Dancing with Musicking in Zimdancehall: Divergent Discourses and Interpretations

This chapter explores the significance of the temporality, spatiality and embodiment Zimdancehall holds for the ghetto population, particularly youths in Zimbabwe. The approach for this chapter privileges neither insider nor outsider knowledge but capitalises on dance, semiotics, discourse and textual analyses to access the Zimdancehall cultural space. This cultural space is sustained through dynamic dance and music, allowing ghetto youths to perform their agency by employing bodies and voices rebellious to those who denied them political, social and economic dialogues. The messages and realities expressed by ghetto youths through Zimdancehall are stereotyped and misunderstood by outsiders. The misinterpretation results in the censorship of the culture by the government and criticism by the public. This study analysed the gestures and songs accused of enacting moral decadency using analytical tools that recognise the economic and political landscape in which Zimdancehall is produced. Therefore, this chapter advocates for a shift from judgemental frameworks towards sustainable frameworks that yield justice within the world of Zimdancehall culture, other than judging and silencing the voices of the ghetto youths.