Originally shown in 1984 as a six-part series on Channel 4, Deep Roots Music is an extraordinary documentary on Jamaican music in what many refer to as “the golden era” of reggae. Beautifully filmed and including countless interviews and vintage footages of some of Jamaica’s most iconic musicians, producers and cultural icons, as well as […]
Originally aired in 1981 and later virtually lost for decades, Sound Business is a UK-produced documentary about two British sound systems, the legendary (and at the time already 18 years-established) Sir Coxsone Outernational and the (then) up-and-coming Lion Charge, both based in SW London. Besides in-depth interviews and session footage, some of the highlights include […]
This book provides a snapshot of UK reggae sound system culture during its 1980s heyday. Scientists of Sound is a documentary portrait of one particular sound system from Birmingham. It features a unique collection of photographs and scanned artefacts from the time, including flyers, magazine covers, speaker box designs, circuit diagrams and handwritten lyrics. It […]
Vibe Merchants offers an insider’s perspective on the development of Jamaican Popular Music, researched and analysed by a thirty-year veteran with a wide range of experience in performance, production and academic study. By focusing on the work of audio engineers and musicians, recording studios and recording models, Ray Hitchins highlights a music creation methodology that […]
Wake the Town and Tell the People offers a lively, nuanced, and comprehensive view of Jamaican dancehall as a musical and cultural phenomenon: its growth and historical role within Jamaican society, its economy of star making, its technology of production, its performative practices, and its capacity to channel political beliefs through popular culture in ways […]
While tracing the history of the Japanese embrace of dancehall reggae and other elements of Jamaican culture, including Rastafari, roots reggae, and dub music, anthropologist Marvin D. Sterlin illuminates issues of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and class. Babylon East is a rare ethnographic account of Afro-Asian cultural exchange and global discourses of blackness beyond the […]