Dancehall
The dance became the engine: deejays, riddims, selectors and producers reshaped Jamaican popular music around the sound system. From late-1970s rub-a-dub through the digital turn and into the present, dancehall keeps moving.
GO DEEPER
The word dancehall came from the place before it named a musical era: the dances where Jamaican sound systems played for a crowd. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, records were increasingly built around deejays voicing reusable riddims, leaner arrangements and the demands of the session rather than the album. The sound never froze. Yellowman became a defining early-1980s star; King Jammy’s 1985 hit with Wayne Smith, “Under Mi Sleng Teng,” helped push computerized riddims to the center; later generations carried dancehall through clash culture, international crossover and constant exchange with rap, Caribbean and African popular music. Dancehall is music, dance, language, fashion, technology and sound-system culture talking to each other at once.
Where the history is argued
- The start of “dancehall” changes depending on whether the word means the dance space, sound-system culture or the musical era usually dated to the late 1970s.
- Sleng Teng is the landmark digital breakthrough, but claims that it was literally the first computerized dancehall rhythm are contested.
How they stand with the others
Came beforeDancehall first meant the physical and social space around Jamaican sounds; the later genre grew inside that culture.
Studio influenceThe 1985 Sleng Teng explosion accelerated computerized riddims, but it did not create dancehall from nothing.
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Last checked 1 September 2026