They began in the late 1940s among people from the inner city of Kingston, who were not able to participate in dances uptown. History Early developments ĭancehall is named after Jamaican dance halls in which popular Jamaican recordings were played by local sound systems. In the 2000s, dancehall experienced worldwide mainstream success, and by the 2010s, it began to heavily influence the work of established Western artists and producers, which has helped to further bring the genre into the Western music mainstream. Key elements of dancehall music include its extensive use of Jamaican Patois rather than Jamaican standard English and a focus on the track instrumentals (or ' riddims').ĭancehall saw initial mainstream success in Jamaica in the 1980s, and by the 1990s, it became increasingly popular in Jamaican diaspora communities.
In the mid-1980s, digital instrumentation became more prevalent, changing the sound considerably, with digital dancehall (or ' ragga') becoming increasingly characterized by faster rhythms. Initially, dancehall was a more sparse version of reggae than the roots style, which had dominated much of the 1970s. Dancehall is a genre of Jamaican popular music that originated in the late 1970s.
