Dancehall Reggae
Introduction
In the development of Reggae, “the lyrics tended to turn away from social,
political or historical themes”31 and a new style was invented in 1986 with
the song “Under me sleng teng” by King Jammy. The style was called “Dancehall”,
an expression that is normally used for parties in
halls or on the streets where different soundsystems ( DJ’s with mobile music
sets) compete for the favour of the audience. As it is self-evident in Jamaica
that in the big cities every district has its own soundsystems, the DJ’s who
speak over the songs often talk about the gossip and news that are actual in
this district. But they are also important for the youths, because they have a
great influence on them and orders of the DJ’s are followed. For example the
musician Mr. Lex has written a song that tells the youth not to bleach their
faces, because it is a dangerous fashion, when they use caustic creams. ( “Let
those monkeys out/ all girls with their face bleached out.”- unknown source).
Some DJ’s have played this songs and the adults could observe that it did
educate the young audience.
Slackness
Lyrics
Although there are some DJs who try to influence the youth in a positive way,
the majority seems to do the opposite. The glorification of violence, the insult
of gays and slackness lyrics
are no rarities.
The slackness lyrics (sexually explicit lyrics) are always connected with sexual
show-off by the musician. One of the most famous slackness DJ’s is Yellowman,
who confesses that he makes commercial Reggae and just sings what the audience
wants to hear. In the song “Jamaica proud of me” he sings, for example, “A
some a dem a talk ‘bout me have no gal-friends, you a idiot me have about a
hundred and ten, an all a dem have yellow children”32. (Yellow = albino, like
himself). But this is still one of the more well-behaved lyrics. In “Me too
sexy” he even tells about sexual details: “She ums (comes) up my ankle, me
brief and me knee, she look under me and tell me whe (what) she see”32 –it
can be imagined how the song goes on. The DJ’s are always trying to surpass
all the others with exaggerations about their virility and with more and more
new expressions for female parts of the body. There are no taboos!
Violence
As a result of the belief that the man who has got the biggest number of affairs
is the greatest, the antipathy against gays that had already existed in great
extent, has increased.
In 1992, for example, Buju Banton published a song called “Boom, Bye Bye”
which contains the appeal to murder gays. ( On the CD, you can even hear the
sound of a real pistol in the
background!) Although many people were shocked and there were protests against
it in the USA and in Jamaica, Banton’s single was sold very well. This shows
that for the Dancehall audience insults and animosities of this kind are already
normal and Buju Banton is no isolated case.
Capelton, another famous DJ, shows in the song “Hang them up” that he shares
Banton’s point of view when he sings “Bare b---y man come round yah a
brive...yow, string them up and hang dem up alive (...)”33. “B---y man” is
written instead of “batty man”, in Jamaica a common word for gays.
But not always gays are the goals of this oral brutality. In some songs the
people who were, in Roots Reggae, criticised as “Babylon” are threatened,
but sometimes just any people who are regarded as enemies at the moment.
This sounds only negative at the moment, but in fact, there is also an other
group in Dancehall: conscious Rastafarians who strongly speak against the “sex
and violence”- topics and still sing about the topics that were dealt with in
Roots Reggae. The DJ Sizzla, for example, connects social critical texts with
Ragga-rhythms. Ragga is a mixture of Rap and Dancehall that was
invented in the end of the 1980ies when the US-music gained more influence in
Jamaica.
The topics of Sizzla‘s songs are all conscious. He sings about Babylon
(“Babylon a listen”, “Babylon Cowboy”), Jah (“No other like Jah”,
“True god”) and tries to educate the youths (“Do some good”, “Bless
the youth”, “Clean up your heart”).
This shows that Rastafarianism is no idea that helped some people in the 60ies
and 70ies to overcome a identity crises, but a way of life that is still
accepted by young and old people in Jamaica.
