Contents - Beth Lesser

Concrete Jungle Rock * . But the guys them used to stay down a Rema love
it. They used to say, ‘Uuuuuhhhhh! If I get a hold of Ranking Trevor, gonna
blow off him head! But he’s one of the greatest deejay. Him bad.’”
Political lyrics were actually very common in the dance, despite the apparent
dangers. Peter Metro, for example, appeared at a PNP Rally held in
Skateland. He explained, “You know, at the time, I was living in a PNP area,
a PNP constituency, whatever time the PNP rally would be keeping, PNP
meeting, they would call upon me, because I live in the community, to come
and entertain the crowd that was there - either before or after the Minister
make him speech. So, I would go there and sing. I guess a lot of guys do this
in their communities.”
Peter’s brother, Squiddley Ranks could be quite outspoken with lyrics like,
“Wan’ Michael Manley pon the fifty dollar bill.…Put the boy Seaga on the
one cent…” He readily admitted that if you talked like that, “You get branded
as a PNP deejay” with possible severe consequences. “Cause it’s a life and
death thing when you sing like that. But, in those days I never really stray.
Just stick to the area I come from. In those days, I don’t go in a laborite area
go deejay. Gemini don’t play in laborite area them times.”
Sound systems came under tremendous pressure to play out in support of
one side or the other. “Guys used to come to us and put gun to our head to
go and play,” Arrows owner, Sonny, remembers. “That was before the peace
treaty. Guys would come and demand us to play- showing up brandishing
guns and all like that. We just say, ‘OK no problem, you name the dance and
we’ll be there.’”
Jah Screw remembers having to cancel a pre-booked date in order to take
the sound down into Tivoli Gardens when one of the community leaders
insisted. “We supposed to play by Macarthur Avenue and we couldn’t play
because they demanded the sound play down there [Tivoli]. We have to play
because, I mean, we wasn’t really into politics, but the whole of Jamaica use
any little thing you say to brand you. Ray Symbolic [the sound owner] come
by my house and say, ‘Bwoy, Screw, you have a career. You either have to think
about your career or you going to finish with the whole businesses’. So, the
following day I decided to play [in Tivoli]. And we went down there and it
was a roadblock, down there in the Center. And at that time I play about fifteen
piece of ‘Death in the Arena’! They have like Massive Dread, Gully Rat,
General Echo. Everybody come along and I play for them. I have fe do what I
have fe do, you know what I mean.”
The pressure was on the individual deejays, too. Deejay Crutches, who had
carried Arrows through the ‘70s with his talent and dedication, was forced to
leave in 1980, “due to political friction”. Zaggaloo, the selector for Arrows,
explains, “Crutches couldn’t play the set no more. Because the area where
the sound come from, they said it was a PNP area. They accused Crutches of
* Arnett Gardens, a PNP stronghold, was referred to as Concrete Jungle
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