Fly Girl

Matt Matches
ES 397 Blog 3

Fly Girl

Female hip-hop artists are known for using their words, attitude and appearance to articulate their identity  in ways more than just making themselves look foxy, but as a notion to address the issue of feminism within society.

In the 1970’s blaxploitation films emerged within the United States. Originally made for a urban black audience, the genre soon appealed to a wide variety of of people, especially women. Why you ask? Not because of the dry humor, or funky music but because of the fly girls. Fly was a term used to describe someone in women’s clothing that had fashionable hairstyles, jewelry and cosmetics. The style grew from the various female characters within blaxploitation films. Some films include, Foxy Brown, Superfly, Shaft, and The Mack. The “fly” persona in these films influenced a wave of Black contemporary youth who in turn resurrected “flyness” and its continuum in hip hop culture. This was most influential towards black women than any other race. The black fly girls express a growing awareness of their erotic selves by sculpting their own personas and as “writing their own bodies”. At the time society might have had control over what women of color were able to do, but the fly girls weren’t going to let anybody control what they looked like, how they acted or what they said. “Women who have worked hard to keep our bodies in shape; we’re proud to show them off, we’re not ashamed of our sexuality; for we’re Salt-N-Pepa, sexier and more in control” - Salt-N-Pepa.

Appearance is one thing, but let’s talk about words and attitude. U.N.I.T.Y., words spoken directly from Queen Latifah, and also the title of her hit song. The first real lyrics of the song are “who you callin’ a bitch?” From the get go you can tell she’s got an attitude and she’s expressing her feelings in a way where any normal person wouldn’t want to retaliate. I’ll post a link of the music video below but within the video Queen Latifah is standing in front of a large group of people, hence uniting with others. She’s expressing  visual examples of what she’s talking about in her song. Her dress isn’t your typical girly girl attire, she’s wearing a lot of different styles, representing personal attitude and self-identity within the hip-hop culture. Later in the video she struggles from domestic violence and stands up to revolt, in doing so this lyrically and visually represents the movement of women’s rights.

Regardless of who it’s coming from, a powerful voice, a fly style and a strong attitude are elements within the hip-hop culture that can define the beginnings of a movement within society.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8cHxydDb7o

Hip Hop Ain't Dead (It Lives Underground) by Big D

         The majority of people born after 1995 have a certain idea of what hip hop is today, and who represents it. They will probably list off people like Lil Wayne, Drake, J. Cole, A$AP Rocky, or Waka Flaka. If asked what hip hop looks like, they will probably say gold chains, gold teeth, and fancy cars. If asked what hip hop is about, they might say sex, money, bitches, and murder. And ya know what? That's actually a very accurate description of what hip hop has come to be. Today's hip hop tends to be somewhat of a hollow shell of what it used to represent when it first came about in the 1980's. In the beginning, or a simulacrum. Simulacrum, meaning an image without the substance or qualities of the original. It is sad, but many of the hip hop artists we know and love today are not even aware of the humble beginnings of the culture.

      One of the main issues that we see in mainstream hip hop today is the emphasis and somewhat glorification of crime, especially black on black. Almost every artist has "beef" with someone else. So they rap about how that other person should watch their backs and how much of a wannabe the other is. I do not doubt that many of our favorite top 40 artists have come from a struggle and cities with violent crimes, so why continue that even when they get out? If we recall from our reading in Can't Stop Won't Stop, hip hop emerged from an era where young men grew tired of burying their brother's and friends from gang violence; why is it again popular to promote such hate?

      Thankfully, that's only considering mainstream hip hop; it also does not consider the other elements of hip hop like DJing, Graffiti, and BBoying. There are still conscious rappers out there, unfortunately their music is not making the Billboard 100 list. Artists like Dead Prez, Public Enemy, and The Roots make music that challenges societal norms, political injustices and contemporary issues; they aren't rapping about gold rings and having unprotected sex. They emulate and reinforce the messages that inspired the OG’s of consciousness like The Fugees and KRS-One. There are probably even more artists, deeper underground than I even know of. (Guess I’m going to have to do my homework as well!) Hip hop with substance is out there, we just won't find it on MTV!

