Daggering

What is Daggering?

Daggering is a dancehall dance from Jamaica, and it is about as blunt as dance gets. Two people dance together, usually a man and a woman. One drives their crotch or hips hard against the other's buttocks, or the other way round, mixed with fast, frantic whole-body movement. The point is a public make-believe of sex, done to dancehall tracks. The activity has gone on in Jamaican dancehalls for years, but the name is new: people have only called it daggering since about 2006. It is not a folk tradition with set figures. It is a party style, picked up by watching others on the floor and, lately, on screens.

Where does Daggering come from?

The dancing is older than its name. The behaviour was on show in Jamaica's dancehalls for years before anyone called it daggering; the label arrived with the dancehall wave of 2006. Some see it as a cousin of 'cabin stabbing', a musical style with its own dance found elsewhere in the Caribbean. Reggae historian David Katz, writing in Mojo magazine, credits a run of dancehall videos and artists with making the style widely known. From there, clips posted on YouTube carried it far beyond Jamaica, and people around the world began trying it. Recent as a named craze, then, even if the ground it grew on is not.

How is Daggering danced?

There is no routine to memorise. The core picture is a couple pressed close: one dancer drives their pelvic area against the other's backside, and the pairing can go either way round, man into woman or woman into man. Around that centre both dancers throw themselves into fast, frantic movement, using the whole body. Jamaica's broadcast regulator offers the plainest summary: the public mimicry of sex acts and positions, done in the open. Since this happens on a crowded party floor rather than a stage, the dance belongs to whoever is dancing it that night.

The music of Daggering

Daggering is danced to dancehall, the Jamaican style behind the island's party scene. Several artists have cut records made for the dance specifically: among them Vybz Kartel, Mr. Vegas, Spice, Popcaan, Mavado, Shenseea, Dexta Daps, Ding Dong, Aidonia and Major Lazer. Some of the songs are as blunt as the moves, which is part of what drew the broadcast ban down on the scene.

When and where Daggering is danced

The setting is Jamaica's dancehalls, the clubs and parties that gave dancehall music its name, and the dancing has gone on there for years. Its wider fame came through music videos and then YouTube clips rather than any festival or rite, as people watched, copied and posted attempts of their own. In 2009 the Jamaican government answered the craze with a broadcast ban, keeping songs and videos that promote or suggest daggering off radio and television. Singers pushed back, saying the ban limits free speech and variety.

Styles of Daggering

No formal schools or regional styles are recorded for this dance. The nearest relative named is 'cabin stabbing', a Caribbean style of music with its own dance that some writers call roughly the same thing. Dances often mentioned alongside daggering are grinding, twerking and Surra de Bunda, offered as points of comparison rather than versions of it. With no set figures to learn, what a couple does on the night is theirs to decide.

What Daggering means

Daggering sits at the centre of an argument about taste and control. In 2009 Jamaica's government ordered radio and television to drop songs and videos with openly sexual content. The broadcast regulator defined the word as dancehall shorthand for hardcore or 'dry' sex, or the acting-out of sex acts in public, and barred any recording, live song or video that promotes or suggests it. Singers protested that this stifles free speech. Doctors added a caution: by 2016 the Caribbean Quarterly could report many Jamaican cases of damaged penile tissue, with lasting harm possible. One commentator points out that the waltz, tango and belly dance were all banned in their day, and sees the alarm as mostly about novelty.

Questions people ask about Daggering

Good reading and sources

• Daggering on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data
• Videos of Daggering on YouTubeSearch results, not chosen by EveryGhunghroo