Dancehll Jamaica

One of the popular genres that developed in the late 70’s in Jamaica was Dancehall. This followed the reggae and was well received by most; it was different from the reggae in style as it featured less religious and political subjects that were prevalent in the lyrics at that time.

In the 80’s there was a change from the earlier rhythms that would be in the reggae with the addition of digital implementations to make the rhythms much faster. One could say that dancehall owes it name to the popular dances that started in the streets with the sound systems and later held in “lawns” that was also called the dancehall. In the late 1970’s there was a shift from the roots reggae to dancehall Jamaica that was a linked more to the international music, than to the local oriented music based on the political and social changes that was taking place in Jamaica at the time. The people were bringing the politics into the music scene and at that time there was a change of government. The atmosphere in the music industry was changing; lyrics were now changing from the Rastafarians, repatriation and social discriminations. The new themes were violence, dancing and open sexuality.

The musicians started recycling older versions of the rhythms from in the 1960’s. There was now a situation where artist were recording new songs on these old rhythms. The Deejay Sugar Minott was recognized as the creator of this new trend. Other artists that started early in the dancehall genre was Al Campbell, Tristan Palmer and Don Carlos, but you had some artists whose name was already known in the business such as Bunny Wailer and Gregory Isaacs who modified their songs to this genre.

The sound systems also started to take advantage of this new style and started adding new deejays to their mix. There were sounds such as Black Scorpio, Kilimanjaro, Gemini Disco, Aces International and Volcano Hi-Power. They even replaced their toasters with new ones such as Ranking Joe, Captain Sinbad, Lone Ranger, Charlie Chaplin, Yellowman, General Echo and Clint Eastwood.

Some of these new Deejays went back to U-Roy to get some inspiration, as he who was said to be the originator of toasting and he used to DJ on many sound systems. The Deejay was gaining a lot of popularity now as their records were becoming more significant than the singers, most time they are the first to add lyrics to the new rhythms. Another factor that boosts them was a new trend of the sound clash albums, this would feature deejays challenging each other in competitions, sound systems using their songs in sound clash and then this would follow through to the documentation of the events on cassettes.

In this dancehall Jamaica era, there were two stars Eek-a-mouse and Yellowman, who did not use violence in their lyrics, but utilized humor. They went on to becoming huge stars; the first deejay to be signed to an American label was Yellowman. The dancehall genre in the 1980’s also saw some female bursting on the music scene; they were Sister Nancy, Shelly Thunder and Lady Saw. The producers from the 70’s were now be overtaken by fresh ones such as Linval Thompson, Junjo Lawes, Jah Thomas and Gussie Clarke.

Dancehall Jamaica brings so much change to the Jamaican music and this still continues today with new talents entering into new markets internationally.