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i Performing Otherness in Guyanais Dancehall: An Analysis of the Rude Bwoy and Bad Gyal

Personas

By

RASHANA VIKARA LYDNER

DISSERTATION

Submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

in

French and Francophone Studies

in the

OFFICE OF GRADUATE STUDIES

of the

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

DAVIS

Approved:

Julia Simon, Chair

Moradewun Adejunmobi

Tobias Warner

Eric Louis Russell

Committee in Charge

2022
ii

Abstract

This dissertation is at the intersections of Black popular culture, French Cultural studies, and Linguistic Anthropology. Primarily, this project focuses on the diffusion of Jamaican dancehall music and culture in Guyane (French Guiana), an Overseas Department and region of France. Dancehall music as a status granting institution (Stanley Niaah 2004) offers Guyanais artists radical politics along racial, gender, sexual, and linguistic lines. Rather than looking to France, Guyanais dancehall audiences and performers, I argue, find an influential source of identification in a trans-Caribbean culture. This phenomenon complicates our understanding of Francophone identity as Guyanais people choose to identify with a regional Black Caribbean identity even as they exist in the Francophone world. More specifically, I draw on semi-structured phone interviews from dancehall enthusiasts in Guyane, a linguistic analysis of code-switching between Jamaican Creole and Guyanese Creole, and a study of the embodiment of the "bad gyal" and "rude bwoy" personas to examine how Jamaican dancehall music is creatively appropriated in

Guyane.

iii

Dedication

Dedicated to 11-year-old me, who believed she would do great things. iv

Acknowledgments

To my dissertation committee:

To Julia Simon, my dissertation chair, thank you for having faith in me when I doubt myself. I appreciate that I have an advisor who is as excited as I am about my work. Your willingness to read with me even though my work is so interdisciplinary has been a blessing to me. You have shared so much knowledge and given me so much of your time, feedback, and advice, and for that, I am immensely grateful. Thank you for reading every copy of my writing from fellowship apps to job apps to this dissertation. Thank you for the good energy and positive vibes. I could not have asked for a better advisor and mentor. To Eric Louis Russell, thank you for teaching me how to write, for always insisting that I can do better and that I have the potential to be the best. Over the years, I have appreciated your quick feedback and critiques, without which this dissertation would not be the same. I am thankful for all the independent studies we did on Creolistics that have inspired the work in this dissertation and the work that I will do in the future. To Moradewun Adejunmobi, thank you for always asking me 501 questions. Some of which I have figured out, and others I am still working on. You have taught me to be such a better thinker. Your breath of knowledge and willingness to engage me like I am one of your peers have been a blessing. Thank you for your advice, suggestions, and motivation throughout the process of dissertation writing, job apps, and Grad school in general. I appreciate all the time you have spent thinking with me and helping me. E se. To Tobias Warner, thank you for teaching the amazing class on the Language Question that changed my perspective on the possibilities of what my research could look like and for exposing me to the extraordinary francophone authors that you study. Thank you for your v willingness to read with me or think with me through the Caribbean and Black Intellectual thought. I am appreciative of all the thoughtful feedback that you have given me over the years and for your constant support and motivation.

To my other mentors at Davis:

To Bettina Ng'weno, thank you for validating my interdisciplinary research interests and encouraging me to conduct anthropological research on dancehall and language. I have appreciated your willingness to share ideas and grow intellectually with me throughout this journey. I appreciate all the questions you have asked me during crucial moments on my dissertation journey that have helped enrich this project. To Vaidehi Ramanathan, thank you for teaching me how to be a better graduate student, how to engage with scholarly texts, and how to form my own research questions and agenda. I have learned so much from the courses I have taken with you and from our many talks. To Claire Goldstein, thank you for keeping me motivated throughout this 5-year journey and for your feedback on writing and dissertation advice. I am appreciative of your mentorship and grateful for the warmness and care that you show graduate students. To the French and Italian department at UC Davis, thank you for giving a first-generation college student from the little Island of Jamaica the opportunity to fulfill her dreams. My romance with French and the Francophone Caribbean has been long, over 16 years. With the completion of this dissertation, I feel like I have reached the pinnacle of my 11-year-old little girl's dream.