Female Rappers Empower Other Women Using Rap as a Vehicle - Koko

             Out of the four elements of Hip Hop, Rap has always been male-dominated due to the media exposure of men putting out the first rap record. Females were involved in rapping outside the media. Female rappers like MC Lyte, Queen Latifah, Roxanne Shante, and Monie Love, have struggled hard to get the success close to the male rappers in the 80’s and 90’s. Female rappers proved as much lyrical skills as men while struggling against sexism and created ‘spaces’ to deliver empowering messages to all females. According to Cheryl Keyes in her reading Empowering Self, there are four categories to female rappers that empower all women. Many female rappers fit in more than one categories. In this blog, I will be talking about how female rappers in Hip Hop culture helps articulate women’s identity that is marginalized by society due to sexism by being in categories described by Cheryl Keyes.

            First category described by Cheryl Keyes is the “Queen Mother”.  Queen Mothers are the intelligent women also known as “sistas droppin’ science to the people”. Queen stems from ancient African Queens that had rights and privileges including control over portions of land in Africa. Female rappers in this category demand respect in their strong lyric and attitude from everybody including men. Queen Mothers have a mature motherly image and express ethics of caring. Great example of a female rapper in this category is Queen Latifah. She is known as the other mother, addressing political-economic issues facing all Black women and the Black community in her strong lyricism.

          

Second category is the Fly Girl. Attires worn by female rappers in this category stems from films like Shaft, Superfly, The Mack, and Foxy Brown. Female rappers in this group are not shy to show off their figure in tight clothes. They came at a time when Black women’s bodies were considered undesirable by mainstream standards of beauty. Fly Girls like Salt N Pepa, TLC, Yo-Yo, and Missy Elliot taught us to be sexually independent, sexy, and most importantly, accept and love our own bodies. 

          Third category is the Sista with Attitude. Female rappers in this category are Da Brat, MC Lyte, Lil Kim, and Foxy Brown. They are not afraid to use the word Bitch and use it as an empowerment rather then a negative term. In their definition, Bitch is a fierce girl, a strong, aggressive women who goes after what she wants. Some female rappers like Lauryn Hill is against the use of the word Bitch.

            Last but not least, the Black female rappers in the Lesbian category. I thought they were the most brave out of the other three categories because they had to struggle against white male patriarchal culture, racism, and on top of all that, the white lesbian culture and general homophobia. They were the first to rap about and address the lesbian lifestyle from Black woman’s perspective. Example of a rapper in this category is Queen Pen. Her song “Girlfriend” was empowering to all lesbians but especially to the Black lesbians.

 

            Black female rappers are breaking negative stereotypes about being females in the rap industry. They are deconstructing and reconstructing black women’s identity through being a Queen Mother, Fly Girl, Sista with Attitude, and/or the Lesbian. Just like Cheryl Keyes explains in her writing, rap is used as a vehicle for black women to seek empowerment to make choices and create spaces for themselves and other women around the world.

Year of tha Boomerang

Matt Matches

ES397 BLOG 2

Year of tha Boomerang

Rage Against the Machine, the American rap metal crew explore an array of inner aesthetic meanings relating to politics, culture and social attitudes within the hip-hop culture in their song Year of tha Boomerang. 

Let’s start with the title, ‘tha’, which is popular pronunciation of the word ‘the’ within hip-hop culture. The title in a whole, The Year of the Boomerang is a reference from a quote by Jean-Paul Sartre, “it is in the moment of the boomerang” which analyzes his thoughts about Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, which is a psychological analysis of the dehumanising effects of colonization, and a social movement for decolonization, written in 1961. From this title alone Rage Against the Machine explores elements of hip hop slang culture and intertwines it with references towards pro-independence movements relating to decolonization in literature. And to take it one step further, this could be a movement of decolonization within hip-hop. 

Next let’s investigate the opening lyrics of the song; ‘the sistas are in so check the front line’. As you can see the word ‘sisters’ is exchanged with ‘sistas’ becoming another reference towards the slang within hip-hop culture, the line itself can also be interpreted as a reference towards feminism. In the 1960-70’s The civil rights movement and anti-racism was influenced and an influencer for feminism which was a controversial topic popular around the time of hip-hop’s origins. People’s attitudes at the time of the civil rights era were definitely different from attitudes of today’s society, these references towards the peak of those eras could indicate the band is suggesting a new approach to the modern attitude of American culture to the attitude of the past. Another quote worth exploring is only said once in the song but is very influential, ‘All power to the people’ which was originally quoted from the Black Panther Party as their central motto. Within the beginnings of hip-hop much of the surrounding culture was going through changes and movements especially around the South Bronx in New York. Some of these ‘changes’ included non-violent gatherings for equality and racial rights. The Black Panthers were a black revolutionary socialist organization active at that time, that influenced hip-hop gangs to spread the word of peace and equality instead of corruption and violence. 

