My research focuses on the migration and genealogical history of reggae/dancehall contemporary urban dance in Britain. The culture of young Black British people exists at the intersection of race, gender, racism and social (in)justice. Engaging these crucial discourses, reggae/dancehall’s presentation as a vibrant cultural expression, is often misunderstood and dismissed as vulgarity and violence (Cooper, 2004). This obscures reggae/dancehall’s subversive connection to the Decolonial School of thought wherein resistance and re-existence facilitates change and transformation of circumstances (Albán-Achinte in Tlostanova, 2017). This research presents an alternative narrative, positioning reggae/dancehall as a continuity of resistance and survival amongst disenfranchised and marginalised young people.

I contend that reggae/dancehall dance provides young Black people with a vehicle that serves to undermine the dominant narrative, which perceives Black bodies as threatening, placing them under attack. As an alternative to the frustration some young people channel through gang warfare, gun and knife crime, reggae/dancehall will be used to demonstrate how the murders of George Floyd (USA), Stephen Lawrence (UK) and historically oppressed Black bodies connect to cultures of resistance and re-existence. This facilitates the re-imagination of Black reggae/dancehall bodies as dynamic, vulnerable, powerful, playful and creative.

This research seeks to provide the first mapping of British reggae/dancehall through the lens of the dance vocabulary, dancing bodies, and British socio-political movements and events they historically intersect. Jamaican popular culture has significantly contributed to British culture, migrating to Britain amidst the Windrush generation’s Caribbean culture from 1948 onwards, influencing: Punk, Two Tone, Drum and Bass, Hip Hop, Jungle, UK Garage, and Grime. 

This project extends my ethnographic and auto/ethnographic research on reggae/dancehall in Jamaica (2010-2018), investigating its genealogical spiritual links, by attempting to present reggae/dancehall’s direct contribution to the artistic, socio-politico-economic and technical impact of Britain’s creative industries globally, opposing the pathological narratives that currently exist.