Independence Day is coming. It's early evening in Kingston, the capital of Jamaica, and the slumbering hills that surround the city are covered in warm blankets of shadows. It has been a season of heat--the sugarcane crop is shriveling for lack of rain, the streets are dusty and dry, and tensions are simmering. Last month there were riots as citizens clashed with police. Last night, at a Montego Bay concert, there was gunfire, a stampede, injuries.
But Independence Day is coming, the 39th anniversary of Jamaica's emergence from the control of Britain. Outside club Asylum, one of the city's most popular night spots, young Jamaicans--in their teens, 20s and 30s--have begun to gather. Inside, things are slow as the drone of foreign acts--Britney Spears, Whitney Houston, 'N Sync--echoes across the empty dance floor. But out on the streets, kids are making their own scene, to their own sounds. It is a scene like those that nowadays are taking place in cities all over the planet--in Tokyo, in Cape Town, in Reykjavik. In such ways, in such places, a fresh sound in global music is being born. It's the beating heart of a new world.
On the street outside club Asylum, ragga (a rap-influenced form of reggae) booms out of parked cars. Young Jamaican men with white scarves tied around their heads vibrate to the music, thrusting their hips at passing Suzuki Samurais. The youths have now begun to slow up traffic, and police close in on them like parentheses. Is a confrontation brewing? One young reveler reaches into his car and turns up his stereo. The voice of Elephant Man, the latest local ragga star, blares out, heavy with attitude and thick with patois: "Badman nah run from police inna shootout/Whole crew a government see dem pon di lookout..." The youth smiles at the cops and keeps dancing.
Bob Marley, the great Jamaican Reggae star, once posed the question "Won't you help me sing these songs of freedom?" Music can be a tool: for relaxation, for stimulation, for communication--and for revolution. In fact, it is often a rhythm of resistance: against parents, against police, against power. The U.S., in this one-superpower age, has perhaps never been so dominant--economically, militarily, culturally. That strength attracts immigrants, who bring with them new forms of music. And that strength also inspires competition, as musicians and performers in other countries, mindful of the American hegemony, assert their national identities and culture and create new musical genres they can call their own: garage in Britain, kwaito in South Africa, ever evolving forms of reggae in Jamaica. America may be the world's policeman, but citizens of the world--and the New Americans who have come here--have turned up their car stereos and are dancing like never before.