This work provides an accessible account of a poorly understood aspect of Jamaican popular culture. It explores the socio-political meanings of Jamaica's dancehall culture. In particular, the book gives an account of the power relations within the dancehall and between the dancehall and the wider Jamaican society. Hope gives the reader an unmatched insider's view and explanation of power, violence and gender relations in Jamaica as seen through the prism of the dancehall.

An ethnography of Dancehall, the dominant form of reggae music in Jamica since the early 1960s.

"In Jamaica, dancehall music and culture has become perhaps the most prominent expression of Jamaican popular culture. Taking its name from dance halls in which popular local recordings were played by sound systems, the concept of Dancehall as a cultural space has rapidly gained momentum in the last three decades as deejay stars enjoy unprecedented successes locally and internationally. Donna Hope builds on her earlier work on popular culture and theories of sexuality/gender to examine the process and progress of Jamaican masculinities. Man Vibes: Masculinities in Jamaican Dancehall explores Jamaican masculinity through the male-dominated dancehall space that is at once a celebration of the marginalized poor and also a challenge to social inequality. Using the major masculine debates that are articulated in dancehall music and culture, Hope explores the transition of Jamaican masculinity in the 21st century. The dancehall representations of Ole Dawg (promiscuity), Badman (violence), Chi Chi Man (anti-male homosexuality), Bling Bling (consumerist/consumptive) and Fashion Ova Style (stylized transgressions and homosexuality) are all used to evaluate the relationship between dancehall culture and the hegemonic standard of masculine. Man Vibes significantly advances the Cultural Studies agenda and acts as a contemporary reader by speaking not only to dancehall music and culture s masculinities but to Jamaican and Black masculinities in general. "

Reggae and Dancehall music and culture have travelled far beyond the shores of the tiny island of Jamaica to find their respective places as new genres of music and lifestyle. In Reggae from Yaad, Donna Hope pulls together a remarkable cast of contributors offering contemporary interpretations of the history, culture, significance and social dynamics of Jamaican Popular Music from varying geographical and disciplinary locations. From Alan 'Skill' Cole's lively and frank account of the Bob Marley he knew and David Katz's conversation with veteran music producers Bunny 'Striker' Lee, King Jammy and Bobby Digital; to Heather Augustyn and Shara Rambarran who both explore the role of music in the relationship between Britain and Jamaica in the post-independence 1960s, the contributors bring a new dimension to the discussion on the impact of Jamaican music. Drawn from a selection of presentations at the 2013 International Reggae Conference in Kingston, Jamaica, Reggae from Yaad continues the ever-evolving discourse on the meaning behind the music and the cultural and social developments that inform Jamaican Popular Music. Contributors: Heather Augustyn - Winston C. Campbell - Alan 'Skill' Cole - Brent Hagerman - Patrick Helber - Donna P. Hope - David Katz - Anna Kasafi Perkins - Shara Rambarran - Jose Luis Fanjul Rivero - Livingston A. White

This thesis explores dance beyond entertainment, psychological, behavioural or cognitive theory; beyond conventional interpretations of performance, and beyond the disciplinary categories that tend to separate practices in contemporary Western culture. This is a study of "Daggering," the Jamaican style of dancing marked by violence and raw sexual licentiousness inna di dancehall (in the dancehall) -- a male-dominated dance space in Jamaica. The problem of daggering analyzed stems from the so-called "causes" of violence. Cultural theorists argue the violent situation in the dancehall and throughout Jamaica is related to the history of colonialism and slavery, poverty, the polarization of the country's political parties, and politicians who first issued guns. Some philosophers argue the myth of 'poverty' is an illusion and world-historical logico-mathematical thinking is delusional. Primary texts studied are: The Birth of Tragedy by Nietzsche, and the Concluding Unscientific Postscript by Kierkegaard. I am interested in the inseparability, the embeddedness of Dionysus in all the phenomena of life. The myth of Dionysus contains statements about society and the individual not easily accessible by purely objective techniques. Nietzsche writes: the invisible forces of nature, "through whose gestures and eyes all the joy and wisdom of 'illusion,' together with its beauty, speak to us." Kierkegaard's aesthetic philosophy of subjectivity challenges the myth of poverty. Thus, this thesis marks a connection between daggering, the myth of Dionysus, and subjectivity. The essential question asked: 'what' knowledge is of the most worth to transform the individual and a society in crisis? A philosophical methodology is used to analyze texts in relation to social issues and dance. I conclude 'how' to transform the individual and a society in crisis "an apolitical and passionately responsible subjectivity" is necessary.

Publisher description

International Reggae is an edited volume emanating from the International Reggae Conference hosted annually by the Institute of Caribbean Studies Unit at the University of the West Indies, Mona. Like the conference, this work seeks to consolidate and disseminate knowledge on Jamaican music and associated music forms.

This book focuses on how in/security works in and through Jamaican dancehall, and on the insights that Jamaican dancehall offers for the global study of in/security. This collection draws together a multi-disciplinary range of key scholars in in/security and dancehall. Scholars from the University of the West Indies' Institute of Caribbean Studies and Reggae Studies Unit, as well as independent dancehall and dance practitioners from Kingston, and writers from the UK, US and continental Europe offer their differently situated perspectives on dancehall, its histories, spatial patterning, professional status and aesthetics. The study brings together critical security studies with dancehall studies and will be of great interest to students, scholars and practitioners in theatre, dance and performance studies, sociology, cultural geography, anthropology, postcolonial studies, diaspora studies, musicology and gender studies.