If Rage Against the Machine isn’t a band you’ve explored, and you enjoy the anatomy of the hip-hop culture, their music a perfect match, their name alone can cause a discussion. Just by exploring a few elements of their head rocking hip-hop rap song Year of tha Boomerang one may become very amused with what else they have to offer which inspects 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5qeL7AghIo

Chi-Boys Will Be B-Boys.  by GAT702

Peace,

In this blog I’m going to discuss the aesthetic connections of two of my greatest loves martial arts and Hip Hop. In class we’ve discussed Hip Hop to be something of African Aesthetic rather than ethnically African meaning if you can feel it or in Hip Hop terms if you’re down then you are Hip Hop and Hip Hop is you. Though they seem like two totally separate and unrelated things for me they’ve both served and satisfied a particular need, a distinct feel. I guess you could say if Kung Fu and Hip Hop were two separate girls, they’re both my type. I’d like to share with you folks my new understanding of Aesthetics and two videos of my si-hings or kung fu big brothers as well as a bit of their story.

When I was in elementary and middle school I had idolized these guys because they were the real, in my face examples of sifu’s teachings and expectations. They were the kicks that knocked me down but also the hands that would pull me up. They were what I was to strive to be like. Though we were all taught the same when I would watch myself in the mirror I didn’t look like them but they also didn’t look like each other, they all had their own distinct signature style all their own. One type of aesthetic we discussed was sampling which happens in three ways: mimetic or copying, transformative or manipulation and lastly extractive which decontextualizes. We were all sampling sifu, but I was simply copying, they were rightfully me big brothers because they did more than just copy. They were able to take sifu’s teachings a step further, transforming it to their own styles that fit them. Hanging out with my si-hings they introduced me to things other than martial arts, two things in particular anime and Hip Hop, Dragon Ball Z and Naruto, and the Wu-tang Clan. These influences are what uniquely characterized their kung fu, trying to emulate certain characters and themes.

My family put my in kung fu to teach me discipline and self-control, I was a kid with so much energy that I didn’t know what to do with all of it so I got into a lot of fights. Kung fu was able to satisfy my needs up until my teens. I stopped going to the Lohan School of Shaolin and searched for a new outlet. Things like girls and being cool were now starting to matter to me and I stumbled across tagging which then led to breakdancing. There was something about breakdancing that had the same feeling as doing martial arts but in a cool way. Funny thing was, though I left Lohan I still found myself under the influence of Lohans. A group of my si-hings had also left Lohan and formed a crew called the Runaway Tribe which dominated the bboy scene up until I graduated high school. Just as aspired to be at their level as a martial artist, they were bboys I tried to emulate.

Runaway Tribe

http://youtu.be/V_6sKJfQR44

In the first video titled Runaway Tribe right of the bat you will see characteristics of Hip Hop Aesthetics: flow, layering, and rupture in line. A flow is established with an interview right before a typical night which then leads into what sounds like opening theme music. You see audio and visual layering right away sampling the anime/manga style. Notice also the first words that appear are the crew name followed by a strong introduction and mission statement “Runaway Tribe, an elite group of specialists, brought together by fate, here to save the world, no one will stand in their way.” The last part of this statement, very powerful serves as a rupture. These lines can be directly tied to their influences from anime and Wu-tang, and very characteristic of Hip Hop and African Aesthetic by renaming themselves and pledging them to a divine purpose. They chose the name Runaway Tribe because they had all left Lohan and kung fu together to “conquer” together as bboys. Other than the crew name, their bboy names are also very strong, reflecting their personalities i.e. Kabuki, Rawbin, Machine Gun Jun. Another example of layering and sampling in the video is the style and attitude of their dance moves, the kicks and taunts show traces of their martial arts. Their fashion choices as well, headgear and hairstyles look like their favorite anime characters, Wu-tang shirts and colors, kung fu brand shoes. Their unique and powerful style is what lead to their dominance of the scene. In addition to that style was their reverence for the art, they took the spiritual connection and warrior mentality of their martial arts and were able to extract and inject it into their dancing which you can see in video through prayer and training scenes.

