Dancin' a Jamaica Middle Name': Musical Hegemony...

Abstract

This review wanted to be titled “Wake the Town and Tell the People the Truth! Dancehall Culture in Jamaica.” But that wasn’t to be. My intention was to adopt the “values and attitudes” approach of the day in order to reveal sources unacknowledged, debates about authenticity, quarrels with history, and so on. Needless to say, this book has sparked great, mostly unwritten, debate among Jamaican nationalists who on the one hand feel the book should have been written by a Jamaican, and on the other know that glory for the print belongs not only to the author but to all those who came before him -- whether in patches of work or oral transmissions -- who have contributed to the Dancehall enterprise and kept its light burning.