Ini Kamoze - Contributed

by Mel Cooke, Freelance Writer

"There's a hole in the pumkin

This must be Halloween

And if it wasn't one thing

This Dread would scream

I'm telling you something

About this system

If it ain't one thing

Tis eleventeen others"

It is nearly two decades later and the current contenders for the top political job in Jamaica are different, but Ini Kamoze still remembers the fuss that his song Hole in the Pumpkin caused.

It was released in 1988 on his 'Shocking Out' album, ahead of the 1989 General Election that brought the People's National Party (PNP) back to power, after the Jamaica Labour Party's (JLP) landslide 1980 victory, and the 1983 snap election which the PNP did not contest.

The song was banned from airplay, along with the accompanying video, this in an era when Jamaica had only two national radio stations and one television station. More than the ban on airplay, though, was a situation where "carload a man turn up a me gate".

"There was a farm thing," Kamoze recalls, that most likely being the failed Spring Plain winter vegetables project, run by Israeli Eli Tisona.

"Because we a sey whe we a sey, dem sey me a fight gainst dem ting dey. Dem attach a politics ting to de ting," Kamoze told THE STAR. "Dem carry it all bout, de pumpkin green an' de inside orange."

"Dem ban de tune. Blacklis' me an all dat. I feel sey some trickle down ting a gwaan now," he said, adding that while some performers seem free to say anything when he speaks it can be a problem.

"I was de rope inna dem (Michael Manley and Edward Seaga) tug a war ting," Kamoze said. "Dem call I. Seaga have a ting up a Shortwood Road one night an sen fi me fe sort it out."

As for his take on his song, Kamoze says "we always have the social commentary. We check de politics. A Spanish Town we spen' nuff time. A couple years yu cyaan open yu door an come out straight. Yu haffi come out pon yu belly or yu head get lick off".

"Every man did have him social commentary," Kamoze noted, quoting part of 'Hole in the Pumpkin':

"A don't want no DoDo

Come treat me like yoyo

And when me life get soso

They run away to Accapulco"

"Nuff man did come cream off an go Miami wid im briefcase. A jus' bout de social situation whe did a gwaan. True we get a voice an get fe record, we get fi sey some tings whe yute pon de corner neva get fi sey," Ini Kamoze said.