ABSTRACT
This chapter establishes dancehall's embodied Jamaican spiritual coding by contextualising it within its ‘genealogical’ antecedents. Genealogy here, means the ‘explor[ation of] influences and historical relationships’ (Beckford, 2000), that is, the historical ‘company’ dancehall keeps. Genealogy is extended to incorporate dancehall's re-connection with ‘ancestral data’ (Stines, 2009), the ancestral knowledge that (un)consciously underpins meaning within Jamaican culture. This connection to ancestral knowledge demonstrates dancehall's complex origins, which demands deeper analysis.
Outlining both the African (religious, ceremonial and recreational) dance classifications and the Caribbean (African retention, European influenced or indigenous) dance classificatory systems, the chapter foregrounds their intersection with Jamaican African/neo-African cultural practices from Myal, Jonkonnu Masquerade, Kumina and Revival dances and the worldviews they convey, to the Mento and subsequent Jamaican popular genres.
Establishing Jonkunnu masquerade as part of the spiritual rather secular classification, the chapter further explores the dialogue concerning dancehall as a continuity of the Jamaican popular forms of Ska, Rocksteady and Reggae, all influenced by African antecedent cosmologies, dancehall's ‘company’. It highlights the centrality of dance within Jamaica's major cultural expressions and how dance, remains a continuity within dancehall that both directly and indirectly shapes performance and behavioural actions within contemporary Jamaican society.
