Gays caused J'can music to suffer, war was unnecessary says entertainment manager

Iconic entertainment manger Copeland Forbes says Jamaican music lost the war against the homosexual community reported Curtis Campbell of the Star News today.

According to Forbes, the war was unnecessary and only served to set back reggae and dancehall music for decades.

The manager, who has worked with a long list of icons including Beres Hammond, Gregory Isaacs, The Wailers, Peter Tosh, Ziggy Marley, Sugar Minott and Luciano, was speaking to The STAR at the recently concluded International Reggae Conference hosted at The University of The West Indies. He believes it will take a strong level of professionalism for Jamaican music to bounce back.

courtesy of his Facebook profile

"I used to tell my artistes you don't need to go down that road, leave that alone. You don't need to go on stage and address homosexuality because it existed before you, and it will exist after you are gone. The sad thing is that our entire music industry was affected," he said.

Shabba Ranks was blacklisted by several companies in the '90s, after the deejay stated in an international interview that he did not support homosexuality. Forbes believes Jamaican genres suffered a similar fate.

Still affected

"Look pan Beenie Man, he did a duet with Janet Jackson and that went nowhere because the homosexual community was going hard against him at the time and the record label pulled away. They lost because over a million dollars was pumped into the production of that song. You don't need to address dem because a lot of them are in the record companies and you are shaking their hands and you don't even know. So leave that alone, homosexuality existed before you and it will be here when yu gone, yu don't have to bring that inna yu music," he said.

The manager further stated that recording artistes who stayed away from such topics were still affected, because Jamaican music was branded as 'hate music'.

"I see even Beres Hammond suffer the consequences of that and Beres never have any part in it. He had five shows cancelled in one year, the only person I think escaped was Luciano. Beres even lost his band that year because when his shows were being cancelled, the band members were forced to go their separate ways. The fight was not only against some artistes, but the entire genre and that was the problem. I'm sorry I never bring the signature to show you today of four prominent men who signed to say they were not going to sing against homosexuality. Many of the artistes did it secretly," he said.

The International Reggae Conference was held from February 11-13 and conveniently falls under the Reggae Month celebrations endorsed by JaRIA.

Pity that the rest of the artistes in my estimation did not stand on principle and disassociate themselves from the murder music ones who advocate death for gays, yet they complain their business has slowed while in the same breath when most of them are interviewed they say their overseas appearances have been successful, so is someone lying here?

The dancehall DJs for the most part have stopped putting out new material calling for the execution of homosexuals but older acts with songs of that nature in their repertoire every now and again do try to perform excerpts of the popular tracks on live sets to gain "a forward" or to rile the crowd as such songs though dated still pulls the audience to a full rush. The last near miss was at Rebel Salute but it was more a subtle strategy instead of repeating the offending lyrics openly so as to avoid scrutiny by vigilant activists.

Check out JFLAG's Response as appearing in the Sunday Gleaner February 22, 2015: 

Ready For Dialogue - J-FLAG Welcomes Open Discussion With Artistes

Lewis agrees that the dancehall fraternity has suffered tremendously from protests over the years to bar artistes from performing at events in a number of countries across North America and Europe. He states that it is time the artistes and the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community convene a meeting to discuss these matters and chart a way forward.
"We've been trying every so often to engage the artistes in dialogue. We've seen these national displays of homo-intolerance, particularly by some artistes. The 2012 and 2013 Independence galas, for example, had some homophobic slurs, which thankfully, the Government and wider society responded to. Our efforts have consistently been getting them to see that while they have a right to freedom of expression, with that comes a level of responsibility. There is more to Jamaica and our music than hate and violence and it is incumbent on our artistes to show the world what is good about Jamaica, our people and music. We can't allow our nation to be characterised by this, because, ultimately, it's the artistes, their family and team who depend on it for their livelihood that suffer. In fact, members of the LGBT community who work in the industry, as well as other artistes who don't have such songs, are affected too," Lewis said.

Peace and tolerance 

H