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Passa Passa is a weekly street party that originated in Kingston, Jamaica and has spread to other areas in the Caribbean. It is reported to have begun on Ash Wednesday in 2003 with the name being coined by Carl Shelley. It features dancehall music. It has spread throughout the Caribbean including Colón, Panama Limón, Costa Rica and later Puerto Rico. It is similar to a block party. The Passa Passa usually gets started around 1 a.m. and has been known to continue straight through until 8 a.m.
Artists, selectors, and dancers who usually attend and have done a great deal to build the dance for what it is today include: Bogle, Ding Dong (dancehall performer), Marvin, Kartoon, Aneika Headtop, Ravers Clavers, Black Blingaz, Timeless Crew, Shelly Belly, Spikes, John Hype, Sample 6, Sherika Future, Jermaine Squad, Sadiki, Swatch, Maestro, Beenie Man and Future Girls.
Passa Passa has drawn many professional and amateur dancers into the media spotlight as the event is typically videotaped for mass DVD distribution. Many of the popular Jamaican dancers, such as the late Bogle and Ding Dong, have made appearances on these videos. The spread of dancehall popularity, particularly in Japan and Europe, attracts many international dancehall fans along with the hundreds of Jamaicans who attend weekly.
Among other opportunities for street dancing and parties, Passa Passa was also the location for the queering of the masculine Jamaican identity. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, many Dancehall/Reggae songs started to espouse homophobic rhetoric, such as T.O.K.’s “Chi Chi Man,” while male dance crews were beginning to explode in popularity. These two trends fostered a homosocial, sometimes homoerotic, space for Jamaican men where societal rules surrounding masculinity were not strictly enforced. These songs, oftentimes played during Passa Passa, created a space in which no one could be considered “gay” or “queer," as it was assumed the ideas the songs promoted were shared by everyone present. As Nadia Ellis writes, “The songs are played; no one is “gay”; everyone can turn a blind eye." Due to this increased freedom, men could explore fashion much more openly, including the ability to wear “tight clothes; bold accessories of metal; gemstone, and cloth; hair in relaxers and braids”.
Grenada's Education Minister, Claris Charles, called for a ban of the dance in that country in 2006.
References
- Ellis, Nadia (2011). "Out and Bad: Toward a Queer Performance Hermeneutic in Jamaican Dancehall". Small Axe. 15 (2): 7–23. doi:10.1215/07990537-1334212. S2CID 144742875. Project MUSE 446631.
Further reading
- Hope, Donna P. (2006). "Passa Passa: Interrogating Cultural Hybridities in Jamaican Dancehall". Small Axe. 10 (3): 125–139. doi:10.1215/-10-3-125. S2CID 143666149. Project MUSE 206139.
- Jaffe, Rivke (2012). "The Popular Culture of Illegality: Crime and the Politics of Aesthetics in Urban Jamaica". Anthropological Quarterly. 85 (1): 79–102. doi:10.1353/anq.2012.0010. JSTOR 41427089. S2CID 144877191. Gale A282326586 Project MUSE 467118 ProQuest 922765725.
- Meikle, T.; Jaffe, R. (2015). "'Police as the new don'? An assessment of post-Dudus policing strategies in Jamaica". Caribbean Journal of Criminology. 1. hdl:11245/1.491517.
- West, Keon (13 June 2018). "Understanding and Reducing Sexual Prejudice in Jamaica: Theoretical and Practical Insights From a Severely Anti-Gay Society" (PDF). The Journal of Sex Research. 55 (4–5): 472–485. doi:10.1080/00224499.2017.1416055. PMID 29411998. S2CID 4048016.
- West, Keon; Cowell, Noel M. (24 March 2015). "Predictors of Prejudice Against Lesbians and Gay Men in Jamaica" (PDF). The Journal of Sex Research. 52 (3): 296–305. doi:10.1080/00224499.2013.853725. PMID 24483715. S2CID 205443381.
- Salkind, Micah (2019). Do You Remember House?. doi:10.1093/oso/9780190698416.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-19-069841-6.
External links
- Balford Henry: "The 'Passa Passa' phenomenon" The Jamaica Observer, November 21, 2003 (copy at the Internet Archive)
- J.A.Wallace: "PASSA PASSA is destroying our moral values" article from Grenadian Connection web site, March 11, 2006
- Williams, Carol J. (10 April 2006). "Dancing Against the Beat". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on 18 March 2009.
- Photos of Passa Passa in Kingston
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