Labour Day, work and Dudus
just before things reached a bloody peak in 2010. While the song has long faded from its immense popularity at the time (as often happens with art that is made exclusively about a particular moment), it remains as a marker of pro-Dudus sentiment at the time. Starting with a US agent asking for a certain ‘Dudus’, in its chorus, the song asks: “A which Dudus you a talk a no Mikey? A coulden short man, highly unlikely A which Dudus you a talk a no de President
A lie dem a tell show me de evidence”
WHEN THE HELICOPTER CAME
Eventually, the US did. In loads. And, even before that, in real life, the level of defiance to the government’s forces was not met with the level of resistance which the performers had predicted. In the song, the Twins ask rhetorically, “Yu tink de man deh a go run when helicopter come dung?” Not too far into the shooting, they did. Considering the meaning of posse, which the US applied to Jamaican criminals in Uncle Sam’s land, it is noteworthy that Barrington Levy uses the term in his track about working. In the chorus, he sings, “Every posse must work, work harder.”
And he also sings, “If you’re not working, then you got to be loafing/and if you’re loafing then you got to be joking.” Sometimes it seems that Jigsy King gets left out of the memories about the song, but he does have significant input as he rasps, “lazy body got to work” and castigates those who would sit and wait for the much-vaunted barrel to come in with goods packed by relatives and friends overseas.
Still, the main figures in the accompanying music video include Willie Haggart and Bogle (of dancing fame) – both of whom were murdered.