Cut ‘trash’

Minister of Education Ronald Jones says the “trash” within the calypso genre must be cleaned up as it is paramount to abuse of the mind.Speaking yesterday during his feature address at a two-day Schools Positive Behaviour Project Training workshop at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre, Two Mile Hill, St Michael, Jones said some of what people were trying to pass off as double entendre was simply “ignorance”.“Double entendre is a fine and delicate art; you have to practise it to reach perfection, but some of the things I hear cannot be double entendre – just an ignorant man spewing out foolishness.“There are some things some people should not do. They just don’t have the talent to do it. It is violence and abuse against the minds of our people and especially our children,” he said.Jones added: “We, too, have to clean up our act in the calypso genre in Barbados, not because I want to get rid of calypso – I like music.” He challenged songwriters: “Instead of writing negative foolishness and crap . . . why not change [to] something positive?”Referring to similar statements he made in March following the cancellation of the Movado and Vybz Kartel concert, the minister said: “And then I faced ridicule, but I don’t retreat from anything or anyone, and I am hearing some of the foolishness still.”He said he was not against the artistes expressing their creativity but he had a problem when it became “foolishness”.“When your creative self denudes the mind and destroys the senses of people, then that is not creativity at all; it is foolishness, and teachers have to protect young people from such negativity,” he said.Jones’ sentiments follow on the heels of similar ones expressed by Minister of Youth Stephen Lashley on Saturday at the National Youth Festival.Lashley said he was putting local broadcast media “on alert” as he planned to support any efforts to “clean up” the airwaves, adding that he would be going after local artistes who abused double entendre by playing on sexual words and pretending they were not talking about sex.“I don’t buy that, and I certainly will be at the forefront of any advocacy to ensure that that kind of music is not played on our airwaves. “I believe that if that is what calypso is all about, then it ought not to be on our airwaves. [However], we do have some way to go to ensuring that we send a message to our artistes that Crop-Over is not about smut,” he said.