Abstract

The question of names and naming is important in many performance cultures, Zimdancehall included. The Zimdancehall movement’s chanters, their stage names, riddim names, chants and record label names, demonstrate the performative power of language to name people whose existence in crowded ghettos speaks of anonymity and marginality. Many scholars have seen Zimdancehall’s subversive nature as a cultural antidote to the domination of a repressive state which seeks to control, not just what people say and hear, but also what they create. This is seen most importantly in the tightly controlled space of radio and television broadcasting. Thus, Zimdancehall is regarded as something that challenges this circumscription by, firstly before its co-option into the mainstream, circulating in spaces of marginality (the passa-passa spaces, kombis and barbershops, all ghetto spaces) and, secondly, offering a platform that reaches the majority in their language. This chapter extends that thesis by arguing that the self-naming of Zimdancehall artistes has a double-pronged effect of deformation and formation ([de]formation), challenging existing cultural codes of naming and the culture(s) that undergird(s) those cultural codes of naming, thereby forming new practices of naming and their attendant cultural practices. This is a political act which, on the one hand, challenges parent cultures (for who names us but our parents?) and what they represent, and, on the other hand, challenges the anonymity of living in the ghetto. The chapter utilises an onomastics perspective and a selection of nicknames, riddim names and record label names from the Zimdancehall movement that have made it into the mainstream to argue that the names create new words and new cultures that represent the paradigms of action by which Zimdancehall artistes create new identities and possibilities for themselves and their fans.

Original language	en
Pages (from-to)	151-177
Publication status	Published - 2024