The Influence of Dancehall Music in Today’s Society

The negative effect of dancehall music on the younger generation. Thesis: Although dancehall music has positive effects on the younger generation its negative effects outweighs the positive effects and is manifested mainly through the generally explicit, sexual and violent content of the music. This in turn negatively impact the younger generation leading them to embrace immoral sexual behaviours, encouraging violent behaviours and negatively influencing other aspect of their social values, speech and dress. Rationale: Dancehall, a highly rated Jamaican genre of music which is among one of the strongest influence on the younger generation and has also my behaviour as a young person. It is with this view in mind that I have decided to conduct a research on the impact of dancehall music on their attitude and behaviour. I am also pursuing a course in sociology in which this research will greatly help me completing in this course. It is also my short term dream to pursue a career in Psychology so this research will therefore help me in gaining experience in the field.

Presentation of main points:
Dancehall music in today’s society exposes young people to immoral sexual behaviours. Such kind of immoral sexual behaviour is due to the stimulating effect of sexual music our children gravitate towards. This raises much public health and policy concerns, especially in an era where first sexual debut is at the mean age of 11.4 years for boys and 12.8 years for girls in Jamaica according to statistics. The study, which centered on contraceptive use among adolescents, revealed that a number of children aged nine to 17, identified popular music as the main influence for experimenting with sex. Also in a 2009 Jamaican study, it shows that school children were more drawn to heavily tint public buses with lewd dancehall music in which female students would often sit in the laps of male students and engage in sexual activities. The study further pointed out that such kind of sexual behaviour demonstrated by adolescent was also prevalently practiced in taxis. Behavioral scientist and music educator, Dr Marilyn Anderson says despite the fact that the music is being laid out as part of the culture, there is no doubt that hard-core dancehall lyrics and content has an impact on the brain.

“Some rhythms, timbres and amplitudes of the music can affect emotional behaviour in humans, particularly the young,” she says. These indecent behaviours are now taking place because of the loose sexual content our dancehall music now contains. Furthermore it is shown that dancehall music stimulates and encourages violent behaviour among teens. Many dance hall artists use lyrics that portray violent scenes. Because of this, some critics argue that the music encourages violent behavior which, through studies have shown that graphical and violent lyrical content in some music can impact adolescent violent behaviour in a bizarre psychological way. It also shows that in terms of young persons being stimulated to be violent, more males were being influence than females.

According to the statistics on “Adolescent’s response to dancehall genre” done by Alexay D. Crawford, 19% males demonstrated violence in schools, in their communities and in their homes through the influence of violent music whereas on the other hand 13% females were. It also negatively influences their speech, dress, value and body language. Dancehall is not just the music, but it is a culture which impacts the dress, fashion and body language; it influence attitude. Dancehall dress leaves little of the women’s bodies to the imagination. It is this mindset that is now affecting so many of our young people in school.