17 Jul 2025
18:00 - 20:00
Dancehall Divas Then and Now: Framing the Caribbean Feminist Narrative
On 17 July, Dancehall Divas Then and Now: Framing the Caribbean Feminist Narrative, initiated by multi-disciplinary creative Timothy Paul, explores the gendered dynamics of Dancehall culture through discussion and visual material.
The late 1980s and early 1990s marked a pivotal era in Jamaican cultural production. At the heart of this period was Dancehall music: a genre that emerged not only as a sonic experience but also as a socio-political force. Loud, raw, provocative and unapologetically Jamaican, Dancehall became the soundtrack of the streets, articulating everyday life, resistance, and survival. Though often defined by male presence and hyper-masculinity, women were never mere spectators.
This event aims to explore Dancehall through a feminist lens, tracing the lineage of female agency within the genre, from pioneering figures of the ‘80s and ‘90s to contemporary bold and boundary-pushing artists. During Dancehall’s early rise, figures such as the ‘video girls’, female selectors, and dancers claimed visibility in a space that often objectified them, using performance, fashion and choreography as tools of both subversion and survival. These women helped redefine the limits of public sexuality, class mobility and self-representation in a postcolonial context.
Today, we are witnessing a new generation of Dancehall Divas who are not only occupying space but demanding it. Their work interrogates themes of gender, power, pleasure and violence, reframing Dancehall not just as entertainment but as a battleground of feminist discourse in the Caribbean and its diaspora. The audience is invited into a critical celebration of the genre’s complex gender dynamics, examining how Dancehall has served as both a site of patriarchal reinforcement and radical feminist expression. These topics will be discussed along with a screening of episode 4 of the HBO series Get Millie Black.
Sign up here to let us know you’re attending
This event is in English. Admission is free.
Do you also think art should be free and accessible? Please consider supporting us with a donation when registering or by becoming a Framer Framed Friend!
The event may be photographed and filmed. Kindly let us know in advance if you prefer not to have your picture taken.
Feminism / Caribbean / Diaspora / Queer /
Network
