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Cultural diversity and popular music in the UK

A New Chapter of Dub: Tracing the Technological and Conceptual Influences of Jamaican Musicians and Producers on British Popular Music and Society1

David BOUSQUET

Résumés

La littérature académique sur la musique populaire jamaïcaine a mis en évidence son lien vital avec les communautés caribéennes émigrées au Royaume-Uni et, plus généralement, avec l'industrie britannique de la musique pop. Si la scène reggae britannique a fait l'objet de nombreuses recherches, l'influence des artistes jamaïcains sur la musique populaire britannique a moins retenu l’attention. Bien que confinés à l'origine dans des espaces racialisés, marginalisés et souvent criminalisés, les musiciens jamaïcains se sont hissés au sommet des hit-parades britanniques et ont laissé une empreinte profonde sur les pratiques musicales au Royaume-Uni. Cet article se concentre sur les innovations technologiques apportées par les musiciens, producteurs et ingénieurs du son jamaïcains au cours des dernières décennies, en analysant leurs implications esthétiques et politiques sur les processus de création musicale dans les scènes underground et l'industrie musicale mainstream britanniques.
Des pratiques telles que les sound systems, les versions instrumentales ou le dub, et le deejaying ont profondément modifié la production, la circulation et la réception de la musique populaire dans le monde entier, et plus particulièrement au Royaume-Uni où elles ont été directement importées par les immigrés jamaïcains. Cela a notamment conduit à la prolifération de styles hybrides, des scènes two-tone et ska-punk au mouvement free party et aux musiques électroniques telles que la jungle, la drum and bass ou le grime. De nombreux artistes britanniques mainstream, des Beatles à Amy Winehouse, ont également cité des idiomes musicaux jamaïcains de manière plus ou moins extensive et explicite, au point que l'on peut dire que la musique pop britannique a subi un processus de créolisation. Mais au-delà de ces emprunts stylistiques, les artistes jamaïcains ont contribué à modifier le tissu même de la musique populaire britannique et la manière dont elle est consommée et conceptualisée, en créolisant non seulement son contenu stylistique mais aussi les matériaux et les opérations mêmes par lesquels elle est produite.

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  • 1 The title of this chapter is taken from British reggae band Aswad’s 1982 record of the same name, f (...)
  • 2 For popular histories of Jamaican music in the UK, see for instance Young Gifted and Black: The Sto (...)
  • 3 For a recent popular account of the stylistic evolutions of Jamaican music in the UK, see Paul Sull (...)

1The history of Jamaican music and musicians in Britain has been largely documented, although more so in popular than in academic literature (Charles, Black Music in Britain 2-3).2 These accounts generally adopt a primarily musical focus, emphasising especially how reggae and related genres led to the emergence of Black British musical styles such as drum and bass, jungle, garage or grime.3 Even though many contemporary artists have managed to take Black British music out of the underground where it was confined for most of the 20th century and currently dominate the charts, the Jamaican roots of these styles are still often obscured. Despite their influence, the contribution of these genres and musicians to the British music industry is still far from being generally acknowledged. While it can be argued that much British pop music has been creolised for decades, including some major mainstream artists from the Beatles to Amy Winehouse, Jamaican and Afro-Caribbean influences often remain invisible in common representations (Bousquet, “’Don’t Call Us Immigrants…”).

2Besides analyses of stylistic aspects, a few studies discuss how Jamaican practices have altered the transmission and the reception of music in Britain (Collins; Charles “RWD Selecta!”). These sources often dwell on sound system culture and how reggae and dub got intertwined with British working-class subcultures, producing alternative ways to consume and to distribute music. Some authors have also focused on the political dimension of Jamaican music in the UK, for instance Paul Gilroy in his seminal work, The Black Atlantic. They discuss, on the one hand, the ongoing marginalisation, racialisation and criminalisation of Black music in Britain and, on the other, its potential for social transformation in terms of class, race and (less frequently) gender. Finally, a few studies look at economic aspects related to Jamaican music in the UK, often to highlight its exclusion from the industry’s mainstream (Johnson and Wallace).

3This article addresses a related but somewhat less researched issue, in the hope to complement and strengthen the findings from the above-mentioned literature. It focuses on technological and conceptual innovations brought about by Jamaican musicians, producers and engineers over the last decades, analysing their aesthetic and political implications on music-making processes in the British underground scenes and mainstream music industry. While technology is sometimes disregarded in academic approaches in comparison to broader musicological and/or sociological considerations, I will argue that technology is essential to understanding Jamaican music’s contribution to British music and society.

  • 4 This distinguishes Jamaican music from other forms of technology-oriented music, especially in Euro (...)

