Deconstructing the ‘Dance Hall Space’ in Jamaica

Abstract

Dance Hall, like the famous Jamaican reggae music, emerged out of the bowels of poor inner-city people wanting to tell their story. The proverbial socialization and identity need found in all human populations and culture, the need for the catharsis, the need to be heard, the quest to have the ears and attention of a neglectful society served as the scaffold from which jettisoned this emergence. For black lower classes, glossed as downtown people, the dancehall represents a symbol of pride in the ghetto; a source for black identity and expression, and the awakening of our roots in African culture. One such deviation occurs when women and men are erotically oriented to members of the same sex. A man who acts upon this erotic orientation violates a tenet of masculinity and most importantly appears to reject standards by which ‘real men’ are defined as selves and as subjects. Within a heterosexist culture like Jamaica, what is not masculine is feminine. Unable to cross freely between spheres, gender traitors are deemed to be homosexuals despite where their biological or sexual orientation may lie. A man who acts too effeminate is then regarded as a ‘maama man’ (feminine or effeminate man), and a,woman who acts too masculine is termed as being ‘butch’ or as being ‘man royal’. One of the most notorious homophobic songs ever produced in dancehall history is perhaps “Boom-bye-bye” by Buju Banton. Saunders posits that upon its release, the song received substantial air play on the radio and in the dance clubs however, when news of its content hit the air waves, the song was immediately banned for its homophobic lyrics. In addition, the song nearly cost Banton his international career and resulted in the sudden demise of DJ Shabba Ranks’s career after he supported and reiterated these sentiments in an international interview. The ‘Dance Hall Space’ is a social institution that expresses Jamaicans resistance to sexual exploitation, particularly the sodomization of Black slaves, and goes to the root of their allowed dissention with Europeans supremacy.