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Originally posted by Mexxx

4. ‘Reggae Boyz & Reggae Gyals’: Blackness, Diaspora and the Jamaican National Team
While the negotiations around the politics of Englishness have only affected partial changes within domestic football, the world cup qualification of Jamaica’s Reggae Boyz has probably done more than any of football’s anti-racist campaigns to attract black people as spectators inside football grounds. They were dubbed the ‘Reggae Boyz.’ No one really knows where the name comes from but the Jamaican Football Federation acted quickly and in March 1998 they registered the ‘Reggae Boyz’ as a trademark in 11 countries. The official story is that the Zambians coined the name during a Jamaican national team tour in 1995, but in large part the name has stuck because of the pre-match concerts fused football and dance-hall culture where reggae stars like Dennis Brown and Jimmy Cliff performed. The road to the World Cup finals for Jamaica was followed keenly within the diaspora. This was made possible by global communications technology often associated with nascent European techno-imperialism.

In south London a small pub called ironically The Union Tavern was the place where a packed house of black fans saw their team draw 0-0 with Mexico and earn their trip to Europe. These events in Kingston, Jamaica had a distinctly local resonance given that this part of the metropolis has such a long standing Afro-Caribbean and specifically Jamaican community.

Elsewhere in London black fans watched the game on Sky Sports amid a carnival atmosphere. Alister Morgan, writing in The Independent newspaper, told of the scenes at York Hall in East London where the game was watched by 2,000 Jamaicans. One of the revellers told him:
It’s not just a question of that round ball and 22 men. We’re talking about the position of Jamaica and the efforts of a poor people. It’s beyond football - in this country we live four and a half thousand miles from home and have been suffering for 40 years. Now Jamaica have qualified all Jamaicans will be uplifted.

This event provided a means for people within the diaspora to identify with Jamaica but also it offered black football fans a possibility to participate in football on their own terms.

The Jamaican team - coached by the Brazilian Rene Simoes - itself featured ‘English’ black players like Deon Burton of Derby County, Wimbledon’s Robbie Earle and Paul Hall and Fitzroy Simpson both of Portsmouth. The inclusion of players ‘from foreign’ caused some initial disquiet in Jamaica, the Daily Observer ran an article on 17th March 1998 with the headline – "No, we won’t cheer for a team of British rejects."

Millwall’s Tony Witter had been approached to play but had not made the trip because the Jamaican Football Association could not afford to pay the medical insurance that Millwall made a condition of his release. As part of their pre-tournament preparation the Reggae Boyz played a series of friendly games in England. The first was a testimonial for the journeyman white player Simon Barker at Queen’s Park Rangers on Sunday 22nd of March. Unprecedented numbers of black people attended the game. Of the 17,000 fans packed into the stadium on that sunny afternoon probably all but a few hundred were black. Paul Eubanks, a journalist for the Caribbean newspaper The Gleaner, wrote:
Never ... had I seen so many black people inside one [football] ground. Generations of Jamaicans had come to watch the game. The most emotional moment for me was witnessing grandmothers at a site they would have never dreamed of entering, but they were getting ready to support their beloved team. The weather was consistent with its surroundings of Jamaicans: steel band and reggae music blaring out of the PA system, Jamaican patties on sale and even the odd ‘FUNNY’ cigarette being passively smoked.

The significance of this event is hard to overstate. It marked not only the emergence of unprecedented numbers of black fans actively going to watch live football but also a shift in the nature of supporter culture. What this event revealed was the ethnocentrism of English football and its class-inflected and gendered nature.
One of the striking things about the culture of Jamaican support was the transposition of the rituals associated with Jamaican musical cultures to the footballing context.

Earl Bailey and Nazma Muller commenting on the long association between football and music particularly in relation to Bob Marley, conclude:
Every DJ worth his salt knows how to kick a ball… Given the chance to marry both Jamaican loves, many entertainers turned up at the National Stadium and away matches to rally fans behind the Reggae Boyz. From Beenie Man to Bounty Killer, Yellowman to Jimmy Cliff, they came out to support the national team.

