King Yellowman

Jamaican deejayYellowman divided a country with his bawdy songs and his very body: he has beenwildly popular among dancehall fans, yet widely despised by polite society. Eventhough his contribution to Jamaican musical culture is immense, scholars haveignored him and reggae histories have largely misunderstood him.



King Yellowman: MeaningfulBodies in Jamaican Dancehall Culture is the first serious study of one Jamaica's most significant artistsand dancehall’s first major international star. It is a critical biography designedto satisfy fans while furthering academic discourse on dancehall by offering anew perspective on the way Yellowman negotiates the slackness/culture binary inJamaican music.



Based on years of ethnographicfieldwork, Brent Hagerman begins with the compelling story of Winston Foster’searly life as an abandoned ghetto outcast and his hard-fought journey to becomethe King of Dancehall, then goes on to a critical exploration of themarginalization of people with albinism in Jamaica and the use of slackness inCaribbean music. Through slackness and his mobilization of Rastafarian symbols,Yellowman subverts embedded Jamaican cultural notions of sexuality, gender, andrace to overcome his cultural displacement, promote his yellow body as sexuallyappealing and forge a place for himself among the Jamaican body politic.