Swagga: Fashion, Kinaesthetics, and Gender in Dancehall and Hip-Hop PDF

Published in: Journal of Black Masculinity: The Philosophical Underpinnings of Gender Identity, vol. 1, no. 3 (Summer 2011) www.blackmasculinity.com Swagga: Fashion, Kinaesthetics and Gender in Dancehall and Hip-Hop Lena Delgado de Torres, Ph.D....

Published in: Journal of Black Masculinity: The Philosophical Underpinnings of Gender Identity, vol. 1, no. 3 (Summer 2011) www.blackmasculinity.com Swagga: Fashion, Kinaesthetics and Gender in Dancehall and Hip-Hop Lena Delgado de Torres, Ph.D. Kean University Abstract: Gender constructs in Jamaican society have undergone significant transformations over the last two decades. The post-1980s in this peripheral nation-state have been characterized by hegemonic dissolution stemming in part from changes in the world-system. The shifts in gender constructs are defined by class-based conflicts over the norms, values and aesthetics associated with the traditional bourgeois classes. The fulcrum for investigation is Jamaica’s Dancehall culture. Transformations in gender are seen most clearly in the field of Dancehall’s masculinities, taking form in clashes over the body. These conflicts center around dress, gendered dancing styles and adornment. Furthermore, clashes occur within the Dancehall between conservative and counter-hegemonic elements, and outside of the Dancehall, in terms of a confrontation with the conservative norms of the wider society, played out in the arena of sexual morality and aesthetics. By placing Dancehall in its African Diasporic context, Dancehall dress and movement are linked to discursive nodes on the continent and in the Americas in order to arrive at a discourse of Pan-African gender, dress and dance. Research consisted of extensive interviews with dancers and intellectuals, in order to reach a qualitative analysis of the problem. The study concluded that while dancers are challenging the hegemonic norms of Jamaican masculinity, sets of rules are simultaneously evolving as a backlash against the perceived loosening of gender strictures. Introduction: Sociologists suggest that post-1980s Jamaica has been marked by a process of hegemonic dissolution (Meeks, 2000, p. 124-43). Western markers of culture, morality and aesthetics, prescribed as “norms” and “status-bearing” by the bourgeois, brown and white middle classes are gradually being swept away, replaced by an alternative ethos emerging from the massive, the urban and rural Black working classes. It has also been suggested that certain repressed and supressed elements of Black massive culture, in particular men’s fashion and dancing, are rememerging and coming to the fore within popular culture. These 1 repressed elements are of course not new, but draw on a rich tradition of Afro- Jamaican culture, in which counter-hegemonic masculinity figures prominently. This is particularly evident in the male dance, cross-dressing masquerade and costume of Jonkonnu processions. Just as Afro-descended male fashion and dance have long been present in Jamaica’s Black cultural formations, they have also been repressed by the hegemonic strictures of the bourgeois white and brown middle classes, along with other displays of erotic maroonage. That these cultural tendencies have also been repressed within the urban, working-class space of Dancehall should come as no surprise, since Western, bourgeois gender constructs have become hegemonic. Hegemony is continually threatened from below, even more so during this period of large-scale socio-economic shifts and hegemonic dissolution. Thus, we should expect to see many conflicts emerge in Dancehall culture and lyricism as the repressed elements of male flamboyant fashion and extroverted dancing propel the contruction of new, liberatory sets of African Diasporic aesthetics and kinaesthetics denoting opulence, pleasure and well-being. There are strong connections between Hip-Hop and Dancehall’s lyrical traditions. DJ Kool Herc, an early pioneer in Hip-Hop, was a Jamaican émigré to the Bronx. The New York City borough was a cradle for the development of Hip- Hop; it is here where the seeds of the genre were sown. Kool Herc brought with him Jamaica’s sound-system technology. The sound-system had become a primary mode of Black, working-class music-making, dance and celebration on the island since the late 1940s. Academics and music critics have blamed Hip- Hop for the infiltration of the “bling-bling” aesthetic into Dancehall in recent years, just as they assumed Hip-Hop was the source of the “slackness” discourse in Dancehall during the 1980s. Rather than viewing Hip-Hop trends in Dancehall as an invasion from the North, I propose that we see these artistic genres and social phenomena as nodes within a Pan-African Diasporic discourse, a musical and kinaesthetic conversation going back and forth between Kingston, New York City, Atlanta and New Orleans, and other cities in the Americas. To this end, I employ the discourse of “Swagga,” a term popular in both Hip-Hop and Dancehall lyricism, as emblematic of both genres’ contemporary bodies of kinaesthetic pleasure and performance. This paper will explore the socio-economic ramifications of post-1980s hegemonic dissolution and the challenges faced by the male youth of Jamaica, which relate to the breakdown of hegemonic gender discourses, and the creation of counter-hegemonic masculinity in contemporary Dancehall. I will examine the historical precedent of African Diasporic cross-dressing and the Actor Boy character of Jonkonnu processions as early precursors to contemporary male fashion in the Dancehall upon which today’s male dancers and modelers implicitly draw. The bling-bling aesthetic in particular can be traced back to the shiny mirrors and baubles adorning the costumes and masks of Jonkonnu characters. Jonkonnu can also be viewed as a root structure of Hip-Hop, since we find its provenance in South Carolina as well as Belize, Jamaica and the Bahamas. I will highlight data from my fieldwork which exemplifies the conflicts between 2 selectors, artists, and dancers over the new range of aesthetics and kinaesthetics performed in the Dancehall today. In particular, the practices of wearing “tight” pants, eyebrow plucking or shaving, facial bleaching and extroverted dancing in the videolight will be explored as iconoclastic behaviors which threaten the boundaries of hegemonic masculinity. These behaviors ignite conflict in the form of discourses of correction coming from the older generation of dancers which police the boundaries of masculinity, and liberatory discourses emerging from younger dancers. Using an analogy drawn from Dancehall lyricism, I will present the concept of Swagga, a term borrowed from Hip-Hop to describe the trend of male adornment in Dancehall. Contrary to reigning paradigms in mainstream gender studies and feminism which assume that the Western experience of gender is universal, hegemonic masculinity is in fact culturally-specific to the Western European, Anglo-American, White, bourgeois, middle-class experience of the “developed world.” Culturally-specific hegemonic gender codes tied to bourgeois middle- class notions of decency have been foisted on the entire world through the historical processes of colonialism and imperialism, and the development of capitalism. Black peoples’ gender discourses, however, must be distinctly counter-hegemonic in crucial ways simply in order to survive in a society that is diametrically opposed to their existence. Most low income, working-class Black people do not have the means, and if they do, often do not have the desire to adhere to these hegemonic gender discourses and aesthetic values, and they choose alternative ways of being as an escape from oppressive discourses that can only construct “ghetto living,” or economically disadvantaged African-descended people’s ways of being in negative terms. This construction of alternative ways of being is precisely what erotic maroonage in Dancehall and Hip-Hop accomplishes. If, as Hope (2010) proposes, Dancehall masculinities are rooted in Kingston’s “inner-city” or “lower class” populations, then we must understand that Black masculinities formed within the conditions of working-class, poor, ghetto/garrison communities are necessarily contestatory, because the everyday social realities of oppression and deprivation in these communities exist in sharp contrast to the middle-class understanding of the “good life” that all should aspire to possess, according to bourgeois hegemonic values. Yet the socio-economic processes which create inequality in these communities are allowed to proliferate by these same middle classes, and are underwritten by the Jamaican political process. All of these tendencies are supported through a tenuous and fractured U.S.