6533b82bfe1ef96bd128d79b

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Reggae Outernational: Borders and Trans/National Identity in Jamaican Popular Music

subject

description

International audience; The history of post-1945 Jamaican popular music is one of constantly changing borders. Despite efforts on the part of the Jamaican state to turn reggae into Jamaica’s exclusively national music and a tourist attraction, reggae and its related subgenres remain to this day a minority culture of the underground, in Jamaica itself and in the many places around the world where it is produced and performed. Recent research on the history of Jamaican popular music suggests that it cannot easily be contained within strictly national borders. Reggae can rather be seen as a focal point around which an incipient alter/native, working-class Jamaican identity is built, both inside and outside Jamaica. Although a certain form of Jamaicanness remains central to reggae music and culture, it is both enriched and challenged by transnational, diasporic definitions of cultural identity.