4This discussion must be cast in a broader cultural and historical context, where music appears to be a central element of Afrodiasporic societies that can be traced back to West Africa. In that respect, it concentrates many social functions that are separate in other cultures and is deeply linked to community life (Gilroy, Black Atlantic 75-76). What distinguishes Jamaica, however, is that a greater premium was placed on sound technology than in other geographical areas with similar musical aesthetics (Howard 147-175; Henriques 63-122; Manuel and Marshall; Stolzoff 115-150; Veal 26-44). The question of technology also needs to be understood in the context of slavery and colonisation, and their role in the emergence of modern industrial capitalism. In colonial discourse, African cultures were cast as antithetical to European modernity, and thus often naturalised and animalised, with an implication that Blacks could not understand technology (Gilroy, Black Atlantic 76). The use of musical technology in Jamaica can thus be seen as a strategy of empowerment and resistance to the cultural effects of colonialism, with irreverent, subversive or deconstructive approaches that counter racist stereotypes and reassert human agency as central to the process of music-making (Henriques xxvii-xxix; Veal 260).4 While references to Africa are ubiquitous in Jamaican music, particularly in roots reggae, and are often couched in natural tropes, this is articulated with a hypermodern, futuristic use of technology that makes it unique and has deeply influenced Afrodiasporic musical cultures and the global pop music industry (Veal 196-219).

Technological and conceptual foundations of Jamaican music

Sound systems

5Jamaica’s most significant and globally influential technological innovation is what is commonly known as sound systems. This term primarily refers to a set of musical equipment, including essentially an audio source (originally turntables and later CD players and computers) connected to one or several amplifiers sending the signal into speakers (known as boxes). This is generally complemented with various devices allowing for the modification of the input audio signal, such as delay, reverberation and echo units or frequency filters. Sound systems are used to play recorded music in public spaces, which became a common occurrence in Jamaica after WWII in the ghettoes of downtown West Kingston and soon developed into the focal point of the local music industry.

6Sound systems are owned by community entrepreneurs known as soundmen and are operated by crews, which involve a variety of distinct yet often overlapping technical, musical and social roles. These include the boxmen (in charge of carrying and setting up the equipment), the operators (responsible for checking, tuning and operating the equipment before and during public performances), the selectors (in charge of choosing the recordings played on the system) and the deejays (who provide vocal interventions over the recordings played). Historically, sound systems in Jamaica were built from imported pieces of equipment that were modified and customized to fit the needs of the crews, a practice that has continued ever since.

7Metonymically, the notion of sound system also refers to the social events organised around the musical equipment, where people gather to listen to the records played, dance and have a nice time. A sound system session, typically lasting several hours from 10pm or 11pm until dawn, is commonly referred to as a dance in Jamaica, while the places where such communal gatherings take place are known as dancehalls, even if they are mostly located outdoors in the Jamaican context. Community events around music and dance are common in many cultures but are closely related to the West African roots of Jamaican music and take various forms across the cultures of the African diaspora. While playing recorded music in public also existed elsewhere, Jamaica’s modern music culture is characterised by its focus on technology itself as the focal point of these social gatherings, in which the sound system occupies a central place physically and symbolically.

8In the 1950s, sound systems in Jamaica mostly played African American music from the south of the US. With the departure of US troops, it became more difficult to have access to records to play during the dances. To remedy the shortage, Jamaican sound system crews started to resort to local music production. This prompted the emergence of the first recording studios and record labels on the island. Soundmen became producers and hired local musicians, who first recorded covers of the US styles that were popular at the time (especially jazz and rhythm and blues). Soon, these were mixed with local influences, especially mento and Afro-Caribbean drumming styles, to give birth to the first recognisably Jamaican genre, ska, which became the soundtrack to the country’s independence in 1962.

  • 5 In Jamaican, the term “massive” refers to the audience gathered for a sound system session.

9From then on, sound systems continued to exert increasing pressure on the studios and record labels to provide always new songs and styles. This can be explained by the demand of the massives, always eager for the latest novelties, one of the main social functions of sound systems being to make new music available to the public.5 From their inception, sound systems have been taken in a fierce competition for the most exclusive records, as is evidenced for instance in the production of specials and dubplates which are exclusive versions of commercially available songs for a particular sound system or even for a specific event. This competitive drive for innovation accounts for Jamaican music’s fast-paced creativity, producing new genres every three to five years.

  • 6 “Riddim” is Jamaican for “rhythm”, but in fact refers to instrumentals that are produced to be voic (...)

10Ska was soon followed by rocksteady (1966-1969) and reggae (1970-74), which is arguably the best-known Jamaican music genre worldwide. In the second half of the 1970s, reggae’s tempo slowed down as it became inflected by revolutionary political messages and Rastafarian spirituality. This new style came to be known as roots reggae, while the music from the first part of the decade was retrospectively named early reggae. After the death of Bob Marley in 1981, Jamaican massives reacted to what they perceived as the over-internationalisation of their music and pushed for a return to the dancehall as the central site of Jamaican music, giving birth to a more minimalistic and dance-oriented style of the same name (Bradley 502). In 1984, the first entirely digital riddim was produced by producer Prince Jammy, which transformed the music once again.6

  • 7 For further exploration of dancehall music, see Norman Stolzoff’s Wake the Town and Tell the People(...)