-led hegemony in the Caribbean region. Meeks (2000) defines a post-1980s breakdown of traditional hegemony in which the upper and middle classes at the helm of Jamaican society are no longer dominating the masses in terms of mores and values. This period of hegemonic dissolution is characterized by conflict over many social and economic issues, not least of which is the perception that university education is no longer the best way to attain upward social mobility and breadwinner status. The traditions of dance, 3 masquerade and costume displayed in Jonkonnu celebrations proliferate in Dancehall and Hip-Hop. The current trend of male dress in the Dancehall must be located in the counter-hegemonic masculinity evident in Jonkonnu. Rather than merely “speculating” on influences aside from the “international” fashion cues of North America and Great Britain which might be in effect, how can we read male body movement and fashion in contemporary Dancehall as African Diasporic practice within late capitalism? The new Dancehall masculinity, the costuming and masquerade of Jonkonnu processions are African Diasporic gender identity constructs which defy Western categories of masculinity and femininity. In order to become attuned to the long-term markers of African Diasporic gender identity constructs within Dancehall, we must examine the ancestral roots as the late Rex Nettleford, premier Jamaican dancer and intellectual, so wisely urged me to do. These roots lie in Afro-Jamaican popular culture precedents such as Jonkonnu. Niaah writes of Dancehall’s simultaneously old and new characteristics: Dancehall is Jamaica's premiere popular street theatre which first flourished around the 1950s, but with unique manifestations of sonic dominance, dance, fashion and lyrical content since 1980. Its antecedents are popular sacred and secular forms such as the slave ship Limbo, Jonkonnu, Dinki Mini, Gerreh, Revival and Bruckins Party, among others. There is something very old, therefore, and simultaneously new and renewing about Jamaica's Dancehall. As it draws on the old, so it invents and reinvents itself (2004b, p. 117). Lewin, in her historical treatise on the popular music and dance of Jamaica, writes that the Jonkonnu festival occurred historically at Christmas. The weeks leading up to December 25th were a time of preparation, and every night Jonkonnu or Horsehead/Buru drums would announce the Christmastime festivities (2000, p. 122). Niaah points out that the Christmas dance of the slaves is an antecedent of all contemporary Dancehall events (2004a, p. 111). Cassidy considers the name Jonkonnu to have most likely developed from the Ewe language, a Niger-Congo langauge spoken in Ghana, Benin and Togo (as cited in Lewin, 2000, p. 126). It is generally thought that Igbo traditions of masking were the West African cultural precedents of Jonkonnu, which is celebrated throughout the African Diaspora in locales as diverse as Belize, the Bahamas, and North Carolina. Jamaican Jonkonnu was practiced as early as 1725 and as late as 1951; however, Lewin (2000) claims that “since 1980, there have been comparatively few practicing Jonkonnu groups of even mediocre standard” (p. 129). The tradition is is kept alive through the activities of the Jamaican Cultural Development Commission (JCDC), an organization which sponsors schoolchildren’s performances of Jonkonnu and other Afro-Jamaican folkloric culture such as Kumina, Dinki-mini, Ettu and Gerreh. Thus, Jonkonnu masquerade and dance is far from extinct, but is still very much present in the 4 repertoire of Jamaica’s popular dancers. While European cultural elements such as Shakespeare’s plays and pre-Christian, “pagan” mummings traditions did contribute to the formation of Jonkonnu, orthodox Christianity does not figure prominently. Mento, the Jamaican variant of early Caribbean music, was customarily played at Jonkonnu processions. Of course, this music is a precursor to reggae and Dancehall (Stolzoff 2000). The 1980s is a watershed moment in Jamaican history; post-1980s Jamaica is the site of large-scale socio-economic changes which sociologists descibe as hegemonic dissolution. Lewin’s finding of a decline of Jonkonnu bands after 1980 makes sense in this historical context. This is precisely the era when Dancehall music moved to the fore of popular culture in Jamaica as a replacement for waning cultural forms. Niaah (2004a) cites a similar phenomenon in reference to the Christmas dance, in which early Dancehall oral accounts “reveal that people looked forward to a Christmas dance with great anticipation as a chance to affirm, or ‘big up,’ one’s social identity and cultural experience” (p. 111). When these traditional dances disappeared by the early 1980s, Kingston’s venue owners and business people began staging events to “bring back the dance spirit” (Niaah, 2004a, p. 111). Niaah (2004a, p. 110) asserts that Kingston’s Dancehall is seasonless since there are events every night of the week throughout the liturgical calendar. The heightened sense of festivity and celebration that is experienced around Christmastime in Jamaica is a constant feature of contemporary Dancehall in Kingston. Dancehall clearly fulfills the massive’s desire for entertainment and culture, of a non-orthodox variety. It is the latest evolution and transformation in Jamaican popular culture, which finds its roots in earlier traditions of entertainment such as Jonkonnu. The infamous Sting stage show is a good example of how reggae/Dancehall has become so instrumental in Jamaica’s Christmastime festivities and celebrations. In earlier times, Jonkonnu revellers in masks and costumes would proceed singing and dancing down the main streets of town, following a leader who would direct them when to pause, to perform and to process, as well as when to distribute monetary gifts collected along the way. The center of the Jonkonnu procession was a masked dancer who would lead the procession of characters in various assortments including Set Girls, i Jack-in-the-Green, Sailor, the Devil, Wild Indian, Belly Woman, Policeman, Horsehead, Cowhead, Actor Boy, and a popular favorite, Pitchy-Patchy. Characters varied based on locale but were generally similar throughout the island. The Actor Boy character is particularly interesting as a historical precedent for the male modelers and dancers of contemporary Dancehall. Actor Boy developed from self-styled actor groups, appearing as early as 1825. The Jamaica Cultural Development Commission (JCDC) describes the Actor Boy as the following: He is flamboyantly dressed in silk, satin and lace frills and finery, and with a long, loose jacket falling over a huge skirt. He wears long curls, which fall over a small facemask and a headdress comprising mirrors, feathers, jewels and coloured beads. Actor 5  Boy has a majestic gait and usually swings his whip as he goes along. This character tends to emphasize pantomime, music and dance and represents the long history of Jamaican theatre and our love for the theatrical. Both our African and British traditions associate Actor Boy with the theme of death and resurrection.ii Clearly, gender identity constructs which defy Western notions of masculinity and femininity have been a long-standing practice among the Black masses of Jamaica, as we see in the appearance of this Jonkonnu character. Actor Boy is bending all kinds of Western gender rules and