ABSTRACT
This book aims to explore reggae/dancehall to determine whether it conveys embodied spiritual references hidden within the ‘corporeal dancing bodies’ of participants and their dances. Thereby, this chapter outlines Jamaican reggae/dancehall as a space and indigenous cultural expression in relation to spirituality, dance and the body. Although dance is incorporated in the beginning of the term dancehall it is often overlooked. The history of reggae/dancehall culture is frequently perceived in relation to Hip-Hop and urban street culture by many non-Jamaicans and individuals outside of the culture. The Black body is therefore perceived as problematic, being over analysed and moralised through the Western gaze and notions of respectability.
The objective of this study is to demonstrate that reggae/dancehall represents a re-imagining of the Jamaican African/neo-African religious dance practices with which it is genealogically connected. It also foregrounds the Christian and post-modern religious practices subsumed within contemporary Jamaican popular culture and how together they form the catalyst for an alternative cultural and spiritual phenomenon. This chapter serves to explain the use of some key Jamaican terms and concepts that have emerged from the research field, whilst presenting the main Scholastic ‘Roll-call’ or theoretical frameworks in which this study is situated.
