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Reggae Sounds

African and other languages make Thursday nights at a Hollywood dance club.

By Michelle Campagna
LALA reporter

Jamaican Live at The Dragonfly, a 21-and-over nightclub
Thursdays, starting at 10 p.m.
6510 Santa Monica Blvd. (between Hollywood and Vine)
$20; $15 with downloadable membership, $10 before 10:30

We had to dish out some extra dough for the cover charge and we stayed up past our bedtimes on a weeknight, but a fellow LALA correspondent and I loved Jamaican Live, a reggae-themed Thursday-night event at the Dragonfly on Santa Monica Blvd. The reason? We were delighted by the various languages we overheard during what otherwise would have been a typical night out.

Waiting to enter, I recognized French, Spanish, and Korean amidst conversations in English. Analee, my partying pal, distinguished an exchange in Wolof: "Nanga def?"/"Magni fi rek" ("How are you?"/"I'm good"). Wolof is the second-most-spoken language in Senegal, after French. She told me that reggae bars are hip in the capital city of Dakar; they have become refuges for those who want to drink and dance in the majority Muslim country, or escape the daily rigmarole by immersing themselves in reggae's slow tempos.

Deep reds and a pungent smell of hemp greeted us inside. So did Richard, a club-goer sporting dreadlocks and a Jamaican accent, who was eager to tell us about his parents; they had emigrated from Jamaica to open a reggae bar in L.A. As an homage to their eventual failure, he was planning to open his own on the Westside sometime soon. We continued to navigate our way through the dancing crowd, and when we needed to catch our breaths, we made our way toward the outside patio. There, we heard more dialogues in Wolof and Spanish. Though the blaring sound system proved to be a barrier, we still picked out a diverse linguistic gamut. The music, paralleling the polyglot atmosphere, included an assortment of genres: we heard different reggae groups (Sean Paul popped up frequently in the DJ's mix), hip-hop, and what sounded like Africando—an Afro-salsa band with members from Africa, Cuba, North America, and Europe.

Niki Millier, the event coordinator for The Dragonfly, said that 10-year-old Jamaican Live has a big "Ethiopian and Jamaican following," with the "mixture of reggae and hip-hop" drawing in people from all over the globe. I recommend Thursday nights at The Dragonfly to adults 21 and over, as long as they have saved up their ducats. Be prepared to move your body, though: this place is full of dancing, loud music, and multilingual crowds that have come to enjoy both!

Date Posted: 3/18/2008