Dancehall is far from being dead, too dangerous or even irrelevant says Carolyn Cooper, expert on the cultural form.
Avia Ustanny, Gleaner Writer
CAROLYN COOPER had her pass for entry to Sting, the premier, local, dancehall event, but was too tired to make it this year, unlike the last.
She was suffering from jet lag, having just returned from London, where she gave the keynote address at a conference on Languages and Intercultural Communication at Lancaster University. The subject was DJ Apache Indian in a paper entitled, "'Mix up the Indian with all the patios': Rajamuffin Sounds in 'Cool Britannia'".
But, when we spoke with her last week, there were no exclamations of 'A God save me'(It was God who made me miss it) over the near miss in the Sting fiasco.
Violence or no violence, only an inability to "bleach" prevented Cooper from being there. The event would have provided peerless fodder for her pen. Cooper writes and speaks passionately about the subject that ranks as her first love - intellectually - i.e, dancehall.
The Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of the West Indies and the co-ordinator of the Reggae Studies Unit who has authored one book on dancehall, with another in the works, was not surprised in the least by the bottle throwing violence which erupted at Sting.
With a shrug of her fabulously-clad shoulders she said, "Contemporary dancehall culture is really a youth culture and there is an element always in youth culture of danger."
She states, "Verbal and physical violence is part of the rush of entertainment for many youth. They embrace the sense of danger. It is part of a global youth culture that you see in rock concerts, etc."
It is her belief that dancehall patrons take pleasure in saying 'me go a de show and me haffi run'. They delight in a sense of contained threat. They enjoy danger vicariously.
LANGUAGE
The professor, whose discipline is literary studies, says she focused on language and the interpretation of language in her ongoing research. "I focus on what the lyrics of the song can be made to tell us about our culture but I am also interested in body language and dress."
Her own mode of dress is a celebration of Afro-Jamaican fashion. Added to her collection most recently was jewellery by Georgia Brown, a dancehall outfit by Biggie's fashions and raffia hats by Jack in Papine market.
The hat is a 'wild' personal statement. Referring to the elaborate hairstyles often seen in the dancehall, Cooper comments, provocatively, "the hat that women wear to church has nothing to do with modesty and covering your head. It is about decoration and shocking out. For the fundamentalist Christian, the hat is the equivalent of the dancehall bling bling.
"These Christian women do not wear jewellery, but we see the essence of the jewellery in the size and trimmings of their headwear - farthing hair and pound of hat. See the connections in the society, we are all Africans. We take the hat as a sign of modesty and convert to decorations."
Putting her thoughts to paper, Cooper has completed another book: "Sound Clash: Jamaican Dancehall Culture at Large", which looks at dancehall as a social space. In one chapter entitled, 'Mama is that you?' she looks at erotic disguise in the theatre productions Dancehall Queen and Baby Mother. "Dress is used as a strategy to claim a sense of visibility."
Cooper, in her words, is "cultural critic negotiating on the border between different social groups."
In the new book's introduction: Word, sound and Power, she takes another look at the importance of the language in which values are communicated. The first chapter, "Border Clash" (a reference to a song of the same name by Ninja Man) examines the culture as a site of contest. The border clash is a metaphor of competing systems; English against patois, Uptown against Downtown, Reggae against dancehall, the clash between Jamaica as a conservative heterosexual society and homosexuality, between fundamentalist and a more sexually free culture.
The professor notes that in dancehall, while deejays are open about heterosexuality, they are repressive about alternative sexual lifestyles. Dancehall is a place where sexuality is heavily policed.
Does the culture have women under bondage?
Discussing the contention that dancehall uses the female body in an exploitative way, she says that if women are exploited it is a reflection of the wider society. Pointing specifically to the female DJ Lady Saw, she comments, "Lady Saw is an act. The persona she displays is like an actress playing a role. There is an image of sensuality, yet there is a consciousness that girls must look at other options." Evidence of this, she says, lie in Saw's songs celebrating female indepen-dence, other songs which are like hymns and still others which speak about the responsibility of the state to citizens, about safe sex and about health.
ISLAND BACKWARDNESS
Efforts to lock away dancehall into the box of cultural and island backwardness will fail.
In her recent UK address, Cooper examined the way in which Apache Indian, the British DJ, has assimilated Jamaican culture. Although he was born in the UK of Indian parents, he grew up in Handsworth, Birmingham, among Jamaicans, learnt patois and ended up deejaying in a way which sounds very Jamaican.
She comments, "People like to say that Jamaican is a local language but is really is an international language carried globally by reggae dancehall culture as a result of which people all over the world want to learn patois."
Professor Cooper adds with a straight face, "We do not realise we could be making money from teaching people Jamaican.
"The language has been globalised by our world class culture. We little but wi tallawah. We are an island people with a continental consciousness. We just big and we broad," Dr. Cooper said.
