BOOKS-JAMAICA: The Dancehall Revealed

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Howard Campbell

KINGSTON, Sep 12 2000 (IPS) - Norman Stolzoff remembers his first experience of Jamaican music as if it were yesterday. It was 1982 and he had gone with his brother to a Black Uhuru concert in his hometown of San Diego. Eighteen years later, Stolzoff has released the book, ‘Wake The Town And Tell The People’, which gives an intimate look at Jamaica’s dancehalls.

An anthropologist, Stolzoff spent a total of 18 months in Jamaica researching the role that the dancehall has played, not only in the development of Jamaican popular music, but on the country’s society.

In recent years, there have been several books on this country’s underground music scene. But Stolzoff is quick to differentiate ‘Wake The Town’ from the others.

“The main difference is that this is the first book (on dancehall) written by an anthropologist,” he said. “It’s not based on artistes or record sales; I actually lived in Jamaica and became immersed in the culture.”

‘Wake The Town’ may just be the most comprehensive piece on the functions of the Jamaican dancehall. Stolzoff, like other authors, traces the roots of the movement to the 1930s when local bands ushered in the dancehall craze by playing Kingston’s ritzy lodge halls reminiscent of the Big Band era in the United States.

The chronology continues into the 1940s when coloured and Chinese middle-class businessmen began establishing sound systems (mobile discotheques) to play in clubs and in the 1950s when blacks like Arthur ‘Duke’ Reid and Clement ‘Coxsone’ Dodd entered the fray with their Trojan and Downbeat sound systems.

This is a story that has been documented time and again, but the Stolzoff story is enhanced by contributions from Hedley Jones, a musician-engineer who was part of the early sound system era of the 1940s, and sound system owners-musicologists Winston Blake and Bunny Goodison.

Goodison and Blake, in particular, spell out the social implications of the dancehall in post-Independence Jamaica in the 1960s when they attended St. George’s College and Kingston College, schools which represented different sectors of society.

Stolzoff also delves into the dancehall’s influence on Jamaica’s tense political atmosphere a decade later when the roots culture replaced the “rude boys” of the 1960s as well as the decline of cultural content and the rise of flamboyant toasters like Yellowman and Ninja Man in the 1980s.

Perhaps the most enthralling period of ‘Wake The Town’ is Stolzoff’s year-long stint in Jamaica in 1994 when he got a first- hand view of a movement that has risen from the slums of Kingston to excite night clubs in New York City, Los Angeles and London.

From the engineer who tunes up the sound system for the big dance to the tailor who sews the fancy suits for the stars and the dance attendees, Stolzoff paints the perfect picture of the dancehall’s economic importance to the inhabitants of Jamaica’s inner cities.

“In the days I moved with the entertainers and saw how they made the music and in the nights I would go with the sound systems to the dances,” Stolzoff related.

The downside of the dancehall is also visited in ‘Wake The Town’. Violence has been linked to the movement since the hot rivalry between Reid and Dodd in the late 1950s. The troubled 1960s when politics made its first moves in the dances of west Kingston largely through the influence of Edward Seaga (later Jamaica’s Prime Minister) is also revisited.

Norman Stolzoff’s childhood bears stark contrast to the happy-go- lucky lifestyle of the people he studied for over one year. He grew up in San Diego, the second of three sons born to parents who were both doctors. Apart from listening to Stevie Wonder and the odd Rhythm and Blues tape, it was not until he saw Black Uhuru that he actually became interested in music.

‘Wake The Town’ will be launched in Kingston later this month. And although dancehall has yet to break big in the United States, Stolzoff says recent developments may help influence his countrymen to read his book.

“September is going to be an interesting month for dancehall; SOURCE magazine (leading urban publication) is going to be having a feature on dancehall and VIBE (another leading magazine) will be reviewing the book,” he said. “So, I see exciting times ahead.”