Spotify is considered a haven for all music lovers. It consists of all different genres for subscribers to explore the realm of composed sounds with a harmonic tune. Spotify fan base extends to every race and gender portfolio including members from the LGBT community. However, surprisingly the multimillion-dollar corporation still includes among their listing anti-gay music. Jamaican artists have a reputation for voicing homophobic songs. Two popular songs were recorded in 1993 and 2005.
Capleton’s song “Buggering” is a harsh indictment of two men having sex and appears to suggest public beheading and shooting as a form of retribution in lyrics that are available on Spotify. The song “Nah Apologize” by Sizzla was released in reaction to the Stop Murder Music campaign, which demanded that dancehall musicians stop performing their anti-gay chants and offer an apology for them. Sizzla not only promotes the deadly stoning in the “biblical days,” but his lyrics also lack remorse.
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“Hate content that expressly or principally promotes, advocates, or incites hatred or violence against a group or individual based on characteristics, including race, religion, gender identity, sex, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, veteran status, or disability,” states Spotify’s hate content policy. But some tunes managed to get past the filters, which goes against the policy.
The disclaimer on Spotify’s policy website reads as follows: “Cultural standards and sensitivities vary widely. There will always be content that is acceptable in some circumstances but is offensive in others.”
This was reasonable on the surface: banning rock, rap, and any other music in between due to questionable content would be the beginning of a slippery slope. After certain acts of white nationalist violence were taken down, some nevertheless managed to stay up on the platform for a while.
A representative for Spotify attested to the fact that the music is known to the business. It released a statement saying, “The tracks and artists in question have been reviewed, and the content does not violate platform policies.”
According to Spotify, the songs were examined by people in addition to an AI looking for trigger phrases. It stated that the songs could be found on YouTube, Apple, and Amazon, offering a broader context for campaigning. The fact that Capleton and Sizzla are Rastafarians was taken into consideration by Spotify’s human reviewers, who comprise a panel of specialists on its Safety Advisory Council, as well as internal and external consultants when making their judgment.
The last point is intriguing yet debatable. Some people assert that Rastafarian readings of the Old Testament are the source of their beliefs on homosexuality: “A member of the militant Bobo Ashanti sect [who] sometimes courted controversy with his strict adherence to their views, particularly his aggressive condemnations of homosexuals,” is how Sizzla is described in his Spotify bio.
While some artist profiles are produced by the artists themselves or by contributors, Spotify was questioned about whether its reviewers had considered Sizzla’s lyrics to be a representation of her cultural and religious values. They remained silent.
Certain musicians have chosen to self-censor. For example, Buju Banton stopped performing his well-known homophobic murder song from 1992, Boom Bye Bye, in 2007, and he voluntarily took it down from streaming services in 2019. He acknowledged in a statement that “the song has caused much pain to listeners, as well as to my fans, my family, and myself.”
Some songs, including the 1999 single “Nuh Like” by Elephant Man, have either been taken off from the platform or were never there in the first place.
Spotify stated, “Some violative tracks have been removed in the past while others have been removed by the rights holders.”
Rather than just banning the songs from streaming services, Glenroy Murray of J-Flag, Jamaica’s LGBTQ+ rights organization, believes that educating people is the better course of action.
Murray stated, “If a society or culture is fertile ground for hate music, censorship by itself solves nothing.”
Murray added, “Spotify and other streaming services have a difficult task in determining hate content. A deeper understanding of dancehall shows that [just like rap] it requires the performance of toxic masculinity and is also very sexist.”
He suggests that similar to what Disney does with older, badly aged movies, streaming companies should include cautions and disclaimers. “A similar approach can be attempted with music so younger audiences can understand the shifts in dancehall, rock and rap.”
Dancehall musicians have been supporting LGBTQ+ rights in recent years. Both Spice and Shenseea performed during Toronto Pride, embracing the gay community and showcasing same-sex partnerships in their graphics. Gay intercourse is still banned in Jamaica, but there are now Pride celebrations on the island, and DJs at live events and radio stations have made a tacit agreement not to play songs that denigrate homosexuals.
Murray notes that certain LGBTQ+ audiences in Jamaica have also taken back parts of this content as “a form of visibility and resistance in dancehall spaces, as in many ways they are the only songs that reference the community. Removal of them would act as a removal of that history of resistance. We would lose the opportunity for dialogue that these songs create for queer people with their friends and families.”
One example of this reclaiming, according to Dr. Aleema Gray, curator of the British Library’s Beyond the Bassline exhibition of Black British music, is the LGBTQ+ club night Queer Bruk, which caters to queer POC: the way that “fully embraces dancehall and sees the juxtaposition of two men kissing in a club listening to Buju Banton as part of their tradition of defiance and beauty”.
According to Gray, the music and culture should not be misinterpreted, because homophobic lyrics represent only a minor portion of “dancehall music’s liberation theology of sex, gender identity, and race as the creative expression of a people.”
Gray added, “For those with histories of violence, erasure, subjugation, and absence, like in the Caribbean, music is a cartography of the past and present, to understand who we are. Associating Rastafarianism with homophobia is an unhelpful narrative. The challenge.” She added, “is where you draw the line.”
LGBTQ+ campaigner Jason Jones from Trinidad and Tobago claims that American televangelism and legislation from the British colonial era—like the Buggery Act, which was in effect in Britain from 1533 to 1828 and is still in effect in several former British colonies, including Jamaica—are to blame for the spread of homophobia throughout the Caribbean.
He stated, “People grow and learn at their own pace.”
Jones noted, “We need more nuance and empathy when addressing homophobic music in the Caribbean. A global north approach to human rights does not always work for the global south and can sometimes cause more harm. I would rather see resources and energy put into uplifting young queer dancehall and soca artists and getting their music out to the public. Let’s answer homophobic music with proudly joyous queer music.”
