Features

In his classic book Beyond A Boundary, the revered Trinidadian political philosopher CLR James? wrote that the Caribbean people would never truly shake off their colonial cast until they had beaten their former masters at cricket.

Although the brilliant West Indies sides of the '70s and '80s achieved James' dream, it was in culture rather than sport that the region's most lasting impact was felt, with Jamaica, in particular, consistently producing music that would become the island's most popular (legal) export since Red Stripe lager.

The fulcrum of Jamaican music is the soundsystem, the oft-imitated, never-bettered driving force behind a scene that invented ska, rock steady, dub and the art of deejaying, or toasting, now best known to the world as rapping. With a dearth of money and domestic appliances such as turntables and radios in the island during the '50s, alongside an abundance of glorious weather, Jamaican music has always been a largely public rather than private affair, and the soundsystems' open-air setting made them huge community events. They were also competitive in the extreme, with rivals resorting to violently breaking up competitors' dances or setting up just a few yards away and trying to blast them off the street. Hence the need for music that was fast and ferocious.

Though the big soundsystems were originally dependent on a steady influx of American R&B (particularly from the simpatico climate of New Orleans), the coincidence of the US soothing out into soul just as Jamaica gained its independence from the UK in 1962 fuelled demand for a homegrown alternative to the cripplingly mainstream culture of national radio, still behoven to the snobbery and cultural elitism of the imperial 'motherland', which decreed the anodyne fare served up on the hotel circuit to rich tourists to be the goal for any aspiring musician.

It took a generation of incredibly talented musicians to turn the culture on its head. With zero support (and sometimes outright opposition) from the authorities, innovators like Prince Buster sought input from radical outsiders like the fervently Rasta Count Ossie and his tribal 'nyabinghi' drummers. But it was the group of jazz musicians (many of them educated at the Alpha Boys School for troublesome youth) who, at the instigation of legendary producer/soundsystem owner Coxsone Dodd (of Studio One), drastically reinvented the sound, becoming synonymous with the first Jamaican music to transcend its national borders ? ska.

Ska combined traditional Caribbean music like calypso and the specifically Jamaican mento with jazz, R&B and boogie-woogie, with a unique offbeat rhythm, and its leading band, The Skatalites featured a rotating group of virtuosos, including Don Drummond, Tommy McCook, Roland Alphonso and Jackie Mittoo, names which echo down the ages. Although they were in constant demand as performers (often playing, individually, in those hotels by night), they kept up an incredible rate of work for Dodd, as well as with rivals, Prince Buster and Duke Reid, recording literally hundreds of tunes in just a few short years.

Ska ruled from the early '60s through to 1966, when, so legend has it, the uncommonly blazing summer demanded a slower sound, ushering in the 18-month long rock steady era, with its emphasis on soulful songs and vocal harmonies. This was a largely local affair, but the increasingly strife-torn nature of Jamaican politics, the growing influence of Rastafarianism and a new sparser, more ambivalent sound, prodded in part by veterans like Dodd and Lesley Kong, but also by a new generation of visionary producers led by Lee Perry spawned reggae, a culture that would take on the world.

Running parallel to this was the emergence of the deejay or toaster (note: in Jamaica, the deejay is not the man who plays the records). Soundsystems had always relied on showmanship, interaction between the selector (that's your actual DJ) and the crowd, while the oral tradition dating back to African griots means spoken word has always had a part in black music. So it was a natural step from there to introducing the deejay, initially onstage, acting as unofficial hypeman for the records. Count Machuki and King Stitt were among the originators, but it's U-Roy who made it into an artform, sparring or conducting conversations with the records played in the soundsystem, chatting in the most simple, accessible, yet musical form. It wasn't long before U-Roy's musical collaborator King Tubby started cutting special versions of popular tracks, leaving spaces for the deejay to do his thing alongside the vocals laid down by groups like The Paragons, dropping instruments in and out, filling gaps with echo effects. Dub was born and the incredible story of innovation that was Jamaican music in the '60s meant this tiny island of barely 3m people now had a story for the world to hear.