive

In Miller vs California, the US Supreme Curt stated clearly that obscenity receives no First Amendment protection - with obscenity defined as material that is patently offensive to community standards. Forget the argument about Fundamentalist Christians' imposing their outdated views on others. Once we establish that ordinary people would find certain things obscene, those things must be controlled.

The fact is that the Western world generally is facing a philosophical crisis as a result of the collapse of various meta-narratives, not just standard Christian morality. Mutabaruka can stand with Christians on this issue for Muta is an ideologue, not a nihilist like some of the academic defenders of dancehall. As Professor John Kang says in his paper Taking Safety Seriously: Using Liberalism to Fight Pornography: "Liberalism, the argument goes, lacks the epistemic resources to judge right from wrong."

In our postmodernist world, right and wrong is purely subjective and contextual. Ah, but here the nihilists can't escape my dagger: If values are subjectively determined and the majority finds something offensive, the minority has no right to force it on them. Argument done.

Aidonia delivers one of his songs at Red Stripe 'Beer Evolution Party and Show', held at Mas Camp, Oxford Road, New Kingston, on Friday, September 29, 2006. - Winston Sill/Freelance Photographer

Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist who may be reached at ianboyne1@yahoo.com or columns@gleanerjm.com.