Marlene, a young woman born in London of Jamaican parentage, commented on her visit to Loftus Road:
It was good to go to football. I’ve never been to a game before but it wasn’t really like the football you see on the TV, it was just like going to a dance with the music and everything. It was funny because I think the QPR players were a bit confused when they came out and saw all us black people and so few white faces in the crowd. [my emphasis]
The participation of black women in football showed parallels with some of the broader patterns of female expression in Jamaican popular culture. In the context of the reggae dance-hall women have used music and to engender female power through dancing and "extravagant display of flashy jewellery, expensive clothes, elaborate hairstyles." Carolyn Cooper has argued, these performances embody complex gender politics in which women’s power lies in the control over their own bodies and sexuality. Through dance-hall culture women have achieved high levels of autonomy and self-affirmation. Equally, their presence within football grounds raised parallel issues with regard to those discussed previously in connection with the construction of black men within white masculinities in football. The range of representations of black femininity within football pose similar questions and we will address these in what follows. But clear traces of dance-hall culture are present amongst Jamaican football fans both in terms of their style and the significant numbers of young women in attendance at games.

The second game arranged for Jamaica in the UK was at Ninian Park against the Welsh national team on March 26th. Paul, a black south London entrepreneur, brought 1,000 tickets and organised a fleet of 11 coaches to ferry the London’s Reggae Boyz and Reggae Gyals to the match from the Capital. "I want to give people a whole experience. You can get a coach to the game and then stay in Cardiff for an ‘after-party’ reggae dance" he told me over the phone as I booked my ticket.

Midday outside Brixton Town Hall was an extraordinary sight as hundreds of black people assembled to make the long trip to Cardiff under the grey London skies. One man was dressed head to foot in black, green and gold like a walking Jamaican flag. Another was draped in a flag with the picture of Bob Marley in the centre and beneath embroidered the word "Freedom." Two young black women boarded the coach dressed in full Reggae Gyal style. One wore a green wig with a Jamaican team shirt and yellow pants. While her friend had a Jamaican flag coloured into her hair, wore a Jamaica scarf around her neck and a yellow and green leisure suit.
Sitting in front of me was a young women call Pam. She was 17 and had come to the game on her own, something that would be unthinkable under any other circumstances. A night game at Ninian Park - home of Cardiff City - is a daunting place to visit even for the most seasoned football fan. Pam - who lives in Brixton - said:
Well, I knew that I’d feel safe because I am travelling with all Jamaican people. It might be very different if it was another match. I like football but the first time that I have been to a game was when Jamaican played at Queens Park Rangers. I really liked it so here I am, and I get to go to a dance as well and I don’t have to go to work tomorrow- do you know what I mean!
The whole experience of travelling with the Jamaican fans was so different from the usual football excursions to away games. Buju Banton and Beenie Man was played over and over on the sound system, fried chicken and bun was served as we sped down the motorway. But, this contrast was more profound than just the quality of the music and the food on offer. The whole social basis of Jamaican fandom was much less tightly scripted than its English counterpart. Older women and men travelled with young people, fans travelled alone safe in the knowledge that they would be amongst their own. Black people who would not ordinarily step inside a football ground attended with the confidence of veterans.
The reality of the game against Wales was dismal in footballing and supporting terms. By the time that the coach arrived the rain was pelting down. The game was an uneventful 0-0 draw. The largest section of Jamaican support was located in the away stand which had no roof.

The Jamaican performance was poor to say the least but there was something inspiring in the fact that here was over 5,000 black fans braving the wind and rain to watch their team. Behind me a black man in his sixties shouted "Come on, Reggae Boyz." The ball ricocheted off Ricardo ‘Bibi’ Gardener’s shin, going out of play ending another aimless run at the Welsh defence. He said, in a voice that was half growl and half whispered: "The man play like cabbage." This was a turn of phrase that I’d never heard inside a British football ground before but some how it captured the moment perfectly. On the one hand this small comment registered a new presence, black people coming to football on their own terms with their own unique way of voicing frustration. On the other, it was the all to familiar crie de coeur of a disappointed fan, a phenomenon universal to people who share a passion for the game the world over.

