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There is a pattern in Jamaica that has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with who we are as a people. 

When a cultural moment arrives, and they do arrive, more often than we deserve, given how little we invest in our own heritage, we do not ask what it is opening up for us. We ask what is wrong with it. We find the thing to be offended by, we sharpen our arguments, we write our letters and record our videos, and somewhere in the middle of all that righteous noise, the moment quietly closes. The door swings shut. And we move on, having defended the culture without ever actually using it.

I say this with love, because it is love that compels me to respond to a recent Instagram video from one of Jamaica’s most treasured cultural voices, Fae Ellington, broadcaster, actress, and a woman who has given decades of her life to preserving what makes us Jamaican. In the video, Aunty Fae expressed her deep concern about Stephen “Di Genius” McGregor’s Hill and Gully Riddim, acknowledging Stephen’s achievement in bringing the folk melody into contemporary culture, but drawing a sharp line at what she described as artistes “getting down in the gutter” likening explicit songs built on Hill and Gully Ride and Manuel Road to singing nastiness over our own anthem. She was angry, she said, because entertainers are supposed to know better. She asked how we explain this to a child. She asked what exactly we expect a child to sing. It was a passionate, heartfelt intervention from a woman who genuinely loves this culture. I do not doubt that for a single second. But with the greatest respect, Aunty Fae, I believe that in focusing on what is wrong with this moment, we risk doing what Jamaica always does, arguing the door shut before we ever walk through it.

Because I want to tell you what I saw on the other side of that door before anyone convinces you to look away: Jamaicans at Coronation Market and at a bus stop doing dinki mini. I saw Generation Z mentees of mine, young people who, by their own admission, barely knew these songs existed outside JCDC festival season, singing “Hill and Gully Ride” with pride and posting it on their pages. I saw something that no curriculum, no cultural policy, and no amount of well-intentioned condemnation has managed to produce in years: young Jamaicans genuinely connected to the folk music of their ancestors, not because they were told to, but because a producer made it irresistible.

That, Aunty Fae, is not cultural destruction. That is cultural resurrection. And Stephen McGregor deserves every word of praise we can give him for making it happen. In doing so, he has honoured his father Freddy McGregor’s legacy, a legacy of musical excellence, cultural pride, and the understanding that Jamaican music, at its best, carries the soul of this island into every generation. Stephen, we see you. Jamaica sees you.

Now, to the matter at hand.

I have enormous love and respect for Fae Ellington. She is a cultural institution, a guardian of our heritage, and her concern for what we pass on to future generations is genuine. But on this particular occasion, Aunty Fae, I believe your point may have missed an important nuance, and perhaps the issue is a little more layered than how it is presented.

Let me be clear about where I agree. The argument about creativity is one I do not quarrel with. If an artiste takes a melody rooted in our folk tradition and produces something artistically lazy, that is a fair critique. We should always demand more of our artistes, more craft, more wit, more ingenuity. On that, Aunty Fae and I are in complete alignment. If I am being honest, the creativity problem runs deeper than this one riddim. The wordplay is gone. The double entendre, the layered metaphor, the wit that made even the most suggestive mento song a masterclass in linguistic ingenuity, all replaced with the most blunt, unadorned directness imaginable. Our predecessors could make an entire audience dissolve in knowing laughter with a single well-constructed line. Today, too many artistes simply say the thing plainly and call it a song. The best dancehall artists, Bounty Killer, Beenie Man, early Vybz Kartel, Assassin aka Agent Sasco, Wayne Marshall, Ninja Man, and Mad Cobra, understood that even in slackness, craft was non-negotiable.

However, we cannot lay this entirely at the feet of the artistes. When you strip away the wordplay, when raw and straightforward becomes the ceiling rather than the floor, you have to wonder whether our artistes are reading, whether they are being exposed to the richness of language and the oral tradition of Louise Bennett-Coverley, whose entire genius was built on making Jamaican patois do things the English language could only dream of. And if the education system is not nurturing language, not teaching our children to love words, and not connecting them to the richness of our own literary and oral heritage, then we should not be surprised when the music reflects that gap. Dancehall has always been a mirror of the society that creates it. If the mirror is showing us something uncomfortable right now, perhaps the discomfort is less about the music and more about what it is reflecting to us.