To mi good up good up fambily:

To my mummy, Althia Hill-Whittaker, without whom none of this would be possible. Thank you for believing in me. Thank you for striving for the best for us and ensuring that I was able to complete high school, undergrad, and now graduate school. Thank you for listening to me read vi each dissertation chapter while I made edits or asked if it made sense. Thank you for always saying "Yean man, it can gwan." Thank you for always reminding me that any work I do will always be important and necessary. Thank you for being the leader of my support system. Mi love Yuh wholeheep mummy. As you always say "here, she goes around the ring, ring, ring. And when you see her, way over yonder: tell her you love her." To Uncle Sheldon, thank you for always listening to me rant about graduate school life and my struggle with writing. I know that you said that you did not want to be in the acknowledgment section and that you will send me an invoice for all your hard work, but this is my many thanks in writing (so a baaay). To my best friend and sister from another mother, Iliana Ruiz, thank you for always being there through all the rejections and acceptances. For being an amazing friend and supporter. For inviting me into your Dominican family with open arms. Additionally thank you, Juana, Julio, and Arlene. To my aunty Marva, Clover Bennett, who has learned French with me since I was 11. Thank you for always believing in my crazy dreams and for reassuring me of all the greatness that I could accomplish. To my entire family back home, thank you for your constant prayers, support, and well wishes.

To my tribe:

To my best friends at Davis, Genesis Lara, and Mayowa Adegboyega, thank you both for keeping me grounded, well-fed, meet and share this journey together. vii To Ann-Dorie Webley, mi Jamaican chargie. Bwoi, yuh know seh mi couldn did manage Davis wid out yuh full support, motivation and vybz. All when mi nuh sure yuh sure. Eva a hype mi up and tell mi fi gwan thru. Mi appreciate yuh wholeheep! Bad Gyal out and stunting! To Mirna Reyna, thank you for the constant motivation, for never letting me be alone and lost through QE preparation to dissertation writing and the opportunity to experience these steps together. To Zunaira Kumal, the ultimate study and dissertation writing partner, thank you for the good vibes and constant motivation. Also, thank you for your willingness to think through Fanon with me. To Tyler Méndez Kline, thank you for your friendship and for thinking through power, cultural identity, and language with me during our many study sessions in Starbucks. To the beautiful Black women, Tamara Christiani, Victoria Mutua, and Analisa Brown, who have worked with me on zoom for over a year now, thank you for motivating me and guilting me into doing work almost every day. Anyways, all a unnu big up unu self,1 without you all none of this would be possible.

1 "Big up" is an expression of respect and recognition. It is an acknowledgment of how much you

mean to someone. The sentence can be translated as "You all should "Big Up" yourself. viii

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Abstract .................................................................................................................................... ii

Dedication ................................................................................................................................. iii

Acknowledgments ..................................................................................................................... iv

Table of Contents .................................................................................................................... viii

Chapter 1: Introduction ...............................................................................................................1

1.1 Nou French Guiana ...............................................................................................................1

1.2 Situating Black France ..........................................................................................................7

1.3 Black and Caribbean Popular Culture and Identity Negotiation ........................................... 10

1.4 Creolization ......................................................................................................................... 13

1.5 Creole Languages and Creolistics ........................................................................................ 18

1.6 On the Gendered Politics of Respectability and Reputation ................................................. 20

1.7 Overview of Chapters .......................................................................................................... 22

Chapter 2: The Socio-Historical and Political Background of La Guyane Française .................. 24

2.1 Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 24

2.2 Populations in Guyane ......................................................................................................... 26

Before the End of Slavery ..................................................................................................... 27

After the Abolition of Slavery ............................................................................................... 29

Brief History of Guyane ............................................................................................................ 30

From the Antilles .................................................................................................................. 32

Penal Colony (Le Bagne) ...................................................................................................... 33

The Gold Rush ...................................................................................................................... 33

Syrian-Lebanese Migration ................................................................................................... 34

2.3 After departmentalization .................................................................................................... 34

