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Gordon 1

Passa Passa is the Jamaican patois for “mix up, mix up,”. It started in February 2003 as a street dance or block where the community could get together in a safe environment to enjoy themselves. It is held every Wednesday night and starts around 2am and goes until approximately 7am. If you go to Passa Passa, it is not unusual to go straight to work from this party after a quick wash and change of clothes.

Some persons are of the mindset that Passa Passa is all about slackness with women who are scantily clad while the men get intoxicated on liquor and marijuana. People most often associate the dance with lewd dressing and rowdy behavior. To some extent this perception is true but I also had to take into account that many of persons at Passa Passa were reflecting one of the major purposes of dancehall--- its ability to provide psycho-physiological relief from the various forms stress associated with daily living. It is indeed the cultural space where persons go to unwind and forget about their trouble through the various forms of entertainment there.

For some this entertainment comes in the form watching scantily clad women and men dance to the latest dances or by enjoying when somebody is teased by the DJ. As a matter of fact in terms of aesthetics scantily clad women were not all that evident at Passa Passa in my opinion it was quite the opposite. Patrons were dressed in the latest dancehall fashions, which ranged from semi-casual to semi-formal. Not all of the persons were dressed like this in fact there were a few women who dressed lewdly but that were only a handful as was evident by one female character who entered the dance with her bosom spilling out of her top pretty much revealing every inch of her breasts for every and anybody to see. This behavior in turn highlighted another one of dancehall’s core elements--- sexuality and identity. These women dress in this way to attract attention from other...