But the argument that lewd, sexually suggestive, or “slack” content represents something new in Jamaican music, a modern corruption of a once-wholesome tradition, is, with the greatest respect, not supported by our own history.

Jamaican popular music has always carried a river of risqué content running alongside its brilliance. Ment, to the very root of our popular music tradition, the genre that predates and birthed everything else was full of sexual innuendo dressed in the most charming folk clothing. Big “Bamboo” was not about gardening. “Night Food” was not about dinner. “Donkey Want Water” was not a song about thirsty livestock. Our grandparents and great-grandparents sang these songs, danced to them, and perfectly understood what was implied. The genius was in the layers respectable on the surface, deliciously wicked underneath.

Then came ska, and with it, Max Romeo’s Wet Dream was banned by the BBC for being too sexually suggestive, yet beloved across Jamaica. Laurel Aitken built a career on flirtatious, cheeky party music. In Rocksteady, the sensuality became even more deliberate and romantic. And then roots reggae, the era we most readily romanticize as spiritual and consciou,s gave us Bob Marley’s Kinky Reggae, song whose intentions were never in serious dispute among adult listeners with lyrics such as “I went Downtown, I saw Miss Brown, she had brown sugar all over her booga-wooga, I think I might join the fun, but I had to hit and run. See, I just can’t settle down in a kinky part of town.” 

The point is this. Jamaica has never had a golden era of musical purity that modern artists have corrupted. What we have consistently had across seven distinct genres: mento, ska, rocksteady, reggae, dub, dancehall, and ragga, is a culture that contains multitudes. Culture, music, and slackness have always coexisted. Many of our greatest artists, including Bob Marley himself, crossed freely between the two lanes. That is not a flaw in our musical character. It is part of what makes it human, alive, and honest. It’s what makes us Jamaican.

Where I believe Aunty Fae’s energy would be most powerfully directed is not in condemning what artistes have done with this riddim, but in asking a more productive question: how do we make this cultural moment last? How do we build on the fact that a Generation Z young person in Kingston is now doing dinki mini and actually knows the words to Hill and Gully Ride?

I would love to see a conversation with Minister Babsy Grange and the relevant cultural bodies about incorporating Hill and Gully Ride, Manuel Road, and our folk song catalog into our upcoming Emancipation and Independence celebrations in a meaningful, contemporary way. Not just as JCDC competition pieces, but as living, breathing cultural expressions performed in public spaces across the island.

And while we are having that conversation with Minister Grange, let us have another long-overdue one about embedding Jamaican music history into our primary school curriculum as a matter of national policy, not as an afterthought. Our children should know, before they sit a single CXC exam, that the island they were born on is the only place on earth to have originated six distinct popular music genres: mento, ska, rocksteady, reggae, dub,b and dancehall genres that went on to reshape the sound of the entire world. Trinidad and Tobago understood this assignment. Their Education Ministry formally signed an agreement to teach calypso and steelpan from early childhood through secondary school, their minister declaring it “incumbent” on them to ensure every young Trinidadian understands the heritage behind their music. Cuba has done the same with son, rumba, and Afro-Cuban rhythms, treating indigenous music as inseparable from national identity and weaving it into arts education as a matter of cultural policy. Yes, Jamaica has CSEC Music, and we acknowledge that it does valuable work at the secondary level for those students who choose it. But an optional exam subject is not part of the curriculum. It is not the same as a Jamaican child in Grade Three learning why ska was born at the same moment as independence, or a child in Grade Five understanding that the riddim they are dancing to in the schoolyard has a lineage that runs from West African drumming through mento all the way to what is playing on their phone today. That is the kind of cultural self-knowledge that builds a nation, and right now, too many of our children are growing up without it.

Stephen McGregor did not defile Hill and Gully Ride. He put it back in the people’s hands. The right response is not to mourn what some artistes did with that opportunity, but to seize the larger opportunity it has created to bring Miss Lou, Mas Ran, our folk tradition, and our musical legacy back into the center of national life, where they belong.

Aunty Fae, your voice carries great influence and value. This is an opportunity to shift the narrative and guide the conversation toward solutions, growth, and a deeper appreciation of the culture. 

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Ibrahim Konteh is an entertainment practitioner of over 15 years, operating across six markets including Jamaica, New York, Miami, Washington DC and Atlanta. He is a founder and director of Strictly 2K Throwback Music Festival and an unapologetic lover of Jamaican culture.
Email: [email protected]