Man Vibes: Masculinities in the Jamaican Dancehall

In Jamaica, dancehall music and culture have become perhaps the most prominent expressions of Jamaican popular culture. Taking its name from the dance halls in which popular local recordings were played by sound systems, the concept of Dancehall as a cultural space has rapidly gained momentum in the last three decades as deejay stars enjoy unprecedented successes locally and internationally. Donna Hope builds on her earlier work on popular culture and theories of sexuality/gender to examine the process and progress of Jamaican masculinities. Man Vibes: Masculinities in the Jamaican Dancehall explores Jamaican masculinity through the male-dominated dancehall space that is at once a celebration of the marginalized poor and also a challenge to social inequality. Using the major masculine debates that are articulated in dancehall music and culture, Hope explores the transition of Jamaican masculinity in the 21st century. The dancehall representations of Ole Dawg (promiscuity), Badman (violence), Chi Chi Man (anti-male homosexuality), Bling Bling (consumerist/consumptive), and Fashion Ova Style (stylized transgressions and homosexuality) are all used to evaluate the relationship between the dancehall culture and the hegemonic standard of masculine. Man Vibes significantly advances the Cultural Studies agenda and acts as a contemporary reader by speaking not only to dancehall music and culture’s masculinities but to Jamaican and Black masculinities in general. Donna P. Hope is Lecturer in Reggae Studies in the Institute of Caribbean Studies at the University of the West Indies, Mona and the author of Inna di Dancehall: Popular Culture and the Politics of Identity in Jamaica (2006). Read more