Homophobic lyrics will rock the Square at this year’s Mother’s Day Caribbean Extravaganza.  The show will be headlined by Buju Banton, and includes, among others, guests TOK.   TOK are famous for their song “Chi Chi Man,” with the lyrics:  

From dem a par inna chi chi man car
Blaze di fire mek we bun dem! (Bun dem!)
From dem a drink inna chi chi man bar
Blaze di fire mek we dun dem! (Dun dem!) 

That’s right, it’s an incitement to murder gays.  It’s nothing new in the world of dancehall reggae.  Bounty Killer has sung the lyrics, “You know we need no promo to rub out dem homo,” and “Mi ready fi go wipe out this fag.”  No subtlety there. 

In 2007, a number of reggae artists signed the Reggae Compassionate Act, but Bounty Killer, TOK, and Buju Banton were not among the signers.   Banton started out as a socially conscious DJ, but his song Boom Bye Bye did more than flirt with homophobia. 

Boom Bye Bye Buju World is in trouble
Anytime Buju Banton come
Batty bwoy get up an run
At gunshot me head back
Hear I tell him now crew

(Its like) Boom bye bye
Inna batty bwoy head
Rude bwoy no promote no nasty man
Dem haffi dead
Boom bye bye
Inna batty bwoy head
Rude bwoy no promote no nasty man
Dem haffi dead

A 2006 “Time” magazine piece asked if Jamaica is, “The Most Homophobic Place on Earth?” Here’s some excerpts.   

“Though familiar to Americans primarily as a laid-back beach destination, Jamaica is hardly idyllic. The country has the world's highest murder rate. And its rampant violence against gays and lesbians has prompted human-rights groups to confer another ugly distinction: the most homophobic place on earth.

“In the past two years, two of the island's most prominent gay activists, Brian Williamson and Steve Harvey, have been murdered — and a crowd even celebrated over Williamson's mutilated body. Perhaps most disturbing, many anti-gay assaults have been acts of mob violence. In 2004, a teen was almost killed when his father learned his son was gay and invited a group to lynch the boy at his school. Months later, witnesses say, police egged on another mob that stabbed and stoned a gay man to death in Montego Bay. And this year a Kingston man, Nokia Cowan, drowned after a crowd shouting "batty boy" (a Jamaican epithet for homosexual) chased him off a pier. "Jamaica is the worst any of us has ever seen," says Rebecca Schleifer of the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch and author of a scathing report on the island's anti-gay hostility.

“Gay-rights activists attribute the scourge of homophobia in Jamaica largely to the country's increasingly thuggish reggae music scene. Few epitomize the melding of reggae and gangsta cultures more than Banton, who is one of the nation's most popular dance-hall singers. Born Mark Myrie, he grew up the youngest of 15 children in Kingston's Salt Lane — the sort of slum dominated by ultraconservative Christian churches and intensely anti-gay Rastafarians. Banton parlayed homophobia into a ticket out of Salt Lane. One of his first hits, 1992's Boom Bye-Bye, boasts of shooting gays with Uzis and burning their skin with acid ‘like an old tire wheel.’”

In the UK, efforts have been made to stop artists like Bounty Killer from entering the country.  There have been protests, and several shows have been cancelled.  NYC is home away from home for many reggae artists.  The outrage is nowhere to be found.  Could it be that it is not politically expedient to criticize New Yorkers of West Indian descent?  The forces of tolerance are probably too occupied condemning the tea parties with their subtexts of hatred.  Subtexts, not the text.   

Full disclosure:  I love most of Buju Banton’s music.