.Beenie Man Catches a Fire

Irate gay-rights advocates and shady-ass promoters couldn't keep the dancehall don from (finally) conquering Berkeley.

It took him just shy of a full year, but dancehall titan Beenie Man finally took a Bay Area stage in late July, rocking Berkeley’s Shattuck Down Low for two straight nights despite the best efforts of infuriated gay-rights activists and a hilariously brazen con-man promoter.

You may recall that last year, the UK gay activist group OutRage declared PR war on Beenie Man and fellow dancehall stars Sizzla, Bounty Killa, Elephant Man, Vybez Kartel, Capleton, Buju Banton, and T.O.K., assailing their blatantly homophobic lyrical content (see “Beenie Manhunt,” 9/15/04). OutRage charged that lyrics deriding and threatening homosexuals– I’m dreaming of a new Jamaica/Come to execute all the gays, for instance — contributed to an unsafe climate for Jamaica’s gay and lesbian population, an on-the-DL community then reeling from the brutal June 2004 stabbing death of prominent gay activist Brian Williams, whose murder remains unsolved.

OutRage’s media-assisted propaganda campaign, dubbed “Stop Murder Music,” whipped its supporters into a zealous frenzy — Beenie Man, for one, was compared to both Osama bin Laden and Hitler — by dredging up inflammatory quotes from old or obscure songs, and insisting that the artists be investigated for attempted murder (!). This strategy proved highly effective, resulting in a flurry of canceled shows, among them Beenie’s scheduled appearance at Miami’s 2004 MTV Music Awards, his entire UK tour, and an SF date last September. The lost concert revenues cost dancehall artists $5 million in Britain alone.

This February, with considerably less fanfare, OutRage officially called off the campaign after a precedent-setting meeting with Jamaican government officials and reggae industry execs. The government is now considering “comprehensive hate crime legislation,” says OutRage’s Peter Tatchell, while the record labels have declared a moratorium on antigay lyrics on internationally released albums.

Tatchell insists that he resorted to an economic boycott only after a decade of unsuccessful political lobbying — “Money talks when morality doesn’t,” he says. “Our campaign has generated the biggest debate in Jamaican history on the issue of gay human rights.” Since then, he has moved on to other campaigns — asserting that black Nationalist icon Malcolm X led “a secret gay life,” for example. The fatwa appeared to be off.

But apparently, no one told Bay Area journalist Tim Kingston, who in early July sent out a widely forwarded e-mail calling for a mass protest of Beenie Man’s pair of July SDL shows, based solely on the artist’s tarnished image. “It’s a relevant issue because I don’t want to get hit,” he explained, citing fears of an epidemic of gay-bashing in Berkeley. While admitting he hadn’t actually heard any of the songs in question, Kingston (an occasional contributor to the Express) argued that antigay lyrics — which he found online by Googling “Beenie Man homophobia” — “don’t contribute to social equanimity.”

Also trumpeting the queer cause was Tina D’Elia, a program director at SF’s Community United Against Violence — the LBGT-friendly group had helped organize last year’s successful SF protests against Beenie and fellow dancehall icon Capleton, whose headlining appearance at Reggae in the Park was cancelled. (Ironically, when C2tE called D’Elia’s office, the hold music was Jimmy Cliff’s “I Can See Clearly Now.”) D’Elia admitted that she, too, hadn’t actually heard any of the offensive songs, and when it was pointed out that gays account for less than 0.02 percent of Jamaica’s murder victims (Amnesty International reports that the country has the third-highest per-capita murder rate in the world), she responded that because of the extreme secrecy surrounding homosexuality in Jamaica, there was no way to accurately document instances of assault or police brutality against gays and lesbians there.

Fair enough, but the same could be said about police brutality, period, in most Third World countries. Furthermore, while Amnesty International reports that police are suspected in the majority of antigay violence in Jamaica, there’s no solid proof of a direct connection between dancehall lyrics and specific instances of gay-bashing, nor has any reggae artist ever been charged with murdering homosexuals. Still, the Community United Against Violence rep insists that homophobic lyrics constitute a “hate crime” in and of themselves. D’Elia, who identifies as a Latina lesbian, refuses to accept the vaguely worded apology issued last year by Beenie’s label, Virgin, last year — a tepid mea culpa that never specifically mentioned gays or lesbians. She thus demands that Beenie recant his past statements, donate to gay causes, and remove all the offending CDs from retail shelves (even though many of the songs in question were actually Jamaica-only singles that never saw overseas distribution). For that reason, she too sent out an e-mail blast alerting folks to July’s Berkeley Beenie dates.

Ultimately, those shows still happened, but not without considerable trepidation.


Candida Martinez, Shattuck Down Low’s publicist, reports that the venue received at least twenty irate e-mails and voicemails regarding Beenie Man. Some chastised politely, while others did not — one communiqué “bothered to inform me about the anatomy of a gay male versus a hetero male,” she recalls. Still, the ten-year PR vet (who says she has never encountered such a hailstorm of static in that time) maintains that “I welcome people’s opinions. … That is the beauty of democracy. However, I do feel strongly that their efforts could have been better placed.”

In response, a day before Beenie’s first show, the venue posted a disclaimer on its Web site signed by Martinez and club owner Daniel Cuckierman, asserting that Beenie “would not be performing songs that promote hate or intolerance of any kind.” The letter added that “We believe the focus should be on appealing the law in Jamaica, where homosexuality is not only frowned upon, but illegal.”