11Since then, Jamaican popular music has been known as dancehall rather than reggae. The latter refers to music recorded with acoustic instruments and analogue equipment, while dancehall is produced predominantly by using digital technology. This has facilitated the music’s ability to renew itself at a tremendous pace. While specific subgenres are less easily identifiable than in previous eras, dancehall music is extremely fluid and versatile, as it mixes new styles and trends with elements from previous eras of Jamaican music (a process facilitated by the advent of sampling, see below). The digitalisation of music production has also facilitated the transnational exchanges that are at the heart of the Jamaican music industry, leading to a globalisation of Jamaican popular music (Cooper 279-301; Veal 220-260).7

Dub and deejays

12In the early 1970s, Jamaican studio engineers started to release instrumental versions of songs, primarily to fill the B-side of 45 rpm records and keep up with the demand of sound systems. These instrumentals were tested in the dancehalls and were met with huge popularity on the part of the massives, notably because fans could sing the songs’ original lyrics to the instrumental backdrop. This in turn prompted engineers such as King Tubby or Lee Scratch Perry to develop a creative approach to the instrumental versions, called dub.

13Dubbing essentially consists in removing the vocals from a song and rearranging the instrumental tracks, focusing on the rhythmic elements, especially the drums and the bass, while keeping only fragments of the more melodic instruments. Tracks are remixed and recorded live in the studio and dub versions typically involve slow tempos and low frequencies, providing a psychedelic and dance-oriented treatment of the original song material. Dub thus introduced a new technological and conceptual approach to music recording, which was directly brought over to the dancehalls by the sound systems.

14By removing the original vocals from instrumental tracks, dub also caused a major transformation of the role of the deejay. While deejays originally provided vocal interventions between the records played to keep the crowd entertained, especially since most sound systems had only one turntable, with dub versions they were able to express themselves while the records were being played. Soon, deejays became vocalists in their own right and started to provide alternative vocal versions of popular songs. While this was originally done live during sound system sessions, as is still the case today, by the early 1970s deejays also entered the studios to record their versions of previously recorded songs.

  • 8 Jamaica is characterised by a situation of diglossia, where Jamaican Creole or Patwa, as it is call (...)

15Deejays thus became an established part of the Jamaican musical landscape, introducing a new vocal style known as toasting or chatting which is less concerned with melody than with rhythmic diction and verbal virtuosity. While most Jamaican singers wrote lyrics in English, deejays preferred to use Patwa, making the language of the people heard in the dancehalls.8 They also articulated new concerns, focusing on the daily experiences of lower-class Black Jamaicans. The central role of the deejay in Jamaican popular music echoes the centrality of the voice in Afrodiasporic music cultures more generally and its underlying ethics, placing the human voice at the heart of the sound system as a technological device. The deejay’s voice is inscribed in antiphonic call-and-response patterns and the reaction of the massives is an essential element of the sound system session as a communal experience, which can be described as a form of casual, non-institutional public sphere (Gilroy Black Atlantic 78-79).

Implications

16Several points are worth emphasising to conclude this brief overview of Jamaican music’s most salient technological foundations. In practical terms, the sound system as a technological device places emphasis on the low frequencies of the audio spectrum and on very high volumes of sound amplification. This implies a focus on the materiality of sound and turns the sound system session into a physical as well as a spiritual experience. In that respect, the sound system crew, and especially the selector, are not only responsible for operating the technological equipment but also for managing the experience of the session itself, often referred to as the vibes. This essentially involves playing with the levels of energy and intensity of the music, with much attention being paid to the crowd’s reactions.

17The Jamaican music industry also relies on an ecosystem where the main agents (i.e. sound system crews, producers, studio engineers and musicians, and massives) are very closely connected, with roles that are often overlapping and/or interchangeable. Musical productions are still played in sound system sessions before being made commercially available, notably to test the audience’s reaction, which in turns directly influences the way the music is produced. The fans thus play a central role in shaping the production of the music in the studios and its diffusion in the dancehalls, through the sound system as a specific mode of musical consumption (as opposed to, for instance, commercial release in physical or digital format, radio airplay or music videos).

  • 9 These technological and conceptual foundations of Jamaican music have been well established in the (...)

