Dancehall: A Reader on Jamaican Music and Culture contextualizes the emergence of the globally popular dancehall genre, while tracing the complex and often contradictory aspects of its evolution, dispersion and politics. This collection of foundational essays places dancehall in context with cutting-edge analyses of performance modes and expression, genre development, and impact in the wider local, regional and international socio-political milieu of struggles by black Jamaicans in particular and cultural adherents more broadly. Dancehall is one of eight musical genres created in Jamaica and, in the past two decades, it has become one of the most influential Jamaican cultural exports since reggae. The impact of dancehall extends far beyond Jamaica and is evident in music genres (such as hip hop, trip hop, jungle, reggaeton, South African kwaito and Nigerian Afrobeats) and international fashion, film and dance.
This interdisciplinary volume documents various aspects of dancehall's global impact, evolution and influence in gender, political economy, geography, ethnomusicology, spirituality, music production, fashion and language. Each selection interrogates the range of meanings ascribed to dancehall culture, a phenomenon which has been seen to be associated with violence, crime and debauchery. This collection exposes the immense cultural work towards self-expression and identity in post-colonial Jamaica which takes shape through dancehall and the contributors apply a new level of seriousness, depth and academic rigour to dancehall studies.
Edited by:
Sonjah Stanley Niaah
Imprint: University of the West Indies Press
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
ISBN: 9789766407506
ISBN 10: 9766407509
Pages: 506
Publication Date: 30 December 2020
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
"Acknowledgements and Permissions Introduction—SONJAH STANLEY NIAAH Part 1: Early Reflections The Development of Jamaican Popular Music—GARTH WHITE Slackness Hiding from Culture: Erotic Play in the Dancehall—CAROLYN COOPER Murderation: The Question of Violence in the Sound System Dance NORMAN C. STOLZOFF Gun Talk and Girls' Talk: The DJ Clash—JOSEPH PEREIRA Part 2: Negotiation, Urban Space and Experience Post-Nationalist Geographies: Rasta, Ragga and Reinventing Africa—LOUIS CHUDE-SOKEI An Archaeology of Dancehall: Garrison Life at Fort Rocky—ZACHARY J.M. BEIER Sampling City: Kingston in the Social Imaginary of Jamaican Popular Music—ANNA KASAFI PERKINS Tommy Lee as ""Uncle Demon"": Contemporary Cultural Hybridity in Jamaican Dancehall—ROBIN CLARKE Dancehall Political Patronage and Gun Violence: Political Affiliations and the Glorification of Gun Culture—DENNIS HOWARD Part 3: Engagement, Spectacle and the Language of Performance Video Light: Dancehall and the Aesthetics of Spectacular Un-visibility in Jamaica—KRISTA THOMPSON ""Spar wid Me"" and Other Stories of Civic Engagement in the Sound Clash Arena—JOSHUA CHAMBERLAIN Death before Dishonour: Language and the Jamaican Sound System Clash—AUDENE S. HENRY Part 4: Sexual Politics and Aesthetics Out and Bad: Toward a Queer Performance Hermeneutic in Jamaican Dancehall—NADIA ELLIS Fashion Ova Style: Dancehall's Masculine Duality—DONNA HOPE Ghetto Girls/Urban Music: Jamaican Ragga Music and Female Performance—TRACEY SKELTON ""A Uman Wi Niem!"" Sexual Desire and the Poetics of ""Badness"" in the Works of Lady Saw and Tanya Stephens—AGOSTINHO PINNOCK Part 5: Sound System, Riddim and Practice A Caribbean Taste of Technology: Creolization and the Ways of Making of the Dancehall Sound System—JULIAN HENRIQUES The Riddim Method: Aesthetics, Practice and Ownership in Jamaican Dancehall—PETER MANUEL AND WAYNE MARSHALL ""'Sleng Teng' Dominate Bad, Bad"": Understanding Jamaica's ""Computerized"" Riddim Craze—ERIN C. MacLEOD Sleng Teng: Redefining Jamaica's Digital Riddims—RAY HITCHINS Part 6: Ritual, Celebration, Space Ritual and Community in Dancehall Performance—SONJAH STANLEY NIAAH Egúngún in Disguise: The Jamaican Nine Night Ceremony—LENA DELGADO DE TORRES Representations of ""Obeah"" and ""Bad-Mind"" in Contemporary Jamaican Dancehall—KATE LAWTON Part 7: Adornment, Embodiment and Style Fabricating Identities: Survival and the Imagination in Jamaican Dancehall Culture—BIBI BAKARE-YUSUF Dancehall Bodies: Performing In/Securities—""H"" PATTEN Born in Chanel, Christen in Gucci: The Rhetoric of Brand Names and Haute Couture in Jamaican Dancehall—ANDREA SHAW NEVINS Part 8: The Dancehall Transnation Music and Orality: Authenticity in Japanese Sound System Culture—MARVIN D. STERLING Zimdancehall: Jamaican Music in a Transatlantic and African Perspective—ANDREA HOLLINGTON Black Music, Popular Culture and Existential Capital: The Relationship between Appropriation and Originality—BRUNO BARBOZA MUNIZ White Faces in Intimate Spaces: Jamaican Popular Music in Global Circulation—LARISA KINGSTON MANN Part 9: Tribute to Bogle ""Bogle ah di Order fi di Day"": Dance and Identity in Jamaican Dancehall—SONJAH STANLEY NIAAH Contributors"
Sonjah Stanley Niaah is Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies and Director of the Institute of Caribbean Studies, the University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica. Her publications include the books Reggae Pilgrimages: Festivals and the Movement of Jah People and Dancehall: From Slave Ship to Ghetto.
