Dancehall has long expressed many things about the realities of life in the underbelly of the social structure, as it were - the ubiquitous violence, the distorted sexual relations, and the much-admired hard, aggressive responses to these debilitating life experiences, as acted out on stage and voiced in their lyrics by the musical millionaire heroes.

One major problem is that due to lack of real robust competition, dancehall has had disproportionate representation and influence in mainstream media and corporate support, whereas other forms of popular national music (such as reggae) have seemingly declined.

We all, as humans, have in our packages of survival instincts, almost irresistible urges for sex and aggression. Neurologists inform us that the brain stem structure of humans is very similar to the entire brain of reptiles, such as lizards and crocodiles, and so we have many of the same aggressive and mating behaviours of these animals.

What distinguishes us is the developed mammalian instincts for love and caring, including parental caregiving and a relatively large cortex, enabling considerable reasoning power, and the formulation of morals and ethical and legal rules limiting irresponsible breeding and casual murder.

Checks and balances

However, the older instincts regularly override the cortex, as can be seen by a worldwide look at the newspapers, TV news and history books. Policymakers aware of these aspects are, therefore, right in restricting how much sex and aggression they will allow public access in their societies, especially since masses of young humans can have their instincts prematurely activated.

There must also be checks and balances. We must become more literate in music, so that the generation coming will have exposure to alternatives. Music must be taught in Jamaican schools in an even more robust way than at present - emphasising the skills of writing music and the playing of instruments.

School bands could eventually have national competitions com-parable to the famous annual athletic championships.

I am, etc.,

PATRICK BLAKE

mysterymonpatrick@hotmail.com