Wake the Town and Tell-PB [Paperback]

Of course, this isn't the first piece of writing to cast a critical eye on dancehall; but past discussions (helmed mostly by staunch roots reggae apologists who make no bones about expressing their view of the subject as an anti-musical ebola responsible for devouring the innards of upright, "real" reggae as exemplified by the likes of Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Burning Spear), irrespective of whether they have been pro- or anti-dancehall, have all revolved to varying degrees around the old dancehall "reggae" vs. "traditional" reggae issue.

Stolzoff distinguishes himself from the pack by sidestepping that stumbling block altogether: In (what I think is) a revolutionary move, he posits ALL Jamaican music, in essence, as dancehall-from the creolized drum and fiddle music of 18th century slave frolics to the thundering amplified bass blaring from contemporary Kingston sound systems. In short, he sees dancehall not as a distinct genre of music, but as an interactive method of experiencing music that might be specifically Jamaican.

Stolzoff's an anthropologist, not a rock critic, so rather than examining the music in isolation, he reconstructs the world that is dancehall's context, starting from the beginning with the sound systems, the cornerstone of the Jamaican music world.( Stolzoff scores a major coup by including extensive interviews with sound system pioneers like Hedley Jones, who provide a lot of insight into the Jamaican music experience prior to the birth of the local music industry-all other books on reggae up until this time have summed the whole era up in a sentence or two). Upon that foundation, Stolzoff layers the various social and ideological trends that have shaped the dancehall: rude boys, Rastafar-I, fashion, technology... You come to see that as chaotic as the dancehall universe appears to be, it is a well-ordered cosmology where everything has its place: sexuality, piety, violence, flamboyance, humility... They can all co-exist.

What I really, really love is the "career trajectory" Stolzoff maps out from his observation of the dancehall field. Using many of the aspiring and established dancehall stars he befriended, Stolzoff illustrates the stages of a career as a performer in the dancehall economy-which is an actual economy that employs millions of Jamaicans in various capacities.

I think this is definitely an important book and a complete must-read not only for fans of Jamaican music, but for anybody interested in the way that music and culture intersect with the daily lives of its participants.