Rough Riding

Tanya Stephens and the Power of Music to Transform Society

Adwoa Ntozake Onuora, Anna Kasafi Perkins, Ajamu Nangwaya

• Publisher: The University of the West Indies Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9789766408091

Rough Riding: Tanya Stephens and the Power of Music to Transform Society is a groundbreaking collection of articles that explore the contribution of the cultural worker, feminist organic intellectual, and controversial reggae and dancehall artiste Tanya Stephens. An accomplished lyricist on par with the genre's celebrated male performers, Stephens has been producing socially conscious and transformative music that is associated with revolutionary reggae music of the 1970s and 1980s. The contributors to this anthology – a diverse group of scholars, activists and reggae professionals – explore the range of ideas and issues raised in Stephens's extensive body of work and examine the important role cultural workers play in inspiring shifts in consciousness and, ultimately, the social order.

PART 1

WHO IS TANYA?

CHAPTER 1

Tanya Stephens as a Black Feminist Organic Intellectual of Dancehall and Reggae

AJAMU NANGWAYA

MANY DANCEHALL AND REGGAE FANS ARE CONSCIOUS of the fact that Tanya Stephens occupies the role of an intellectual in society – someone who engages in the discussion, critique and advocacy of ideas and practices in her songs and public pronouncements. As an educator, I have had the opportunity to both hear and read student evaluations of Stephens’s contribution to ideational discourse. My women students generally laud her for expressing ideas that advance women’s empowerment and self-determination, especially in the context of female/male relations and female erotic/sexual autonomy. In the wider society outside the classroom, I have heard reggae and dancehall fans extol her ability to raise ideas about various oppressed groups and bring a frank and unapologetic tone to speaking truth to both the powerful and the powerless. The academy is not the exclusive home of intellectuals: indeed, many of them do not need the stamp of approval from the bourgeois university to be so designated.

Linking Stephens with the category “intellectual” might inspire some people to ask the question, “Who exactly is an intellectual?” The Tanzanian intellectual Issa Shivji (2018) provides us with two generic and universally applicable functions of the intellectual:

Intellectuals are producers and purveyors of ideas. They produce all kinds of ideas, many ideas: ideas to rationalize and legitimize, ideas to explain and deceive; ideas to mystify and mesmerize; ideas to decorate and demonize; ideas to inform and entertain – all kinds of ideas. They may produce ideas gratuitously or for a price – these days, more often than not, for a price. Thus ideas become a commodity, an artificial commodity.

At the same time, the above proposition does not robustly speak to the fact that intellectuals are not neutral actors in the white supremacist, patriarchal and capitalist social order. An intellectual serves either the cause of the oppressed or that of the oppressor, and it is for that reason that I am inclined to use Antonio Gramsci’s category “organic intellectual” and apply it to Stephens’s role in society.

TANYA STEPHENS AS ORGANIC INTELLECTUAL OF THE OPPRESSED

The Italian Marxist theorist and political leader Antonio Gramsci asserts that “All men are intellectuals, one could therefore say: but not all men have in society the function of intellectuals” (Gramsci 1971). Here, Gramsci declares that while we all produce and disseminate knowledge, we do not all necessarily effect or fulfil that role as our major, daily preoccupation. However, Stephens clearly creates and circulates ideas as part of her regular vocation, which is directed at a mass public with the aim of influencing people’s thoughts and actions. Consequently, I believe most, if not all, of us can see Stephens in Edward Said’s (1996, 69) characterization of the intellectual:

The fact is that the intellectual ought neither to be so uncontroversial and safe a figure as to be just a friendly technician nor should the intellectual try to be a full-time Cassandra, who was not only righteously unpleasant, but also unheard. Every human being is held in by a society, no matter how free and open the society, no matter how bohemian the individual. In any case, the intellectual is supposed to be heard from, and in practice ought to be stirring up debate and if possible controversy. But the alternative is not total quiescence or total rebelliousness.

I choose to read Said’s admonishment against “total rebelliousness” as advice to the intellectual to neither become a rebel without a cause nor stand opposed to everything in society just for the sake of playing devil’s advocate. An intellectual from the ranks of the labouring classes or other oppressed groups must be rebellious in the stance against the forces of Babylon, or social domination. Being an “uncontroversial and safe figure” (Walters 2011) is definitely not the path that Stephens has taken as a cultural worker, one who pays significant attention to the relationship between women and men and eroticism. Indeed, an artist who critically and interrogatively speaks to the social inequities that undergird sexual relations within the heterosexual relationship and the oppressive and overbearing presence of patriarchy in regulating that area of social life will court the male backlash of the religious and social forces invested in perpetuating the status quo.