So much nonsense has been written about the apparent unwillingness of black fans to attend English football matches. The reasons offered vary from the out and out racist to claims about ‘extenuating cultural and economic factors’: - "Black people don’t watch football they follow basketball," "They don’t like to have to stand out in the cold," "They can’t afford to pay the high ticket prices." Looking out on the legion of Jamaican fans that night in Cardiff, draped in black, gold and green with the rain trickling down their necks it became all too clear. The reason why they were here in these terrible conditions was because they felt this to be their team and their game. As the mass of black fans looked out onto Ninian Park and the Jamaican team, on this cold wet night they saw themselves. The experience of English racism and the racially de-barred nature of British spectator sports is what prohibits an equal commitment and emotional bind being established between black fans and the England team and local clubs. This is true despite the fact that black players are playing at all levels of English football. One of the biggest cheers of the night was at half time when it was announced that England were losing 1-0 at Wembley.

Three months later at a sun drenched Parc des Princes the setting was altogether different at Jamaica’s second fixture of the finals against Argentina. The stadium was a patchwork of Jamaican gold shirts alongside the pale blue and white stripes of Argentina. The atmosphere was heavy with anticipation. Jamaican fans of all ages and of both sexes alongside pockets of Argentinean fans. Two young female Jamaican fans dressed in classic dancehall queen style held court for the cameramen at the front of the stand. Later after the match the two women told me that they’d grown up in America: "But we’re Jamaican! Our parents came to New York from the Caribbean" said Debbie, who had her hair bleached and styled up in a kind of bouffant on top of her head. She wore a green leather top with green and yellow hot pants and big platform boots and one of her eyebrows was pieced with a silver ring. Her friend – Paula – was equally striking in her dance-hall style, her hair was permed and ironed so that it was straight up with red sunglasses resting on the top. "It’s been incredible coming to Europe to see the football. We’ve met so many Jamaicans in Paris and before that we stayed in London but here we are thousands of miles from Jamaica and it’s like a big family reunion," she said after the game.
These two female fans were probably the most photographed women in Paris that day. Relentless waves of Argentinean and later Jamaican men had their photographs taken with them. One portly Argentinean wearing a national team shirt, a false moustache and a kind of wide brimmed gringo hat, posed with Debbie and Paula to the delight of the hordes of paparazzi. On the pitch there must have been 100 photographers in an arc around this spectacle. An important question here is the degree to which these gendered performances are being re-inscribed as the pack of press photographers focused their lens? Or, equally how are these women being viewed by the male football fans who flocked to have their pictures taken with them? Sexual carnivalesque is part of the transgressive power of these styles of black femininity and the football stadium provide a new arena for their exposition. But part of Paula’s and Debbie’s allure - so evident amongst the Argentinia and and other European men - may have been informed by dubious racialised ideas relating to black women’s sexuality or racial biology. Here, the transgressive potential of the dance-hall queen performance, may in turn be re-inscribed by a male footballing audiences which reduces these women and their agency to mere sex objects. The other danger of focusing too much the dance-hall queens is that the substantial numbers of black women of all ages in the stadium is eclisped because they followed the Jamaican team in a less stylised way.

The period before kick off was charged with aniticipation. This reached a kind of fever pitch about 10 minutes before the start of the game when the guitar lick from the opening bars of Bob Marley's "Could this be love" struck up on the stadium sound system. The whole place erupted with Argentinean and Jamaican fans alike singing and dancing. In an attempt to find a suitably ‘Latin’ equivalent to Bob Marley the French stadium manager immediately followed the reggae rhythm with "La Bamba." The choice of Los Lobos' version was somewhat ironic given this tune is a Mexican folk song, made famous in the fifties by the Mexican American rock’n’ roll singer Richie Valens! Regardless, the packed stadium swayed, danced and sung together with equal intensity.

The game itself became almost a side issue as Jamaica slipped to a 5–0 defeat. Martin Thorpe wrote in The Guardian the following day of the Jamaican side "for all the infectious joy of their singing and dancing fans, the team simply could not match the high standards demanded on the global stage." The Jamaican team were certainly treated like second class citizens in the lead up to this fixture. Robbie Earle recounted the shoddy treatment that they received from the FIFA officials, the teams pre-game warm up on the pitch was shortened to suit the Argentineans and they were ushered away despite Simoes’s objection so that the ground could be prepared for the corporate spectacle.
"Incidents like these highlight the fact that we are not yet looked upon as equal. FIFA have based much of their promotion on fair play – it is time that they applied it across the board. Is it not the mentality of a bully to identify its weaker targets and pick on them? We have enough work to do on our own to climb the soccer ladder without any obstructions from the game’s administrators."
Off the pitch FIFA treated the Jamaican team as a footballing ‘poor relation.’

