This story was produced as part of the Introduction to Radio Production class at the Department of Television and Radio at Brooklyn College.

AUDIO STORY BY Jenna Romany

The Caribbean is known for many things; beautiful beaches, calypso music and dances like the conga line. But now, there’s a new dance that’s sweeping the region.

That dance? Daggering-- which takes dirty dancing to brand new, uh, heights. Forget your tangos and even your lambadas, daggering is straight to the point as the titles to daggering songs like "Bend Over" and "Up In Her Belly" proove.

Jenna Romany thinks this takes the partying reputation of her Caribbean culture to an unnecessary extreme. 

A transcript of the audio story is available after the jump...

[Ed. Note: This transcript reflects an experimental approach to narrative, and as such omits some of the track information our transcripts usually include.]

The Caribbean is known for many things; beautiful beaches, calypso music and dances like the conga line. But now, there’s a new dance that’s sweeping the region.

"I think that my expression when daggering first came out was the same as everybody else. It was shock and awe. It was like what the hell is going on here?"

The dance is called daggering, and it’s far from doing the conga line. It was developed by Jamaicans. You wonder what it looks like?  Here’s Cherelle Dinchong:

"Daggering for me is when someone aggressively thrusts their pelvic bone, into your derriere."

Wow!… ok. Some dancers go for more daring moves… like the one where the women are in handstands, with their legs spread part? The problem is that the dances can get out of hand and go terribly wrong. Here’s Cherelle again:

"They were daggering on a ledge and the next thing you know, the guy picked her up and threw her but his friend didn’t catch her so she actually fell and hit her head on the ground. "

Like the Macarena or the electric slide, a dance is nothing without music. Ok, it’s not exactly the same, but there are several daggering songs. Cherelle doesn’t really like them…

"The music is the worst. All of the songs are about sex and all of the songs are about men doing what they please to the women."

And here’s Omari Williams AKA DJ Official’s take on the music.:

"So basically, it starts with the rhythm; Secondly it’s the lyrics; the lyrics will have pro daggering lyrics. So you can take for instance, the RDX song, RDX has a song called “bend over”. Would you like me to sing some lyrics?"

OOO kay?

"There’s a part where he goes “girl let me push it inner inner inner inner inner inner inner”.

Busy Signal lyrics "Up in her Belly”: When me force it all up in there there, on the wall she crawl up...

Ok… I Did you catch that? If you didn’t, let me translate it for you. He’s saying “when I force it all up in there in there, on the wall she would crawl up in there in there…” Umm… I think you get the idea. I thought the lyrics blatantly objectify women. And I am not alone.

"When you look at daggering it shows women in a very, very poor light."

That was Joel. But I found that some people disagreed with this view. Here’s Sherice:

"In every society or every culture they have something similar in my opinion even if it’s r&b you know you rubbing or you stroking on someone so I don’t think it degrades women."

I guess that music and dances represent a culture and life style. So I wondered… is daggering an accurate reflection of the Caribbean culture? Here’s DJ Official:

"I don’t think that it’s a one sided or reflect the culture as a whole. But, West Indian culture has the ability to talk about sex and look at sex not as something so taboo as America would look at it"

And here’s what Cherelle has to say about it:

"In many ways the music can reflect a big stereotype that Caribbean women are passive and just allow their husbands to take control of them and do as they please"

As a Caribbean person I am worried that the world will see this dance and associate it with my culture. I understand that we enjoy music and have carnivals… and we party in the streets and all but… to me this is vulgar and offensive. It has taken partying to the extreme.