ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses and explores the relationship between dancehall, spirituality and the body, as dances within most African/neo-African practices are classified by function or origin. Demonstrating that most African/neo-African people do not make a clear distinction between religion and spirituality, it further contextualises the Jamaican African/neo-African practices with Christian and postmodern religious and spiritual approaches. Focusing on the human performatisation (behavioural actions), the ritual performances, objects, symbols, places and spaces that facilitate Jamaican cultural existence, this chapter foregrounds the key elements that make up the spiritual worldview many African/neo-Africans subscribe to.
It establishes the fact that each human being has their own spiritual belief system, even though they may share the same belief with another individual, due to personal interpretation. Thereby, it investigates the belief in one ‘Supreme Being’, the Almighty God (referenced by different names) and often served by a pantheon of lesser deities or spirits in most African/neo-African practices. Thus, whether spirituality and religion are autonomous or synonymous concepts is examined to identify some key parameters from African, Christian, post-modern and Jamaican African/neo-African approaches to spirituality, to facilitate a broad functional, existential and hermeneutic definition of spirituality, against which, any potential dancehall spirituality may be determined.