Meanwhile, the biggest threat to these shows apparently had nothing to do with protesters. At the same time Martinez and the Down Low were taking flak from the queer community, they were also dealing with a promoter who, Cuckierman says, fraudulently claimed to represent Beenie Man.

Initially, the venue was approached by one Leslie Keith Osborne Moore, a Jamaican guy living in Oakland who went by the nickname Junior. At first, Cuckierman says, Junior — who claimed to have connections with Beenie Man and other big-name dancehall dons — seemed to be a credible, authentic promoter. He’d planned on renting the venue himself, but when he said he couldn’t come up with the deposit needed to secure the artist, Cuckierman says he stepped in, writing a cashier’s check for $4,000 to Peter Schwartz (Beenie Man’s booking agent), and handing Junior a $1,200 advance to reserve plane tickets and hotel rooms.

But two weeks before the show, as Cuckierman recollects, the Jamaican dropped out of sight, claiming he had to “visit a sick relative in England.” (It now appears Junior probably never left Oakland.) Four days before the show, Cuckierman says he found out that not only had no flights been booked, but that the contract he’d signed was for $15,000 less than Beenie Man’s actual price.

Cuckierman says the deception was discovered after he contacted Schwartz, who asked about the “second half of the deposit,” which the club owner knew nothing about. He finally confronted Junior about his inconsistencies: As Cuckierman tells it, and independent promoter Jonathan Mack concurs, Junior had scammed several other local reggae promoters, accepting deposits based on fake contracts for shows while promising to secure exclusive dubplate specials.

The owner’s story only gets wilder from there. After confiscating Junior’s cell phone and passport, Cuckierman says he and some other people who felt victimized by Junior drove the guy down to outside the Berkeley police station and forced him to sign a “confession.” While waiting inside the reception area for an available officer, Cuckierman received a phone call from a friend who worked for the Oakland police, telling him that his promoter was wanted on a $45,000 identity-theft warrant in Fremont under the name Keith Osborne. Again, Cuckierman allegedly confronted Junior, who took off running and tried to hide in another City of Berkeley office building nearby. The enraged owner says he caught up to Junior and placed him in a headlock, attempting to make a citizen’s arrest until the police arrived.

When the cops finally showed up, Cuckierman says Junior threatened to press charges for assault. As both men were taken into custody, Cuckierman alerted officers to Junior’s outstanding warrant. Several hours later, Cuckierman posted bail. Mack says he pressed charges against Junior.

Attempts to contact Junior or determine his current legal status were unsuccessful. Berkeley police confirmed that he was arrested on July 19 for the outstanding Fremont warrant.

Eventually, a bona fide contract was inked with Beenie’s management — but at a renegotiated price that still all but ensured the five-hundred-head venue would lose money, especially because the flights (booked just one day before the show) were exorbitantly expensive. While Cuckierman says he considered forfeiting his deposit and canceling the show — easily the highest-profile booking in the Down Low’s history — he decided to go ahead with it. In addition to the extensive promotion and advance tickets sold, the Down Low was now heavily invested emotionally as well.


After such drama, Beenie’s performances themselves were almost anticlimactic. There were no picket signs or protesters at 11:30 Friday night for the first show, while several hundred people inside (approximately 70 percent were female, incidentally) listened to warmup act Silver Cat. Fifteen minutes later, Beenie Man appeared, making the sort of fashion statement only Jamaicans can get away with: a white muscle-T and pants combo emblazoned with numerous screen-printed dollar bills. As if the message wasn’t clear enough, “MONEY” was spelled out in block capitals between the currency. Such a getup would’ve looked cheap or tacky on anyone else, but on him it was ghetto fabulous.

Every time Beenie jumped atop a speaker to introduce another hit song from his extensive repertoire, the ladies yelled and screamed, while the guys chimed in “Bo! Bo! Bo!” His one-hour set was a mega-medley of familiar tunes: “Let Him Go,” “Tell Me,” “Murderer,” Old Dog,” “Wicked Slam,” “Romie,” “Love Me Now,” “Girls Dem Sugar.” Gyrating and gesticulating wildly, he commandeered the stage, while his band adjusted the tempo and the intensity accordingly. At one point, he demonstrated the overtly sensual “Slow Wine” dance, then told the crowd: “Rude boys, make sure the ladies come first.” When he got to his recent smash, “Dude,” he motioned for the musicians to be silent, and dueted a cappella with the ladies on the hook: She want a dude with the wickedest slam/Not a one, two, three minute man.

The big revelation wasn’t just that Beenie stayed away from any sort of homophobic statements — even in his between-song patter — but that he was a consummate entertainer, charismatic and personable, hardly a demonic purveyor of hate. As anyone there could attest, he didn’t seem anything like the poster boy for homophobia he’d been made out to be.

In the end, while Beenie and other dancehall reggae stars may have been targeted over a complex issue far bigger than lyrical content, the genre’s momentum has only increased. A new generation of roots-identified artists — among them I-Wayne, Richie Spice, Chuck Fenda, Jr. Gong, and Jah Cure — have deemphasized antigay lyrics in favor of significantly more cryptic warnings of apocalyptic doom and the consequences of moral corruption. I-Wayne’s “Can’t Satisfy Her” (which tackles the thorny issue of sexually transmitted diseases) and Jr. Gong’s “Welcome to Jamrock” (a plea for an end to Jamaica’s senseless killings) have both attained commercial radio rotation, signaling a conscious lyrical resurgence. As the Jamaican gay-rights debate has moved on to the legislative arena, reggae has progressed because of — or maybe despite — all the fuss.

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