18On a conceptual level, the emergence of dub and the ensuing transformation of the deejay’s role also led to a change in production methods, as the riddims or instrumentals began to be produced separately from the vocal versions, which were recorded afterwards and tended to multiply (Manuel and Marshall). This dissociation has become paradigmatic in other music genres globally, especially hip hop and various kinds of electronic dance music. Dub also introduced the conceptual foundations of sampling and remixing, i.e. isolating the various elements of an original piece of music and rearranging them in new patterns, often adding new, non-musical sounds. These have become central to the global pop music industry in the last decades, where the practice of remixing (or versioning in Jamaican) has become ubiquitous and, as Michael E. Veal puts it, “dub’s sonic and formal concepts have become models for pop song composition in the digital age” (258).9

Adaptations and transformations in the British context

19The technological and conceptual foundations discussed above were brought by Jamaican immigrants to Britain, as they started to relocate in large numbers after WWII and in the following decades. Unsurprisingly, Jamaican music underwent changes and adaptations in this new context but also profoundly altered the British musical landscape.

Aesthetic and sociopolitical dynamics

20The first Jamaican-styled sound system in the UK was created by Vincent George Forbes in Ladbroke Grove in 1955 under the name “Duke Vin the Tickler’s.” Forbes had arrived in Britain the year before as a stowaway on a ship leaving Jamaica. This seemingly anecdotal story reveals that Jamaican music did not in fact emerge and develop on the island before being exported to Britain. On the contrary, links between the Kingston scene and expatriate communities in the UK were instrumental in the making of the Jamaican music industry itself (Heathcott). While many accounts tend to confine Jamaican music within national borders, arguably in a desire to increase recognition for the country’s cultural heritage, it appears that modern Jamaican music has always already been a transnational phenomenon and that its relation to Britain is one of the major factors that has contributed to its global success (Bousquet, “Reggae Outernational”).

  • 10 For a critical appraisal of lovers rock, see Palmer. Jamaican sound systems have always used indivi (...)

21This transnational dimension also explains why Jamaican music culture was able to grow rapidly in Britain, as frequent exchanges with Jamaica facilitated the arrival of new people, artefacts and ideas. Following on from Duke Vin, sound systems developed in Jamaican communities across the UK, leading to the emergence of a local Jamaican music scene involving artists, recording studios, labels and radio stations. While a direct connection between the Jamaican scene and the expatriate communities in Britain has always been maintained, the UK scene also developed its specificities. This manifested through the emergence of British styles of Jamaican music, especially lovers rock, but also through the importance given to bands and albums, concepts derived from the pop rock market that did not have much traction in Jamaica itself.10

  • 11 The Windrush generation refers to people who left the Caribbean for Britain between 1945 and the ea (...)
  • 12 One can note in that respect that many Jamaican musicians in the UK were both direct victims of rac (...)

22Upon arrival, the Windrush generation were met with individual and institutional racism, a phenomenon which has continued until this day and has deep roots in British colonial history.11 This had consequences on Jamaican music as well, as it was marginalised and criminalised like much of Black Caribbean social life. Significantly, anti-immigrant discourse focused on noise and music as a form of disruption to public order, using the trope of the uncivilised and inferior tastes of (formerly) colonised people (Bousquet, “‘Don’t Call Us Immigrants…”).12 This also took place in Jamaica, where lower-class Black culture was also seen as antithetic to middle-class postcolonial cultural ideals, yet it took on a specific guise in the British context, notably with episodes of violence between Black and white residents of the same working-class neighbourhoods, often fuelled by far-right political parties and organisations.

23This context of racism also induced specific responses and inflections in Jamaican music, which already had a history of resistance to the colonial order in Jamaica itself. This can be observed in particular articulations of antiracist positions and in an inscription in British antiracist politics, for instance (Gilroy, There Ain’t No Black 200-302). It is often said that Jamaican music made in Britain has a gloomier, darker mood than its Jamaican iterations, reflecting both the weather and the urban, industrial environment in which Jamaican communities lived, as well as the climate of oppression and injustice that they had to face. Jamaican music culture, and especially sound systems, also became a site of resistance and a rallying point for other Black Caribbeans in Britain, transcending national boundaries and creating a form of pan-Caribbean identity and a sense of Black Britishness (Gilroy, Black Atlantic 82). This extended in some cases to South Asian communities (Cooper 251-277), who were faced with the same postcolonial racism, and later to African immigrant communities (Ugwu and Charles).

24Another major change in the British context was that Black Jamaican communities were a small minority in a predominantly white environment. Links were formed between Black and white musicians, as early as the 1950s and continuously afterwards. This meant that, on the one hand, white artists, activists and producers got involved in the Jamaican music scene, creating a more multiracial environment than in Jamaica. On the other hand, Jamaican music evolved and transformed under the influence of the British musical environment, leading to the emergence of a number of crossover or hybrid genres.

