The reaction of Saint Lucians to the song that won the Dennery Segment Song of the Year award at the recent Caribbean Music Awards was somewhat predictable. Many were livid and expressed their disappointment that Klassik, a non-Saint Lucian artiste, had won the award for a genre that was distinctively Saint Lucian, with the song Dansa. However, I believe that the disappointment and backlash that ensued were misplaced and lacked an understanding of how the award system and the music ecosystem in general work. The reality is that music awards generally do not tie genres to where they originated or award recipients based on ethnicity. So why should the Caribbean Music Awards be any different?
Then again, truth be told, some of those I spoke to could not say definitively what exactly Dennery Segment is. They also could not make the connection between the singer and the song until I played Dansa, and they instinctively started nodding and saying, “Oh yeah, dat song.”
I am sure, too, that many of those who were crying foul were among the millions who had viewed, liked and shared the video of Dansa last year, making it easily one of the biggest standout songs in that category.
I reiterate here that the vitriol I saw levelled at the singer on social media was uncalled for. And maybe his response to some of it may not have helped either. After all, Klassik did not hand himself the award. After putting in the work, the rewards came: the tours, the bookings and then the Dennery Segment Song of the Year award.
Strangely, though, I did not see any backlash from music fans in Jamaica regarding the Dancehall Album of the Year award, which went to Prince Swanny of Trinidad.
Then there was the Bouyon Song of the Year award, which went to 1T1 of Guadeloupe for the song Bouwey. Did we see the same hue and cry from music fans in Dominica?
Do we have the same sort of passionate love affair for Dennery Segment when it is struggling for a greater space at home during Carnival or other events, or competing for airtime with Bouyon, Dancehall and even Country music?
In putting forward my perspective, it is imperative to point out that the seeds for the genre that we now call Dennery Segment started to germinate in 2009. Seeds were planted by young men in rural Saint Lucia (Dennery and further south) who had a love for music, for Lucian culture, for the Kwéyòl language, and who did not have the means to go to a big studio to express themselves. And so, they took the lyrics they would come up with on the blocks and recorded them in bedrooms and small corners equipped with a laptop and basic recording equipment, and shared those songs within their communities.
Since then, Dennery Segment has been dissected, criticised and shunned, all the while evolving into a genre embraced by many young people as their favoured “rebellious sound”.
As it became more universally accepted, many artistes outside of Saint Lucia were taking note and “jumping” on Dennery Segment rhythms. Among them were Bunji Garlin, Machel and Preedy from Trinidad, Hypasounds of Barbados and, of course, Klassik, a Miami-based artiste who was born in New York but raised in Jamaica. Alongside the likes of Freezy, Umpa, Blackboy, Motto, Subance, Mighty and several producers, these artistes have helped to expand the reach and popularity of the genre, taking it to a broader audience and giving it a wider fan base.
So why do we now seem to be saying, “Yes, you can sing a Dennery Segment song no matter where you are from, just do not win any awards for it”?
And why, even to this day and amidst all the brouhaha, are we still grappling with a foundational definition of Dennery Segment?
In a Carnival lecture held in Saint Lucia in June, Dr Ronald Francis, lecturer in Linguistics at the University of the West Indies Cave Hill Campus, Barbados, looked at three areas in an attempt to define Dennery Segment. Regarding the rhythm, he said: “The very core of Dennery Segment is rhythm, and it is specifically a folk rhythm that is connected directly to our African drumming tradition, most specifically the Tressilo Rhythm.”
He went on to indicate that the lyrics were predominantly Kwéyòl, or what he described as Saint Lucian English Creole – SLEC. “The majority of the lyrical content of the genre is a lascivious pursuit of young women,” he explained further.
Regarding the third aspect, “culture”, Dr Francis said that many of the songs spoke to connections to lived expressions of Saint Lucian identity. “The music’s cultural capital is derived from its deep connection with local folk traditions,” he pointed out.
May I add to this that alongside the rhythm are the dances that seem to be instinctively created for every hit Dennery Segment song, placing another cultural nuance on the genre that has to be seen and felt – a movement even.
And on the point of “cultural capital”, I dare say that it is this cultural capital that many artistes, including Klassik, see as the right musical codes to gain access to opportunities in this multi-billion-dollar music ecosystem, where the genre is trying to find an economic space.
It was probably that same cultural capital and economic currency that may have caused several artistes of the past to step out of their lane and appropriate cultures and sounds beyond their borders. As they say, there is nothing new under the sun, right?
Harry Belafonte, who was born in New York and raised in Jamaica, is credited with having the first LP to sell a million records. The album was called Calypso and contained the song Day-O (The Banana Boat Song), which is still the subject of debate among ethnomusicologists over its classification as calypso.
Ironically, it is also still disputed whether the late Mighty Sparrow, considered the King of Calypso, sold a million records of Jean and Dinah that same year. What is undisputed is that Sparrow’s version of Only a Fool Breaks His Own Heart, recorded with Byron Lee, a soul ballad rather than a calypso, became an international hit.
Let us also look at the first number one reggae song on the Billboard Hot 100, which did not come from Jamaica, where the music was born. In 1972, the American singer Johnny Nash rose to number one with I Can See Clearly Now, later covered by Jamaican singer Jimmy Cliff.
Then there is Dancehall, another genre born in Jamaica. One of the earliest dancehall-influenced songs to reach number one on the Billboard Hot 100 was Informer by Snow, a Canadian, in 1993.
Two years earlier, white American rapper Vanilla Ice gave rap its first number one on the Billboard Hot 100, even though the music originally represented Black Hip Hop culture and had sprung out of Black neighbourhoods in the late 1970s.
So while this debate over who should have won the Dennery Segment Award and the question of cultural appropriation continues, there may be some deeper questions we need to confront.
What can be done, or is being done, to secure the intellectual property of the genre as something uniquely Saint Lucian?
If we love Dennery Segment and “our” music so much, then why are we not equally, or even more, outraged when more than 50 per cent of music played on local radio is foreign content? What this translates to is that most of the money collected by the Eastern Caribbean Collective Organisation for Music Rights is repatriated to overseas music societies to pay their artistes.
Instead, what can we do to ensure that Umpa, Blackboy, Mighty and others collect bigger royalty cheques? Why do we still embrace and hold Country music in higher regard than our homegrown music or even Caribbean music?
What else are we doing, or can we do, to reward our artistes?
Do we truly want to identify with Dennery Segment as “ours”, or are we simply paying lip service when it is convenient?
Until we can confront these questions and answer them sincerely, the debate will sound more like emotional social media noise and quarrels. It will offer little in the way of constructive discussion about how the music can grow and live in an ecosystem that cares little about race, creed, patrimony and intellectual property, but more about strategic positioning and economic empowerment.
Let the music play on!
