Protests Rise Against Homophobic Jamaican Dancehall Stars

Jamaican dancehall music stars are flamboyantly homophobic in their music. “People have known about and protested against dancehall artists’ homophobic lyrics since the early 1990s, when Buju Banton had a Jamaican hit with Boom Bye-Bye, a song advocating shooting and burning homosexuals. In the past six months, however, the protest against homophobic dancehall has gained momentum. No one seems entirely sure why the campaign of letter-writing and event picketing, headed by UK pressure group OutRage!, has suddenly started yielding results, but you can only gawp at its new-found effectiveness.”