25This first took place in the 1960s and 1970s through links with working-class, urban subcultures such as the mods, skinheads and punks, who felt attracted to Jamaican musical styles like ska, rocksteady and early reggae as a way to express difference from mainstream, middle-class values and tastes (Hedbige, Subculture). British musical subcultures amply borrowed from Jamaican styles but also led to the emergence of hybrid styles such as two-tone, mixing elements of Black and white music in interracial bands. Through these links with underground subcultures, Jamaican music had a profound impact on British popular culture more generally. This is especially evidenced in the culture of football fans, which has historically been a stronghold of British working-class culture. The early reggae instrumental track “Liquidator” by Harry J Allstars, for instance, was chosen by the Chelsea F.C. as its anthem when it came out in 1969. This was an early point of connection between British football and Jamaican popular music, signalling a relationship that has continued until then, albeit in complex and equivocal ways (Burdsey & Doyle). The adoption of various genres of Jamaican music by white British subcultural movements has more generally left a profound legacy, both musically and sociologically.

  • 13 Significantly, Millie Small’s hit was produced by English producer Chris Blackwell, the founder of (...)

26In a less conspicuous way, Jamaican music also had an influence on the (white) British musical mainstream, with countless chart-topping artists making more or less explicit and more or less extensive references to Jamaican musical aesthetics. Jamaican music itself had in fact topped the charts in Britain since the 1960s. Millie Small’s cover of “My Boy Lollipop” reached number two in 1964, while in 1968 Desmond Dekker’s “Israelites” was the first Jamaican song to reach number one in Britain.13 Early Jamaican music styles such as ska and rocksteady influenced major British musicians of the period such as Paul McCartney, leading The Beatles to produce their own version of early reggae in “Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da” in 1968. In the 1970s, The Police became associated with white reggae, as illustrated for instance by their album Reggatta de Blanc. In more recent times, pop singers such as Amy Winehouse, Lily Allen, Dua Lipa or Jorja Smith have achieved mainstream success with songs strongly inspired by Jamaican music. These are but a few examples of the deep penetration of Jamaican music into the mainstream of the British pop music industry, which can be understood in the context of the general influence of Black Atlantic music in Britain.

27In the 1980s, the first wave of Jamaican musicians was replaced by younger activists and fans, the children of the Windrush generation. Most of them were born in Britain and had a different relationship to Jamaica than their parents, as well as a different experience of being Black in Britain and different claims to integration and belonging. Aesthetically, they turned away from the roots style of the 1970s and followed the new digital reggae trend popular in Jamaica. This led to the emergence of ragga or raggamuffin in the second half of the 1980s, British names for what is known as dancehall music in Jamaica. Like in Jamaica, deejays (called MCs in the UK) took on a prominent role and gradually replaced singers. They articulated specifically local concerns as a reaction to the internationalisation of reggae during the roots era. MCs such as Smiley Culture and Tippa Irie developed the fast chat style, another British innovation, and mixed Jamaican Patwa with British working-class sociolects.

28In the 1990s, the Jamaican British ragga scene gradually fused with electronic music styles coming either from Europe or from African American communities in the US, especially hip hop, techno and house music (Sullivan 116-146). This led to a proliferation of hybrid styles such as UK garage, acid house, jungle, drum and bass, trip hop and later grime, which all had roots in the Jamaican British sound system culture. In the 21st century, new Black subcultural genres emerged such as UK funky, UK bass, bassline or more recently UK drill, while Black British music received more and more influences from West Africa, and especially Nigeria and Ghana (Ugwu and Charles). These new migration patterns explain why the UK, and more particularly London, has been a central point in the emergence and development of afrobeats, reflecting the ongoing dynamics of the African and Afro-Caribbean diasporas.

29It can be argued that Black British music in the 21st century has managed to escape the underground where it was confined in the 20th (Charles, Black Music in Britain 2-3). This is due to the process of hybridisation described above and to the deep penetration of Jamaican musical aesthetics in the British mainstream, leading to the creolisation of much pop music in the country, as well as to a wider recognition of Black presence in Britain in the last twenty years. The process is still incomplete though and much remains to be done for the recognition of Jamaican musicians and producers to British music, while Black music in the UK continues to be racialised, marginalised and even criminalised (Fatsis).

Structural influences

30While the aesthetic and sociopolitical developments mentioned above have been quite well documented, the structural influence of Jamaican technological practices on British music is less firmly established. The primary component of this influence is the sound system as a technological, musical and social device and the specific modalities of music production, diffusion and consumption that it involves. In the British context, most sound system sessions had to take place indoors. This is partly due to the weather conditions, of course, and could seem anecdotal if one forgets that the access to public space was severely restricted for Black musicians and promoters in Britain, in a context of rampant individual and institutional racism. This meant that blues dances or blues parties, as they were called in the UK, often took place in private rather than public spaces, sometimes resulting in conflicts with neighbours.

