Jamaican Dancehall

Sound systems started in the 1950s—mobile discotheques blasting American R&B from trucks and handcarts in neighborhoods where radios cost more than most people earned in a month. Lloyd James, who would become King Jammy, grew up listening to WLAC out of Tennessee, a national station where DJ John R. played Curtis Mayfield, Sam Cooke, the good stuff you couldn't get on Jamaica's single radio station. By the early seventies, these systems had evolved into institutions: Coxsone Dodd's Downbeat, Duke Reid's Trojan, King Tubby's Home Town Hi-Fi. DJs began talking over instrumental B-sides. The venues were open-air by necessity. Inner city Kingston couldn't afford enclosed clubs, so lawns and parking lots became the stages where the culture incubated.