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Niaah, Sonjah Stanley. DanceHall: From Slave Ship to Ghetto. University of Ottawa Press, 2009. 

Coming October 2009.

From the University of Ottawa Press Catalogue:

“The first extended study of Jamaican dancehall music and performance
culture. DanceHall combines cultural geography, performance studies and cultural studies to examine performance culture across the Black Atlantic. Taking Jamaican dancehall music as its prime example, DanceHall reveals a complex web of cultural practices, politics, rituals, philosophies, and survival strategies that link Caribbean, African and
African diasporic performance.
Combining the rhythms of reggae, digital sounds and rapid-fire DJ lyrics, dancehall
music was popularized in Jamaica during the later part of the last century by artists
such as Shabba Ranks, Shaggy, Beenie Man and Buju Banton. Even as its popularity
grows around the world, a detailed understanding of dancehall performance space,
lifestyle and meanings is missing. Author Sonjah Stanley Niaah relates how dancehall
emerged from the marginalized youth culture of Kingston’s ghettos and how it
remains inextricably linked to the ghetto, giving its performance culture and spaces a
distinct identity. She reveals how dancehall’s migratory networks, embodied practice,
institutional frameworks, and ritual practices link it to other musical styles, such as
American blues, South African kwaito, and Latin American reggaetòn. She shows
that dancehall is part of a legacy that reaches from the dance shrubs of West Indian
plantations and the early negro churches, to the taxi-dance halls of Chicago and the
ballrooms of Manhattan. Indeed, DanceHall stretches across the whole of the Black
Atlantic’s geography and history to produce its detailed portrait of dancehall in its
local, regional, and transnational performance spaces.”