What does resistance sound like? Beyond the venerable tradition of protest songs, it can live in something more subtle: a voice, a rhythm, a timbre, a way of claiming space through music itself.
Racquel Bernard has spent years thinking about those questions in reggae music. In a genre whose history has often centered male voices, women artists have long challenged sexism, shaped the music’s evolution and expanded its expressive power—often without receiving equal recognition in the record books. Bernard’s work explores how resistance is embedded not only in lyrics, but in sound itself.
We sat down with the 2026 commencement speaker to talk about what first drew her to this subject, and what listening closely can reveal about music, power and history.
Where did you grow up?
I moved from Jamaica to Florida when I was eight years old. My family moved to Miami first, then eventually to Coral Springs near Fort Lauderdale. I attended two high schools: Glades High School in South Florida and later Auburndale Senior High School in Polk County after my family moved to Central Florida.
You attended Dartmouth College for your undergraduate degree. What led you there?
A friend of mine in high school told me he regretted not applying to Ivy League schools and encouraged me not to shortchange myself. So I applied to a few schools, including Dartmouth. I really fell in love with the campus.
What was your undergraduate education like?
I majored in African and African American Studies. According to one of my professors, my double major was extracurricular activities. I sang with the Dartmouth College Gospel Choir, participated in Christian fellowship groups, I founded a praise dance team called For Your Glory, did stage management, directed a Black History Month tribute, and worked several campus jobs. I did all sorts of things—at one point I had seven different jobs on campus, staying true to the stereotype that Jamaicans have a thousand jobs.
You worked for a while before you pursued graduate education. What took you on your path to research?
During my time at Dartmouth I became involved with the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship program, and that experience introduced me to research and the possibility of becoming a professor. After working for a bit, I pursued a master’s degree in cultural studies at the University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica. I initially wanted to study social movements and social change, but through reggae studies I began focusing on music, especially the work of Peter Tosh.
Your dissertation is titled “Empress Epistemologies.” Who are the empresses?
Black women reggae artists—artists like Judy Mowatt and Marcia Griffiths, two of the I-Threes who performed with Bob Marley, Queen Ifrica, Koffee, Lila Iké.
What brought you to this subject?
Reggae scholarship has traditionally focused heavily on male artists and on bass-heavy sonic elements. I wanted to highlight the contributions women have made to reggae and dancehall music and to show that higher vocal registers and women’s vocal practices are equally important to understanding the genre.
Vocal practices?
Yes. What I primarily analyze are vocal registers—chest voice, head voice, falsetto, harmonization, vocal layering—and I explore how those musical choices create social and political meaning. Chest voice resonates lower in the body and often conveys strength or groundedness. Head voice resonates higher and can create a lighter or more ethereal sound. There’s also a transitional moment where you have mixed voice. That’s where a voice is resonating in the chest, but also resonating in the head. And then falsetto is extends the head voice even more and it’s like kind of like the highest placement.
What I’m interested in is how singers use those registers to create political meaning, to communicate that political meaning.
What sorts of intellectual currents are you finding with this technical analysis?
Well, for one thing, Black Caribbean women’s resistance aligns more closely with Latin American than North American feminism. It roughly aligns with Alice Walker’s idea of “womanism,” although these women would not necessarily call themselves “womanists.” But regardless, Jamaican feminist traditions often operate differently from North American ones, and reggae women articulate their own theories of liberation through music and performance.
Part of what I’m doing here is recovering bodies of knowledge that are created by these women artists, and their theory of knowledge that they create, through their music, through their voices and how they understood the world.
Your final chapter includes interviews with women reggae artists in Los Angeles.
I interviewed female reggae singers and one dj in LA, and it gave me a chance to learn how they used their vocal registers. I incorporated their reflections with my own experiences as a singer.
Yes, you are a reggae artist too.
My artist name is Jahmi Roc, which means “Jah is my rock.” I started recording music in 2021 as a way to process and heal after a difficult period in my life. Over time the music became more intentional and professionalized.
I sing across genres, but recently I’ve leaned much more heavily into reggae. I’ve worked with several producers over the years and now collaborate with producer Dale Virgo at DZL Records. Over the past several months I’ve been releasing a new track nearly every month, and I have an EP coming out later this year.