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Dancehall : from slave ship to ghetto / Sonjah Stanley Niaah.
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Stanley Niaah, Sonjah, 1970-
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Dancehall (Music)--Social aspects--Jamaica--Kingston.
- Dancehall (Music).
- Dancehall (Music)--Jamaica--Kingston.
- Popular culture--Jamaica--Kingston.
- Popular culture.
- Inner cities.
- Social aspects.
- Kingston (Jamaica)--Social conditions.
- Kingston (Jamaica).
- Inner cities--Jamaica--Kingston.
- Jamaica--Kingston.
- Jamaica.
- Physical Description:
- xix, 238 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
- Place of Publication:
- Ottawa : University of Ottawa Press, [2010]
- Summary:
- DanceHall combines cultural geography, performance studies and cultural studies to examine performance culture across the Black Atlantic. Taking Jamaican dancehall music as its prime example, DanceHall reveals a complex web of cultural practices, politics, rituals, philosophies, and survival strategies that link Caribbean, African and African diasporic performance. Combining the rhythms of reggae, digital sounds and rapid-fire DJ lyrics, dancehall music was popularized in Jamaica during the later part of the last century by artists such as Shabba Ranks, Shaggy, Beenie Man and Buju Banton. Even as its popularity grows around the world, a detailed understanding of dancehall performance space, lifestyle and meanings is missing. Author Sonjah Stanley Niaah relates how dancehall emerged from the marginalized youth culture of Kingston's ghettos and how it remains inextricably linked to the ghetto, giving its performance culture and spaces a distinct identity. She reveals how dancehall's migratory networks, embodied practice, institutional frameworks, and ritual practices link it to other musical styles, such as American blues, South African kwaito, and Latin American reggaetòn. She shows that dancehall is part of a legacy that reaches from the dance shrubs of West Indian plantations and the early negro churches, to the taxi-dance halls of Chicago and the ballrooms of Manhattan. Indeed, DanceHall stretches across the whole of the Black Atlantic's geography and history to produce its detailed portrait of dancehall in its local, regional, and transnational performance spaces.
- Contents:
- Out of Many ... One Dancehall 1
- Out of Many ... Perspectives 3
- Many "Relations of Abnormality" 9
- One Dancehall from Slave Ship to Ghetto 17
- Introducing Performance Geography 29
- A Performance Geography of the City 37
- Select Citizenry, Select Spatiality 40
- Bonds of Solidarity, Echoes of Community 47
- The Social "Psychoscape" 48
- Performing Geography in Kingston's Dancehall Spaces 53
- Blocking the Dancehall Stage 53
- Mortimo Planno's Experience as a Dance Promoter 57
- Becoming a Venue: Time, Space and Location 58
- California California at Rainbow Lawn 60
- Venues Politicized: Hierarchy, Policing and Policy-making 62
- Theorizing and Singing the Street 68
- Classifying and Mapping Venues 75
- Locating Halfway Tree 80
- Conclusions 83
- Ritual Space, Celebratory Space 87
- A Reading of Ritual 89
- Names, Times, Themes and Purposes 92
- Major Types of Dance Event 98
- Passa Passa 104
- Bembe Thursday 108
- British Link-up Events 110
- Conclusions 115
- Geographies of Embodiment-Dance, Status, Style 119
- "Ol' Time Somet'ing Come Back Again": African and Other Continuities 121
- The Role of the Dancer 123
- Gerald "Bogle" Levy (1966-2005) 124
- Reaping Rewards from Dancehall 130
- Masking (the Body) in the Dance 132
- Dancehall Queens 137
- Gender Demarcations and Negotiations in Dance 140
- A Preliminary Chronology 143
- Performing Boundarylessness 151
- Boundarylessness and Boundedness 151
- Buju Banton on Tour 154
- Stone Love and Tony Matterhorn 161
- Dancehall Queens beyond National Boundaries 163
- Dancehall in Japan 164
- From Bogle to Usain Bolt 166
- Video Light and Spectacle 168
- Conclusions 174
- A Common Transnational Space 177
- World Musics and the Black Atlantic 177
- Common Genealogies: Kwaito 179
- Common Genealogies: Reggaetón 185
- Common Space: From Ghetto Streets to World Stage 188
- Performing Geography, Performing Identity 191.
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 196-210) and index.
- ISBN:
- 9780776630410
- 0776630415
- 9780776607368
- 0776607367
- OCLC:
- 635988947
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