I love dancehall for a multitude of reasons, but mostly for its complexity and how it is a site to observe the ways in which it has and can be disruptive and challenge respectability. It’s way more than a genre and the music. It’s the life that it breathes into all that surrounds it.

It’s also important that we forever be reminded of the location, both geographically and in terms of the social identities, that dancehall was forged from. That’s why contemporary instances of co-opting and appropriation are so violent because it often leaves those folks behind.

In my debut for Red Bull Music Academy, I wrote about the history, influence and various facets of all things dancehall for their Afrofuturism week 

https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2019/07/essential-guide-to-dancehall