From: ray@unisql.UUCP (Ray Shea)
Newsgroups: rec.music.reggae
Subject: Re: Annoyances ( was Re: Blue eyed dub)
Date: 8 Jan 93 15:53:11 GMT
Organization: UniSQL, Inc., Austin, Texas, USA

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.

>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.


>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.

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).

Dunno what I'm getting at here, really.  Maybe other people have thoughts on
the subject?

-- 
Ray Shea                                      
UniSQL, Inc.                             Sometimes I feel like a blue dog.
unisql!ray@cs.utexas.edu                                     -- The Blue Dog
DoD #0372 -- Team Twinkie -- '88 Hawk NT650