Small Immigration .................................................................................................................... 34

French Metropolitans ............................................................................................................ 35

Chinese Immigration ............................................................................................................. 35

2.4 Modernizing Guyane ........................................................................................................... 36

Le Plan Vert .......................................................................................................................... 36

Hmong Ethnic Group ............................................................................................................ 36

ix

Centre Spatial Guyanais ........................................................................................................ 37

Brazilians .............................................................................................................................. 38

Haitians ................................................................................................................................. 39

Surinamese Noirs Marrons .................................................................................................... 40

Guyanese .............................................................................................................................. 40

Summary of Current Population ............................................................................................ 41

2.5 Situating Guyane ................................................................................................................. 42

2.6 Complicating Guyanité ........................................................................................................ 46

2.7 What Does This Mean for Dancehall? ................................................................................. 55

Chapter 3: Dancehall Ka Global: Dancehall as A Status-Granting Institution ............................ 58

3. Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 58

3.1 Dancehall: Socio-Historical and Political Definition ............................................................ 58

3.2 Dancehall: Musical Definition ............................................................................................. 65

3.3 Dancehall as a Status-Granting Institution ........................................................................... 67

3.4 Dancehall: Locating Space, Race, Gender, and Sexuality .................................................... 70

3.4.1 Manifestation of Slackness and Petit Marronage in Dancehall ...................................... 76

3.5 Dancehall: Locating a Transnational Space ......................................................................... 81

Chapter 4: Stylizing the Other: Theoretical Frameworks and Considerations ............................. 84

4.1 Introduction: Guyanais Dancehall ........................................................................................ 84

4.2 Dancehall as a signifier of otherness .................................................................................... 88

4.3 Performance ........................................................................................................................ 93

4.4 Linguistic Stylization .......................................................................................................... 95

4.4.1 Enregisterment ............................................................................................................. 96

4.4.2 Language Varieties ..................................................................................................... 100

4.5 Performing Identities ......................................................................................................... 102

4.5.1 The Fact of Blackness ................................................................................................. 102

4.5.2 Performativity............................................................................................................. 105

4.5.3 Queerness ................................................................................................................... 109

4.6 Case study of Personas: Bamby and Jahyanaï .................................................................... 112

4.6.1 Bad Bwoy/Rude Bwoy Persona .................................................................................. 114

4.6.2 Bad Gyal Persona ....................................................................................................... 116

Chapter 5: Rude King Jahyanaï: From Cowboys to Rude Bwoys ............................................. 119

x

5.1 Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 119

5.2 From Cowboys to Rude Bwoys ......................................................................................... 119

5.3 The Rude Bwoy ................................................................................................................ 123

5.5 Petit Marronage ................................................................................................................. 129

5.6 Rude King Jahyanaï........................................................................................................... 133

5.7 The evolution of Jahyanaï's Rude Bwoy persona ............................................................... 135

5.7.1 The Rude Bwoy .......................................................................................................... 136

5.7.2 The Gyalis .................................................................................................................. 149

5.7.3 International Rude Bwoy ............................................................................................ 163

5.7.4 Linguistic Stylization of the Rude Bwoy ..................................................................... 174

5.8 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 177

Chapter 6 Bad Gyal Bamby: From Real Wifey to Lyrical Guns and S'habiller Sexy en Body

String ...................................................................................................................................... 179

6.1 Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 179

6.2 S'habiller Sexy en body string ........................................................................................... 181

6.3 Mainland France as Eldorado ............................................................................................ 184

6.4 Nous Les Antilles Guyane vs Eux Les Jamaïcains ............................................................. 189

6.5 Slackness and Vénus Noire................................................................................................ 194

6.6 The Evolution of the Bad Gyal .......................................................................................... 204

6.6.1 The Real Wifey Phase ................................................................................................ 204

6.6.2 Bad Gyal as the Rude Bwoy's Counterpart Phase ........................................................ 209

6.6.3 Embodying the Bad Gyal Phase: Towards Lyrical and Physical Confrontation ........... 215

6.6.4 Embodying the Bad Gyal Phase: Towards a Sexual Politics ........................................ 223

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