31The sound system scene in the UK also took root in the vivid British club scene from the 1950s and 1960s onwards, especially in large urban, industrial areas where most Caribbean communities lived. Sessions or dances were happening in privately owned bars, pubs and clubs, and in community centres, with different degrees of autonomy for Black musical practitioners and fans. This facilitated the inclusion of Jamaican music in the British musical landscape, with clubs acting as an intermediary between the underground and the mainstream and allowing for the various hybridisations and interactions mentioned above (for instance with rhythm and blues, rock and roll and northern soul in the 1950s and 1960s or with the emerging electronic dance music scene in the late 1980s and early 1990s). The question of the physical and symbolic spaces occupied by Jamaican music in Britain thus reflects the dynamics of its inscription in the larger power relations that structure society.

32While the move to indoor spaces had important consequences on Jamaican music in the UK, many of its technological and conceptual components remained in place. These include primarily a cult of DIY equipment customised to play recorded music at very high volume, with a special emphasis being placed on low frequencies. This has remained a cornerstone of Jamaican music produced in the UK, as evidenced for instance by the UK dub or stepper scene, but also of all the hybrid genres such as UK garage, jungle, drum and bass, trip hop and grime, and more recently all the subgenres associated with British hip hop or afrobeats. Jamaican sound system culture was also influential in shaping a conception of musical parties in terms of levels of energy or vibration, a notion referred to as the bubble in electronic dance music.

  • 14 The spelling “deejay” refers to the Jamaican use of the term to denote a vocalist, while “DJ” refer (...)

33As noted above about the Jamaican context, such musical events give a prominent role to the deejay (or MC in the UK) and to the selector (or DJ in the UK).14 The former is in charge of articulating the experience of the community while the latter manages the musical and energetic dynamics of the session, both having a central function of interaction with the crowd that is characteristic of these genres. A proximity between performers and fans, with overlapping and interchangeable roles, can also be observed in the British context, in Black British musical scenes but also in many of their crossover incarnations. It has for instance been studied in the DIY culture of the punk rock movement (Hebdige, Subculture 62-70) and in various iterations of the electronic music scene (Charles, “RWD Selecta!”).

34The key role of vocalists in Black British music is also a marker of the Jamaican influence. Singers and deejays/MCs have documented the life of Afro-Caribbean communities in the UK since their arrival, from ska and rocksteady in the 1960s through reggae in the 1970s, ragga in the 1980s and 1990s and to grime and hip hop in the 21st century. They have notably articulated responses to issues of social and racial discrimination and thus a discourse on identity, belonging, and the meaning of Black Britishness (Bousquet, “‘Don’t Call Us Immigrants…”). This has played a major role for communities who are often denied access to public discourse, as vocalists contribute to creating a collective verbal repertoire as archive of community life. This ability of Jamaican music to archive itself has been discussed in the Jamaican context and has been crucial, I argue, to the experience of Caribbean and Black communities in the UK.

  • 15 One can think for instance of producers such as Dennis Bovell, Mad Professor or Adrian Sherwood, wh (...)

35The central role of the sound system in shaping the modalities of music consumption also had a direct influence on production practices in the UK, again in a strikingly similar fashion to what has been taking place in Jamaica. This is manifest in the dissociation between the production of instrumentals (riddims or beats) and their multiple subsequent vocalisations, for instance, but also in the recording of dubplates or specials (customised records produced for a specific crew or event), or in the ubiquitous practice of sampling and remixing across all Black British music and in many hybrid and crossover genres. The concern for cultural and commercial autonomy which characterises the Jamaican music industry can also be traced in Britain, for instance with the proliferation of small independent labels and pirate radio stations, and specific conceptions of ownership and copyright (Charles “RWD Selecta!”; Collins). The role of producers can thus not be underestimated when analysing both the gradual legitimation of Jamaican musical ideas and practices in the UK and their influence on the British and international mainstream pop music industry (Veal 227-231).15

  • 16 The skank is a strong accent played simultaneously by the guitar and the piano on the offbeat of ea (...)
  • 17 Grime evolved from earlier Jamaican-inflected styles such as jungle and drum and bass, a term that (...)

36Nowhere are the technological and conceptual influences of Jamaican music in Britain more evident than in the grime and hip-hop scene that has been developing over the last twenty-five years. While earlier adaptations and hybridisations had mostly involved the adoption of stylistic traits, often reducing Jamaican music to stereotypical, essentialised elements such as the skank, they had mostly remained within the rock paradigm that had shaped British pop music since the end of WWII.16 From the second half of the 1990s, artists and producers started to inject Jamaican musical concepts in the burgeoning electronic music scene, eventually leading to the emergence of grime at the turn of the 21st century.17 Many members of the first grime crews, mostly based in London, were of Caribbean descent and had a strong background in reggae and dancehall music. They brought to the club and rave scene Jamaican musical and linguistic idioms, as well as a tradition of resistance in the lyrics of their songs.

