Reggae Dancehall Music Defined

Series Summary

Reggae Dancehall is a rhythmic form of popular Jamaican music that had a major influence on modern Hip Hop. In Reggae Dancehall, like Hip Hop, typically an MC raps over rhythms or beats produced by a DJ using turntables. Also like Hip Hop, some find Dancehall's lyrics to be crass and bawdy because of its sexual overtones, popular with the Jamaican youth. Dancehall is unlike traditional Reggae in that it is sped up, and many argue whether it should even be considered an extension of Reggae music at all.

In this free video series, our expert Safi Thomas will tell you all about reggae dancehall, including how to do chest isolations, waist isolations, and the dutty whine. Safi will also show you how to do the bogle, the pepperseed, the butterfly, and upper and lower body waves. He will tell you about east coast reggae dancehall, and teach how to freestyle your own dance to reggae dancehall. Finally, Safi will give you a full demonstration of reggae dancehall dance.

Video Transcript

"On behalf of Expert Village I'm Safi Thomas from the Hip Hop Dance Conservatory here in NYC. Today we're going to bring you reggae dance hall moves. So today we're talking about reggae and dance hall, the music that you hear in the background; this is current dance hall. Dance hall is a lot faster than what reggae use to be. Reggae stands from around 60s, mid 60s late 60s. It had a lot of drum rhythms but they were all done by hand as dance hall starts to become popular it was because of the drum machine. The ability to make rhythms that were very deep 808 kick drum and had a very very tough bass. That changed the game in the relation to what dance hall music was like what we're going to cover dance hall the dance and the different dances that came about in the relation to dance hall."