Contents - Beth Lesser

like what you hear in the dancehall, and think it’s no big thing. But I couldn’t
play that on the radio. A perfect example of that is Yellowman. Yellowman
did hundred’s of songs for the danchall that I could never play on the radio.”
Like Yellowman’s ‘Operation Eradication’. “The government would hear
certain songs and demand that the radio station pull the songs. Crime was
getting out of hand and the government didn’t have a clue how to curb it.
They were creating different firing squads and the deejays had a field day writing
songs about how they were behaving! And when they recorded them, it
embarrassed the government.”
Former rock steady balladeer, John Holt ran afoul of management when
he sang that he would burn down the cane fields in ‘Police in Helicopter’ (Jah
Guidance 7 inch 1983), and the song was also banned. “I wanted to play it.
The radio station said, ‘You could play it on Wadat’.”
In the latter half of the decade, a lot of songs were banned for lewdness,
starting with Admiral Bailey’s number two chart topper, ‘Punanny’. Bailey
had at least three records banned in of a couple of years.
Working as a jock was a constant pull between the radio station management,
the individual deejays and the audience who wanted to hear these
banned songs - they were often the most popular ones. “The government
would threaten to take away their license. Or say to you, ‘Take Barry G off the
radio’. Picture Barry G arguing with management - ‘There is nothing wrong
with the song. Tell me what’s wrong with the song?’ But, he [the manager]
knows his hands are tried because the government is pressuring him.” Radio
in Jamaica didn’t really start to change until the ‘90s when new stations began
to open up competition by taking listeners away from the two who had
monopolized the airwaves for decades.
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