Must Blog!! Blame it on Dancehall

Marcia Forbes PhD

Wrong Day & Not a Blog

It’s Friday afternoon. From everything I’ve read this is not a good day to blog. In any event this is not a blog but a mere few words of comment (LOL) which will not go to blogsphere, wordpress or any blog site—only to my lowly website and shared with my tweeps.

Truth is though; I’ve got to get this out of my system. Blame it on dancehall. Most other things are, so why not this too. After watching Bree and Edgar, Canadian dancers, perform in a dance competition to Kartel and Popcaan’s sell-off Dancehall song, Clarks, I feel compelled to write.

Proud of Dancehall

In the YouTube video, the judges, including a Jamaican, were effusive in their compliments of the dancers, with expressions like “it was disgusting” and the “raw nature” used to describe dancehall. As the dance tutor said, dancehall is “bad man and bad gal”. Remember these are all ‘nice’ words being used to ‘big up’ dancehall.

I felt really good to watch important aspects of Jamaican culture, our music and dance, taking centre stage and being so warmly received. I wondered though about the choice of words. Taken out of context they would be seen as quite negative. After all, in my soon to released book, Music, Media & Adolescents Sexuality in Jamaica, these are precisely the same words used to describe dancehall by teenagers, but not in complimentary ways. Although language is evolving and is dynamic---Context is everything!!

Blame it on Dancehall :)

They say 300 to 500 words is a great length for a blog. I wondered about that. It seemed so short after writing 1,000 words for newspaper articles. Yet here I am breaking all the blogging rules before I even start blogging—writing a too short blog (it may just hit over 300 words) and posting on the wrong day of the week. Again I blame dancehall.

Seriously though, I must blog and am eagerly awaiting the planned October startup.