boundaries with his “lace frills, huge skirt, long curls, and elaborate headdress full of mirrors, iii feathers, jewels and colored beads.” At the same time, Actor Boy’s whip-swinging majestic gait denotes a powerfully male dominant kinesthetic movement acted out through pantomime, music and dance. The whip is a common prop of the Jonkonnu dancer, who is the Jamaican version of an Egungun. The whip could also be interpreted as a symbol of male power within an ex-slave society. A masked dancer and leader of the group, he is the embodiment of a deceased ancestral spirit who has returned to visit his people. Wynter (1970) writes “this spirit is known as Ara-Orun, a citizen of heaven. The Mask, i.e. the costume, must entirely cover the dancer. He carries a whip and speaks in a ventriloquial voice” (p. 37). Jonkonnu characters were born whole cloth out of the imaginative process of indigenization of African culture within the Jamaican environment. Although European elements are absorbed in the later creolized versions of Jonkonnu, the characters are not Westernized hybrids of feminized masculinity analogous to the fop, dandy or macaroni. Actor Boy grows straight from the working classes and emerges as a construction of Jamaican counter-hegemonic gender identity. Similarly, all Jonkonnu characters were played by males, but if necessary they wore female clothing in their portrayals of women (Lewin, 2000, p. 127). Jonkonnu processions are tantamount to a historical practice of African Diasporic cross- dressing, which echoes throughout the contemporary Dancehall in the allegations against male dancers who tailor women’s clothing to wear themselves. Thus, we see that historically in Jamaican popular culture there was much “gender- bending” occurring, long before the new millenium. Counter-hegemonic gender identity is a long-term feature of Jamaican popular culture and entertainment, not some recent infiltration from abroad. It is important to note that the expressions of gender present in Jonkonnu really go beyond masculinity and femininity to denote an Afro-Jamaican, African Diasporic, Black expression of gender which is quite different from Western understandings. Hope (2010) describes the post-millennial reconfiguration of male dress in the Dancehall as “fashion ova style,” iv which she claims is “brokered on a range of feminized aesthetics, public presentations of the male body in dance performance and high levels of male homosociality in the public performance space” (p. 124). I will begin to critique Hope’s rendition of fashion ova style with an analogy from the patois lyrics of one of Dancehall’s most powerful griots, 6 Vybz Kartel. The way in which patois is formed in Jamaica, as a reconfiguration of the English language with West African syntax to reflect an Afro-Caribbean worldview, is analogous to the way in which Western gender constructs become reconfigured in Jamaican Dancehall. In his song “Money Pon Mi Mind,” Vybz chats “pocket nuh fi tin, Gaza nuh macaroni, high definition like TV a Sony, money haffi run....” ‘Our pockets are not thin; Gaza is not macaroni (small change); we have Sony high definition TVs; we have to earn money.’ Kartel’s lyrical artistry lends itself well to multiple interpretations, relying as it does on the nuanced, proverbial meanings of African-inflected patois. The phrase “pockets nuh fi tin” could mean that his pockets must be fat with paper money, not coins. Perhaps Vybz uses the term “macaroni” in the indigenous Jamaican patois sense to mean a small amount of money. In other words, he and his crew, Gaza, do not have macaroni, but have abundant stores of money and material assets including Sony high-definition TVs. Cassidy and LePage’s Dictionary of Jamaican English defines “macaroni” as a “coin valued at a quarter of a dollar or the like amount, or one shilling” (p. 284). In historical British usage during the mid-18th century, however, the term referred to an epicene gentleman who dressed very fashionably. Cassidy and Le Page’s Dictionary of Jamaican English (2002) stipulates that by the 19th century, the meaning of macaroni had shifted to signify monetary currency in Jamaican usage. According to Cassidy and Le Page, “macaroni” is defined in present-day Jamaican patois as a small amount of money, which alludes to the historical use of the coin as a tip given by an English gentleman or macaroni. Vybz’s use of this term is fascinating since it draws discursively on 18th-century English usage which was later reinterpreted in the Jamaican, African Diasporic context of slavery, servitude and post-colonial socio-economic relations as a small tip given by a rich gentleman to a poor laborer. The use of this term calls to mind the memory of oppression under slavery and wage labor and Vybz’s purported escape from this reality of poverty faced by so many Jamaicans. Vybz’s lyrics are, in this instance, an expression of a larger counter-hegemonic Dancehall masculinity which denotes opulence, wealth, grandeur and economic prosperity in the midst of racism, classism, poverty, and geo-political economic inequality. v Ultimately, this larger Dancehall ethos goes well beyond Western dichotomies of femininity and masculinity to denote humanity and a grandiose existence, meanwhile discursively rejecting the macaroni, or feminized English gentleman. The Dancehall usage of the term represents a discursive rejection of this Western type of feminized man and simultaneously a negation of the unequal historico-social relations which allowed the rich (white) classes dominion over the poor (Black) classes. This discursive shift in meaning between the British metropole and the Jamaican colonial space, which occurred as the Old English term macaroni was re-interpreted around the pivot of contradictory social relations in the colony, is analogous to the shifts in masculinity taking place in the Dancehall today. Western meanings are indeed hegemonic in Jamaica since the majority of the society upholds the West’s values in one way or another, but at the 7 same time, culturally-specific Western norms become revolutionized in order to fit the counter-hegemonic, African-descended Dancehall reality. The term “macaroni” is related discursively to the pejorative fop, dandy, and the contemporary, post-1980s version of these - the metrosexual. All of these are tropes defined within culturally-specific, Anglo-American, Western gender constructs to describe men who practice fashion, a cult of self, follow rules of appearance and personal hygiene, and behave in an “epicene” or “effeminate” manner, departing from hegemonic masculinity. Hope’s concept of “feminized masculinity” is but a recycled version of these older Western tropes of departure from hegemonic masculinity. Male dancers are on the cutting-edge of gender iconoclasm in Jamaica today. They are testing the limits of a hegemonic masculinity based in Western ideals and they are doing it not in the language of bourgeois academia, but through the discourses of African Diasporic, Afro- Jamaican, working-class, urban expressions of popular culture that explode the borders of Western-based gender identities. We must start with a firm understanding of aesthetics. Sylvia Wynter writes in her article entitled “Rethinking ‘Aesthetics’: Notes Towards a Deciphering Practice” (1992): If as Bourdieu notes, the discourses of philosophical aesthetics take as their “sole datum” the lived experience of a homo aestheticus who is none other than the middle-class mode of the subject represented as “the universal subject of aesthetic experience,” they also represent the lived experience of the western European and now, more generally, the “developed” world’s middle classes, as the experience of the generic human subject of aesthetic experience….the discourse of Aesthetic 2 (our present mode of aesthetics) is then able to project the taste of the middle classes of the “developed” worlds…as the general equivalent of all human existence (p. 249). Thus, aesthetics in and of themselves are culturally-specific. Hope (2010) describes “bling-bling,” which she claims becomes synonymous in