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'Dutty Wine' culture
published: Thursday | November 2, 2006 <DIV class=KonaBody>
Martin Henry
'Dutty Wine' wi tek life. And it has. The very popular - and appropri-ately named - 'Dutty Wine' dance killed Tanisha Henry last Saturday night in Beacon Hill, St. Catherine, some residents there are claiming.
The Gleaner, interestingly, illustrated its front page story on Monday of the young winer's death with a picture of a dancer in its sister newspaper THE STAR's 'Dutty Wine' contest at the Asylum night-club in July. So the 'dance of death' has had big and respectable backing. Although earlier in March the same STAR had reported warnings from doctors that the dutty wine is a dangerous dance that could cause serious neck injury and permanent pain.
'Dutty Wine' is a lusty celebration and confirmation of our dutty sex culture. The wine of the dance, mostly done by poor girls in search of a moment of recognition, is a choreographing of 'which gal can give the wickedest slam.' It encodes the values and attitudes of a 'Dutty Wine' culture.
Alarming stats
Most of the dutty winers, like so many of the rest of us, are the incidental results of the original 'Dutty Wine'.
The stats are alarming, if there is anybody to be alarmed. The results before our very eyes are as stunning as the 'Dutty Wine' dance itself. The age of first sex, which launches a life of promiscuity, never high in the first place, has fallen to 14 for girls and 13 for boys. One survey reported that 14 per cent of boys had had a sexual encounter by the time they were 10 years old.
A grade nine boy in a prominent city high school, aged 15 or so, proudly announced before his class in a research interview for health and family life education that he had many girlfriends (as sex partners), but from what he was learning he was trying to cut down. Of course, the girls are for cheap entertainment and are quite disposable as in the 'Dutty Wine' dance where art imitates life - and death.
Jamaicans are predominantly beginning their mating lives in visiting relationships with sequential and often concurrent partners, with children a casual by-product and casualties of the free-for-all sex culture. By the time most people settle into fairly stable common law unions in mid-life, there has been a string of children with multiple partners, ready to repeat the deadly cycle. The absentee baby father, off on his next breeding assignment, is a folklorish Jamaican character like Brer Anancy or Rolling Calf. It's just the way things are, and, perhaps, were meant to be.
While the numbers have trended down somewhat, due more to the use of contraceptives rather than any decline in early 'Dutty Wine', a few years ago 28 per cent of births were to girls 16 years old or younger. Sixteen is the legal age of consent. Among these young breeders, 25 per cent of them were delivering their second child, and five per cent their third.
'Dutty Wine' and disease
The pattern of the spread of HIV/AIDS indicates a free-for-all 'Dutty Wine' culture. It is largely heterosexual with major foci in the tourism centres. The rising spread of the killer disease, which is showing decline in some other places, says not even death can stop the 'Dutty Wine.'
Much of the music and the rest of the popular culture promote and celebrate the 'Dutty Wine.' There must be few places on earth where sexual free-for-all is so in your face. The street dances, every night of the week, promoting and celebrating sex and more sex, run on the assumption that there is no obligation for productive work the next day only for more 'Dutty Wine'.
Every culture has
'Dutty Wine' culture
published: Thursday | November 2, 2006 <DIV class=KonaBody>
Martin Henry
'Dutty Wine' wi tek life. And it has. The very popular - and appropri-ately named - 'Dutty Wine' dance killed Tanisha Henry last Saturday night in Beacon Hill, St. Catherine, some residents there are claiming.
The Gleaner, interestingly, illustrated its front page story on Monday of the young winer's death with a picture of a dancer in its sister newspaper THE STAR's 'Dutty Wine' contest at the Asylum night-club in July. So the 'dance of death' has had big and respectable backing. Although earlier in March the same STAR had reported warnings from doctors that the dutty wine is a dangerous dance that could cause serious neck injury and permanent pain.
'Dutty Wine' is a lusty celebration and confirmation of our dutty sex culture. The wine of the dance, mostly done by poor girls in search of a moment of recognition, is a choreographing of 'which gal can give the wickedest slam.' It encodes the values and attitudes of a 'Dutty Wine' culture.
Alarming stats
Most of the dutty winers, like so many of the rest of us, are the incidental results of the original 'Dutty Wine'.
The stats are alarming, if there is anybody to be alarmed. The results before our very eyes are as stunning as the 'Dutty Wine' dance itself. The age of first sex, which launches a life of promiscuity, never high in the first place, has fallen to 14 for girls and 13 for boys. One survey reported that 14 per cent of boys had had a sexual encounter by the time they were 10 years old.
A grade nine boy in a prominent city high school, aged 15 or so, proudly announced before his class in a research interview for health and family life education that he had many girlfriends (as sex partners), but from what he was learning he was trying to cut down. Of course, the girls are for cheap entertainment and are quite disposable as in the 'Dutty Wine' dance where art imitates life - and death.
Jamaicans are predominantly beginning their mating lives in visiting relationships with sequential and often concurrent partners, with children a casual by-product and casualties of the free-for-all sex culture. By the time most people settle into fairly stable common law unions in mid-life, there has been a string of children with multiple partners, ready to repeat the deadly cycle. The absentee baby father, off on his next breeding assignment, is a folklorish Jamaican character like Brer Anancy or Rolling Calf. It's just the way things are, and, perhaps, were meant to be.
While the numbers have trended down somewhat, due more to the use of contraceptives rather than any decline in early 'Dutty Wine', a few years ago 28 per cent of births were to girls 16 years old or younger. Sixteen is the legal age of consent. Among these young breeders, 25 per cent of them were delivering their second child, and five per cent their third.
'Dutty Wine' and disease
The pattern of the spread of HIV/AIDS indicates a free-for-all 'Dutty Wine' culture. It is largely heterosexual with major foci in the tourism centres. The rising spread of the killer disease, which is showing decline in some other places, says not even death can stop the 'Dutty Wine.'
Much of the music and the rest of the popular culture promote and celebrate the 'Dutty Wine.' There must be few places on earth where sexual free-for-all is so in your face. The street dances, every night of the week, promoting and celebrating sex and more sex, run on the assumption that there is no obligation for productive work the next day only for more 'Dutty Wine'.
Every culture has
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