Maybe the Jamaican team were out of their depth on the field, but something significant happened within the stadium itself. The Parc des Princes is the home ground for Paris St Germain a team with a reputation for a racist following amongst its fans. A black friend who’d lived in Paris told of an experience watching Liverpool F.C. there in the European cup in 1996: "It was an incredible atmosphere and the racism was very open. It was funny in a way because we were standing with the Paris St Germain fans and one of the skinheads came up to me and advised me to go and stand somewhere else for my own safety!"

At half time and along with a stream of Argentinean and Jamaican fans I made for the toilets. Descending down a long staircase, bordered by grim grey concrete walls this throng of multi-racial fans was confronted with the inscriptions of hate which laid claim to the ground and registered its history. Racist graffiti was plastered over virtually every surface of the toilets area. Above the sinks where a black man was washing his son’s hands, read the inscription ‘SKINHEADS’ alongside scribbled Celtic Crosses and Swastikas. Elsewhere, FN stickers with a flame coloured red, white and blue were plastered on the cubicles, SS and Swastikas scratched into the surface of the metal doors. The fans seemed on the surface to ignore these racist outpourings. As I watched the little boys hands being washed, I noticed the Jamaican motto on the back of his gold and green shirt: "Out of many, one goal!" Here a multi-cultural footballing reality was confronted with the subterreanean traces of racist football culture. Turning to leave I looked up and daubed in English on the open door was the slogan "WHITE POWER." Ascending the stairs this image was etched on my mind and provided a stark reminded that the transformations manifest around this fixture and considerable numbers of black fans present was both a temporary and conditional phenomenon.

Jamaican support during France 98 provided a pretext for the diaspora to gather in one place. What was striking was that people of Jamaican descent had converged on Paris from a range of itinerant homes be they in New York, London or Birmingham. The other thing that was striking was the range backgrounds that Jamaican fans demonstrated in terms of age group, gender and class background. As we boarded the bus for the long drive back Calais and then via the channel tunnel to London, a man in his late forties sat down next to me. He hadn’t been part of the outward journey which had been something of a carnival atmosphere, laced with duty free Remy Martine & Coca Cola, reggae music and fried chicken. The scene now after the match was altogether more subdued. The man sitting next to me seemed more than just a bit dejected from the 5-0 trouncing. He appeared a little remote and aloof and just sat there making no gestures towards conversation wearing a Jamaican team shirt with a beaten up full size football on his lap. Occasionally, he’d lift his Jamaican team baseball cap off his head, then tug it down firmly and then rub his eyes. We sat together without passing a word as the bus cruised down the now dark motorway.
After about an hour and a half, I decided it was too long a journey to suffer alone in silence. We started to talk. My travelling companion’s name was Walter, and his outward aloof appearance was for good reason. To my surprise he told me that he was one of Jamaica’s 18 High Court Judges! Walter lived outside Kinston and he’d travelled to France to see the World Cup with a package deal, taking the opportunity to see Europe including Belgium, Luxembourg and Amsterdam. I told him that I couldn’t imagine an English judge going to France to watch England play. "Well they think of me as a bit of a radical back at home" he said. I asked him how many people had made the trip to from Jamaican to France. "Quite a few, quite a few," he replied. "Probably about 5-600 and that’s quite a lot when you consider what a small island Jamaica is compared to European countries." We shared friendly conversation all the way to London about everything from the morality of coach Simoes’s choice to take the controversial player Walter ‘Blacka’ Boyd to France, to Walter’s knowledge of sociology and exposure to ‘Haralambos’ the A Level students’ text book and bible. Here I was sitting discussing such things with a High Court Judge in a football shirt! The remarkable diversity found amongst Jamaican football fans seemed to be epitomised in this one unexpected moment.

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