  • 18 Many of these concepts are also found in hip hop, of course, but it bears reminding that they were (...)

37More profoundly, though, these early grime activists dramatically altered the way pop music is produced in Britain, introducing fundamental Jamaican features such as the dissociation of the instrumental tracks and the vocal versions (with different MCs voicing the same instrumentals), the emphasis on low frequencies in both production and performance, lyrics involving social commentary and an autonomous discourse on racial issues expressed by the central figure of the MC, all geared towards a communal experience of sound in live performance (Charles, “MDA as a Research Method”). Lyrical battles between MCs and clashes between crews also took prominence while producers released dubplates specifically for certain crews and live performances, which was directly inspired by the Jamaican practice of the sound clash (Cooper 35-72). While the musical and linguistic vocabulary changed, the underlying conceptual frameworks for music production, diffusion and reception were forcefully brought to the fore.18

38Grime was also instrumental in taking these structural influences out of the underground and propelling them into the mainstream of British pop music. Unlike previous adaptations of Jamaican music in Britain which enjoyed wide recognition, it can be argued that grime overall compelled the industry to take these ways of making and thinking music on their own terms, rather than accommodating them to a mainstream white rock audience. After the first grime pioneers achieved tremendous success in the 2000s, a new generation emerged spearheaded by the likes of Stormzy, who was the first grime MC to have an album reach number one in the British charts in 2017 (Gang Signs & Prayers) and to headline the Glastonbury Festival in 2019. Grime thus diversified and paved the way for the British hip hop movement more generally, including a myriad of styles such as UK drill, road rap, UK trap, afrobeats or afroswing. This also illustrates new articulations of Black Britishness, where Jamaican and Afro-Caribbean inflections have been fusing with West African influences through constant diasporic movements between London, Kingston and Lagos.

Conclusion

39Jamaican music culture has left a deep imprint on British pop music on various levels. As I have shown, it has profoundly altered the way of making music but also of thinking about it, affecting the modalities of the production, dissemination and consumption of music, as well as its conceptualisation. This is arguably the most important contribution of Jamaican music to popular music globally, but it is worth repeating that its link with Britain has been vital from the start. It has turned Jamaican music into the transnational phenomenon that it is today and has considerably influenced the British pop music industry and enhanced its global outreach, in the African diaspora and beyond. I argue that it becomes ultimately pointless to distinguish Jamaican music from its iterations on British soil and that one needs to place its transnational character at the heart of critical analysis to appraise it accurately. This implies challenging forcefully the rigid boundaries of the nation-state and the (post)colonial hierarchies that they are associated with.

40Following Henriques’s argument (207-241), one can also conclude that, in the context of Jamaican music, making and thinking are not separate activities but partake from the same logic of practice. The sound system as a technological and social device can be appropriately conceptualised as a nexus of knowledge and praxis or, more accurately, a form of knowledge as praxis or praxis as knowledge. Music then appears as a medium for alternative epistemology or knowledge-making, which underpins, explains and reinforces its potential for sociopolitical emancipation. There also lies its dimension of resistance and empowerment in the face of racism, as a platform to restore agency and enable cultural autonomy and social integration. The use of technology in Jamaican music and its British iterations places the human element at the centre of musical knowledge-praxis as an antidote to systemic discrimination and the enduring legacy of colonialism. It is in this sense that Jamaican technological practices and ideas have perhaps been most influential in British popular music, as a restorative ethics, poetics and politics of embodiment, empowerment and healing.

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Bibliographie

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BOUSQUET, David. “‘Don’t Call Us Immigrants’: The Musical and Political Legacy of Reggae in the UK.” Windrush (1948) and Rivers of Blood (1968): Legacy and Assessment. Ed. Trevor Harris. Routledge, 2020, p. 135-149.

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Notes

1 The title of this chapter is taken from British reggae band Aswad’s 1982 record of the same name, featuring dub versions of the songs from the 1981 album New Chapter.

2 For popular histories of Jamaican music in the UK, see for instance Young Gifted and Black: The Story of Trojan Records and Tighten Up! The History of Reggae in the UK by Michael de Koningh, or the dedicated chapters in Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton’s Rough Guide to Reggae (381-422) and Lloyd Bradley’s Bass Culture (111-132, 232-259, 370-395). For academic approaches, see the classic works of Dick Hebdige (Subculture and Cut’n’Mix) and Paul Gilroy (There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack and The Black Atlantic) or Amon Saba Saakana’s chapter in Carolyn Cooper’s Global Reggae.

3 For a recent popular account of the stylistic evolutions of Jamaican music in the UK, see Paul Sullivan’s Remixology (56-91, 116-146, 147-167). For academic studies, see Monique Charles’s and Natalie Hyacinth’s essays in Charles’s 2023 collection of essays on Black music in Britain or the dedicated chapter in Michael E. Veal’s 2007 book on dub (220-260).

