BUJU BUSTED!

Jamaican tourism commercials feature beach walks and tropical cocktails set to a hypnotic, sun-drenched reggae beat. You may experience a different kind of beat if you're gay. Like getting your ass beat a gang of gay-bashers who are thoughtful enough to make house calls. (I guess "Try Jah Love" doesn't extend to the gay community, but try Jah fist does.) Buju Banton, the popular Jamaican reggae artist whose lyrics advocate killiing gays, will be sentenced today for joining just such a gang of thugs. Well-organized protests in forward-thinking countries have lead to the cancellation of many of his concerts, so perhaps he was taking revenge. Yeah, right. So please explain the rest of the bashers' motives. I wish him only the worst in his trial today.

I have mixed feelings about censorship in music. On one hand, I don't think anyone's expression should be muted by what society thinks. We would have lost out on a lot of great songs that way. (I remember radio stations banning Donna Summer's LOVE TO LOVE YOU BABY because it had orgasmic groans in it.) If I write a song which some people find objectionable--and trust me I have--I want the freedom to perform/promote it even though it doesn't jive with public opinion. Particularly in this country, where the born again crackpots seem to be shifting public opinion back to the days of the Puritans. But the issue gets gets a lot stickier when you are attacking/recommending murder, particularly of an already beleaguered group like gays, jews, blacks, women, felchers, etc. And it gets even stickier when the group is well-organized. Dammit, I've just GOT to mobilize us felchers a little bit better!

I guess it's just a fine line. I was on the opposite side of that line regarding the Elton John/Eminem duet on the Grammys a few years back. I was surprised that Elton would team up with a homophobic rapper, but it was Em who suggested the pairing, so maybe he's not as hateful as he tries to seem. But I'm glad they did team up. Elton sang the haunting, Dido-penned chorus in STAN, a grim tale about a crazed fan who slits his pregnant girlfriend's throat and stuffs the corpse into his trunk. And Eminem's rap is amazing story-telling. Sick, yes. But intelligent, creative and very moving. You could even argue that STAN has a message: if you're completely living for the attention of your favorite recording artist, this may point to a possibly dangerous imbalance. Eminem knows about mental instability and has probably received some very disturbing fan mail in his time, so he was writing from experience and I prefer a real expression like this to some sugar-coated "lets-make-a-formulaic-hit" approach to song-writing. And he wasn't advocating killing your girlfriend. I guess that's where I draw the line. Cuz I would never want anyone to kill MY girlfriend. What's the point in torturing her if she's not even alive to feel it?

But my mind isn't made up and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this!