Jamaica with Dancehall, as an “ostentatious consumptive aesthetic” (p. 92). She claims that the concept is “loaded with notions of impropriety and poor taste in the use of and response to newly acquired riches by the working or lower middle classes….” (p. 93). This is, by extension, associated with her concept of “feminine aesthetics,” which she believes are at play in the new styles of Dancehall men. Only in the Western hegemonic codes of gender is a man’s attention to fashion, style and appearance automatically read as “feminine.” Only in bourgeois codes of middle- class aesthetics are “ostentatious” displays of wealth considered poor taste. If Dancehall men and women are performing styles that are considered “poor taste” within Western bourgeois codes, how can their activities simultaneously be considered supportive of hegemonic gender constructs? Why are Dancehall 8 practitioners intentionally rejecting upper- and middle-class aesthetics by choosing to express themselves in modes the upper and middle classes consider “ostentatious” or in “poor taste”? What are the connections between North American Hip-Hop and Jamaican Dancehall’s sets of male sartorial aesthetics and the construction of gender within these sub-cultures? Hope presents what she considers to be a reason for the prevalence of the bling-bling and feminized aesthetics in Dancehall - the “American” influence of Hip-Hop. Unfortunately, she does not specify that these supposedly “new and global” aesthetics come from the Black and Latino, poor and working-class counter-hegemonic masculinities, constructed in the inner cities and ghettos of North America, which are at work in Hip-Hop’s discursive formation. As Greg Thomas (2009) points out, “ghetto fabulosity” is the “opulent cultural fantasy of an urban working class” (p. 152). Its associated bling-bling aesthetic existed prior to designers such as Versace seizing on to it as “the next big thing” (Cole as cited in Thomas, 2009, p. 152). Thus, if Western, bourgeois hegemonic masculinity cannot be uncritically applied to either Dancehall or Hip- Hop, the researcher must seek to construct concepts that begin to approximate counter-hegemonic Black and Latino, working-class people’s multiple and individualized gender identities and aesthetics as expressed through these art forms. Cooper’s erotic maroonage (2007) is a most useful theoretical concept to understand the counter-hegemonic gender discourses and aesthetics of Dancehall and Hip-Hop. I find it worthwhile also to connect erotic maroonage to the concept of Swagga. The Swagga concept can be defined as 1) the aesthetics of a person’s appearance, presentation and performance in front of an audience which represents the world and 2) a person’s own unique style, fashion, kinaesthetics or personality within that world. Swagga is useful to describe the phenomenon of dress in today’s Dancehall, in addition to Mr. Wacky’s “fashion ova style.” While fashion ova style denotes the very local relations of Dancehall, coming as it does from Mr. Wacky, the originator of the male dancing phenomenon, Swagga is useful as an international signifier of the Diasporic bridges between Dancehall and Hip-Hop. Swagga is a concept that denotes Black Power-dressing and the articulation of a Black Nationalist, Pan-African identity within Dancehall. While Hope (2010) emphasizes the North American influences within this trend of male dress in the Dancehall, she does not specify that the United States is, like Jamaica, also characterized by a racialized, gendered class hierarchy formed within a colonial/post-colonial setting. The influences of Hip-Hop emerge from the United States’ Black and Latino inner cities and ghettos, and the music finds its genesis in the everyday lives of working-class people and experiences of urban life. These influences are part of an African Diasporic flow that has been occurring between Jamaican and Black American music since at least the late 1950s and the emergence of Ska. This particular manifestation of cross- fertilization between Hip Hop and Dancehall which is responsible for the infiltration of new sets of erotically marooned aesthetics into the Dancehall is just 9 the latest of these exchanges. At the same time, there exists a tension between the geo-political privileged realities enjoyed by Blacks in the U.S. as opposed to their counterparts in Jamaica’s inner cities. Clearly, Jamaicans emulate and imitate Northern styles and fashion imperatives. It is important to keep in mind that the exchange between Black American music and Jamaican Dancehall/Reggae does not always occur on a level playing field. In the 2008 song “Swagger Like Us,” Jay-Z rhymes “I can’t wear skinny jeans cuz my knots so thick, you can learn how to dress just by checkin my fresh.” Hip-Hop artist Jay-Z was already providing commentary on the popular trend of so-called tight pants, or skinny jeans, preferred today by Jamaican men in the Dancehall, claiming he can’t wear them because his wad of money is too large to fit. According to Jay-Z, Swagga represents not only the way one dresses, but one’s economic prosperity, which he personally defines as a rejection of skinny jeans. Thus, we see that Swagga very much pertains to the individual, and that Jay-Z does not consider skinny jeans part of his “Swag,” whereas a Dancehall man would. Female artist Mia sings the chorus, claiming nobody has Swagga like the group of artists featured on the song, including her. Swagga is not simply used to describe males, but is a genderless concept, since women may also possess it. Elephant Man’s 2009 song entitled “Swagga” shows the overlap of this term with Dancehall culture. Here, Swagga is about being “clean and out,” a Dancehall term which describes the preparation of one’s appearance and application of techniques of the body. The Dancehall participant becomes “clean” in order to then be “out” in front of the Dancehall audience. Swagga in the Dancehall context, as well as in the Hip-Hop context, overlaps with a series of dance moves and songs. One such wildly popular Dancehall song of 2009 was the “Pop Champagne Remix Swagga Bounce,” featuring artists Teblanc and Damage. The song “Pop Champagne” was originally a collaboration between Hip-Hop artists Jim Jones, Ron Browz, and Juelz Santana, which was then reinterpreted and “remixed” numerous times within the Dancehall world. First, there was Elephant Man’s remix done to the “Pop Champagne Riddim,” entitled “Sweep Dem Weh.” The second remix was Teblanc and Damage’s tune, in which the dance move “Swagga Bounce” was born. Thus, the definition of Swagga in the Dancehall and Hip-Hop context is both aesthetic and kinaesthetic; it is both appearance and movement. It is simultaneously a way of being, an aesthetic of grandiose existence and mere economic survival in an oppressive society that would just as well see Black, poor people either dead or imprisoned, or suffering in the ghettos and garrisons. Swagga is about kinaesthetic pleasure, in which the Dancehall practitioner dresses up, becomes “clean and out,” and then “busts” the dance when the proper song comes on in the Dancehall. All of this is performed for a receptive and appreciative audience. Through the lens of the videolight, the audience becomes the world, and in an exquisite moment of kinaesthetic ecstasy and joyous celebration of life, Dancehall celebrants revel in the ultimate late capitalist, African Diasporic ritualistic fantasy-turned-reality of 10 adornment, abundance, prosperity and presentation of individualized techniques of the body. This presentation signifies existence for the Dancehall practitioner on all levels, including material and meta-physical. In this way, Swagga really does encapsulate this moment of Dancehall dress and movement as no other concept does, as a term of Hip-Hop kinaesthetics in imbrication with Dancehall, all in an African Diasporic overlay of erotically marooned cultures. In order to perceive fully how the expression of Swagga as an aspect of Dancehall’s erotic maroonage creates and supports Black people’s very existence in an oppressive society, we