4 This distinguishes Jamaican music from other forms of technology-oriented music, especially in Europe, which have emphasised and dramatized the dehumanisation implied by industrial technology. This can be observed, for instance, in the fact that in a Jamaican-styled sound system session, the audience always turns towards the crew who operate the equipment, rather than towards the equipment itself (which is the case for much electronic dance music). While Jamaican music has influenced and been influenced by European electronic music, there thus remains a fundamental difference in their underlying ethics.

5 In Jamaican, the term “massive” refers to the audience gathered for a sound system session.

6 “Riddim” is Jamaican for “rhythm”, but in fact refers to instrumentals that are produced to be voiced subsequently (see below).

7 For further exploration of dancehall music, see Norman Stolzoff’s Wake the Town and Tell the People and Sonjah Stanly-Niaah’s Dancehall.

8 Jamaica is characterised by a situation of diglossia, where Jamaican Creole or Patwa, as it is called by its speakers, is spoken by a vast majority of the population but has an inferior social status to English (Cooper, 1-33).

9 These technological and conceptual foundations of Jamaican music have been well established in the academic literature mentioned in the introduction. For a concise yet illuminating synthesis, see Charles (“RWD Selecta!” 36-37).

10 For a critical appraisal of lovers rock, see Palmer. Jamaican sound systems have always used individual songs as their primary material, a format which also became the most commonly used for commercial releases. Songs are generally identified by their main vocalist(s), while the studio musicians often remained anonymous (especially in the earlier days of the Jamaican music industry), explaining why the concept of bands is relatively alien to Jamaican music culture. Songs are also not performed live by the vocalists but as recordings during sound system sessions. The specific structure of the Jamaican music industry, characterised by a direct link between producers and fans through the sound systems, explains the relatively small part played by commercial formats and marketing strategies of the global pop music industry developed in the US and the UK.

11 The Windrush generation refers to people who left the Caribbean for Britain between 1945 and the early 1960s, when the British Nationality Act 1948 de facto gave British citizenship to all people living in the colonies. The arrival of HMT Empire Windrush in Tilbury on 22 June 1948 is commonly regarded as the starting point of this history.

12 One can note in that respect that many Jamaican musicians in the UK were both direct victims of racism and fierce anti-racist activists.

13 Significantly, Millie Small’s hit was produced by English producer Chris Blackwell, the founder of Island Records who would later achieve international success with Bob Marley and the Wailers. This illustrates once again the crucial roles of the connections between Jamaica and Britain in Jamaican popular music’s international appeal.

14 The spelling “deejay” refers to the Jamaican use of the term to denote a vocalist, while “DJ” refers to the person playing the music (called “selector” in Jamaica).

15 One can think for instance of producers such as Dennis Bovell, Mad Professor or Adrian Sherwood, who all come from the Jamaican music scene and have injected its specific practices in the records of mainstream artists such as The Cure, Living Colour, Depeche Mode, Simply Red or Cabaret Voltaire (Adrian Sherwood), The Orb, The Ruts, UB40, Jamiroquai, Beastie Boys or Massive Attack (Mad Professor), and Alpha Blondy, Bananarama, the Pop Group, Fela Kuti, the Slits, Orange Juice or Madness (Dennis Bovell).

16 The skank is a strong accent played simultaneously by the guitar and the piano on the offbeat of each bar, giving Jamaican music its distinctive “bouncing” rhythm.

17 Grime evolved from earlier Jamaican-inflected styles such as jungle and drum and bass, a term that was directly taken from the world of Jamaican roots reggae and dub sound systems.

18 Many of these concepts are also found in hip hop, of course, but it bears reminding that they were imported to the US by Caribbean immigrants in the 1970s. It is somewhat pointless to try and distinguish between these styles and genres given their fundamentally transnational and diasporic character, even if local or national inflections can certainly be identified.

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David BOUSQUET, « A New Chapter of Dub: Tracing the Technological and Conceptual Influences of Jamaican Musicians and Producers on British Popular Music and Society »e-Rea [En ligne], 22.2 | 2025, mis en ligne le 15 juin 2025, consulté le 20 juillet 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/erea/19279 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/144q3

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Auteur

David BOUSQUET

Université Bourgogne Europe, TIL UR 4182, 21000 Dijon, France
david.bousquet@ube.fr
David Bousquet is a senior lecturer at Université Bourgogne Europe in Dijon, France, and a member of the Text, Image, Language research centre (Centre Interlangues TIL – UR 4182). He specialises in the study of Caribbean literature, poetry and popular culture with a particular emphasis on musical traditions and reggae. His research on song lyrics and performance poems focuses on the tension between orality and writing from the perspective of postcolonial and cultural studies.

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