A foreigner who hears a Jamaican “bad word” without context may be confused at the incoherence of the choice words like “Suck Yuh Madda” (Suck Your Mother), Bloodlclaat etc.
Those phrases were recently used by Mr. Bombastic Shaggy as he was being disrupted by stage hands at the Summer Jam Festival in Cologne Germany for going past his time. Festival goers who were chanting immediately got silent as Shaggy shouted over the mic: “Pussy if you touch me bloodclaat gear me and yuh inah problem suck unuh Mada, suck unuh madda, suck unuh madda, suck unuh madda, everybody a go over pon this bloodclaat every night inuh can touch my ting guh suck unuh madda,” repeatedly as the band played a rhythm section of the The White Stripes’ Seven Nation Army. How poetic.
Most cultures and languages have words that are not acceptable on the front street and are usually used in anger. It is the first thing foreigners want to learn when they come to Jamaica. Saying “Suck yuh Mada” or calling another man a “pussy” is an invitation to war, and if said on a public stage those terms could land you a court case and a fine in Jamaica.
On the surface these “bad words” are often used for emphasizing shame and to marginalize groups of people or individuals in dancehall lyrics. At a cellular level they equate elements of womanhood to be bad. Variations of Jamaican “bad words” are all about motherhood, the vagina, and all things women use for sanitary purposes.
Whether abbreviated, prefixed or suffixed as languages tend to do, they put the female genitalia in sentences to degrade, ostracise and as in Shaggy’s case to emasculate, intimidate and perhaps threaten the stage hands who were interupting his set.
There are no bad words that come from men or fatherhood and the possible combinations don’t have the same effect. Had Shaggy replaced “madda” with “Fadda” (mother with father), or “Pussy with Dick”, it would not have had the alarming effect of causing a chanting crowd of 30,000 Europeans to get silent and a visibly gittered stage hands. Jamaicans would also probably see his response as soft or “uptown” because the nastiest, most powerful thing to say to another person in the Jamaican lingua is to compare them to a woman.
Women have also adopted this as a curse upon themselves and more socially acceptable terms like “You act like a girl” or “behave like a girl” is a degrading thing to say to a Jamaican man.
Having “girlie” behaviour is shameful and viewed as weak.
A society built on shame will produce insecure people, and insecurity prevents people from living out their true potential. Unfulfilled people become uncultured and violent and in the case of Jamaica there is no shortage of violence.
Ironically Shaggy has built his 25 year successful career on being an advocate for the ladies and making multiple hit songs that glorify women and put them on a pedestal.
“So amazing how this world was made
I wonder if God is a woman
The gift of life astounds me to this day
I give it up for the woman
She’s the constant wind that fills my sails
Oh, that woman
With a smile and a style
She’ll protect you like a child
That’s a woman”– Shaggy, Strength Of A Woman, 2002