must first understand the capitalist imperatives at work in Jamaica. To answer the question of which colonial/postcolonial capitalist historical processes have been at work in Jamaica since the 1980s, it is useful to outline Jamaica’s current economic situation. The international economic crisis which began in 2007 and continues to the present has forced third world countries such as Jamaica further down the precipice of economic stagnation. The current crisis has prompted Jamaica’s administration headed by Prime Minister Bruce Golding to return to the IMF, a move received by many with consternation, since it was fourteen years ago that Jamaica finally managed to escape the shackles of the IMF. The early 1980s were characterized by the termination of agreements between the Jamaican government and the IMF, based on the failure of the country to meet economic targets. Only during the years 1986 – 1990, when the IMF steadily pumped money into Jamaica, did the economy register growth. Jamaican academics and economists generally agree that the IMF has softened its policies, and is more empathetic to the struggles of developing countries than it was during the former period of borrowing. University of the West Indies economist Dr. Michael Witter, however, believes that while Jamaica has no choice but to borrow from the institution, it remains to be seen whether the IMF will impose harsh consequences if the country breaches the economic targets of the agreement (Rose 2010). From 1980 to 1996, Jamaica’s economy was characterized largely by economic stagnation, alternated with periods of growth fuelled by IMF monies. IMF-imposed austerity measures were felt by the Jamaican masses in the urban ghettos and in rural areas in terms of reduced access to quality health care and education. These were accompanied by further breakdown in civil society, inflation in the price of basic food-stuffs, rise in unemployment, and a widespread increase in poverty and violence among urban proletariat and rural working classes. Material deprivation and political wrangling between the two main political parties abounds in Kingston’s garrison communities amidst the Washington imperative to impose its economic consensus and cultural-political hegemony throughout the Caribbean and Latin America. Kingston’s garrisons provide the bedrock of support for the ruling political parties, yet these communities suffer acute poverty, setting the stage for the rise of dons who do not depend on political parties for their livelihood as they did in years past. These dons are now increasingly involved in extortion, drug and gun trades, such that they have become independent of the state that initially gave them power. vi 11  The divergence in quality of life between uptown, bourgeois, geo- politically privileged existence and the extreme poverty and material deprivation faced by the residents of Kingston’s ghettos is notable. Kingston’s inner city lies in the southern part of Kingston’s Metropolitan Area (KMA), “with its overcrowding, unemployment, competition, violence, desperation” (Niaah, 2004a, p. 105). It “defines and organizes the sociocultural sphere of Dancehall” (Niaah, 2004a, p. 105). So-called extra-judicial killings, which are tantamount to police murders of garrison/ghetto residents, are also quite prevalent in the downtown area of Kingston, but not in the Uptown region (Kamagisha 2003). In 2009, 250 people had died in extra-judicial police killings in Jamaica. To date, no police officer has been found guilty of any crime or misdemeanor for their role in the killings. This is a very serious problem, but it is not often highlighted in the mainstream U.S. media. The Jamaican media coverage of such events is often recited in formulaic statements which present the killings as the outcome of armed conflicts between “gunmen” and police. These media stories diverge completely from eyewitnesses’ accounts of the murders, who claim police are engaged in cold-blooded murder. Police officers’ extremely violent treatment of ghetto residents creates an atmosphere of chronic insecurity, fear and an acute sense of suffering and grief in the ghetto/garrison areas when an innocent civilian is murdered by police. In this context of capitalist-fed violence, scarcity and deprivation, young men of Kingston’s inner cities come of age. It is also in this socio-economic context that hegemonic dissolution proliferates. The disregard for formal, university education as the most effective path to social mobility among the younger generation is fuelled by the third-world economic context. Why go to university if there are no jobs paying a living wage when one emerges? Given these harsh circumstances, it is no surprise that so many young men fail the CXC exam governing entrance to secondary school; thereby constituting a swath of young men aged 15-19 who are “set loose” onto society with but a Grade 9 education and barely the “hint of a skill” (Chevannes, 1999, p. 12). Motivated by the socialization process which insists men provide if they are to have any worth in the society, these young men must find ways to “make life,” or earn money. “Where do capable young Jamaican men go who do not earn degrees?” asks Chevannes (1999, p. 17). They enter in the formal and “informal sectors” of the economy in larger numbers than women, he claims. A part of this informal sector is the world of Dancehall’s male professional dancers. My data culled from interviews shows that many young men who choose to dance professionally within the world of Dancehall culture, especially the dancers from Kingston, feel that they would be committing crimes if they were not dancing. The following quote from a Kingstonian dancer amply demonstrates this sentiment: Well, dancing has kept me from doing a lot of things. It took me off the wrong road, and it changed me from a bad person to a good 12  person, and it helped out my community, right now it puts food on my table, and puts a bit of money in my pocket, so it helps all of my family and friends, because maybe if I was not dancing, I would do things that weren’t legal. So I am really thankful for dancing because it has done a lot for me. The dancer clearly views this as a viable source of income which allows him to help himself and his community financially, facilitating their basic survival. Dancing and the informal sector provide an alternative to the life of the shata or gunman as a path towards economic prosperity, masculinity, leadership and human existence itself, as Chevannes points out (1999, p. 34). We must see Dancehall as part of this informal sector which has the power to provide young men with a positive alternative to more dangerous, anti-social behaviors within the informal sector. As Mavado so aptly points out when he advises young men that “music is di shield, never give up, put yuh shoulders to di wheel” ‘music is a shield/ protection, never give up and work hard at it,’ deejaying, and most recently dancing, provides young men with the means to survive during this period of economic stagnation and contraction. Dancehall allows working-class and impoverished young Black males the ability to be “men” in the hegemonic understanding of breadwinner and provider. While this is a hegemonic coding of masculinity, it becomes anti-hegemonic in this case because working-class and impoverished Black males are usually denied this privilege of being a provider within the world-system. It provides youth with legal avenues of material security and the possibility of obtaining the elusive “visa” needed to travel abroad. As one female dancer put it rather cynically when I asked her opinion about the recent rise of male dancers in Kingston’s Dancehall scene: Well, for me, personally, for most of them, it’s just like quick cash, a easy way of living, because most of the dancers, because of Bogle, everybody know Gerald Levy aka Bogle, he kind of paved the way for dancers, so seeing that he made the mark overseas, and all a dat, they see it as a pathway, an easier way to access, what do you call it, to be a celebrity, and money and all a dat, and go