big tings a gwan on weekend! part 1

This weekend was a lively one. Clubbing in downtown Kingston on Saturday night, and attended the PNP rally outside at Half Way Tree on Sunday afternoon. We have a few connections here so we didn't go alone to the club (The Quad - the biggest club in Kingston apparently). We also had a guide to the rally, initially, but then he went off and we were on our own for the end of it. My partner in adventuring right now is my fellow intern at the SET Foundation. We will get to know each other pretty well, I think.

I'll start with a recap of the club night, which was a blast:
When we first came in, around 1am, the main floor was pretty bad – everyone standing around stoneface, and the dj playing sort of non-diva house, unmelodic and slightly breaky, but really uninterestingly mixed. Nobody was having it. It reminded me that Jamaican audiences are pretty intimidating, from a DJ perspective. Never seen people so specific about what they want, or so clear about how much they were not into it. No bottles were flying, but there could be no doubt about people being unimpressed. We went upstairs to the "voodoo lounge" where they were playing 80s funk, better mixed, but not my scene.

When we headed back down to the big dancefloor, a good dj came on, and it was pretty fascinating to hear him work. The crowd got pretty crazy and was fun to watch, but I was most interested in what the DJ was doing.

Selection-wise, he was playing local hits, hip-hop hits, interspersed with Jamaican lyrics over big hits. When the big hits relied on a sample, he would often cut in the original for musical emphasis. One example: the Jamaican version of Mims' "this is why I'm hot" featuring Junior Reid and, I think, Bounty Killa, also samples the intro to Dawn Penn's "No no no," which then the dj cut to the actual Dawn Penn version. Another popular thing was dropping in totally obscene Jamaican sex chat on top of hit tunes, sometimes letting the vocals play out after the instrumental had ended. What I could follow made even me blush a bit. Also because a lot of it describes what happens to the female anatomy when it is receiving aggressive attention, and it was obvious the singer was not imagining what that would feel like if you identified with the female. "poom poom split in two" is not really an attractive image to me. Ouch. In other places I heard some songs or segments of his sets as a dizzying selection of samples and references that caught you up in a web of references, where the familiar pulled you into the unfamiliar, or was in conversation with other tunes with similar lyrics, sonic qualities or references. The sonic and lyrical interrelationships were a major highlight of the dj skill, and also really engaging as a listener.

The most impressive skill showcased was the dj's sense of pacing. There was a clear rhythm and cycle – he would start slower, then build the crowd up, speeding up the music in intensity, peaking with a hit song where everyone knew the lyrics, getting everyone to sing along at top volume, cutting out the sound so you heard everyone singing, and then he would cut out the tune and drop back to something slower or less familiar and start building it up again. The songs that really got people going (not usually the peak song, but the tunes building up to the peak) were usually extremely homophobic lyrics, unfortunately that's what got people jumping, lyrics about burning, shooting and killing batty boy, and songs distancing the singer from 'dirty' acts like gay sex, but also about "nah f*ck batty," or "nah s*ck batty" or "p*ssy." The peak song was usually a tune I recognized as a big dancehall tune, but occasionally a US hip-hop tune or a remix would get in there. The level of vocal interaction between the crowd and the dj increased as the excitement increased. Really good to be involved in the experience, although part of me kept splitting away when the lyrics were too horrific. I find my body shuts down too, I don't feel like dancing when i hear certain things. Still incredible to see the energy from the crowd.

Content-wise, the DJ played no Sean Paul at all, I noticed. I guess he has no big tunes right now. Also, my impression is he is not considered big here as he is in the US. I did hear a decent selection of big hip-hop tunes: some JayZ track, and Rick Ross (2 versions of every day I'm hustling"), and "It's Going Down" and the awful T-Pain song about the bartender.

I heard almost no female lyrics/chat (although there were crooning female backup vocals in some of the songs early in the cycle). At near-peak times he would occasionally play a really sexual female chat. Around mid-cycle or right after the most homophobic lyrics he would drop some tunes that were really political. I wished I knew what they were, but they were really dancehall-sounding (not roots) and were about politicians, and pretty specific political criticisms. A couple of them were really impressive, both as good dancing music and good lyrics. More of this please!

The dancing definitely got crazier as the night went on. By the time we left, the benches against the wall were lined with couples – the women on the benches and the men slamming against them in various creative or straightforward ways. People were on the floor, dancing or just simulating sexing, with great enthusiasm. The woman-bent to 90degrees, table-back, doggy-style dance also very popular. Now, I like dancing.. I like dancing alone, but I'm not averse to dancing with a partner, even getting a bit freaky, but still, there's something to me about dancing that is separated from performing the sex act fully clothed. I can't see the separation here any more. I'm also curious as to whether people who do this on the floor of he club leave together to do it somewhere else without clothing, or whether the public interaction is the extent of it. In that case, it's the safest one-night-stand I can think of (if perhaps lacking in some of the physical pleasures).