4 / 12
hoped-for mental and cultural Emancipation.
She accepted our language, our stories, our ways of seeing the
world, our indigenous forms of culture, when ’polite society’ deemed
them scornful and inferior. She never craved authentication and
validation from the middle and upper classes. She stood her ground,
nurtured excellence in all she did and the middle and upper classes
had to ’bow’ to her and rise to her heights.
At a time when too many of us are willing to sell our souls for the
Almighty Dollar; when integrity is regularly sacrificed on the altar of
greed and social climbing, Miss Lou stands in prophetic defiance of
this cowardice and cultural sell-out.
A NEW SLAVERY
We are a great people, with our traditional sense of community,
family and caring. The runaway individualism and acquisitiveness
which characterise so many of us today is not our authentic cultural
history. This is something imported in the culture, something alien.
We were very concerned about the ’alien ideology’ of communism
which was supposedly upon us in the 1970s, but we now enthusiasti-
cally welcome the alien hedonistic and materialistic ideology of self-
gratification which is causing havoc in the society.
Today we are free from the plantations of the ruling class but we
are slaves to their ideology of consumerism and commodification.
Miss Lou calls us back to the abundance that we have in our culture;
the wealth that we possess; a wealth not confined to physical things.
This is no ’romanticising of underdevelopment’ but an open rejection
of the view that development is the same as Westernisation.
Since we don’t listen to our own and always seek validation from
outside let me quote the father of Western capitalism, Adam Smith,
in that less well-known book The Theory of Moral Sentiments. He
rejected the notion that happiness and fulfilment in life is synonymous
with material possessions, ’bling bling’ and the trappings of Western
opulence. Hear him, if you don’t want to hear Miss Lou: ’In the ordi-
nary situations of human life, a well-disposed mind may be equally
calm, equally cheerful and equally contented... in the most glittering
and exalted situation that our ideal fancy can hold out to us, the plea-
sures from which we propose our real happiness are almost always
the same with those which in our actual, though humble situation we
have at all times in our hand and in our power... The pleasures of van-
ity and superiority are seldom consistent with perfect tranquillity, the
principle and foundation of all real and satisfactory enjoyment.’
That is Louise Bennett-Coverley in Old English! Miss Lou never
glorified poverty or belittled ambition, quite the contrary. But her
work is stubbornly opposed to the view that the Western notion of
success and ’making it’ is the only way, and that without it we are
necessarily wretched and miserable. Miss Lou made us understand
that our foreparents were not just discontented souls before the Gospel
of greed was introduced. The woman who popularised ’Tun you hand
and mek fashion’ knows the relentless creativity and improvisation
skills of our people.
Hear Adam Smith, whose book The Wealth of Nations is synony-
mous with the capitalist revolution: ’All the members of the human
society stand in need of each other’s assistance... where the necessary
assistance is reciprocally afforded from love, from gratitude, from
friendship and esteem, the society flourishes and is happy.’
DESCENT INTO DECADENCE
Miss Lou’s work shows us the things which really make us
happy - community, human solidarity, caring, love, sharing, humour.
We have forgot a lot of that in our mental and cultural enslavement
to hedonism. We have become trapped in a rat race not of our own
making. We have been manipulated psychologically. So our women
bleach their skin, our inner-city men run after ’bling bling’ and the
latest gadgets from ’foreign’ and we have freely traded our indigenous
cultural values for those of a decadent United States. No wonder our
newspaper headlines follow the trends in America.
Says US Professor Stanley Rothman in his fascinating paper, The
Decline of Bourgeois America: ’An ever larger number of children
are initiated into sexual activity before they are ready for it; even as
increasing numbers of children are born with AIDS or brain-damaged
because of their mothers’ sexual activity, drug abuse or both. More
and more children, especially of the poor, are abused by stepparents
or by their mothers’ boyfriends who have no biological investment
in the children of the woman with whom they are associating. Power
replaces achievement as an ideal goal and with that comes heightened
mutual suspiciousness, even as the number of narcissistic personality
types increase.’ He could be writing about Jamaica - but by extension
he is, for Jamaica has swapped its indigenous values for those of a
culturally decadent America. Our dancehall artistes, our professional
and political elite - and now many of our churches - have all sold out.
This is why Jamaica needs Louise Bennett-Coverley desperately and
urgently.
CULTURE vs ’SKIN OUT’
There will be those who will seek to validate their vulgarity and
cultural perversion by appealing to Miss Lou, noting the resistance
she received from ’society people’ when she started with the dialect.
But don’t involve Miss Lou inna unno nastiness. Miss Lou was never
vulgar. Everyone who knows her knows she hated profanity with a
passion. Lady Saw is no modern-day Miss Lou! Vulgarity and the
’skin out, bruk out’ thing is not our ’culture’. It is imported from
abroad.
We are a regal people, a dignified people, Marcus Garvey people.
Miss Lou is sustainable because she is authentic. She is not ’commer-
cial’.
Miss Lou never bowed to the dominant values just to get ahead, to
make it overseas or to be acceptable to audiences who love vulgarity.
She never catered to the ’nah no head’, ’head no good’ crew. When
you ’tek off the head’, anybody can lead you.
Miss Lou is far more significant to this country in what she repre-
sents than we will ever know. The Prime Minister might not officially
declare it, but she is Jamaica’s only living national hero.
Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist. You can e-mail you comments
to
ianboyneyahoo.com.