Inna Di Dancehall

While attending Sixth Form at the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College in Saint Lucia, I often heard young men stating “mi nah bow” any time conversations veered towards a sexual nature, and they felt a need to assert their masculinity. Even more recently, the “gully” and “gaza” disputes fostered by dancehall artistes Movado and Vybz Kartel incited great uproar and division among the youth of Saint Lucia. Dancehall music is therefore an inherent part of youth culture in Saint Lucia. However, my question has always been whether they really understood the meanings and driving forces behind the production of the venerated art form and whether they could intrinsically identify with any of the ideologies put forth by the artistes. For me, it was one thing that they consumed this “disgusting” art form, but it gravely affected me that young men and even young women subscribed to the ideologies of violence and sexual identity that were promulgated in dancehall music. I thought that they were subscribing to ideologies out of ignorance, and without any reasons to do so, but after reading “Inna di Dancehall”, I realized that my ignorance about the history of the music was what shaped my mindset about the music. This book report will therefore seek to show a knowledge of the research conducted by Donna P. Hope in “Inna Di Dancehall” and will briefly show that the similarities between Saint Lucian   and Jamaican culture is the reason why dancehall music was able to infiltrate and become a static part of Saint Lucian youth culture.
In "Inna Di Dancehall", a five-chapter research thesis, Donna P. Hope seeks to give social, political and economic meanings to the symbols of sexual vulgarity and violence portrayed in the lyrics of dancehall music.   The book places dancehall music in a historical context and shows through historical eyes, how the social, political and economic infrastructure of Jamaica perpetuated the birth and proliferation of the art form. The setting of this book is...