Wake the Town and Tell the People: Dancehall Culture in Jamaica

44 b&w photos. Stolzoff, an anthropologist at the University of California-Irvine, puts forth the first comprehensive study of a largely misunderstood and underestimated phenomenon. In Wake the Town & Tell the People: Dancehall Culture in Jamaica, Stolzoff reveals that the lingo, dress code, power structure (including sexism and violence), sound and expression of dancehall not only reflect the struggle between Jamaica's haves and have-nots but also represent an intra-class (though not insular) battleground among the nation's poor. From Publishers Weekly Arguing that dancehall music is steeped in the Jamaican slave culture of 200 years ago and is not just a recent form of expression by volatile ghetto youth, Norman C. Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Dancehall culture thus remains a key arena where the future of this volatile nation is shaped. Jamaican dancehall has long been one of the most vital and influential cultural and artistic forces within contemporary global music. As his argument unfolds, Stolzoff traces the history of Jamaican music from its roots in the late eighteenth century to 1945, from the addition of sound systems and technology during the mid-forties to early sixties, and finally through the post-independence years from the early sixties to the present.Wake the Town and Tell the People offers a general introduction for those interested in dancehall music and culture. Stolzoff brings a fan’s enthusiasm to his broad perspective on dancehall, providing extensive interviews, original photographs, and anthropological analysis from eighteen months of fieldwork in Kingston. Stolzoff argues that this enormously popular musical genre e

Owen Everard James said Dancehall Understood & Revealed. Stolzoff takes an otherwise fairly circumscribed subculture out of its relatively small arena and presents it to a much wider and more sophisticated audience with great skill and understanding. It is quite surprising and impressive to see the breadth and depth of his emotional commitment and intellectual investment. George W. James said Dreams and Visions. Destined to become a classic and one that our children can be proud of. The most authentic and evocative portrait of the Jamaican poor---the rich and sustaining vernacular of their culture, the sheer heroism of their economic existence--that I have seen.. A Whole New Insight to Jamaican Music! Uchenna C. Ikonne As a lover of the creative, colorful and very controversial culture known as Jamaican dancehall, I received this book ecstatically, but I wasn't quite sure of what to expect. I mean, this is a world that changes so rapidly that any attempts to document it have felt outdated even before their ink dried. I thought St