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This course will expand the offerings that engage with popular Jamaican dancehall music by examining elements of its rituals, identity politics, place-making and spectacles that characterize the ”theatre-like moments” of dancehall events and performances. Since the 1980s, U.S.-music producers utilize Jamaican dance for a majority of music video or live performances from rap to hip-hop and pop á la Lady Gaga, Beyoncé or Rihanna. The course introduces students to selected facets of dancehall culture as a reading of its rituals and celebratory elements, alongside the spectacle of fashion, gender and masquerade. It explains how these can be understood within and beyond their local framings in Jamaica with an increasing commercial and cultural interest in dance performances and dancehall queen competitions in the USA since the 1990s. The course evaluates dancehall’s embodied activities as socio-cultural acts and as sites for a theoretical engagement with the social function and symbolic meaning of dancehall culture in Jamaica and the US. Theories from performance studies, cultural studies and anthropology will be deployed to analyze the ways in which the agency of dancehall actors ”from the margins” influence American popular culture at large. The course offers a guest lecture about the historical development of dancehall as a benchmark genre in the US by a Jamaican music producer and entrepreneur. Optionally, this course serves as a Pop Project as required in the module 2 of the Pop Certificate. Selected students will be able to visit a music studio of a German-based Jamaican reggae and dancehall producer in the Saarland area and gain insights into music and video production processes.
Readings/ materials: A selection of relevant essays and book excerpts will be made available via MS Teams. The course will include listening comprehensions and music video screenings (also with graphic content).
Course requirements: Completion of reading assignments, a short (oral) presentation, and an essay at the end of the term. For those who choose to hand in this course as module 2 of the Pop Certificate, a written final report is mandatory! Regular attendance and active participation in seminar discussions is expected. |
