ABSTRACT
Since its rise to dominance in Jamaica in the 1980s, dancehall culture has developed into and remains a critical site of popular sociocultural engagement with a variety of discourses that emanate particularly from within Jamaican society. Many of these discourses are tackled in dancehall culture’s lyrics, as well as its other manifestations, such as music videos, stage-show presentations, fashion and style, and dancehall slang. The male body in dancehall culture remains a central site of contested discourses of gender identity, and these discourses emanate from and are impacted by the wider terrain of gendered and social discourses in Jamaican society. Dancehall’s gendered narratives arguably function as a form of life writing or self-narration that engages a variety of autobiographical acts to bring the artistsjauthors and audiencejreaders into a sphere of mutual creation and interpretation of artistic and social identities. I draw on my earlier research on contemporary dancehall lyrics and audience responses to examine the mutual creation of meanings on dancehall’s male body, and its simultaneous play with and against manifestations of Jamaican hegemonic masculinity.
