In
Jamaica
Jamaica (; ) is an island country situated in the Caribbean Sea. Spanning in area, it is the third-largest island of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean (after Cuba and Hispaniola). Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, and west of His ...
n
popular culture
Popular culture (also called mass culture or pop culture) is generally recognized by members of a society as a set of practices, beliefs, artistic output (also known as, popular art or mass art) and objects that are dominant or prevalent in a ...
, a sound system is a group of
disc jockey
A disc jockey, more commonly abbreviated as DJ, is a person who plays recorded music for an audience. Types of DJs include Radio personality, radio DJs (who host programs on music radio stations), club DJs (who work at a nightclub or music f ...
s,
engineers
Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the ...
and
MCs playing
ska
Ska (; ) is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1950s and was the precursor to rocksteady and reggae. It combined elements of Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazz and rhythm and blues. Ska is characterized by a walki ...
,
rocksteady or
reggae
Reggae () is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1960s. The term also denotes the modern popular music of Jamaica and its diaspora. A 1968 single by Toots and the Maytals, " Do the Reggay" was the first popular song to use ...
music. The sound system is an important part of Jamaican culture and history.
History
The sound system concept first became popular in the 1940s, in the parish of
Kingston.
DJs would load up a truck with a generator, turntables, and huge speakers and set up street parties.
Tom the Great Sebastian, founded by Chinese-Jamaican businessman Tom Wong, was the first commercially successful sound system and influenced many sound systems that came later.
[ Gooden 2012] In the beginning, the DJs played American
rhythm and blues
Rhythm and blues, frequently abbreviated as R&B or R'n'B, is a genre of popular music that originated in African-American communities in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly ...
music, but as time progressed and more local music was created, the sound migrated to a local flavour.
The sound system remained successful when the conservative, BBC-modeled Jamaican establishment radio refused to play the people's music, while DJs could play whatever they wanted and favored local sounds such as reggae.
The sound systems were big business, and represented one of the few sure ways to make money in the unstable economy of the area. The promoter or DJ made his profit by charging admission and selling food and alcohol; often thousands of people were in attendance.
By the mid-1950s, sound systems were more popular at parties than live musicians, and by the second half of the decade, custom-built systems began to appear from the workshops of specialists such as
Hedley Jones, who constructed wardrobe-sized speaker cabinets known as "House
of Joy". It was also around this time that Jamaica's first superstar DJ and MC,
Count Machuki
Winston Cooper (c.1929–1995), better known as Count Matchuki or Count Machuki, was a Jamaican deejay.
Biography
Cooper was born c.1929 in Kingston, Jamaica,Moskowitz, David V. (2006) ''Caribbean Popular Music: an Encyclopedia of Reggae, Me ...
, rose to prominence. As time progressed, sound systems became louder—capable of playing bass frequencies at 30,000 watts or more, with similar wattage attainable at the mid-range and high frequencies—and far more complex than their predecessors.
[ Barrow 1997] Competition between these sound systems was fierce, and eventually two DJs emerged as the stars of the scene:
Clement "Coxsone" Dodd
Clement Seymour "Coxsone" Dodd (26 January 1932 – 4 May 2004) was a Jamaican record producer who was influential in the development of ska and reggae in the 1950s, 1960s and beyond.
He was nicknamed "Coxsone" at school due to his talent ...
, and
Duke Reid
Arthur "Duke" Reid CD (21 July 1915 – 1 January 1975) was a Jamaican record producer, DJ and label owner.
He ran one of the most popular sound systems of the 1950s called Reid's Sound System, whilst Duke himself was known as The Troja ...
.
Besides the DJ, who rapped over the music, there was also a
selector
Selector may refer to:
*Selector, electrical or mechanical component, a switch
*''Selector'', music scheduling software for radio stations created by Radio Computing Services
*Selector, of music, otherwise known as a disc jockey
*Selector, a pers ...
, who selected the music/rhythm tracks.
The popularity of a sound system was mainly contingent on one thing: having new music. In order to circumvent the release cycle of the American record labels, the two sound system superstars turned to record production.
Initially, they produced only singles for their own sound systems, known as "Exclusives" or
Dubplate
A dubplate is an acetate disc usually of 10 inches diameter, traditionally used by Recording studio, studios to test recordings prior to Audio mastering, mastering for the subsequent pressing of a vinyl record, but pioneered by reggae Reggae sound ...
s—a limited run of one copy per song. What began as an attempt to replicate the American
R&B sound using local musicians evolved into a uniquely Jamaican musical genre:
ska
Ska (; ) is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1950s and was the precursor to rocksteady and reggae. It combined elements of Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazz and rhythm and blues. Ska is characterized by a walki ...
.
