Dancehall Queen Carlene Endorses ‘Dancehall Week’ In Jamaica
Dancehall Queen Carlene is endorsing the move to have an official Dancehall Week starting in Reggae Month 2024.
Speaking to DancehallMag at the media launch of Dancehall Week on Thursday at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel in Kingston, Carlene said that she originally had an idea to implement a week dedicated to Dancehall pre-pandemic. However, she is happy that it will finally be set in motion, even if it is by another entity.
“I’m kinda hurt because Whirlwind Entertainment and myself had this idea for 2020 and Covid came. So it kinda hurt, but, (I’m) happy because we still had it in the making and as I’ll always say: the cake has enough slice for everybody. But, we did come up with this. We had a launch where we were doing Dancehall Week with the Dancehall Road March,” she said.
Dancehall Week is being spearheaded by Dancehall Lifestyle with endorsement from the Ministry of Culture, Gender, Entertainment and Sport and the Ministry of Tourism. This will be the first official launch of such an initiative.
The week will be from Tuesday, February 13, 2024 and will culminate on February 19, 2024. On February 18, 2024, there will be a Jamaican Road March parade with costumes available from five local designers.
Carlene further said that Whirlwind Entertainment still has its slew of events in the making.
“We have Dancehall Fashion Week coming up in November at MECA night club. As I said, great minds think alike,” she told DancehallMag.
She however added that she is open to collaborating with Dancehall Lifestyle in the future for the success of the series of events.
“Nothing is impossible ‘cause you know we’re one Jamaican and one Dancehall. We don’t wanna be in any segregation. So, it’s just that Covid came and we put it off for 2020,” DHQ Carlene said
I’m Known as the “Original Dancehall Queen”, Carlene is often credited for making fashion, female sexuality and provocative dancing a part of Dancehall in the 90s, when the genre was known primarily for its ‘rude bwoy’ antics, male bravado, and pants length and merino.
With all her years of experience and expertise of all things Dancehall-related, Carlene also reasoned that the themes being explored in the genres nowadays need to be reassessed.
“It has changed for good and bad. It’s a little watered down but they say it’s growth. I don’t see it as growing ‘cause you’ll hear a song for 10 weeks and you don’t remember it after that so I’m kinda worried about that. But, hopefully they’ll get it together ‘cause we’re growing as a nation and Dancehall is no different,” she said.