ABSTRACT
As Jamaica’s most popular indigenous cultural expression, reggae/dancehall is a complex phenomenon in which dance reects the transformative nature of its musical sonic dominance (Henriques 2011), the all-engulng, body penetrating, riddim (rhythm). Contemporary reggae/dancehall provides an important subversive aesthetic; exemplied through the dis/ prex (Hope 2006), an abbreviation for disrespect. Many African/Jamaican youths use dis/ to subvert the negativity inherent in terms often directed towards them, such as dis/respect, dis/advantage, dis/empowerment and dis/location. Reggae/dancehall’s subversive aesthetic therefore enables its participants to gain ‘smaddication’ (Mills 1997), or as Rex Nettleford corrects it ‘smadditisation’ (in Scott 2006), the gaining of recognition, agency and visibility, despite the denial of access and opportunity due to race. Transferred to the British context, Black bodies are produced in relation to place and dened by a dominant culture that negates their agency. Thereby, reggae/ dancehall’s subversive aesthetic furnishes many Black youths with a transformative sense of smadditisation, identity and pride. Dance enables them to feel the riddim, whilst participating, submerging, transforming and transcending in the vibe (energy, atmosphere and ambience) of reggae/ dancehall. As such, it represents a contemporary ‘genealogy’, the non-linear connecting of historical moments/events (Beckford 2006) within African and Caribbean dance practice. Reggae/dancehall represents a space where identity, smadditisation and personhood is developed and negotiated in modern transformative rituals of renewal and transcendence. Thereby, as I argue, reggae/dancehall has a deep signicance that embodies Jamaican spiritual cosmology and religious coding.
