Dancehall City: Zongo Identity and Jamaican Rude Performance in Ghanaian Popular Culture

Abstract

The explosion of Ghanaian Reggae-Dancehall reflects the influence of Jamaican-inspired popular culture in Ghana today. This subculture is championed by local Rastafarians and by youth from the zongos (internal migrant, largely Islamic, unplanned neighborhoods). Suffering social alienation, many zongo artists have adopted postures similar to their Jamaican counterparts—mirroring Rasta and rude identities as counter-hegemonic resistance. Alleyne explores several artists variously located between the zongo, the Reggae diaspora, and the Ghanaian state, examining how subjects rework Jamaican tropes and voice their aspirations within a globalizing Ghana and rethinking the zongo as space of rousing diasporic consciousness.

Africanisms in the Caribbean Region: African Descendants’ Resistance to Enslavement and Subjugation in Post-Emancipation

“…Alleyne (1988) indicated that the Maroons believed that Accompong was God of Heaven, creator of all things, and the deity of goodness. They neither worshiped nor offered sacrifices to him.…”

“…The Caribbean Region: A Focus on Jamaica Alleyne (1988) indicated that Africans were transported by the Portuguese, the Spanish, and the British to Jamaica during the periods 1498 to 1655; from 1670 to 1808, and from 1841 to 1865 because of these European enslavers' total dependence on enslaved Africans' labor on the expanding Jamaican sugar plantations. Sierra Leone accounted for about 6%, Senegambia 6%, and South East Africa, 4.3% of Africans transported to Jamaica (Gomez, 2020).…”

“…Africans carried with them their common language, their knowledge on governance and political organizations, their knowledge of the swamp, forest, river and mountains, their knowledge of war and politics, their military training, their codes of honor, their cosmologies, their songs, folktales, proverbs, and other beliefs and values that characterized their beingness and their worldview (Clarke, 1972; Gonzalez-Lopez, 2013; Johnson, 2007). They brought their acquired skills, habits, and cognitive orientations (Alleyne, 1988). These ancestors were accepting of death due to their beliefs that spirits would return to join the ancestors (Warner-Lewis, 2003).…”

“…The passage from Africa across the Atlantic Ocean sometimes lasted 3 months and more that provided opportunities for cultural contact. Africans transported on the same ships developed strong bonds that sustained them during the enslavement experience in the Americas (Alleyne, 1988). European enslavers concentrated rather than dispersed African ethnic groups.…”

“…transported on the same ships developed strong bonds that sustained them during the enslavement experience in the Americas (Alleyne, 1988). European enslavers concentrated rather than dispersed African ethnic groups.…”