overseas and everyting, so the first thing that come to mind for most of the inner-city youth is dancing, quick ting, you just want to go out for one week straight, and you might become famous from dat. You might become famous in the second night of being on the street. Her comment prompts us to ask how a previously unknown person from the inner-city can become famous in their second night of being on the street. The development of media and technology within capitalism has culminated in the creation of Dancehall’s infamous “videolight.” Niaah writes: 13  The entrance of the video camera has assisted in the transformation of the ordinary into the fantastic through adopting masks more ready for the screen. The “videolight” has played a significant role in shining selves into stardom and the celebration of personhood vis-à-vis the urban phenomena of “sufferation,” political banditry, “donsmanship,” and gangs, the constant struggle to articulate identity, as part of the psychoscape (2004a, p. 115). The video recording and global broadcasting of Dancehall culture through you tube, facebook, my space, twitter and various media and social networking platforms which proliferate in this stage of late capitalism, enable almost anyone to broadcast themselves to thousands of viewers around the world. The articulation of capitalist processes of third world economic stagnation and deprivation, combined with an increased access to media exposure, and the growth of telecommunications industries in the Caribbean, have helped to fuel the economic imperative which drives the phenomenon of male dancers. Dancing has proven to be a means of social mobility through which present-day male dancers are negotiating the same gender socialization process on which Chevannes pins their educational failure. But they are doing it in the language of Dancehall. I am not certain whether Chevannes, writing in 1999, envisioned Dancehall culture as providing a positive space for Kingston’s male youth. Given the present circumstances, however, Jamaica’s elites have been forced to recognize that Dancehall wields tremendous influence over the minds of Jamaican masses. It is firmly entrenched in Jamaica’s popular culture and refuses to budge. It is a force to be reckoned with that has potential to create positive spaces for change in a society that desperately needs it. Dancehall offers a potential space of revolutionary self-making to youth otherwise unmoved by the middle-class bastions of morality imparted through formal education. The role of male dancers in transforming hegemonic masculinity is pivotal, as these young men are everyday tackling and resolving some its thorniest issues. These issues include what constitutes appropriate male and female behavior, and the homophobia so characteristic of a Western-dictated hegemonic male identity. Kingston’s male dancers themselves are marginalized within the already marginal world of Dancehall, and their words stand as testament to the struggles faced by young men in an increasingly desperate economic situation, who have chosen the path of African Diasporic artistic creativity, drawing on deep funds of cultural productivity which have always been numbered among Jamaica’s gifts, its Ase. vii It is this wealth of cultural productivity that promises a way for a lucky few out of Jamaica’s deepening crisis of hegemonic dissolution within late capitalism. For all dancers, including those who do not gain a visa, or make copious amounts of money, dancing is a means of existence, self-making, and personal survival. How do the social conflicts so characteristic of this period of hegemonic dissolution in Jamaica, locate themselves discursively within the Dancehall, 14 pivoting around this post-milennial reconfiguration of male dress? How is the articulation of colonial/postcolonial and capitalist historical processes manifested in the cantankerous debates between selectors, artists and dancers over the flamboyant aesthetics of male dress and dancing styles in the Dancehall? The verbal exchanges between selectors, artists and dancers over the supposed “effeminate” or “homosexual” fashion practices of the male dancers provide insight into these questions. There are several discourses of boundary-policing coming from within Kingston’s entrenched social circle of dancers, as well as from certain artists, who are grappling with these iconoclastic behaviors in the face of the throngs of young male dancers flooding the dance floor. Behaviors most highly criticized as disruptive of hegemonic masculinity in the Dancehall today are: the male dancers’ predilection for the videolight; the wearing of so- called “tight pants”; the bleaching of the facial skin; and the shaving or plucking of eyebrows. The following quote from a seasoned male dancer exemplifies the discourse of dancers’ self-imposed correction: What do you think of the criticisms of dancers’ fashion choices? Well, you know, everybody has their own views and opinions, and I can’t really listen to what people say, you understand, but every dancer has their own style, a dancer is a dancer, a dancer has to have fashion, you understand, if he does not have fashion, if he has no sense of style, people will not pay him attention. But at the same time, you have to observe limits as a dancer, and say, hey, I can’t wear this, because this is women’s clothing, I will look too feminine or girly, you understand what I am saying? But some of the dancers pass the limit. This well-known and experienced dancer points out the fine line between acceptable fashion ova style as opposed to looking too “girly,” or wearing women’s clothing, such as women’s jeans which certain male dancers allegedly cut and tailor to wear themselves. Of course, we already know that in Jonkonnu, men donned women’s clothing in order to portray female characters, so this alleged cross-dressing is not entirely new. The practice of male dancers shaving or plucking the eyebrows is a major source of conflict. The following discourse of self-correction came from a Dancehall Queen, popular for several years, who replied with the following when asked what she thought of the male dancers’ shaved eyebrows: Well, you live the life you love, but I don’t believe in man shaving their eyebrows, I don’t believe in a man wearing tight stuff, that’s for ladies, you’re not supposed to wear your pants too tight, that’s ridiculous, as a popular person you have to set an example, so when di selecta dem lick out (when the selectors criticize the 15  dancers), I don’t see anything wrong wid it, a man is supposed to look like a man, dere is no way you can be walking down the street with your woman and ya can’t tell the man from di woman. So dese male dancers need to sort themselves out, stop fighting for the videolight, stop wearing dese tight pants, it’s too tight, di bleach- out face and di eyebrows shave – No! A man supposed to be rough, like a man, so I don’t believe in dat none atall. This female dancer has been around since the 1990s and clearly expressed her displeasure about certain fashion choices and behaviors of the younger male modelersviii and dancers. Both the older male and female dancer, as well as artist Busy Signal, are all expressing hegemonic ideals of masculinity which posit that a real man must have a “rough,” unpolished appearance. This dichotomy parallels a similar one in Hip-Hop between the “roughneck” or “thug” and the “pretty boy.” At the same time, not all seasoned male dancers express this hegemonic view of masculinity. One older male dancer involved in gender iconoclastic practices, when asked what he thought of the recent development in male dancing crews, their fashion choices and dancing styles, replied thusly: OK, in Jamaica, selectors have a saying, if you wear tight pants, you gay. Dats the most reason, cuz tight pants are gay. But if you notice, it’s not really about tight pants, as you can see on everybody right here (pointing to the rest of his dance crew) we are small-fitted, close fit, why would we go and wear a pants that does not fit us, right? So we wear clothes that fit us, right? But