Awaken The Lion

http://youtu.be/48IuRf8c7go

The first video I think of as a kind intro track emcee alliances do when they just form or are releasing a new sound or concept, the second video to me is like the remix of a throwback, it gives ups to the past. This video shows the guys as Runaway Tribe but also as Lohans, it has a back to our roots vibe going on. The second video titled Awaken the Lion is very significant and symbolic to these guys because before they were breakdancers in addition to being martial artists they were lion dancers of the Lohan School of Shaolin. Just as it said in the first video at (01:39) “together they are invincible,” this comes from our sifu, “Lohans alone are strong but together they are invincible,” it is the foundation of their bond as brothers. This video is also an excellent example of cross cultural connection between Kung Fu and Hip Hop. In Kung fu and Chinese tradition the lions of foo dogs are guardians of the sacred and are often accompanied by a buddha or bodhisattva that is usually curious or mischievous, very similar to the trickster in the African Aesthetic or emcee in Hip Hop. The trickster and the buddha is a mediator between the divine and mundane. In the video, the bboy is a perfect substitute for the buddha.

In conclusion the aesthetics Runaway Tribe taps into are deeper than just kung fu or breaking, it is a family, it is home for this band of brothers and it is a path to explore knowledge of self. In kung fu the concept chi means life energy and martial arts particularly those of the shaolin lineage are based upon cultivation of this energy through meditative movement. The concept of meditative movement is very similar to the African Aesthetic of action as a superior mode of thought and balance of mind and body. Meditative movement to us is not just for cultivation but to explore, find gain control of ourselves. Both shaolin kung fu and bboying allow the practitioner to be “self examined, deconstructed and reconstructed all in movement.” You feel me?

"Just like Water" by Lauryn Hill

[Verse 1]
Moving down the streams of my lifetime 
Pulls the fascination in my sleeve 
Cooling off the fire of my longing 
Boiling off my cold within his heat 
Melting down the walls of inhibition 
Evaporating all of my fears 
Baptizing me into complete submission 
Dissolving my condition with his tears 

[Chorus]
He's just like the water 
I ain't felt this way in years 
He's just like the water 
I ain't felt this way in years 

[Verse 2]
Coursing through my senses, he's prevailing 
Floating through the space of my design 
Drowning me to find my inside sailing 
Drinking in the mainstream of his mind 
Filling up the cup of my emotions 
Spilling over into all I do 
If I only I could get lost in his ocean 
Surviving on the thought of loving you 

[Chorus]
He's just like the water 
I ain't felt this way in years 
He's just like the water, the water 
I ain't felt this way in years 

[Verse 3]
Bathing in the fountain of his essence 
He causes my expression to remain 
Humbled on a mountain by his presence 
Washing my intentions with his name 
Sealing off the floodgates of his passions 
Saving all his liquid for his own 
Moisturizing me to satisfaction 
In my imagination? No no! 
He's pouring out his soul to me for hours and hours 
Drawing out my nature with his hands 
Yearning I'm so thirsty for his power 
Burning to be worthy of his land 

[Chorus]
He's just like the water 
I ain't felt this way in years 
He's just like the water 
I ain't felt this way in years 

[Ad Libs Remainder]
Cleaning me 
He's purging me 
And moving me around 
He's bathing me 
And he's claiming me 
And moving me around 
Around and around and around 
And around 
Watching me, claiming me 
Moving me around 
He's purging me 
He's been cleaning me 
And moving me around 
And around

       Lauryn Hill is known for being a conscious hip hop artist. She raps, she sings, she acts; what can't she do? She is an icon, you have to search pretty hard to find someone in the US, or any other country that has not heard of her or heard her sing. She rarely says anything straight up, it always has some kind of deeper meaning. She is so gifted at doing this, that many times people do not even realize she's doing it. She is gifted because she  can eloquently (and poetically) verbalize how many of us have felt in our lifetimes at one point or another. 

        Miss Hill has had many popular songs, including ones like "Tell him," "Doo Wop (That thing," or "To Zion." These songs speak on topics of love, mistrust, adultery, and the love for your child. One of my personal favorite songs by her is called "Just like Water." I like this song because on the surface level it tells the tale of falling in love with a man, but the way it does it is the best part. 

        Water holds many meanings and symbols. Especially in religion. In christianity, it represents a rebirth and baptism of the soul. It cleans and renews the flesh so that it may be suitable for eternal life in Heaven. It washes away our sins. On a day to day basis, we recognize water as a way to wash away physical dirt and stains. Water sustains life: we need it to drink, to water our plants, to get from place to place. 

        In the first verse of this song, Ms. Hill says "cooling off the fire of my longing, boiling off the cold within his heat." I think that this is an excellent example of word play. She puts two opposing thoughts back to back. First she talks about chilling her longing. Using water in a cold sense, because she has been longing for love and passion for so long. Then she says boiling off the cold within his heat. Then the water becomes hot, in order to keep her from becoming cold. Even the word cold in itself could be a metaphor for growing old and tired of searching for a good man.

