The first thing you ought to know about Garfield Delano Spence is that his stage name is Konshens, not “Koshens”. This kind of spelling and pronunciation blunder reminds me of the last time another Jamaican dancehall artiste, Busy Signal visited neighboring Uganda. At the pre-concert press conference to which we were called, Signal’s ego was clearly bruised when an erratic radio journo addressed him as “Business Signal”! The second thing you ought to know about Konshens is that he has what I will call a nice pretty male chocolate voice. You will notice that this is one of those extremely rare occasions when I employ such words of endearment as “nice”, and “pretty” in describing a fellow man. I am reliably informed that Konshen’s female fans consider him as both handsome and pretty, just like comedian Babu of the Comedy Knights. The third fact worth knowing about the Gyal a bubble singer is that he hails from Jamaica, a land where folks like to do almost everything a little differently. When legendary Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt set a new world record at the 100m dash during the 2012 Olympics in Beijing, there were some muted accusations of doping directed at the athlete by haters. And the Jamaicans’ response to the haters? “Jamiekan atliit dem no niid fi tek jogz fi ron faas.” All they were saying is that Jamaican athletes don’t need to take drugs to run fast! The difference is in the fact that the first line is delivered in the Jamaican variation of English –Patois, or Patwa, a kind of stylized, jagged-edged way of speaking the English language that actually boasts its own distinct grammatical pattern. So by the rules of patwa, “boy” now becomes “bwoy”; “girl” is “gyal”; and “thief” becomes “tief”. The Jamaicans also refer to their youths as “yutes”. How does the grammatical pattern of the Jamaican version of English differ from that of the Queen? Here is an example: Ask any other person where they hail from, and they are likely to tell you “I come from Rwanda” or “I come from Uganda” or something along those lines. Ask a Jamaican where they come from, and the most probable response is. A jamieka mi com from. Actually, most of the world’s fascination with Jamaica stems from this fact of people attempting to partake of this stylized, somewhat lyrical and expressive way of speaking. Finally, Konshens hails from Dancehall, a musical genre that boasts other such colorful names like Buju Banton aka Buju Badd, Bounty Killer aka the War Lord aka The poor people governor; Sizzla Kalonji; Capleton aka King Shango aka King of Fire, and then how can we forget the man himself -Vybz Kartel aka Addi di Teacha aka Gaza General aka World Boss?
