Global Reggae Book Launch

The newly released book Global Reggae, edited by Carolyn Cooper and published by the University of the West Indies Press is now available to satisfy the unending curiosity of reggae fans around the world. 

 These plenary lectures from the “Global Reggae” conference held in 2008 at the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica, eloquently exemplify the breadth and depth of current scholarship on Jamaican popular music. Radiating from the Jamaican centre, these illuminating essays highlight the “glocalization” of reggae – its global dispersal and adaptation in diverse local contexts of consumption and transformation.

 The languages of Jamaican popular music, both literal and metaphorical, are first imitated in pursuit of an undeniable “originality”. Over time, as the music is indigenized, the Jamaican model loses its authority to varying degrees. The revolutionary ethos of reggae music is translated into local languages that articulate the particular politics of new cultural contexts. Echoes of the Jamaican source gradually fade. But new hybrid sounds return to their Jamaican origins, engendering polyvocal, cross-cultural dialogue. 

The contributors to this de­finitive volume lucidly articulate a cultural politics that acknowledges the far-reaching creativity of small-islanders with ancestral memories of continents of origin. The globalization of reggae music and its “wild child” dancehall is, indeed, an affi­rmation of the unquantifi­able potential of the Jamaican people to reclaim identities and establish ties of affiliation that are not circumscribed by the Caribbean Sea: To the world!

The book launch for Global Reggae will take place on Sunday, February 17, 2013, at 6:00 p.m. at PULS8, 38 Trafalgar Road.  The line-up of artistes for the evening’s programme will include Jah 9, Protoje, No-Maddz and Cali P. All are invited!

 Carolyn Cooper is Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies, University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica, and 1992, she initiated the establishment of the university’s International Reggae Studies Centre. Her publications include Sound Clash: Jamaican Dancehall Culture at Large and Noises in the Blood: Orality, Gender and the “Vulgar” Body of Jamaican Popular Culture.

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If you would like more information about this topic, or to schedule an interview, book signing or author tour with Carolyn Cooper , please call Donna Muirhead, Marketing and Sales Manager, UWI Press at 876-702-4081/2, 876-977-2659 or email uwipress_marketing@cwjamaica.com