       One could even argue that this man that she speaks of is not a man at all, but rather God.  Maybe she had been searching for this purpose and hope in life, and she found it by finding God and being reborn. I love Lauryn Hill because there are so many songs and interpretations built into one.

Tequila Sunrise by Cypress Hill - koko

            Cypress Hill is the first Latino-American hip-hop group to have Platinum and multi-platinum albums. They have sold a total of over 18 million albums worldwide. Cypress Hill started off with two brothers name Ulpiano Reyes (Mellow Man Ace) and Senen Reyes (Sen Dog). Their family originally migrated from Cuba back in 1971. In 1988, the two brothers formed a group called DVX with DJ Muggs and B-Real but changed their group name to Cypress Hill after Mellow Man Ace found a solo career for himself. This blog will be analyzing the cultural aesthetic in the song Tequila Sunrise by Cypress Hill.  

            When we listen to Cypress Hill, we notice their strong roots in the Latin culture. For example, in the song Tequila Sunrise, Cypress Hill mentions eating the worm at the bottom of tequila bottle as well as drinking·   Jose Cuervo down in Tijuana, Mexico. We can see Cypress Hill represent their Latin culture when the song Tequila Sunrise start off with a conversation in Spanish between B-Real and Sen Dog.  This would not have been possible if it weren’t for the Latinos like Lee Quiñones, Lady Pink, Rock Steady Crew, and especially Charlie Chase, who fought for their rightful place in the African American dominated Hip Hop culture.

             

Out of all the Latinos that represented their culture in the Hip Hop scene, one that affected Cypress Hill the most would have to be DJ Charlie Chase. Charlie Chase was born to a Puerto Rican-born parents in 1959 and played a key role in establishing Latinos as a contributing force in black dominated New York Hip Hop culture. He was the only Latino member in the well-known Hip Hop group called The Cold Crush Brothers in the 80’s. During that time many people mistook African ethnicity as the African aesthetic in Hip Hop so not many understood of the multicultural component of Hip Hop culture. Charlie Chase fought to change the direction Hip Hop was headed. He snuck in a beat from the number “Tu Coqueta” in the middle of a jam and countered the Afrocentric view of Hip Hop history at the New Music Seminar by speaking up when people started saying Hip Hop was a ‘black thing’. Charlie Chase reminded the people at the seminar that Hip Hop has nothing to do with ethnicity. Hip Hop was a street thing and anybody from the street can be a part of it because environment does not choose people by their skin color.

 

           

           

Gangs of New York (No Leo DiCaprio) by D

            Looking back on the history of America, we can see that the 1960’s was a time of hippies and "love not war.” However, the 1970's in New York was a very different story. It is no mystery that with difficult economic times, usually crime and violence is sure to follow. The children growing up in this area and this time seem to have been jaded by the lost hopes and ambitions of their parents. They did not fight for integration, but actually it seemed as though they welcomed the segregation. The kids growing up at this time were lost, products of their environments; they needed some set of laws to live by. This is what the gangs provided. 

“Gangs structured the chaos (Chang 49). ” I feel that this is by far the most important concept to understanding why gangs thrived. The adolescents of this time saw their families falling apart. They saw their parents struggling to pay bills or protect their kids from the dangers of the streets in New York. So, they took it upon themselves to find protection. That is where the gangs come in. These gangs were families (though dangerous ones). Once you had passed initiation, they offered complete loyalty and unity. 

The gangs thrived because people wanted a sense of belonging. They also acted like police officers in a round about way. Where the cops deemed unimportant, gang members were pushing out drug addicts and dealers. Though they became extremely violent over time, I do feel that the situation served a purpose. The bad conditions and difficult economic times served as a stepping stone for the kids. Ultimately these violent and senseless killings between opposing gangs would calm down. Soon enough, as the 80’s approach, the impressionable youth would be more interested in standing out as BBoys and Bgirls, MCs and DJs, as opposed to clones of a gang. 

Just like as we saw in Jamaica with the birth of reggae, the struggle  acts as a platform. It allows them to want to change their circumstances, and music is one way to invoke change and express feelings and desires. 

