Fashion as dancehall credit

commentary

Fashion deserves credits

Dancehall fashion histories should credit designers, stylists, brands, dancers and video-image workers, not only artists wearing the looks.

Stance: artist image vs fashion labour

commentary

Clarks 'fever': organic cultural branding vs uncompensated endorsement

“Everybody haffi ask weh mi get mi Clarks”

Vybz Kartel's 2010 'Clarks' trilogy drove a reported surge in Clarks sales in Jamaica and the diaspora, reviving the long dancehall association between the shoe and inner-city style (documented in Al Fingers' book 'Clarks in Jamaica'). Commentary split over the economics: some celebrated it as proof of dancehall's power to move product and market Jamaican style, while others noted the artist received no endorsement fee, contrasting it with Run-DMC's Adidas and Nelly's Nike deals and raising the question of uncredited/unpaid cultural labour (Jamaica Gleaner, 'Clarks shoes and the power of words', 30 Apr 2010).

Stance: dancehall as free-flowing organic tribute and brand marketing engine vs artists/culture generating brand value without compensation or credit

editorial

Who owns the move? Dancers as uncredited creative labour

As street-dance videos and DVDs made dancers briefly famous in the 2000s, commentary questioned the economics of the dance-song feedback loop: dancers invented moves (Bogle, Willie Bounce, Dutty Wine, Nuh Linga and others) that fuelled hit records and riddims, yet often went uncredited and unpaid while artists and promoters captured the value. The Jamaica Gleaner's 'Dancehall's dancers go hungry' (28 Apr 2013) documented dancers' complaints that the collapse of street dances under the Noise Abatement crackdown left them without income.

Stance: dancers as originators owed credit and pay for moves that drive songs vs a system where recording artists and promoters reap the returns