Synopses & Reviews
A fascinating look at a music genre which is increasingly called the next hip hop. Sound Clash is the first in-depth look at Jamaican dancehall music and culture, a fiesty and dynamic music form featuring toastmasters, infamous musicians such as Beenie Man and Lady Saw, and bawdy "sound clashes" where DJs battle to win the glory of the dancehall. Cooper examines the lives of these musicians, their music, and the culture of dancehall, for example probing the eroticism in the cult films Dancehall Queen and Babymother. Cooper looks carefully at dancehall lyrics for the first time ever --often overlooked as offensive (they are), misogynistic (they are), racist (they are), but all that criticism overlooks the fact that they're fascinating. The lyrics interweave Jamaican mythology and Rastifarian cosmology and include a constant questioning of status quo Jamaican notions of race and gender, which are for the most part a legacy of British rule in Jamaica.
Review
"'Chatty chatty mout' you better shut up. With
Sound Clash, Carolyn Cooper has rescued the debate about the importance of dancehall music from know-it-alls and know-nothings. With insight, humor, and an elastic intelligence that ranges with assurance over what has become the tricky terrain of contemporary literary theory, Cooper makes compelling--and as usual--controversial arguments about the fundamental relevance of dancehall music to the critical understanding of Jamaican culture to claat."--Colin Channer, author of
Satisfy My Soul and
Waiting In Vain"At last, a book by a Jamaican that finally announces the powerful artistry and political force of artists like Shabba Ranks, Bounty Killer, Sizzla, Lady Saw, Capleton, and many of the dance-hall poets whose work has dominated the sound systems in Jamaica, the Caribbean and around the world."--Kwame Dawes, author of Bob Marley: Lyrical Genius
"Professing slackness, Carolyn Cooper invites us to take seriously the local, the indigenous subject, Jamaican nation language and the feminist values in the lyrics of Shabba Ranks and Lady Saw. She insists that we recognise the overall emancipatory possibilities of Jamaican Dancehall culture. A monumental work, Sound clash will make waves, huge waves that Oya, Oshun and Yemoja the female Gods of great waters, Patron Divinities of Global African
cultures will certainly recognize as their own, and be proud of."--Oyeronke Oyewumi, author of The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses
Synopsis
Megawattage sound systems have blasted the electronically enhanced
riddims and tongue-twisting lyrics of Jamaica's dancehall DJs across the globe. This high-energy
raggamuffin music is often dissed by old-school roots reggae fans as a raucous degeneration of classic Jamaican popular music. In this provocative study of dancehall culture Carolyn Cooper, Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica, offers a sympathetic account of the philosophy of a wide range of dancehall DJs: Shabba Ranks, Lady Saw, Ninjaman, Capleton, Buju Banton, Anthony B, Apache Indian. She demonstrates the ways in which the language of dancehall culture, often devalued as mere 'noise,' articulates a complex understanding of the border clashes that characterise Jamaican society. Cooper also analyses the sound clashes that erupt in the movement of Jamaican dancehall culture across national borders.
About the Author
Carolyn Cooper is a professor at the University of the West Indies. She is the author of
Noises in the Blood: Orality, Gender, and the 'Vulgar' Body of Jamaican Popular Culture. Table of Contents
Introduction: Word, Sound & Power
Border Clash: Sites of Contestation
Slackness Personified: Representations of Female Sexuality in the Lyrics of Bob Marley and Shabba Ranks
Lady Saw Cuts Loose: Female Fertility Rituals in the Dancehall
'Mama, is That You?': Erotic Disguise in the Films Dancehall Queen and Babymother
'Lyrical Gun': Metaphor and Role-Play in Dancehall Culture
'More Fire': Chanting Down Babylon from Bob Marley to Capleton
'Vile Vocals': Exporting Jamaican Dancehall Lyrics to Barbados
Hip-Hopping Across Cultures: Reggae to Rap and Back
Mix up the Indian with all the Patwa: Rajamuffin Sounds in Cool Britannia
The Dancehall Transnation: Language, Literature and Global Jamaica