Thank you Jah Jah fe give me this a colour

Yellowman's revalorization of thedundus

Bibliographic Data

ID3000941
AuthorsBrent Hagerman (Wilfrid Laurier University, corresponding author)
Year2015
Volume21
Issue6
Pages529-544
Publication date2015-11-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial Identities (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1350-4630 • E-ISSN: 1363-0296
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13504630.2015.1106311
OpenAlexW1912516108
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited22

In 1982, Winston ‘Yellowman’ Foster rose to prominence as Jamaica's king of dancehall reggae and popularized the music genre internationally in the wake of Bob Marley's death. As a dundus, or black person with albinism, Yellowman challenged colonial-derived Jamaican social codes that questioned his blackness and masculinity. By using white society's stereotypes of black hypersexuality and symbols of blackness derived from Rastafari and its ideological forebears, Yellowman was able to transform the dundus identity by portraying himself as African, black, and included in what Carnegie in ‘The Dundus and the Nation’ (1996) calls the imaginary racially homogeneous (i.e. black) Jamaican nation. Furthermore, through his performance of slack or sexually themed songs Yellowman contested embedded cultural definitions of the dundus as impotent and instead successfully represented the body with albinism as the sexually desirable ‘modern body.’ This paper uses interpretive methodologies from interrelated fields such as cultural studies, religious studies and anthropology in recognition that the context of Yellowman's racial critique is found not only in his songs but in his life story as well. Therefore it draws on ethnographic fieldwork, textual analysis of song lyrics and a study of the discourse on Yellowman in the popular and scholarly literature

Aesthetics · Art · Ethnography · Ideology · Literature · Lyrics · Masculinity · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · The Imaginary · Anthropology · Caribbean history, culture, and politics · Cuban History and Society · Gender Studies · History · Law · Music History and Culture · Psychology

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