Mento for visitors: authentic folk form or sanitised tourist product?

Commentary

Folk roots without a single-origin myth

Debate

Louise Bennett and Creole: vulgar dialect or the national voice?

Two documented positions on Louise Bennett's performance in Jamaican Creole: critics long dismissed 'dialect' as vulgar and unfit for the stage, while supporters championed it as an authentic and legitimate national voice, a view that eventually prevailed. Neutral framing; no verdict.

Debate

Mento or calypso? A question of Jamaican identity

A documented naming debate: mento was frequently marketed and referred to as 'calypso,' conflating it with the Trinidadian form; some framed this as harmless commercial shorthand, others as an erasure of mento's distinct Jamaican identity. Neutral framing; no verdict.

Debate

Mento's bawdy songs: rustic candour or colonial indecency?

Two documented positions on mento's sexual double-entendre, stated neutrally: defenders heard rural working-class humour and honest candour in the word-play, while respectable and colonial opinion condemned it as 'smutty' and low. Neutral framing; no verdict.