Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Vybz Kartel, a Conservative Revolutionary?

2017; Éditions Mélanie Seteun; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

2117-4148

Emmanuel Parent,

Urban and Rural Development Challenges

Since his 2003 brawl with Ninjaman, Jamaican deejay Vybz Kartel has been the talk of the town as one of the most both controversial and popular artists of the Jamaican public space. He appears as the umpteenth avatar of the black gangster myth, yet the strength and recurrence of his public stances since 2009, that peaked in 2012 with the publication of his autobiography The Voice of the Jamaican Ghetto, question and add complexity to this image. By looking at the emic discourses of one of the major representatives of the contemporary dancehall scene, this paper examines the possibility of linking Jamaican dancehall conservative values with a form of class consciousness expressed in a rhetoric proudly defending the ghetto. The critical examination of his arguments will enable us to consider how relevant the figure of the organic intellectual is within contemporary diasporic black cultures, as well as within long-term colonial history.