Last night I went to a club in Providence (I wish to keep the name anonymous) with three other friends, that played very little reggae and dancehall music. This was surprising to me because in Norton, it is as if all I hear is Jamaican music. This led me to believe that maybe it is the group of people I hang out with and associate myself with that music that brings on this generalization that everyone in the New England area is familiar with Jamaican/reggae/dancehall music. I have bracketed myself within this type of music that I have failed to realize that only within my “world” is this type of music dominant. Throughout my study with this project and taking an anthropological stance on the matter, I didn’t open my eyes to the fact that I should have gone outside my boundaries of Norton to look for a broader and rounder take on the subject. When I was in New York in February of 2007, a little less than a year ago, my friends and I went to a club in lower Manhattan. There it was reggae all day everyday. In the club in Providence, it was hip hop and rap. At the rare times when they did play a reggae song, two of my friends danced the traditional way that one would normal dance to that type of song. One song which I remember to be “Dutty Wind”, had a lot of people staring at them because they didn’t know how to dance like that. One guy wanted to dance with one of my friends but couldn’t because he didn’t know how to handle that type of dancing. This experience opened my eyes to the fact that I can not generalize my studies and opinions on area that I have never ventured into.
1 comment:
The first thing that captivated me about your blog was the fact that it had so much personal insight and it’s important to be able to talk from a perspective that only an insider can provide, hence he/she is an insider. I was at the Stoplight party that you spoke about and I have been to numerous, if not all Balfour Hood dances, that have occurred since the commence of the academic year and there was a clear distinction between those who knew how to engage with the calypso [etc.] music being played, and those who didn’t. I personally didn’t enjoy the music or the dance at all, because I didn’t find the music appealing in the least, I think that while the DJ was a breath of fresh air there were a lot of individuals at the stoplight part who were not enrolled in this school, and it seemed like the music the DJ played was for them [since they were the ones mostly dancing with a select few students that are students here]. Although I did not enjoy the dance I was intrigued to know more about the kind of dances that were heavily influenced by the cultures of the these peoples so I began youtubing, of course. The fact that I came from new York, leading a very cosmopolitan kind of lifestyle with Manhattan’s elite, had a lot to do with the fact that I didn’t appreciate the music from the different culture; I like many was stuck in a bubble where it was either my way or it wasn’t enjoyable. Back at home I was going to clubs that were playing the top 40 pop songs with some hip-hop and R&B, it was all pretty mainstream, most of my friends were Caucasian and had never met a Jamaican person until my freshman year of high school. Being Hispanic myself, and being always confused for so many other mixtures, I’m even more inclined to know peoples ethnic makeup because I don’t want to disrespect their culture. Now it’s a lot more important for me to recognize cultures and see cultures, because I want to soak in as much information as I can to better understand the world that we live in; because if we don’t acknowledge where people come from then we miss a large portion of who they are and that’s no fun.
Jhonathan Mendez De León
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