From: mcbean@vax.oxford.ac.uk
Newsgroups: rec.music.reggae
Subject: Re: Annoyances ( was Re: Blue eyed dub)
Date: 9 Jan 93 01:33:47 GMT
Organization: Oxford University VAX 6620

In article <4498@unisql.UUCP>, ray@unisql.UUCP (Ray Shea) writes:
> In article <1993Jan7.165810.11135@vax.oxford.ac.uk> mcbean@vax.oxford.ac.uk writes:
>>I would extend (or more precisely change that) to "people who aren't Rastafari
>>should not wear locks".  It really annoys me to see people taking a religious
>>symbol and making it into a fashion statement or an indicator of how
>>hip/cool/down/with it they really are.
> 
> Well, no offense, Mcbean, but I get kind of annoyed when people say that other 
> people "shouldn't" do something or dress some way just because they have 
> different reasons for doing so.  I understand the significance of dreadlocks 
> in Rastafarianism, but I don't think that that means that others who don't 
> subscribe to the religion "shouldn't" wear them.  It's like a Christian 
> telling all the death rock kids that they shouldn't wear crosses and rosaries 
> if they're not Xtian, or trappist monks or white supremacists telling me I 
> shouldn't shave my head if I'm not Catholic/racist.

I disagree with you on some of this, but maybe we can agree to disagree.  I
believe that it is a mark of disrespect when you take somebody's obvious
religious and spiritual symbols and treat them with trite disregard.  For
example if some group believes that a certain area is sacred, then though I
won't agree I will respect their beliefs.  Same thing goes with locks.  It's
probably due to my having grown up in Jamaica, where you would not be wearing
locks for fashion.

> 
>>The same goes for when people start talking about reggae or if , heaven forbid,
>>they find out you are Jamaican!  Suddenly they lose all lucidity and competence
>>in English.  The trite phrases which many Jamaicans no longer use in everyday
>>conversation such as "mon", "irie", "one love" along with the dozen or so come
>>tripping off their tongue, and the sort of silly, slow form of speech, as if we
>>couldn't possibly understand your normal way of talking. (Note how this
>>newsgroup is littered with lot's of """rasta speak"""-:)
> 
> 
> I agree.  It's like the annoying tendency of certain white people to talk
> "black"...but only when talking to black people, or when talking about funk or 
> hip-hop...when they talk about query optimization or whatever, it's back to 
> so-called "white" talk.

They don't tend to talk "black" right anyway.  By the time they have got the
slang right it's already passe.
> 
> 
>>This I find annoying.  If white boys play reggae, all I ask is that they do it
>>properly, If they don't, I'm not buying their records.  Come to think of it
>>their whiteness is pretty irrelevant to the music.
> 
> Good reggae is good reggae.  Of course, it does happen to turn out that most
> good reggae, like most good jazz, or most good rap, is done by black people.
> But I don't really think that is just coincidence.

It's a function of culture, which in this case is tied up with race.  So I'd be
more inclined to listen to reggae done by a white J'can or West Indian, than by
a white group from the midwest.

> 
> I wonder, do people think there is a credibility problem sometimes with white
> reggae artists?  I know in my own mind, when I hear a white reggae group (the
> same also holds for white rappers), I sometimes feel like they're going to 
> have to prove themselves to me more than if they were black.  And when I hear 
> rap/reggae I don't like, by white artists, it often seems to me that some
> quality of "whiteness" about it is what I don't like...whereas when the artist
> is black, I usually have other reasons (Most dancehall stuff doesn't thrill,
> for instance).

Always goes back to culture.  I wouldn't know how to appreciate heavy metal in
a month of Sundays.  Also the history of black music being ripped off
continuously gives a feeling of deja vu, which becomes almost a reflex action.
                                                                              
McBean