Dancehall Music Guide: Explore the History of Dancehall Music

Dancehall is a form of Jamaican popular music that emerged from that country’s fertile and diverse music industry in the late 1970s. Dancehall music borrowed the sinuous rhythms of reggae music but replaced its spirited live musicians with prerecorded or digitally composed tracks built on pure, driving grooves. The subgenre also embraced lyrical content that celebrated earthly pleasures over the spiritual and mystical language of traditional or roots reggae.

Dancehall’s popularity grew beyond the borders of Jamaica, bringing worldwide attention to dancehall artists like Sean Paul, Beenie Man, and Lady Saw, while pop stars such as Drake and Rihanna earned their own hits with the dancehall sound.

The history of dancehall music began in Jamaica in the late 1960s:

• Roots: Dancehall music takes its name from the dance halls that held dances in inner-city sections of metropolitan areas, like Kingston, during the 1950s and 1960s. Music at dance halls came from local sound systems, which consisted of a generator, a turntable, and large, portable speakers overseen by a selector, who played early forms of reggae such as rocksteady and ska and R&B from the United States. The DJ’s role in a sound system was to create new lyrics for instrumental songs, called riddims—a pronunciation of “rhythms” with a Jamaican patois—in a delivery style similar to rapping in hip-hop. The practice, known as toasting, made stars of DJs, such as Count Machuki, Sugar Minott, and U-Roy.
• First records: Noting the popularity of sound systems, Jamaican music producers like Duke Reid and Henry “Junjo” Lawes created the first dancehall recordings in the 1970s by taking existing instrumental songs or passages from songs with vocals and rerecording new vocals with other singers and deejays. Performers like Barrington Levy, Gregory Isaacs, and Junior Reid rose to fame with these early dancehall cuts.
• Changes: By the 1980s, performers like Yellowman and U-Roy created the template for modern Jamaican dancehall music. Songs featured toasting over hard-driving prerecorded tracks drawn from vintage reggae recordings. Lyrics focused on salacious topics—a feature borrowed from early Caribbean popular music forms like calypso and mento—which became known as slackness. These elements drew a definitive line between dancehall reggae and the socially and spiritually conscious music of roots reggae, which musicians like Bob Marley performed.
• Digital: Dancehall moved even further away from roots reggae when producers like King Jammy created songs using electronic instruments instead of older recordings with analog instruments and faster beats. Jammy scored a huge hit in 1985 with the saucy “(Under Me) Sleng Teng,” which marked the beginning of the digital dancehall or ragga subgenre.
• Superstars: The 1990s saw the rise of many of dancehall’s biggest names, including Shabba Ranks and Bounty Killer. Lyrics celebrating slackness dominated their recordings, though some artists, like Buju Banton and Mavado, also extolled “rude boy” behavior like gunplay and marijuana use. Countering these tracks was a wave of music by female dancehall artists like Sister Nancy, Lady Saw, and Lady G.
• Modern: Dancehall moved into the global market in the new millennium. Artists like Sean Paul, who scored chart hits in the United States and other markets with his 2003 single “Get Busy,” paved the way for other dancehall artists like Elephant Man, Spice, Aidonia, and Vybz Kartel. Their recordings moved away from slackness and folded pop and dance music elements into their sound.
• Throwback sound: Some dancehall artists, including Banton and Sizzla, reached back to the 1970s to embrace Rastafarian ideals in their songs. These and other artists drew attention from pop stars like Justin Bieber and Rihanna, who released music inspired by their sounds. Canadian rapper Drake has released a string of dancehall-styled hits, including 2016’s “Controlla.”

Several distinct characteristics define the sound of dancehall music, including:

1. 1. Lyrics: The lyrical content of dancehall music was one of the primary ways the genre distinguished itself from roots reggae. It replaced celebrations of Jah (God) and political discussion with subjects that drew parallels to some hip-hop styles: An outlaw mentality and a focus on racy subject matter defined the majority of dancehall lyrics.
2. 2. Hybrid elements: Early dancehall featured performers toasting or singing over prerecorded tracks drawn from the vast catalogs of Jamaican record labels like Studio One. Digital dancehall, or ragga, featured original compositions recorded on electronic equipment, which dominated dancehall in the 1980s and 1990s. Modern dancehall is a hybrid of dancehall rhythms and hip-hop and R&B beats from the United States.
3. 3. Reuse: Numerous artists use riddims, which are the rhythm tracks used in dancehall music, on different recordings. A single riddim, like the one featured in “(Under Me) Sleng Teng)” by Wayne Smith, fueled a dozen or more original songs. The riddim that anchored 1967’s “Real Rock” had appeared in more than 250 songs by 2006. This unique practice harkens back to the origins of dancehall, which featured a deejay toasting live over the selector’s albums.

There are many notable dancehall artists in the genre’s five-decade history, including:

1. 1. Buju Banton: One of dancehall’s most acclaimed artists, Buju Banton has enjoyed considerable success throughout his career. His recording career began in the 1980s but exploded with the back-to-back releases of Stamina Daddy and Mr. Mention in 1992. The latter LP broke records in Jamaica and earned him a contract with A&M in the United States. Subsequent releases won critical praise, and he helped to reintroduce social and spiritual themes into dancehall. In the 2000s, Banton faced a few legal issues, which overshadowed a Grammy win in 2011 for his album Before the Dawn. However, he reemerged in 2018 and resumed his recording career.
2. 2. Konshens: Born Garfield Spence, the dancehall artist Konshens is a barometer for the global popularity of Jamaican music. He was initially part of a duo, Sojah, with his brother Delus, before striking out as a solo artist. His 2005 single, “Pon di Corner,” was a huge hit in Japan, and he remains a major performer there and throughout the Caribbean, Europe, and Guyana. His international fanbase has led to collaborations with numerous artists, including DJ Matoma and Enrique Iglesias on the US Top 40 single “I Don’t Dance (Without You).”
3. 3. Popcaan: Singer/songwriter and deejay Popcaan got his big break from another dancehall superstar, Vybz Kartel, who took him under his wing to hone his writing and performing skills. A string of modest hits led to his breakout song, a collaboration with Vybz on “Clarks,” which earned major awards from the Jamaican music industry. More hits, including 2012’s “Only Man She Want,” soon followed, as did team-ups with Drake (“Controlla”), Young Thug, and Gorillaz.
4. 4. Shabba Ranks: Ranks’ booming voice dominated dancehall and produced some of its biggest crossover hits in the 1980s and 1990s. Signed to Epic Records after honing his toasting skills on the sound system circuit, Ranks enjoyed modest success until 1991, when his single “Mr. Lover Man” cracked the Top 40 in the United States. He would enjoy even greater success the following year with a Grammy win for his 1992 album As Raw As Ever, which he repeated in 1993 with X-Tra Naked.

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