The Dancehall Archive and Research Initiative

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Overview

With its seeds rooted in the early toast and talk over style credited to the first wave of Jamaican deejays of the 1950s, Jamaica’s dancehall has exploded outwards from its confined beginnings inside of Kingston’s inner-cities to become a global art form and a space of artistic and creative expression for more than three generations of youths from multiple backgrounds and cultures. Spanning more than five decades and covering several generations from its early forms to the present, dancehall is the clear antecedent to music and cultural forms such as Rap music (Hip Hop) in the USA, Reggaeton (more appropriately Dancehallton) in Latin/South America, and seeded others like Afrobeat on the African continent and Tropical House in the Americas. As the decades advance, the need to appropriately position dancehall in the global and international musical and cultural debates becomes more pressing.

The Dancehall Archive and Research Institute (“DHA”) is the brainchild of Professor Donna P. Hope and was conceptualised during her more than three and a half decades of participation in, and research and scholarship about, dancehall. Its mission is to preserve and disseminate the knowledge and culture of dancehall for current and future generations across the world by facilitating and encouraging the pursuit of research and scholarship, art, culture around dancehall culture. The DHA is committed to unearthing and documenting all forms of scholarship on dancehall and developing, maintaining and supporting intellectually challenging, creative and innovative research and scholarship from all fields that simultaneously highlight and preserve the stellar achievements of dancehall as a global art form that resonates with individuals from multiple cultures, races and socioeconomic backgrounds. The DHA’s website – dancehallarchive.org – and its interconnected social media platforms, will provide information about seminal and ongoing dancehall works, as well as about our activities and projects, while acting as a resource for all who seek to know about, develop, build, preserve, and represent for dancehall culture globally.

Mission

The DHA aims to engage students, faculty, researchers, artists, dancers, musicians, staff, journalists, participants and others who are committed to the preservation and spread of knowledge about dancehall culture. It will support and establish research and scholarship devoted to knowledge, art, culture, materials, organizations, movements and institutions of and about dancehall. The DHA will plan, organize and develop collections, initiate and participate in research activities, sponsor events and acquire material culture associated with dancehall in Jamaica and across the world.

Since dancehall’s early antecedents in Jamaica’s Sound System Culture of the 1950s and it’s coalescing into a globally recognized art form at the end of the 1970s dancehall continues to receive full support of its creators and key participants, while working to generate a wider level of support, based on its global appeal and recognition. From Kingston to Japan, Berlin, Rome, Lisbon, London, Santiago, Cape Town and beyond dancehall has maintained its gritty, hardcore reflections on social ills, harsh living conditions, injustice and the demands and often fantasised desires for better options for the dispossessed and marginalized. Through a range of upcoming projects and activities, the DHA will curate the various forms of dancehall material culture including fashion artifacts, technological tools, recordings, videos, websites, films, original papers, works, references, productions, conferences, interviews, publications, research, and formal proceedings. There are also plans to include a wide variety of responses to dancehall will in DHA’s archival material including academic courses at colleges and universities, arts and community organizations, choreographed works and musicals, among others.

References

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