The dominant society is very much aware of the power of ideas in maintaining its influence and interest. Therefore, it is quite cognizant of the disruptive role and effect of individuals or groups that offer countervailing, anti-systemic ideas aimed at the oppressed masses. It is in this context that the intellectual is a potential threat to the ruling class in all societies. Even more specifically, it is the organic intellectual who has committed herself to the cause of the socially dominated who is the certified gravedigger of the racist, patriarchal and capitalist social order. Conversely, she is also the midwife at the birth of the good and just society. Per Gramsci, the organic intellectual provides her or his organizing knowledge, skills and attitudes to either the forces of oppression or the members of the exploited in society. The organic intellectual is central to organizing the masses because she is actively located at the centre of the creation and/or circulation of ideas. Gramsci has a very expansive take on the people who fall within the category of the organic intellectual, which might be surprising to many people whose notion of the intellectual is someone who is associated with an institution of higher learning or a bookish or highly cerebral person who lives in the world of ideas. In his view, organic intellectuals who serve the ruling class include “the industrial technician, the specialist in political economy, the organisers of a new culture, of a new legal system” who are tasked with the responsibility of creating the conditions for the success of business as well as “organising the general system of relationships external to the business itself” (Gramsci 1971). In this current period, organic intellectuals would also cover functionaries such as “broadcasters, academic professionals, computer analysts, sports and media lawyers, management consultants, policy experts, government advisers, authors of specialized market reports, and indeed the whole field of modern mass journalism” (Said 1996, 8–9).

As each class or social group has its own organic intellectuals to articulate and advance its fundamental interests, the labouring classes also have their own, such as Stephens, who function as “organisers of a new culture” by presenting and promoting ideas to the socially marginalized to encourage them to develop a consciousness of their own interests and to work at making themselves the hegemonic force in society. Stephens is a product of the labouring classes in Richmond, St Mary, and this objective reality makes her an organic intellectual formed by her class of origin. She is a member of the petite bourgeoisie who has committed what Amilcar Cabral has labelled “class suicide” and become one with “the deepest aspirations of the people” (Cabral 1969, 110). She has sided with the suffering masses, in their diversity, despite the opportunity to cast her lot with the bourgeois class to which she belongs by virtue of her material accomplishment. This cultural worker, Stephens, fulfils the role of Gramsci’s organic intellectual as “permanent persuader” and not just a simple orator. She largely (re)presents a “humanistic conception of history” (Gramsci 1971), which makes the case for the capacity of people to creatively take measures to challenge oppressive conditions and work for their liberation. In the song “Welcome to the Rebelution” (from her critically acclaimed album Rebelution), Stephens constructs the progressive cultural worker or artist as an organic intellectual-cum-persuader who attempts to inspire the masses toward unity and revolution:

Stay grounded and not get caught up with this illusion

Cuz that the problem and right now I’m only into solutions

So I say to you now, the Rebelution is urgent

Stand before you not as queen, but as your humble servant

Fake leaders claim thrones without building kingdoms

Same as the music business in Kingston

We need to fight for the future, for our daughters and so

Instead you’re trippin your brothers, fightin for crumbs

But we will not be deterred by knives or guns

Go tell it on the mountain, the rebelution has come

Well You can fight it or hide it

Or seize the moment and ride it

Instead of fallin divided

Why don’t we stand up united

Differences put aside it would be easier had if we tried it

But even if we dont

Change must come

Change must come

The dominant ideological illusions of the capitalist, patriarchal and white supremacist ruling class must be challenged by radical or revolutionary artists in their capacity as organic intellectuals. When Stephens calls on the labouring classes and other oppressed groups to stop “fightin for crumbs”, she is demanding that the socially dominated struggle for control and ownership of the “bakery” in order to ensure an emancipated future for their children. The emancipatory themes present in Stephens’s body of work come from her lived experience as a member of the working class and a woman as well as her observation of people located in socially dominated categories, such as LGBTQ individuals.

In “Welcome to the Rebelution”, Stephens locates the organic intellectual as an organizer of the people and takes a humanistic and oppositional stance toward a top-down relationship with them. She sings, “So I say to you now, the Rebelution is urgent / Stand before you not as queen, but as your humble servant / Fake leaders claim thrones without building kingdoms.” The cultural worker-cum-organic intellectual claims leadership by virtue of her practical work among the oppressed through the development of alternative institutions, programmes and projects. It is not done through the outdated and socially backward idea of the divine rights of queens or kings. The organic intellectual is “your humble servant” and not one of the “fake leaders” who populate many social movements. Stephens’s recognition of the need for practical action and not simply functioning as an orator at the microphone or on stage is a critically important one. It is necessary for progressive, radical or revolutionary cultural workers to become members of social movement organizations with practical connections to the masses. It is through this type of organic ties to the people that Stephens’s pronouncement that the people “will not be deterred by knives or guns” becomes possible as a real force and not empty sloganeering or overheated rhetoric.

Since walking the talk is the way of the socially engaged organic intellectual of the oppressed, and the best articulation of ideas of liberation is its representation in concrete actions, it is a positive development to see Stephens’s association with the Tambourine Army. This protes...