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 grew up.

As a teenager in Waterhouse, James would ride his bicycle downtown to Forrester's Hall with Tubby's brother and other friends to catch Duke Reid, Prince Buster, Coxsone—the sound systems that defined ska and rocksteady. “Those are the ways of dancehall days,” Yellowman explained to Thrasher Magazine. “Every town, every sound system, got a main artist. Like, you have me with Aces International. You have Brigadier the General with Jah Love, Josey Wales with Charlie Chaplin.” Singers came to the dance and performed live over the riddims. The selector wouldn't play the record—the artist sang right there, voice competing with the bass bins.