A raison d'être for making a reggae opera as a pedagogical tool for psychic emancipation in (post)colonial Jamaica

Critical participatory action research is a form of community engagement and knowledge generation which, when represented semiotically, may promote social transformation. In this paper, I describe a critical participatory action research project I undertook as a liberation psychologist and researcher in (post)colonial Jamaica. I summarise a narrative psychological portrait of downpressing produced by analysing participant's relationship to state violence using a voice-centred method of analysis. Denied racism and classism are found to dominate the way in which downpressors relate to others they inferiorise. I discuss the raison d'être for animating the psychology of the downpressor in a performance piece, a reggae opera. Such a piece of community art could be a pedagogical tool for psychic emancipation. Finally, I describe challenges and potentials encountered in an effort to forge an aesthetic synthesis among multiple pieces of conscious art.