This shift was due partly to the fact that as American-style
R&B was embraced by a largely white, teenage audience and evolved into
rock and roll
Rock and roll (often written as rock & roll, rock 'n' roll, or rock 'n roll) is a Genre (music), genre of popular music that evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s. It Origins of rock and roll, originated from Africa ...
, sound system owners created—and played—a steady stream of the singles the people preferred: fast-shuffle boogies and ballads. In response to this shift in supply, Jamaican producers introduced to their work some of the original elements of the Jamaican sound: rhythm guitars strumming the offbeat and snare-drum emphasis on the third beat, for example.
As this new musical form became more popular, both Dodd and Reid began to move more seriously into music production. Coxsone Dodd's production studio became the famous
Studio One, while
Duke Reid
Arthur "Duke" Reid CD (21 July 1915 – 1 January 1975) was a Jamaican record producer, DJ and label owner.
He ran one of the most popular sound systems of the 1950s called Reid's Sound System, whilst Duke himself was known as The Troja ...
founded Treasure Isle.
As sound systems continued to gain in popularity through the 1960s and 1970s, they became politicized in many instances. The DJs would often satirize current affairs and local events, taking on a “singing newspaper” role.
Many sound systems, and their owners, were labelled as supporters of a particular political party (such as the
PNP or the
JLP), but most of the sound systems tried to maintain political neutrality. Nevertheless, as a cultural and economic phenomenon, the sound system was affected by the vast socio-political changes taking place in Jamaica at this time.
An important part of sound system culture is the
sound clash
A sound clash is a musical competition where crew members from opposing sound systems pit their skills against each other. Sound clashes take place in a variety of venues, both indoors and outdoors, and primarily feature reggae and dancehall music. ...
, an organized battle between two systems. The Guinness Sounds of Greatness is one of many such clashes. In 2009, the Guinness clash was organized into three parts: a "juggling" round, where each system gets 15 minutes to get the crowd going; a "tune fe tune" exchange of "commercial releases"; and a "dub-fe-dub", when the systems alternate "specials done specifically for the sound system playing the recording".
The culture of the Sound System was brought to the UK with the mass immigration of Jamaicans in the 1960s and 1970s. Notable UK Sound Systems include Sir Coxsone Outernational,
Jah Shaka
Jah Shaka, also known as the Zulu Warrior is a Jamaican reggae/dub sound system operator who has been operating a South East London-based, roots reggae Jamaican sound system since the early 1970s. His name is an amalgamation of the Rastafarian t ...
, Channel One,
Aba Shanti-I
Aba Shanti-I (born Joseph Smith) is a sound system operator and dub producer from the UK. Aba and his sound system have been playing through UK and Europe for over 30 years. He has been a resident sound system at Notting Hill Carnival since 19 ...
, Jah Observer,
Quaker City, Iration Steppas, Fatman International and
Saxon Studio International
Saxon Studio International is a reggae sound system from London, the first UK sound system to win an international competition.
Saxon Studio International began operating in Lewisham, South London, in 1976.
The sound came to prominence in the e ...
. One of the first sound systems in the United States was Downbeat the Ruler, founded in
Bronx, New York
The Bronx () is a Boroughs of New York City, borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the U.S. state, state of New York (state), New York. It is south of Westchester County, New York, Westchester County; north and east of the ...
, in the late 1970s.
These sound systems were the method in which these migrants were able to maintain their cultural connection with their roots. They broadcast the remixed samples of reggae beats and created an underground music culture. This culture was separate from the larger population which relied on the radio to provide popular music. These sound systems were played in warehouses, clubs, and street corners. This was not simply just music played on the radio for a few people to hear, but a culture that involved many people was developed out of being consumed by sound through large sound systems. Sound system culture presented what Julian Henriques refers to as sonic dominance. He is strategic in his usage of the word dominance because it is visceral and this term embodies the "power and the pleasure of the sonic" (452). The sound is an "enveloping, immersive, and intense experience" (451). The experience is so strong that "sounds carry people, as much as people carry sounds; 'vibes' find bodies to move" (230). Dance acts as a natural, immediate response to dancehall sounds, and as Henriques puts it, "bodies have no musical burden to bear; rather they are borne along, even berthed, by music."
According to Henriques, the sound system has also played an influential role in the global influence of Jamaican music internationally.
It has "proved itself to be one of the most efficient of musical distribution mechanisms," (218) which has resulted in Jamaican music's influence on genres such as
Hip hop,
Jungle
A jungle is land covered with dense forest and tangled vegetation, usually in tropical climates. Application of the term has varied greatly during the past recent century.
Etymology
The word ''jungle'' originates from the Sanskrit word ''ja ...
