What started out as a few street dances in the early 1960s and 1970s has now burgeoned into a barrage of street sessions, where revellers launch out in the early morning, and party until sunrise.
These street dances which have gained some form of copyright legitimacy, coining names like Passa Passa, Weddy Weddy, Japsey Thursdays, Uptown Mondays, Hot Mondays, Flankers Fridays, Feelings Fridays and Beenie Tuesdays, and a host of others, have now come to prominence within the last several years.
What started out as a trickle has now turned into a flood. A flood, because it is now routine to have two or three of these dances on any one night, seven days per week.
The question some are asking is, whether or not having so many dances everyday is an overkill. For Dr Donna Hope, Lecturer in Reggae Studies at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona, it is not so, as all the dances receive adequate support. In fact, on all the nights, at every one of the dances, the venues are usually filled to capacity, even though several are being held every night or morning rather.
On a typical Wednesday night, which runs into Thursday morning, one is able to find patrons partying hard at Weddy Weddy, put on by the veteran sound system owner/selector Wee Pow of Stone Love. After Weddy Weddy, which usually ends between 2:00 am and 2:30 am, everyone launches out to Passa Passa, where they party for another four hours. At Passa Passa, virtually everyone who was at Weddy Weddy or at a dance put on by deejay Lushus, goes there to dance away the rest of the morning.
On Mondays it is the same routine, this is also the case for Tuesdays (pronounced -Chewsdays- in some parts of the dancehall), and for every day for the entire week, the party-hopping routine continues virtually unceasing, that is until the sun comes up.