Matches " ..... "

In the late 1960’s a new revolution birthed within the neighborhoods of the Bronx, youth gangs. Over 1,500 Jewish, Italian and Irish families moved out of the South Bronx to the whites-only Levittown suburbs, once that happened African-American, Afro-Caribbean and Latino families occupied the South Bronx. White youth gangs would target newly arrived colored kids in schoolyard beatdowns, they ran the battles in the streets. Black and brown youths originally formed gangs for self-defense. After the recent population increase unemployment was high, the South Bronx had lost over 500,00 manufacturing jobs and 40 percent of the sector disappeared. The official youth unemployment rate reached up 80 percent in some neighborhoods, and the youth controlled the streets.

By 1968 a variety of teenage groups formed gangs and occupied most of the streets, parks and abandoned buildings within the Bronx. In the beginning, most of the gangs were predominantly Puerto Rican but later, east of the Bronx in a mostly African-American community a group called Black Spades formed, and even further east in the last white communities gangs like War Pigs formed. There were handfuls of gangs but the most feared and dangerous gang in all of the Bronx was the Savage Skulls, they were ruthless. They lived on Leggett Ave right next to an abandoned apartment building, the gang took over the vacant building and made it their club house,  it was referred to as a “fort in hostile territory”, if you were looking for trouble or protection the Skulls was the one to go to. Things got bloody and the Skulls would eventually be in over their head. Soon gangs and people of the Bronx were getting a bad reputation from the rest of New York, the police violently retaliated and gangs rebelled.

            New rebellions were showing up everywhere, a group called The Black Panthers staged movement rallies, over nine thousand Mexican American high school students marched against racism in the schools. Columbia University closed down their campus and hosted a antiwar protest. Students and workers of color would spray-paint walls “Be realistic, Demand the Impossible” Originating from the South Bronx the gangs had started a revolution, New York Post columnist Pete Hamill wrote, “The best single thing that has happened on the streets of New York in the past ten years in the re-emergence of the teenage gangs...These young people are standing up for life, and if their courage lasts, they will help this city endure.

Socio-historical context of the birth and evolution of Reggae Music in Jamaica (by Waku)

The influence of reggae music and culture can be seen and heard in the earliest form of hip-hop, all the way up to the contemporary hip-hop that we hear today. Reggae music itself is a popular genre and can be heard all over the world. The history that revolves around it is so vast and rich. So the question I ask is, when and how did Reggae music come about? And how has it evolved?

Within Jamaica, the people there were listening to a vast amount of musical genres of the time such as, blues, R&B, calypso music, Jazz, and so on. But of those music genres, the most influential to Reggae and the Jamaican people were Ska and Rocksteady. Both Ska and Rocksteady originated in Jamaica, and it was what every Jamaican folks danced to. It moved their feet on the dance floors because of the fast to moderate backbeats (aka “skank”), horns that blared sweet harmonious melodies, drums that kept the steady beat, and the bass line that resonated the air. This was the music choice for the Jamaicans. But as the musicians experimented with the tempo of the Ska and Rocksteady rhythm, they brought it down to a much slower tempo, giving birth to what is known as Reggae. This genre is what gave the voice to the voiceless in Jamaica.

Michael Manley with his "Rod of Correction"

Around the time when Reggae had just emerged, Jamaica claimed independence from the British in 1962. Within the first ten years after claiming independence, Jamaica showed signs of strong economic growth. But as the country showed signs of growth and wealth, it was accompanied by a growing sense of inequality, and concern that the benefits of growth were not being shared by the urban poor. To seek change in this predicament, two parties fought for political dominance, the conservative Jamaica Labor Party (JLP), and the leftist People’s National Party (PNP). “Every Jamaican politician knew what every Jamaican musician knew – the sound systems were crucial to their success” (Chang, p. 31). Michael Manley, the democratic socialist PNP candidate, used Reggae music to win over the people’s votes for the 1972 elections. Manley had won the elections with the promise of social and economic changes within Jamaica. But the changes that he promised the people, came with repercussions.

Jamaicans were losing jobs and were quickly becoming financial unstable. This sparked people to go on strikes, gun violence between gangs, chaos on the streets, a total social crisis. But with all this violence and warfare happening on Jamaica, one man by the name of Robert Nesta Marley, used the musical form of Reggae to bring Jamaicans together as one by contributing his love for the music and his people in the form of a free concert, the "Smile Jamaica" concert

Bob Marley (center) at singing at the Smile Jamaica concert,
with Michael Manley (Left)

.

In my opinion, the rhythm of reggae is that of a heartbeat (“thump-thump, thump-thump”). It beats to almost the exact rhythm of the thing that keeps us alive. To the Jamaican people, Reggae music is their expressionism of a heartbeat, which keeps them moving for a brighter future with no political violence, no war, and living with one love.