The dance halls of

Jamaica Jamaica is an island country in the Caribbean Sea and the West Indies. At , it is the third-largest island—after Cuba and Hispaniola—of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean. Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, west of Hispaniola (the is ...

in the 1950s and 1960s were home to public dances usually targeted at younger patrons.

Sound system Sound system may refer to: Technology media * Sound reinforcement system, a system for amplifying audio for an audience * High fidelity, a sound system intended for accurate reproduction of music in the home * Public address system, an institution ...

operators had big home-made audio systems (often housed in the flat bed of a pickup truck), spinning records from popular American

rhythm and blues Rhythm and blues, frequently abbreviated as R&B or R'n'B, is a genre of popular music that originated within African American communities in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predomina ...

musicians and Jamaican ska and

rocksteady Rocksteady is a music genre that originated in Jamaica around 1966. A successor of ska and a precursor to reggae, rocksteady was the dominant style of music in Jamaica for nearly two years, performed by many of the artists who helped establish ...

performers. The term ''

dancehall Dancehall is a genre of Jamaican popular music that originated in the late 1970s. Initially, dancehall was a more sparse version of reggae than the roots reggae, roots style, which had dominated much of the 1970s.Barrow, Steve & Dalton, Peter (2 ...

'' has also come to refer to a subgenre of reggae that originated around 1980.

History

Dance hall owners and sound system operators often competed fiercely with other owners/operators to capture the attention of their young clientele. The competition often led to the hiring of Rude boys to break up a competitor's dance, which fostered the growth and violent tendencies of this subculture. Dance halls contributed to the rise of ska as the predominant form of popular music at the time, and gave rise to a new social power in the form of major

sound system Sound system may refer to: Technology media * Sound reinforcement system, a system for amplifying audio for an audience * High fidelity, a sound system intended for accurate reproduction of music in the home * Public address system, an institution ...

operators like

Duke Reid Arthur "Duke" Reid CD (21 July 1915 – 1 January 1975) was a Jamaican record producer, DJ and record 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 Tr ...

, and

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 ...

. It was in the dance halls that ska dancing originated. Jamaican dance halls of today still bear strong resemblance to the days when Dodd was spinning the latest release out of Studio One. Dance halls of today often serve as competition grounds for DJs, just like they did in the early days, though today's competitions end less often in the dance being broken up by rude boys.

Notable early DJs

was born on January 26 1932 in Kingston, Jamaica. He began at a young age playing

bebop Bebop or bop is a style of jazz developed in the early to mid-1940s in the United States. The style features compositions characterized by a fast tempo (usually exceeding 200 bpm), complex chord progressions with rapid chord changes and numerou ...

and

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its roots are in blues, ragtime, European harmony, African rhythmic rituals, spirituals, h ...

records in his parents' liquor store for their customers in the late 1940s. He then moved to United States to work as a cane cutter, and it was there that he began to listen to

. After a short period of time he moved back to Jamaica with his own PA system,

turntable A phonograph, later called a gramophone, and since the 1940s a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogue reproduction of sound. The sound vibration waveforms are recorded as corresponding phys ...

, and box of records. Dodd set up his first sound system, the DownBeat, in 1954 playing boogie-woogie, jazz, and R&B.

Prince Buster Cecil Bustamente Campbell (24 May 1938 – 8 September 2016), known professionally as Prince Buster, was a Jamaican singer-songwriter and producer. The records he released in the 1960s influenced and shaped the course of Jamaican contemporary ...

was born Cecil Campbell in 1938 in Kingston, Jamaica. After working for the Coxson Sound System, he created his own sound system in 1962 called The Voice of the People. Campbell dedicated himself to providing a voice for the

African diaspora The African diaspora is the worldwide collection of communities descended from List of ethnic groups of Africa, people from Africa. The term most commonly refers to the descendants of the native West Africa, West and Central Africans who were ...

Notes

References

* Stolzoff, Norman C. Wake the Town and Tell the People: Dancehall Culture in Jamaica. * Chang, Jeff (2005). Can't Stop, Won't Stop: A History of the Hip Hop Generation. St. Martin's Press. . * Barrow, Steve and Peter Dalton, Reggae: The Rough Guide. Rough Guides. (1997) .

External links

Kool Herc interview

Profile of Prince Buster

Profile of Coxsone Dodd
{{reggae Dance venues Music of Jamaica Reggae culture