Kinky Reggae

Kinky Reggae: The Agony and The Ecstasy of Sex in Jamaica

By Frederick R. Dannaway (www.HighStylus.com)

In its 50th year of independence, Jamaican music scholar Frederick R Dannaway charts the ebb and flow of a nation’s sexuality through its music – from mento, rocksteady, reggae, dancehall and more.

Blue Beat
Although there are more churches per capita than anywhere else in the world, Jamaicans are not, and never have been, puritanical. Perhaps it’s the island heat that makes clothing superfluous, combined with the seductive riddims that infuses Jamaica with sexuality. Sex and music go together like ackee and saltfish, and Jamaica is saturated with both from the rent-a-dreads trysting with white woman, to the orgies of the Hedonism resort and the indigenous sexuality of the dancehall. The rhetoric and fundamentalism in Jamaica emerged when foreigners descended en masse into military guarded enclaves for the rich – otherwise known as resorts – which overtly broke Jamaican laws of decency in an orgy of neo-colonialism, debauched materialism and racial elitism, expressed in fortified tropic paradises firewalled from the island poverty by razor wire and military guards.

Read the rest at Red Bull Music Academy: http://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/magazine/kinky-reggae