No apology
IN November when UNESCO named reggae among its “intangible cultural heritage” bloc, it was widely hailed in Jamaica. After the United Nations’ cultural and scientific agency’s announcement in Mauritius, Olivia “Babsy” Grange, Jamaica’s culture minister, described it as “a historic day.”
But Dotun Adebayo, a Nigerian-born British journalist, was not impressed. In a column for The Guardian newspaper on November 30, he said the UNESCO acknowledgement was condescending. According to Adebayo, it was like “turkeys endorsing Christmas”.
Adebayo, who considers himself a student of reggae, is in Jamaica on vacation. He defended his column which took shots at Grange for her shortsighted glee; Adebayo was criticised by reggae insiders like Lloyd Stanbury who said the UNESCO gesture was to “protect the reggae music genre from this kind of use and failure to attribute”.
In an interview with the Jamaica Observer, Adebayo said he had no regrets about his column, which he insists is based on fact.
“Why should I regret doing something for the positivity of Jamaicans? I didn’t criticise anybody, you know…People think I criticised,” he said. “I didn’t criticise the UN, I didn’t criticise Babsy Grange, I didn’t criticise the Jamaican government. All I said was, isn’t it ironic that the Jamaican government used to be the target of reggae artistes and the Jamaican government did nothing for reggae artistes. It’s not criticism, it’s fact!”
The 57-year-old journalist moved to the United Kingdom at six years old. By the early 1970s, he was following Jamaican music in clubs and dances throughout London; he covered reggae for publications like The Voice and BBC, interviewing countless artistes including Aswad, Steel Pulse and Peter Tosh.
Adebayo’s publishing company, X Press, produced edgy books such as Yardie, the 1992 book by Jamaican Victor Headley that inspired the movie of the same name.
Married to lovers’ rock singer Carroll Thompson, he first visited Jamaica in 1980 for interviews at Channel One studio in Kingston. Over the years, Adebayo said he is surprised successive governments had no structured policy in place to support reggae and Jamaican musicians.
“The government didn’t support them. The government didn’t even use reggae to promote itself, like the tourist industry does now,” he pointed out.
UNESCO cited reggae’s global influence as a voice for the oppressed among reasons for placing the music on its Intangible Cultural Heritage list. Adebayo said people like him were aware of that long ago.
“What I wanted to do was put things in perspective; reggae did not start in 2018. Reggae does not start by the UN saying, we are acknowledging it now. We’ve known it’s world heritage music for years.”