Page 167 - Aesthetic Formations Media, religion, and the Sense

152 Francio Guadeloupe

audience, teenage “wannabee Bob Marleys” were elated with his perfor-
mance. He touched a nerve every time he said “we a going Chant Down
Babylon tonight,” [we are going to revolt against the Western dominated
capitalist order tonight] and, “a inity we want” [inity means an explicit
wish for unity and equality], and, of course “politrickians run, judgment
soon come.”
The teenagers and young adults I spoke to after the concert felt that DJ
Shadow was a genuine “rebel man.” Many tell me that they are loyal fans
who follow his program on a daily basis. He was as genuine as they were.
But if they tuned into his daily program, which aired Mondays to Fridays
from 1 pm to 5 pm on PJD2 radio, they must know that he is many things
to many different people. One can guess that he reminds them of the many
compromises they too must make despite their love for Rasta. They
couldn’t be Rasta 24/7.
On the radio there is Shadow the romantic balladeer who always blames
men for love relationships gone sour, there is Shadow the Calypsonian who
specializes in double entendre, there is the Shadow of the mucho fuego who
knows his Salsa and Bachata, there is Shadow the Rastafari rebel who is
angry with Babylon, and then there is the capitalist Shadow comfortable
with Babylon. The latter Shadow is the one the money people know they can
trust and do business with.
Fascinating was the way the various “Clarkes” and “Shadows” shared
the same bodies and smoothly alternated one another. One of the things
that the Shadow and Fernando Clarke did, no matter how raunchy a show
they were performing at, was to end with the words “God bless y’all.”
Furthermore their whole discourse was always saturated with biblical terms
and references to God being the ultimate power. Their public was always
delighted when they did this, and believed it to be genuine expressions of
their religious reverence. They did not seem suspicious, and I took their
response seriously.
Taking the public’s response seriously means understanding the issue of
a person’s authenticity and the truthfulness of his or her discourse differ-
ently. It means forgetting the view that presupposes another man, a more
authentic one lurking in the background. Instead I prefer to understand

these gestures as temporarily authentic. This requires us to take seriously
the conceptualization of the person as being able to inhabit various posi-
tions requiring specific performances, as well as the person coming into
being at every performance. 4
With Clarke and the Shadow this became even more evident, as these
DJs were also performers in the artistic sense of the word. Their main stage
to entice SXMers to see society as a sin-ridden-yet-sanctimonious place
that they all should embrace was through the airwaves.