Dancehall
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Somewhere late in 1979 the Roots Radics laid down the riddims for Barrington Levy's first tunes for producer Junjo Lawes, credited at the time as the Channel One Stars. No one could envisage the importance of these sessions, but with hindsight we can point back to them as the inception of Jamaican dancehall music.[1] |
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Dancehall is a type of Jamaican popular music which developed around 1980, with exponents such as Yellowman and Shabba Ranks. It is also known by some as "Bashment".
The style is characterized by a deejay singing and rapping or toasting over raw and danceable music riddims. The rhythm in dancehall is much faster than in reggae, sometimes with drum machines replacing acoustic sets . In the early years of dancehall, some found its lyrics crude and bawdy ("slack"), particularly because of its sexual tones, popular among youths in Jamaica. Like its reggae predecessor it eventually made inroads onto the world music scene.
This deejay-led, largely synthesized speechifying with musical accompaniment departed from traditional conceptions of Jamaican popular musical entertainment. Dub poet Mutabaruka maintained, "if 1970s reggae was red, green and gold, then in the next decade it was gold chains". It was far removed from its gentle roots and culture, and there was furious debate as to whether it ought to be considered some sort of extension of reggae music.
