File
A patron at a recent entertainment event.
Germaine Smith, Staff Reporter
WHERE HAS all the love gone?
For many people who have been attending dancehall sessions over the decades, it seems that selectors islandwide have stopped playing love ballads.
Many of dancehall's older generation can reminisce on a segment at all dances where the selector would announce that it was time for the lovers then play a series of love songs, both local and international.
Then men and women would get closer both physically and emotionally, as they could share a priceless moment of intimacy together. Many a woman found a husband and many a man wives after bouts of close romantic dancing - vertical lovemaking, for all intents and purposes.
For those without dance partners, these segments were torture to endure, as they had to watch others get close while they stood alone.
In today's dance hall this seems to be dying - or is already dead - because for an entire night patrons expect a hype from start to finish. Any form of intimate contact between male and female is reserved for sensuous gyrations and hard-core grinding in a variety of positions.
Some argue that the selectors do not play the love songs for them to dance to, while others see it as the fault of a society which has generally stopped showing love.
Kingsley Goodison, a long-standing member of the Studio One generation, feels that dancehall scenes are just reflecting the shortage of love in society. He sees it as just an extension of what exists.
"Remember when you used to go to a dance, the love songs gave you a chance to hold a woman's hand and touch her. This was special and no matter how coarse or bad a man was, dancing with a girl to slow music softened him up a bit," he reasons. "Nowadays no one seems to want to show love, so even inside the dance everybody is still aggressive."
Carlos Lincoln, one of the founding members of Studio One, feels that this phenomenon is just because of a generational change. "The youths inside the dance hall are just enjoying what they are growing up around," he argues. "Each generation has its own likings and now is just time for the youths to enjoy the hype music."
Professor Carolyn Cooper, author and lecturer at the University of the West Indies, Mona, says she does not necessarily see love songs as dying in the dance halls, but offers her reasons as to why the drought may be happening.
"Patrons to these events are getting younger and some just don't know the songs, hence they can't dance to the older ones," she explains. "People of the generation tend to accept what is in their era and dismiss whatever else as rubbish. The radio stations should play more of these songs and the older generation should go out of their way to teach the younger ones."
Sky Juice of Metromedia fame has been playing at sessions for over 20 years and relates it to the economic principle of supply and demand.
He feels that public 'demand' for love songs inside the dance hall has cut down the 'supply' that the selectors would give, thus putting an end to slow, intimate interaction couples have.
"The dancehall thing has changed. First time love songs used to make man and woman get close and mingle. You used to have a time when you could even dance with another man's woman and nothing would come out of it," he recalls.
"Nowadays most people are just dancing by themselves and the youths are into the hype thing. If certain selector play love songs people don't want to hear that and they will run them out. That doesn't happen to me because me name Sky Juice and for my sessions I always encourage men and women to get close because I love to see that. Man must dance with woman," he said.
STATEMENT PROVED TRUE
His latter statement proved true at last week's Passa Passa dance in Tivoli Gardens. After a night of hype music and good crowd vibes from Swatch International, Sky Juice played 13 love songs back to back, something considered a record in today's sessions. However, only a few couples got together, as the majority of women hugged themselves and sang aloud to the tunes while the men watched.
That scene at Passa Passa has characterised many dances, where people attending sessions generally do not interact on a romantic level. They are in groups doing synchronised moves but not together and the music does not foster the intimacy.
Show organiser, Jerome Hamilton, of Quorum Entertainment feels that more than one thing has contributed to the shortage of love songs in the dance hall. He argues that the tendency of the society not to show love openly is just reflected inside the dance halls. He adds, however, that the sound systems had a part to play as well.
CLEAR DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SOUND SYSTEMS AND DISCOS
"Part of the situation is people's refusal to show affection to others in public. Generally we don't hug or hold hands etcetera, and this is just carried out into the dance," he notes. "Another thing is that one time there was a clear difference between sound systems that played at dances and discos that played at parties. Discos used to play love songs and I know Stone Love used to play them as well. Now everything is just a sound system and they don't play these songs anymore."
In terms of the 'demand and supply' argument, Hamilton says that selectors should still try to keep the love inside dances, even if patrons do not entirely want to accept it as first. "Few people lead and less will follow. Some selectors see the hype tunes working and they just do it too. They are not willing to try setting a trend by playing the love songs."
In all fairness, one cannot look at the shortness of love inside the dance hall and ignore the impact of Miguel 'Sizzla Kalonji' Collins in this situation. Sizzla is known for a hard-edged point of view, cutting lyrics, and yet soothing melodies. On his latest VP Album Da Real Thing, Sizzla directly taps into the theme of love in the dance hall with his tunes Woman I need You and Just One Of Those Days (called Dry Cry by many).
In these two tunes Sizzla uses powerful metaphors and poetic language to describe the nature of his love for his black woman. The songs openly embrace love and intimacy, and are extremely regular rotators on local radio stations, sound systems, roadside shops, taxis, etc. Whenever any one of the two is played in local dance halls, there are frantic reactions from dance patrons, who relate to the intimate sentiments of the song, but may or may not express it with intimate contact while inside the dance hall.
LOVE VERSES
Fire Links, the selector known for his prowess at the 'Hot Mondays' session in Kingston, describes these love verses by Sizzla as "Something that dancehall needed." Links agrees as well that the love tunes are scarce inside the dance hall but feels that short-sighted selectors are the cause for it.
"These selectors don't understand that there are many different types of people who come to your dance," he points out. "Different people come and want to dance to different things. I play the love songs because seeing a couple dancing together is a joy to me. Every couple makes love so love songs have to be played inside the dance," Links explains.
In the end, it seems that like several other things in Jamaican society, dancehall music is evolving. The present situation of 'bling bling', celebration, dancing and hype will probably pass, and one day love may find its way back into the hearts of loyal dancehall fans. As we all know about life and the dance hall, nothing lasts forever.
