Hill & Gully Ride – Why This Riddim’s Revival Is Actually A Win For Jamaican Culture

Veteran Jamaican broadcaster Fae Ellington (Aunty Fae) has publicly expressed discomfort with the modern use of the “Hill & Gully Ride” riddim, particularly the sexually explicit dancehall songs now dominating social media and streaming platforms through its sampling. It would be dishonest of me if I suggested that her concern wasn’t understandable. After all, “Hill and Gully Ride” is not merely another catchy melody. It is one of Jamaica’s treasured folk standards; a song that is tied not only to the island’s musical history, identity, but also to its cultural memory. As a result, hearing it transformed into modern dancehall content can understandably jar members of an older generation who grew up seeing folk music as something almost sacred.
But while I love Aunty Fae considerably and respect her immense contribution to Jamaican broadcasting and culture, I believe this moment exposes something else entirely, beginning perhaps with a lack of understanding about how today’s music industry actually works, an observation that ironically opens the doors to another argument for greater cultural education.

Is The Riddim Being Destroyed, Or Is It Being Revived?

It appears to me that what many critics are missing is that the current explosion around “Hill & Gully Ride” is not cultural death but the riddim’s cultural regeneration, a feature of today’s music ecosystem, where sampling an older song or riddim is often the very thing that breathes new commercial and cultural life into it. Younger audiences who may never have heard the original melody are suddenly searching for it, discussing it, remixing it, and rediscovering Jamaica’s folk traditions through modern interpretation. This is a fact that matters because culture survives not by being frozen in glass cases or reams of archives, but by remaining alive enough to be reused, reimagined, and reintroduced to new generations. The simple truth is that if nobody touches the music, the music dies.

The Original Owners Are Benefiting

I am beginning to think that many people seem to overlook entirely that the owners of the original composition are, to use a Jamaican term, “licking their fingers” as every new version of the riddim creates fresh commercial activity including streaming revenue, publishing royalties, licensing income, performance royalties, YouTube monetization, synchronization opportunities, and renewed catalog interest. Furthermore, each artiste who samples the riddim potentially increases the earning power of the original intellectual property. Plain and simple, that is how the modern music business works. Even if the original creators are deceased, those rights and earnings typically flow to their estates, families, publishers, or rights holders. In many cases, a revived sample can generate more income for a catalog than the original song earned in years of dormancy. So while some people see disrespect, the rights holders may very well be celebrating the renewed relevance and profitability of the work as they should do because Jamaican creators have historically been robbed, exploited, underpaid, and denied ownership of their intellectual property for generations. Too many of Jamaica’s musical pioneers died poor while the world profited from their creativity. So if modern sampling now creates renewed economic value for older Jamaican works, that should not automatically be viewed as cultural vandalism. It can also be viewed as cultural investment.

Jamaican Music Has Always Evolved Through Reinvention

It is important to understand that what is happening with “Hill & Gully Ride” is not unusual in Jamaican music history, as Jamaican music itself was built on reinterpretation. For the record, Folk rhythms gave rise to Mento, which helped to spawn the Ska. Ska would eventually give way to Rocksteady, which opened the doors to Reggae, and Reggae spawned Dancehall, which now absorbs Trap, Afrobeats, Hip-Hop, and internet culture. What is critical to understand is that at every stage, older generations complained that “the music gone bad.” Yet, each evolution eventually became part of Jamaica’s cultural identity. With this in mind, it is important to appreciate that sampling and reinterpretation are not acts of destruction, but are central features of Black musical creativity globally.

Hip-Hop was built on sampling, while Dancehall was built on versions, while Dub literally reinvented songs through manipulation and remixing. Therefore, it is the ability to recycle, reshape, and breathe new life into existing material that is part of the genius of Jamaican music culture.

Creativity Cannot Be Constrained

It would be worthwhile for the critics to understand that the larger problem with the moral panic around music is that creativity does not respond well to restriction. Art has always tested boundaries, and it is a fact that every generation shocks the previous one. Attempts to constrain creativity usually fail because culture moves faster than institutions, governments, or cultural gatekeepers can control it. That does not mean every lyric must be celebrated or every artistic choice defended. I am a subscriber to the principle that criticism is fair and debate is healthy. But trying to police artistic expression through outrage rarely produces better art. Education does, and if young creators were properly grounded in Jamaican music history, they will innovate while still understanding the traditions they are touching. What we (especially the older heads) should understand is that innovation itself cannot be stopped; nor should it be.

The Real Issue Is Cultural Literacy

It is my view that this controversy has served to highlight a deeper national weakness:
Jamaica still does not properly educate its people about the business of culture. Many Jamaicans understand music emotionally but not economically. They hear a sample and think only about morality, not ownership. These people think only about “respect,” not publishing rights. They think only about nostalgia, but not about intellectual property. But in today’s creative economy, catalog ownership is gold. A single revived sample can reopen global revenue streams for decades-old recordings. That is why the world’s biggest artists aggressively purchase music catalogs, because they understand that old music never truly dies if younger generations keep finding ways to reinterpret it. I believe that it is high time that Jamaica should understand this too. Especially a country whose cultural exports have given the world so much while often receiving so little in return.

Culture Must Evolve To Survive

There is also another uncomfortable truth and that is that young people cannot be expected to preserve culture in exactly the form older generations inherited it, as every generation reshapes culture according to its own language, technology, experiences, and realities. That is not disrespect, but continuity. The alternative to this is cultural fossilization. And fossilized culture eventually becomes museum material rather than living expression.
“Hill & Gully Ride” is trending today precisely because it has been reintroduced into contemporary conversation. Millions of people who may never have listened to traditional Jamaican folk music are now engaging with a melody rooted in Jamaica’s musical past. That is not cultural extinction. It is cultural circulation.

Aunty Fae’s Concern Still Matters

To be clear, Aunty Faye’s concerns should not simply be dismissed, especially as she represents a generation that still sees Jamaican folk culture as deeply sacred and deserving of protection. There is value in that perspective because societies that completely lose reverence for their cultural foundations often lose themselves altogether. But protecting culture and freezing culture are two different things. Culture cannot remain alive if every reinterpretation is treated as sacrilege. And in fairness, some of the very folk and mento songs now viewed as “respectable classics” were once criticized themselves for suggestive lyrics and social irreverence. Jamaican culture has never been entirely polite.

The Bigger Lesson

Perhaps the real lesson here is that Jamaica needs a far deeper understanding of both culture and the business of culture. The debate should not merely be “Are the lyrics too slack?” The debate should also ask, who owns the publishing, and who benefits financially? How are Jamaican cultural assets protected, and how can old catalogs create wealth for future generations? How do we educate young creators about the traditions they inherit while still allowing them freedom to innovate? Because creativity cannot be constrained, but it can be guided, and it can be taught. It can also be contextualized, but it cannot be frozen. Perhaps this is the true beauty of the “Hill & Gully Ride” riddim today. Here is a melody that was born decades ago, yet it is still alive enough to provoke outrage, inspire debate, generate income, dominate trends, and reconnect Jamaica to its own musical DNA. That, people, cannot be interpreted as the death of culture. That is culture doing exactly what living culture is supposed to do.