The acclaimed, definitive and essential guide to 1980s Jamaican Dancehall--featuring hundreds of photographs with interviews and biographies This widely admired book, back in print with a new introduction, captures a previously unseen era of musical culture, fashion and lifestyle. With unprecedented access to the incredibly vibrant music scene during this period, Beth Lesser's photographs are a unique way into a previously hidden part of Jamaican culture. Born in the 1950s out of the neighborhood sound systems of Kingston, Dancehall grew to its height in the 1980s before a massive influx of drugs and guns made the scene too dangerous for many. Dancehall is a culture that encompasses music, fashion, drugs, guns, art, community, technology and more. Many of today's music and fashion styles can be traced back to Dancehall culture and continue to be influenced by it today. Dancehall is an essential reference book for anyone interested in reggae, as well as a unique photographic and textual sourcebook of the musical, cultural and political life of Jamaica. In the early 1980s, as Jamaica was in the throes of political and gang violence, Beth Lesser ventured where few other dared, documenting the producers, singers, DJs and sound systems who all made a living out of the slums of Kingston. This book is a thrilling record of the exciting, dangerous and vibrant world of Dancehall.

An ethnography of Dancehall, the dominant form of reggae music in Jamica since the early 1960s.

This work provides an accessible account of a poorly understood aspect of Jamaican popular culture. It explores the socio-political meanings of Jamaica's dancehall culture. In particular, the book gives an account of the power relations within the dancehall and between the dancehall and the wider Jamaican society. Hope gives the reader an unmatched insider's view and explanation of power, violence and gender relations in Jamaica as seen through the prism of the dancehall.

DanceHall combines cultural geography, performance studies and cultural studies to examine performance culture across the Black Atlantic. Taking Jamaican dancehall music as its prime example, DanceHall reveals a complex web of cultural practices, politics, rituals, philosophies, and survival strategies that link Caribbean, African and African diasporic performance. Combining the rhythms of reggae, digital sounds and rapid-fire DJ lyrics, dancehall music was popularized in Jamaica during the later part of the last century by artists such as Shabba Ranks, Shaggy, Beenie Man and Buju Banton. Even as its popularity grows around the world, a detailed understanding of dancehall performance space, lifestyle and meanings is missing. Author Sonjah Stanley Niaah relates how dancehall emerged from the marginalized youth culture of Kingston’s ghettos and how it remains inextricably linked to the ghetto, giving its performance culture and spaces a distinct identity. She reveals how dancehall’s migratory networks, embodied practice, institutional frameworks, and ritual practices link it to other musical styles, such as American blues, South African kwaito, and Latin American reggaetòn. She shows that dancehall is part of a legacy that reaches from the dance shrubs of West Indian plantations and the early negro churches, to the taxi-dance halls of Chicago and the ballrooms of Manhattan. Indeed, DanceHall stretches across the whole of the Black Atlantic’s geography and history to produce its detailed portrait of dancehall in its local, regional, and transnational performance spaces.

Reggae Soundsystem is a new deluxe 200 page hard-back 12"x12" book featuring hundreds of stunning full size record cover designs that span the history of reggae music. The book is compiled by the celebrated author and reggae expert Steve Barrow (Rough Guide to Reggae/ Blood and Fire Records) and Stuart Baker (Soul Jazz Records). Beginning in the 1950s, Jamaican music developed into one of the most important and influential music industries in the world. From its early Mento (Jamaican Calypso) beginnings through to the invention of Ska, Rocksteady, Roots, Dub and Dancehall, Jamaican music is also one of the richest and innovative veins in popular music. This stunning hardback deluxe book is a timely look at the endless visually creativity of reggae record cover designs, iconic, classic, rare and unique artwork spanning sixty years of Jamaican sounds. The book includes a fascinating introductory essay on the history of reggae by Steve Barrow and the book is edited by Stuart Baker (founder of Soul Jazz Records and editor of the book Dancehall, and cover art books on Bossa Nova, Freedom, Rhythm & Sound and Studio One Records).

This history of reggae music covers from the Jamaican R and B and Calypso of the post-war years, to the surge of interest in the 1990s. As well as tracing the musical history, this book explains the historical and social background which are crucial to the understanding of its development. There are four main centres, in chronological order - Jamaica, London, New York and Toronto.

Megawattage sound systems have blasted the electronically enhanced riddims and tongue-twisting lyrics of Jamaica's dancehall DJs across the globe. This high-energy raggamuffin music is often dissed by old-school roots reggae fans as a raucous degeneration of classic Jamaican popular music. In this provocative study of dancehall culture Carolyn Cooper, Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica, offers a sympathetic account of the philosophy of a wide range of dancehall DJs: Shabba Ranks, Lady Saw, Ninjaman, Capleton, Buju Banton, Anthony B, Apache Indian. She demonstrates the ways in which the language of dancehall culture, often devalued as mere 'noise,' articulates a complex understanding of the border clashes that characterise Jamaican society. Cooper also analyses the sound clashes that erupt in the movement of Jamaican dancehall culture across national borders.