as we know Jamaica is a really like homophobic country, we’re not hiding that, but it’s a country that is very homophobic, and our view is that the selectors dem sometimes they get too far, sayin that dancers are gay and all a dat. What they need to say is some, differentiate, some dancers do shave dem eyebrow, which I don’t support, one is not allowed to shave eyebrows. We are against that. Dancers defend themselves against the “tight pants” criticism by stating that the pants are actually “straight” and that they wear clothes that “fit” them, as opposed to the popular and well-known baggy style in which pants appear several sizes too big. Dancers also claim a functional purpose to “close-fitted” or “straight” pants, claiming that they help the dancer to exhibit his dance moves more clearly since his leg movements are more visible: Would you say that close-fitted pants help you to dance? Well, it makes most of the dancers look more neat, more unique, more than if you were dancing inna baggy pants, you won’t see the moves so clearly, dats why most dancers choose to wear the 16  straight pants, ya undastand. But some of them are buying the girl pants, and cutting them too much on them, so most of them when they go to the parties, you will hear the selectors like disrespecting them, ya know? Younger dancers who are new to the game bear the brunt of these criticisms but also are most aggressive about breaking hegemonic stereotypes of male behavior. When asked the following question, two younger dancers replied: What is your opinion of recent development in male dancing crew’s fashion choices and dancing styles? I’m gonna just keep it real, you know how a lot of the selectors criticize the dancers because they wear certain designers or because they shave their eyebrows, what do you say about that? What would you say to them? Dancer one: Well, it’s what someone tink, his image, or it could be someone just see something and like it and try it, but we don’t really have a problem with that, yu zee mi. Well, it’s up to the individual how he wishes to construct his image, it could be the person saw something and liked it and tried it, but we don’t really have a problem with that, you see? Dancer two: But we are natural! Dancer three: Ye, well we have an opinion on dat. It’s all about image, and how you have to carry yourself, cah we haffi go out clean, and go perform and dance, but yah haffi look good so di people dem nuh smell you, yeah, propa yu know? Yes, well, we have an opinion on that. It’s all about image, and how one carries oneself, we have to go out clean, and go perform and dance, but you have to look good so people don’t smell you. Dancer four: Dis is the real ting, cah we have like a image right now, check it out (displays his close-cropped hair and eyebrows which are bleached orange with two stripes of black rising above his temples giving him the “clean and propa” look he desires). This is the real thing, because we have an image right now, check it out. The new generation of dancers allows themselves and other males more freedom to construct individualized counter-hegemonic masculinities and adheres to less rigid boundaries of gender identity and aesthetics of an acceptable or appropriate male image. At the same time, they defend their gender identity by defining it as 17 “natural.” This is, of course, a self-defensive resort to the hegemonic understanding of gender as natural or biological, and not socially constructed. In a counter-hegemonic turn, however, these dancers are borrowing Dancehall’s traditionally “female” techniques of the body, such as smelling good, in order to define their new brand of masculinity. The younger dancers’ gender identity revolves around the concept of being clean and out, an essential part of having Swagga in Jamaican Dancehall. Cooper (2004) writes “powerful currents of explicitly political lyrics urgently articulate the struggle of the celebrants in the dance to reclaim their humanity in circumstances of grave economic hardship that force the animal out of its lair” (p. 17). The recent emergence of male popular dancer crews is fuelled by a desire for power by a disadvantaged group of men taught that hegemonic masculinity resides in being a breadwinner, but who are often unable to provide and must display their masculinity in other ways. It is clear that working-class Black gender identity is ultimately counter-hegemonic, since it is incomplete within a capitalist world-system predicated on inequality. The brand of working- class Black masculinity is fragile, and for this reason it must be constantly bolstered and shored up. Its boundaries must be clearly delineated since it is threatened constantly by a system of racism, classism, sexism and inequality. The conflicts between selectors, artists, dancers and the discourses of dancers’ self- correction and boundary policing are particularly poignant reminders of how rigid the limits of a working-class Black masculinity must be kept. Younger dancers, and those older ones involved in iconoclastic gender practices, are maneuvering for more space and breathing room in their individualized and multiple brands of gender identity. Their bold and energetic constructions of a new human being after ‘Man’ (Wynter 2003) are testament to a post-millennial hegemonic dissolution in which outdated Western gender discourses that do not “fit” Dancehall’s African Diasporic ethos are being rapidly replaced by an aesthetic of counter-hegemonic gender identity which implicitly draws on Afro-Jamaican cultural traditions such as Jonkonnu. Fashion ova style, having Swagga, being clean and out -- all of these are expressions which echo throughout Dancehall and Hip-Hop today. They represent the desire of working-class, inner-city residents to thrive through a reliance on an African genre of kinaesthetics in a very difficult and complex post- 1980s society. Dancing provides an economic advantage to some, but not to all, so there must be something else at work, in addition to Dancehall’s infectious sense of joy and celebration. Dancehall and Hip-Hop comprise alternate worlds in which fantasy can replace the bitter realities of ghetto living, simultaneously creating an existence of grandiose and opulent living, and finally creating an alternate, erotically-marooned reality. Dancehall practitioners live in a society in which hegemonic values construct them as nothing, in which the majority of the upper and middle classes turn a blind eye to the police’s flagrant violations of life which occur all too often in Kingston’s ghettos and garrisons. Dancehall provides people with a means to exist beyond the Western, hegemonic order of masculinity 18 and femininity, and creates the possibility to live not just an ordinary human life, but an extraordinarily divine existence of opulence, wealth, spiritual abundance, and erotic freedom. It creates the possibility to be any character one wishes within in those moments at the dance, personas that cannot be realized elsewhere. In those sacred moments at the dance, there is a creation of humanity, life and existence itself on terms favorable to the oppressed, in a complete reversal of the society’s structure of inequality. It is in this way that erotic maroonage is accomplished in Dancehall, as a complete escape and departure from the norms of the Western, imperial bourgeoisie, on both metaphysical and material planes. Bibliography: Cassidy, F. G. and Le Page, R. B. (2002). Dictionary of Jamaican English (2nd ed.). Barbados: University of West Indies Press. Chevannes, Barry. (1999). What we sow and what we reap: Problems in the cultivation of the male identity in Jamaica. Kingston, JA: Grace, Kennedy Foundation. Cooper, Carolyn. (2004). Sound clash: Jamaican dancehall culture at large. New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan. Cooper, Carolyn. (2007). Erotic maroonage: Embodying emancipation in Jamaican dancehall. Proceedings from: Ninth Annual Gilder Lehrman Center International Conference at Yale University. New Haven, CT. Retrieved from http://www.yale.edu/glc/belisario/Cooper.pdf Hope, Donna. (2010). Man vibes: Masculinities in the Jamaican dancehall. Kingston, JA: Ian Randle Publishers. Kamagisha, Aaron. (2003). Abducting Black bodies: The Little B’s of North America and the Caribbean. Proud Flesh, 1(2). Retrieved from www.proudfleshjournal.com/vol1.2/kamugisha.html Lewin, Olive. (2000). “Rock it come over”: The folk music of Jamaica. Kingston, JA: University of West Indies Press. Martínez, Mirta Fernàndez and Valentina Porras Potts. (1998). El ashé està en Cuba. La Habana, Cuba: Editorial José Martí. Meeks, Brian. (2000). Narratives of resistance: Jamaica, Trinidad, the Caribbean. Barbados: University of West Indies Press. Niaah, Sonjah Stanley. (2004a). Kingston’s dancehall: A story of space and celebration. Space and Culture, 7(1), 102-118. Niaah, Sonjah Stanley. (2004b). Making Space: Kingston’s Dancehall Culture and its Philosophy of ‘Boundarylessness.’ African Identities, 2(2), 117-132. Rose, Dionne. (2009, Oct. 9). UWI economic forum – economist wary of IMF – academic, analysts suggest different approach to containing debt. The Gleaner. Retrieved from http://www.jamaicagleaner.com/gleaner/20091009/business/business5.htm l 19 Shaw, Andrea. (2005). ‘Big fat fish’: The hypersexualization of the fat female body in calypso and dancehall. Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal, 3(2). Retrieved from http://anthurium.miami.edu/volume_3/issue_2/shaw- bigfatfish.htm Stolzoff, Norman. (2000). Wake the town and tell the people: Dancehall culture in Jamaica. Durham: Duke University Press. Thomas, Greg. (2009). Hip-hop revolution in the flesh: Power, knowledge and pleasure in Lil’ Kim’s lyricism. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Wynter, Sylvia. (2003). Un-settling the coloniality of being/power/truth/freedom: toward the human, after man, its over-representation. Special edition entitled Coloniality’s Persistence. G. Thomas (Ed.). CR: The New Centennial Review 3(3), Fall, 257-337. Wynter, Sylvia. (1970). Jonkonnu in Jamaica: Towards the interpretation of folk dance as a cultural process. Jamaica Journal: Quarterly of the Institute of Jamaica, (June), 34-49. Wynter, Sylvia. (1992). Rethinking ‘aesthetics’: Notes towards a deciphering practice. In M. Cham (Ed.), Ex-Iles: Essays in Caribbean Cinema (pp. 237-279). Trenton, NJ: African World Press. Discography: Elephant Man. (2009). Swagga. On Energy god: The very best of Elephant Man [CD]. Queens, NY: VP Records. Jay-Z and T.I. (2008). Swagga like us. On Paper trail [CD]. Atlanta. GA: Grand Hustle/Atlantic. Jim Jones, Ron Browz and Juelz Santana. (2009). Pop Champagne. On Pray IV reign [CD]. NY, NY: Sony. Teblanc and Damage. 2009. Pop champagne remix swagga bounce. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4a1wBjHsPg Vybz Kartel. 2009. Money pon mi mind. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HBhfTFKCLY Mavado. 2009. A so you move. On Best of the best – garrison series volume 1 [CD]. Kingston, JA: In the Streetz Records. Notes: 1. The contemporary Set girl character is based on historical practices in which women would deck themselves out in intricate dresses, all in the colors of blue or red, entertaining with song and music inside private yards along the procession route (Lewin, 2000, p. 123). This type of popular entertainment enacted by women dressed in fabulous costumes who parade around the Dancehall dressed in their finery is evident in Dancehall today. The “modelers” in the Dancehall and especially the “Dancehall queens” dress such that their very appearance becomes a performance. 20  Andrea Shaw (2005) has also noted the link between Jamaican Set Girls, Trinidadian jamettes, and the Dancehall queens. She writes “the jamettes…were women associated with both Carnival and calypso, and their astonishing gyrations simultaneously attracted the public’s attention and its disgruntlement. Within a pan-Caribbean context, these jamettes are the performative ancestors of the Jamaican Dancehall queens as are Jamaican set girls. During slavery as a part of the Christmas season Jonkonnu festivities, set girls paraded through the streets of Jamaica festooned in elaborate clothing and competed with each other to see who was the best dressed. These set girls as well as the jamettes have bequeathed their legacy of spectacular behavior that specifically manifests as Dancehall’s outrageous fashion” (para. 5). 2. “Jonkonnu Characters.” JCDC. Aug. 22, 2010. Retrieved from http://jcdc.gov.jm/home 3. Mirrors are a favorite object of Osun, Yoruban goddess of fertility, as she loves to gaze at, know and celebrate herself and her own beauty. The use of mirrors in Jonkonnu could relate to this, and could also be a predecessor of the desired bling-bling aesthetic, featuring jewelry which sparkles and shines. 4. According to every one of my interviewees the saying “fashion ova style” was coined by Mr. Wacky, aka Gerald Levy or Bogle, one of the first male dancers to have gained acclaim in the world of Dancehall during the 1990s. Dancers understand him to be the originator iconoclast, who opened up the path for all subsequent male dancers. Sadly, Mr. Wacky was gunned down at a Kingston gas station in 2005. Even larger in death than in life, Mr. Wacky is now regarded with such reverence by dancers that he is akin to a deity. Dancers refer to him as “Fada Wacky” (Father Wacky), second only to Fada God. In a final act of plagiaristic treachery, Hope lays claim to the deceased dancer’s words, rather than citing their true source. Mr. Wacky’s mantra “fashion ova style” was repeated by many of the male dancers I interviewed, especially in Kingston, where Mr. Wacky is most revered in death as the originator of the male dancing trend. Many of the Kingston dancers I interviewed had been friends of Mr. Wacky, and among all of them, I sensed a palpable grief over his death. 5. Vybz Kartel’s recent excursion into bleaching only highlights these unequal social relations. Since “brown” men seem to own and rule over everything in Jamaica, according to Kartel, his bleached appearance would seem to signal a reversal of these unequal social relations by allowing him to don the mask of whiteness and power. Critics have attacked him for 21  being irresponsible, vain, excessively capitalistic and egotistical. He seems to be unconscious of the bleaching epidemic in the African Diaspora, and the significant health risks it poses. Kartel’s bleaching underscores deep-seated anxieties, self-hatred and pressure to whiten which divide and torment Black communities throughout the globe. 6. See Arthur Hall. (2010, Mar. 7). Power of a Don: Putting politicians to shame. The Gleaner. Retrieved from http://www.jamaica- gleaner.com/gleaner/20100307/lead/lead2.html 7. Martínez and Potts (1998), researchers of Yoruban and Afro-Cuban popular religions, define Ase (Ashé) as pure energy of the orisas which can be transmitted to a person through spirit possession; it is grace, blessing, virtue or faculty of speech. It is used to describe the orisas’ attributes (p. 95). I find this term useful to describe the wealth of dance and music that is Jamaica’s cultural heritage. 8. Modelers are men and women who dress up in designer finery and parade around the dance “modeling” their costumes. They do not necessarily dance, but they organize themselves into modeling crews which parallel the dancing crews in terms of their ‘will to adorn.’ Biography: Lena Delgado de Torres graduated in December 2010 with a doctoral degree in Sociology from Binghamton University. Her dissertation was entitled “Swagga: Gender and the Will to Adorn in Jamaican Dancehall.” Her research interests include race, class, gender and sexuality in the African Diaspora, Latin America and the Caribbean. Ms. Delgado de Torres’s publications include the articles entitled “Marked Bowls, Cross-Symbols and Petit-Maroonage” in Proud Flesh: a New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics and Consciousness, issue 4, (2006) and “Reformulating Nationalism in the African Diaspora: the Aponte Rebellion of 1812” in CR: the New Centennial Review, 3(3), (2003). She may be contacted at [email protected]. 22