, and
Dubstep
Dubstep is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in South London in the early 2000s. The style emerged as a UK garage offshoot that blended 2-step rhythms and sparse dub production, as well as incorporating elements of broken be ...
.
While part of its influence can literally be credited to its superior audio
fidelity
Fidelity is the quality of faithfulness or loyalty. Its original meaning regarded duty in a broader sense than the related concept of ''fealty''. Both derive from the Latin word ''fidēlis'', meaning "faithful or loyal". In the City of London f ...
over radio, the sound system also acts as a symbolic transmitter of shared experiences across the
African diaspora
The African diaspora is the worldwide collection of communities descended from native Africans or people from Africa, predominantly in the Americas. The term most commonly refers to the descendants of the West and Central Africans who were e ...
.
In popular culture
The 1978 Jamaican film ''
Rockers'' featured authentic culture, characters and mannerisms of the 1970s Jamaican reggae scene, featuring
Leroy "Horsemouth" Wallace
Leroy "Horsemouth" Wallace (born 22 August 1950) is a Jamaican drummer who worked for several years at Studio One, and has worked with numerous reggae artists including The Gladiators, Inner Circle,Hebdige, Dick (1987) ''Cut 'n' Mix: Culture, ...
with his wife and children and in his own home, and the
Harry J Studios in Kingston.
The film ''
Babylon
''Bābili(m)''
* sux, 𒆍𒀭𒊏𒆠
* arc, 𐡁𐡁𐡋 ''Bāḇel''
* syc, ܒܒܠ ''Bāḇel''
* grc-gre, Βαβυλών ''Babylṓn''
* he, בָּבֶל ''Bāvel''
* peo, 𐎲𐎠𐎲𐎡𐎽𐎢 ''Bābiru''
* elx, 𒀸𒁀𒉿𒇷 ''Babi ...
'', released in 1980, so accurately captured the raw smoldering tensions between White and
British Afro-Caribbeans centered around
Brixton
Brixton is a district in south London, part of the London Borough of Lambeth, England. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London. Brixton experienced a rapid rise in population during the 19th ce ...
in the 1970s and 1980s, that it would be given an
X rating
An X rating is a rating used in various countries to classify films that have content deemed suitable only for adults. It is used when the violent or sexual content of a film is considered to be potentially disturbing to general audiences.
Aust ...
in the UK and blacklisted in the United States, due to its depiction of
institutional racism
Institutional racism, also known as systemic racism, is a form of racism that is embedded in the laws and regulations of a society or an organization. It manifests as discrimination in areas such as criminal justice, employment, housing, health ...
. Believed to be too incendiary for general distribution, it would be buried and forgotten following its premiere at
Cannes
Cannes ( , , ; oc, Canas) is a city located on the French Riviera. It is a communes of France, commune located in the Alpes-Maritimes departments of France, department, and host city of the annual Cannes Film Festival, Midem, and Cannes Lions I ...
, and would take another 40 years before it would be re-released by
Kino Lorber
Kino Lorber is an international film distribution company based in New York City. Founded in 1977, it was originally known as Kino International until it was acquired by and merged into Lorber HT Digital in 2009. It specializes in art house films, ...
in 2019 and made available in the United States on
The Criteron Channel in 2020.
Menelik Shabazz's 2011 documentary ''
The Story of Lover's Rock'' tells the story of the intimate dance, soundsystems, and social backdrop of the Afro-Caribbean community of South London in the ’70s and ’80s.
''
Lovers Rock'', part of the 2020 Amazon anthology series ''Small Axe'', is
Steve McQueen's paean to the
lovers rock genre and its influences across space and between the diaspora communities of the "Black Atlantic" culture of the
British West Indian community of 1980s London.
See also
*
Dub music
*
Music of Jamaica
*
Rocksteady
*
Sound clash
A sound clash is a musical competition where crew members from opposing sound systems pit their skills against each other. Sound clashes take place in a variety of venues, both indoors and outdoors, and primarily feature reggae and dancehall music. ...
*
Toasting (Jamaican music)
Toasting (rap in other parts of the Anglo Caribbean), or deejaying is the act of talking or chanting, usually in a monotone melody, over a rhythm or beat by a reggae deejay. It can either be improvised or pre-written.
Toasting developed in ...
References
Bibliography
*
*
*
* Henriques, J. F. (2003). "Sonic Dominance and the Reggae Sound System Session." In M. Bull and Les Back, eds. ''The Auditory Culture Reader''. Oxford: Berg, pp. 451–480.
ook Section Goldsmiths Research Online
External links
"Soundsystem Splashdown"feature from the London-based ''New Musical Express'', circa 1981
*John Constantinides
2002. Dread Library
{{reggae
Reggae culture
Jamaican culture