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Queering Carnival: Soca and Safe Spaces in Jamaica

image of Queering Carnival: Soca and Safe Spaces in Jamaica

This chapter is informed by primary research conducted during the 2015 Jamaica Carnival season alongside J-FLAG as well as research related to subsequent iterations of Jamaica's Carnival season. Like the work collected in the recent Queer Nightlife – which is drawn from ‘witness’, ‘interviews with bar-goers and performers, fieldnotes taken in the dark’ (Adeyemi et al. 2021: 3), among other techniques – so too did my fieldwork require different approaches. I take a cue from Adeyemi et al.'s instruction to ‘[see] nightlife as performance [original emphasis]’ (2021: 3), in that this work views engagement with Carnival as a performative practice. In this chapter, I outline the ‘new patterns of belonging [...] choreographed through music's role in galvanizing these experiences around shared activities and spaces’, as described by Stahl and Botta in Nocturnes (2021: 4). My attempt, here, is to provide a description, albeit mediated, of soca spaces in Jamaica and, through the use of multiple approaches, investigate why it is that queer Jamaicans find solace in soca and comfort in Carnival.

Keywords: Caribbean ; Class ; Dance ; Ethnography ; J-FLAG ; Lyrics ; Music spaces ; Queer experience ; Queerness ; Sexuality

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References

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References

  1. Adeyemi, Kemi, Khubchandani, Kareem and Rivera-Servera, Ramon H. (2021), Queer Nightlife, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  2. Bakhtin, Mikhail (1984), Rabelais and His World (trans. H. Iswolsky), Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  3. Barratt, Kai (2017), ‘The copy and paste Carnival’, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320962789_The_Copy_and_Paste_Carnival. Accessed 27 March 2022.
  4. Chapman, Nathan, Maharaj, Sageeta, Seeberan, Melanie and Houlder, Emmerica (2021), ‘Heterosexism and homophobia in the Caribbean Dancehall context’, Peer Review, 89:4, pp. 34–33.
     [Google Scholar]
  5. Davis, Brendan (2013), ‘WATCH: J-FLAG executive director headlines “We Are Jamaicans” video campaign’, Glaad, https://www.glaad.org/blog/watch-j-flag-executive-director-headlines-we-are-jamaicans-video-campaign. Accessed 17 April 2022.
     [Google Scholar]
  6. Dreisinger, B. (2017), ‘Caribbean's Carnivals tip their hats to Trinidad’, New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/14/travel/trinidad-caribbean-carnival-island.html. Accessed 27 March 2022.
     [Google Scholar]
  7. Ellis, Nadia (2011), ‘Out and bad: Toward a queer performance hermeneutic in Jamaican Dancehall’, Small Axe, 15:2, pp. 7–23.
     [Google Scholar]
  8. Gill, Lyndon (2018), Erotic Islands: Art and Activism in the Queer Caribbean, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  9. Glissant, Edouard (1997), Poetics of Relation (trans. B. Wing), Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  10. Hall, Arthur (2013), ‘Gays, others clash in Carnival road march, shots fired’, Jamaica Gleaner, https://jamaica-gleaner.com/power/43934. Accessed 24 July 2022.
     [Google Scholar]
  11. Hall, Stuart (1990), ‘Cultural identity and diaspora’, in P. Williams and L. Chrisman (eds), Colonial Discourse and Postcolonial Theory: A Reader, New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 392–403.169
     [Google Scholar]
  12. Henry, Frances and Plaza, Dwaine (2020), Carnival Is Woman: Feminism and Performance in Caribbean Mas, Jackson, MI: University Press of Mississippi.
     [Google Scholar]
  13. Hope, Donna (2006), Inna Di Dancehall: Popular Culture and the Politics of Identity in Jamaica, Kingston: University of the West Indies Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  14. Hope, Donna (2010), Man Vibes: Masculinities in the Jamaican Dancehall, Kingston: Ian Randle.
     [Google Scholar]
  15. Jamaica Gleaner (2014), ‘DENIED: Transgender activist turned away from Bacchanal’, Jamaica Gleaner, https://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20140406/ent/ent1.html. Accessed 27 March 2022.
     [Google Scholar]
  16. Kebede, Rebekah (updated 2017), ‘Jamaican LGBTQ youths escape persecution in city storm drains’, Reuters, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-jamaica-lgbt-homeless-idUSKBN1685AY. Accessed 24 July 2022.
  17. Liverpool, Hollis ‘Chalkdust’ (2001), Rituals of Power and Rebellion: The Carnival Tradition in Trinidad and Tobago – 1763–1962, Chicago, IL: Research Associates School Times.
  18. Lyew, Stephanie, Grizzle, Shereita and Small, Kimberley (2019), ‘2019 Carnival road march the biggest ever’, Jamaica Gleanerhttps://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/entertainment/20190429/2019-carnival-road-march-biggest-ever. Accessed 27 March 2022.
  19. McClure, Livinia (2012), ‘Carnival a foreign culture?’, Jamaica Gleaner, https://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20120410/cleisure/cleisure2.html. Accessed 27 March 2022.
  20. Miller, Kai (2013), ‘The little wine that hurt somebody (or, soca and the bad behaving gays of Jamaica)’, Under the Saltire Flag, https://underthesaltireflag.com/2013/05/19/the-little-wine-that-hurt-somebody-or-soca-and-the-bad-behaving-gays-of-jamaica/. Accessed 19 April 2022.
  21. Miller, Toby (2002), ‘Cultural citizenship’, in E. F. Isin and B. S. Turner (eds), Handbook of Citizenship Studies, London: Sage, pp. 231–44.
     [Google Scholar]
  22. Miller, Toby (2011), ‘Cultural citizenship’, MATRIZes, 4:2, pp. 57–74.
     [Google Scholar]
  23. Nelson, Jaevion (n.d.), ‘Queer in Dancehall’, unpublished presentation, shared with author 24 July 2022.
  24. Nelson, Jaevion (2013), ‘Hurling the first stone’, Jamaica Gleaner, https://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20130411/cleisure/cleisure3.html. Accessed 23 July 2022.
  25. Puar, Jasbir Kaur (2001), ‘Global circuits: Transnational sexualities and Trinidad’, Signs, 26:4, pp. 1039–65.
     [Google Scholar]
  26. Stahl, Geoff and Botta, Giacomo (2021), Nocturnes: Popular Music and the Night, London: Palgrave Macmillan.
     [Google Scholar]
  27. Stanley Niaah, Sonjah (2010), Dancehall: From Slave Ship to Ghetto, Ottawa: Ottawa University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  28. Stevenson, Nick (2003), ‘Cultural citizenship in the “cultural” society: A cosmopolitan approach’, Citizenship Studies, 7:3, pp. 331–48.
     [Google Scholar]
  29. Thompson, Wanna (2023), ‘Carnival is queer’, Portraits of Mas, https://portraitsofmas.com/work/carnivalisqueer. Accessed 23 July 2022.
     [Google Scholar]
  30. Walcott, Rinaldo (2016), Queer Returns: Essays on Multiculturalism, Diaspora and Black Studies, Toronto: Insomniac Press.
     [Google Scholar]

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