Today’s song is ‘Sweat (A La La La La Long) ‘. This is a single from their album, ‘Bad to the Bone’ that was released in 1993. The song achieved a great success particularly in Europe, where it was a top ten hit in many countries, including Austria, Denmark, Greece, Ireland, Norway, Portugal and Sweden. It topped the charts in Switzerland and Germany for six and twelve weeks, respectively. It was also a hit in Australia, reaching Number 2, and New Zealand where it reached Number 1. It reached Number 3 in the United Kingdom and Number 16 in the United States. The song was also ranked number 94 on the ‘Triple J Hottest 100’ in 1993.
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One of the most sexually suggestive songs ever released in Great Britain, ‘Sweat’ reminds me very much of my two visits to Jamaica in the New Millennium. It was during my second visit to Trelawny in Jamaica when I heard this song for the first time. I never realised at the time that it had been released ten years earlier. The song was probably the most popular song that the young Jamaican women and their dancing partners would ‘dagger and grind to’ (dance and move frantically in a provocative way that suggested sexual intercourse was occurring).
At the time of my Jamaican visits during early 2000, I found it hard to get my mind around the fact of the dichotomy that ran deep across this land. On one side of the coin, the country had more churches per square acre within their land than most, but they also had more annual murders per capita than any other country on the face of the earth. Their young lived in three widely different phases of development between childhood-teenager years-adulthood and their response that varied from total respect to all to outright criminal rebellion, along with an increasing rise in one-parent families. where there were too many absent fathers and too many mothers left to rear their young alone. I found the extreme of these distinctions both puzzling and highly disturbing.
I found it hard to reconcile myself with the vast changes that occurred in the behaviour of boys and girls between attending school and once they leave school and start working. From my observation, while working with thirty-two Jamaican schools in Trelawny, between the years 2000-2003, I found the children who attended First School to be so family orientated, so disciplined, so cleanly dressed, so respectful to authority figures like teachers and the la enforcers; properly behaved in every regard.
Once they started attending Secondary School, however, as often happens in the lower social strata of British society today, most of the boys showed a marked resentment to authority figures and were more prone to become involved in gang warfare and act more criminal. They behaved less responsible and respectful to the females in society and reacted more violently in street and gang confrontations. Many of the girls, on the other hand, become more sexualised in their dress and mannerisms, marriages become less common, in favour of having relationships and children out of wedlock. The ‘absent father-figure’ became a more prominent figure in the family settings of children being brought up in one-parent situations, (usually being reared by their mother). I have no doubt that for the young leaving school who do not go on to university, that fewer prospects of getting gainful and satisfying employment, and which pays a living wage fuelled much of this discontent.
Although I observed this change in Jamaican society during the early years of the New Millennium, ten to fifteen years later, we in Great Britain seem to have arrived at a parallel stage in society with regard to youth behaviour and responses to parents, adults, authority figures and communities. Whereas Kingston, Jamaica was considered as being the murder capital of the world between the years 2000-2003, London, England has taken that title in 2017-2019. Where we perhaps differ, in degree, is in the level of absent father figures from the children of pairing relationships.
Despite any advancements that have been made in equalising the rights between the sexes, women are still discriminated against in the workplace, the political arena, the church, the pay market and in the home. While sexual discrimination on the surface appears to have dramatically reduced, there is some evidence that it has simply ‘gone undercover’, and today lies hidden at the back of a man’s mind, is still thought frequently by man, but is less often voiced in public. After all, it is most unlikely that tens of thousands of years of considering ‘slavery’ and ‘female subjugation’ to be in the natural order of things in man’s mind is unlikely to have been erased in man’s conscious and unconscious in a matter of a small number of decades and the passing of a few man-made laws.
One way or another, I’m afraid that it will be the women who are left to ‘sweat’, whether they live in Jamaica, Great Britain or any other country on earth.
Love and peace Bill xxx
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One of the most sexually suggestive songs ever released in Great Britain, ‘Sweat’ reminds me very much of my two visits to Jamaica in the New Millennium. It was during my second visit to Trelawny in Jamaica when I heard this song for the first time. I never realised at the time that it had been released ten years earlier. The song was probably the most popular song that the young Jamaican women and their dancing partners would ‘dagger and grind to’ (dance and move frantically in a provocative way that suggested sexual intercourse was occurring).
At the time of my Jamaican visits during early 2000, I found it hard to get my mind around the fact of the dichotomy that ran deep across this land. On one side of the coin, the country had more churches per square acre within their land than most, but they also had more annual murders per capita than any other country on the face of the earth. Their young lived in three widely different phases of development between childhood-teenager years-adulthood and their response that varied from total respect to all to outright criminal rebellion, along with an increasing rise in one-parent families. where there were too many absent fathers and too many mothers left to rear their young alone. I found the extreme of these distinctions both puzzling and highly disturbing.
I found it hard to reconcile myself with the vast changes that occurred in the behaviour of boys and girls between attending school and once they leave school and start working. From my observation, while working with thirty-two Jamaican schools in Trelawny, between the years 2000-2003, I found the children who attended First School to be so family orientated, so disciplined, so cleanly dressed, so respectful to authority figures like teachers and the la enforcers; properly behaved in every regard.
Once they started attending Secondary School, however, as often happens in the lower social strata of British society today, most of the boys showed a marked resentment to authority figures and were more prone to become involved in gang warfare and act more criminal. They behaved less responsible and respectful to the females in society and reacted more violently in street and gang confrontations. Many of the girls, on the other hand, become more sexualised in their dress and mannerisms, marriages become less common, in favour of having relationships and children out of wedlock. The ‘absent father-figure’ became a more prominent figure in the family settings of children being brought up in one-parent situations, (usually being reared by their mother). I have no doubt that for the young leaving school who do not go on to university, that fewer prospects of getting gainful and satisfying employment, and which pays a living wage fuelled much of this discontent.
Although I observed this change in Jamaican society during the early years of the New Millennium, ten to fifteen years later, we in Great Britain seem to have arrived at a parallel stage in society with regard to youth behaviour and responses to parents, adults, authority figures and communities. Whereas Kingston, Jamaica was considered as being the murder capital of the world between the years 2000-2003, London, England has taken that title in 2017-2019. Where we perhaps differ, in degree, is in the level of absent father figures from the children of pairing relationships.
Despite any advancements that have been made in equalising the rights between the sexes, women are still discriminated against in the workplace, the political arena, the church, the pay market and in the home. While sexual discrimination on the surface appears to have dramatically reduced, there is some evidence that it has simply ‘gone undercover’, and today lies hidden at the back of a man’s mind, is still thought frequently by man, but is less often voiced in public. After all, it is most unlikely that tens of thousands of years of considering ‘slavery’ and ‘female subjugation’ to be in the natural order of things in man’s mind is unlikely to have been erased in man’s conscious and unconscious in a matter of a small number of decades and the passing of a few man-made laws.
One way or another, I’m afraid that it will be the women who are left to ‘sweat’, whether they live in Jamaica, Great Britain or any other country on earth.
Love and peace Bill xxx
