OK, since music is such an important part of the culture, what is the most popular song ever in the cultural music of Jamaica? Is it a Marley number, like Redemption Song? Is it a Festival song, like Eric Donaldson's Oh Cherry Oh Cherry, Oh Baby? Is it some current dancehall hit which children can recite as they wine and dagger to it? Is it a folk song with mento beats?

If popularity is to be measured by the sensible criteria of the number of people who know and use the song as well as frequency and duration of use, then the most popular song ever in the cultural music of Jamaica has to be an imported Christian hymn. Perhaps it is Amazing Grace, published in 1779 by slave-ship-captain-turned-Anglican parson, John Newton. Or is it that mid-19th-century composition by Irish-born Joseph Scriven, What a Friend We Have in Jesus? Or is it that great hymn penned in 1776 by Augustus M. Toplady, Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me? Not only are these Christian super-hymns sung in worship services across the length and breadth of the land on Sundays and Sabbaths, they are staples of wakes and funerals.

But wait! We are missing another great, well-known, well-loved and well-used hymn, but of much more recent vintage. We first started using it in the early 1960s. It is the national anthem, a sublime Christian hymn-prayer which positions Jamaica as a covenant nation: Eternal Father, Bless Our Land.

When we talk about Jamaican culture, there are huge biases in favour of things African, things artistic - and things old - minimising everything else in the discussion. Culture, easy to recognise but hard to define, is the whole way of life of a people. It encompasses how a people views the cosmos and relates to divinity. It covers their association with their environment and with each other in community. Culture includes the art and architecture created, dress and food. Included in it are legal codes and political organisation.

Culture covers language and ritual, taboos and conventions. It includes the science and the technology which a society creates and uses. Culture involves how we handle sex, family and children, and how we educate the next generation. The axes of culture are the spiritual and the material, the social and the intellectual.

Spiritual world view

And foundational to the whole thing are people's views of God and the cosmos. Religion is at the heart of culture. Every civilisation has been defined by its religion. People's relationship to the material world and their creation of a social world are profoundly determined by their spiritual world view.

Jamaican generic cultural religion can best be described as a syncretistic mix of various faith elements. But there can be no doubt that the dominant element is the Christian element. I am simply describing reality on the ground, not prescribing what ought to be. We cannot reasonably and honestly discuss Jamaican culture without acknowledging the dominant Christian contribution as a simple fact.

We started out discussing the musical side of culture. Quite apart from the sheer dominance of church music, so badly ignored in celebrations and discussions of culture, church music has had a deep and lasting influence on Jamaican folk and popular music held up as cultural music.

Our legal code and political system, key elements of culture, are largely the implanted products of nearly 800 years of development in a particular religious milieu, conveniently using the Magna Carta in 1215 as a starting point. English common law and constitutionalism and the Westminster parliamentary system are distinctive products of English Protestantism and its views of God and man and society.

Standing elements of Jamaican culture are our deep respect for the judicial system and the stability of the political system. But we have developed our own peculiar political culture, with a high infusion of tribalism and violence in a culture already with a high degree of tolerance for violence. Violence is a signature and growing element of the so-called popular music.

"Is English we speakin" - at least officially. And we keep our own elastic Jamaica time. As the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis suggests, not only does the environment shape language, but language profoundly shapes perceptions of reality. We see the world disproportionately through English eyes and speak of it in English ways. At the same time, Jamaica is a hotbed of linguistic, contributing words to the most dynamic language in the world, as it is a world centre of musical energy.

Christian-European biases

When it comes to our food, the 100 per cent importation of the ingredients of the national dish, ackee and saltfish, is not the only funny thing about it. It is just not anywhere near the dominant dish, or even a staple of diet. The current staples of diet are rice and chicken, and wheat products, all imported when the feed for the poultry is considered. Older Jamaicans will remember when 'food', or ground provisions and red meat were staples.

A better choice of national dish for historical and sentimental reasons might be bammy and stewed iguana, as the Tainos would have it. And modern Africans consume a great deal of cassava. But Jamaicans, as Dr Cassava will learn, have never really taken to the native root. And Christian-European biases preclude the enjoyment of stewed iguana, never mind the near extinction of these lizards.

The dominant culturalists want us to celebrate the old and despise the new. Culture is projected in static terms, not as something dynamic, which any living culture must be. The Jamaica National Heritage Trust, for example, faces the danger of wanting to preserve every old building in Jamaica. Jamaica has always been at the forefront of adopting new technologies - the railway, electricity, the telephone, to name a few.

Distinctive Jamaican stamp

Whatever Jamaican culture is, it is now deeply influenced by the cellphone, fast food and fast fashion and imported entertainment, things on which we are placing our own distinctive Jamaican stamp.

Sorry, the ring game and live storytelling, the bandana and the quadrille, 'blue draws' and traditional wakes, will be smaller and smaller celebratory retentions of a fading past until they finally disappear from a dynamic culture. What we hope will be preserved - or developed - are spiritual, ethical, legal, political and social codes as critical structural elements of a peaceful, just and progressive society.

Martin Henry is a communications consultant who may be reached at medhen@gmail.com or columns@gleanerjm.com.