ABSTRACT

The video camera, or more popularly, the ‘videolight,’ forms part of the popular mechanism for channeling images and messages of/from Jamaican popular culture into ‘prime time’ visibility, both inside and beyond Jamaica. Using boundarylessness as a theoretical point of departure, this chapter expands research I have conducted on the phenomenon of the ‘videolight,’ the making of dancehall celebrities, and the evolution of the dancehall performance aesthetic afforded by the spectacle of and for the videolight. Premised on over 15 years of research examining a period of over 60 years, and using a combination of participant observation, visual ethnography, case studies, and content analysis, the chapter establishes that dancehall celebrities of urban Kingston are produced and catapulted into the global domain on their own terms using creative performance modes that communicate first at the community level as they simultaneously establish a world wide web of performance practice beyond the inner city. Ultimately, this chapter analyzes the unique ways in which this music and its videoscape provide agency and mobility for largely disenfranchised youth, their messages and lifestyles behind, in front of, and through the ‘videolight.’ While a focus on urban visualscapes characterized by reggae and dancehall has been largely underrepresented in the scholarship on communication and visual culture studies broadly, this chapter positions the context of amateur dancehall video creation vis-à-vis professional video commercialization in contemporary debates about visual culture.