Vibes Up

Reggae and Afro-Caribbean Migration from Costa Rica to Brooklyn

Sabia McCoy-Torres

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Paperback

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English

New York University Press
13 August 2024

Music; Reggae; Social & cultural history; Migration, immigration & emigration; Ethnic studies

Examines reggae culture as an expression of cultural, racial, and gender empowerment in the West Indian Diaspora

In popular media Caribbean culture has either been reduced to stereotypes of laziness, marijuana, and reggae music, or conversely, to an identity centered around a refutation of colonialism. Both are oversimplifications, and do not explain the enduring Caribbean identity and empowerment throughout the diaspora. Vibes Up offers an exploration of Caribbean culture as it is felt, understood, and expressed, centered on research conducted in Brooklyn and Costa Rica.

Sabia McCoy-Torres demonstrates how reggae culture—which encompasses the music and performance modes of both “roots” and “dancehall”—helps to shed light on dynamics relating to migration, diaspora, queerness, Blackness, and Caribbean cultural subjectivity. Through an examination of elements of the Black outdoors, including nightlife venues, sidewalks, and streets in front of homes, the book shows the important role that reggae plays in articulating the frustrations of migration, establishing community and belonging, and forming transnational relationships.

Although reggae’s creators and producers are often perceived as homophobic, Vibes Up also offers a more nuanced examination of the transforming relationships between hetero and LGBTQ+ people in reggae spaces and the accommodation of an array of queer intimacies. The framing of Caribbean Blackness as an expression of perseverance, agency, joy, and the erotic, as opposed to a reaction to colonization, oppression, and enslavement, is a distinctly important and timely view.

By: Sabia McCoy-Torres
Imprint: New York University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
Weight: 513g
ISBN: 9781479827176
ISBN 10: 1479827177
Pages: 304
Publication Date: 13 August 2024
Audience: College/higher education , Further / Higher Education
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Sabia McCoy-Torres is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Africana Studies Program at Tulane University.

Reviews for Vibes Up: Reggae and Afro-Caribbean Migration from Costa Rica to Brooklyn

"""Reflects the best of ethnographic writing. McCoy-Torres writes beautifully and evocatively about the cultural, political, and social practices that structure Caribbean diasporic life, love, labor, community and joy. Her careful attention to the collective labor and love that produce reggae culture reveals novel ways of understanding politics, race, gender and sexuailty that are simultaneously grounded in people's deep sense of place and pride as Afro-Caribbeans in a diasporic context. In this, McCoy-Torres is part of a distinguished tradition of feminist ethnographers whose research and writing is rigorous, rich, and a delight to read."" -- Gina Pérez, author of Sanctuary People: Faith-Based Organizing in Latina/o Communities"