Slackness and More Slackness: A Response

 

Dancehall music and its cultural impact in Jamaica is something that has been debated about for many years. This article, written by Esther Tyson, seeks to explain one side of the debate. 

This article was very interesting to me because it spoke about dancehall music's impact on society and especially what young people thought about it and what it does to them. Younger people are more interested in dancehall music and therefore seem to be more affected by it. Dancehall is a culture of "badmanism", "hot girls" and money. "Badmanism" tells young men that they should be tough and strong, fight and generally be "bad" by disregarding laws and rules and pushing over anyone who gets in their way. Young women are taught to be overly sexual with their dressing and dancing. 

In many dances and parties, women are seen with children as young as five years old, encouraging the behavior that they themselves partake it. They find it funny to see the young children grinding and dancing on each other. A line in the article stood out to me: Before these children can begin to know what innocence is, they have lost it. Their innocence has been aborted. The children are not given a chance to know different. The dancheall culture is the norm for them. 

Teenagers have been saying that they find themselves acting differently when they listen to dancehall music, something I can attest to as it has happened to me. I become a different person when immersed in dancehall because that is what the songs are telling me to do. For some, it allows them to be more outgoing, while others just become unruly and still some end up doing both. 

Here we see where dancehall is dictating the culture and society's behavior. Not the other way around. 

 

 

The article can be read here :  http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20080406/cleisure/cleisure5.html