An historical overview of Jamaican Sound System culture in Coventry, UK, from the 1950s to the 1990s. Includes interviews with local sound system pioneers and celebrities such as Count Spinner, El Paso, Principal, King Baggy HI FI, Jah Baddis, Mackabee Studio, and more, and the voice-over of Pauline Black from the Selectors. LINK TO THE […]
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 […]
An historical overview of Jamaican Sound System culture in Coventry, UK, from the 1950s to the 1990s. Includes interviews with local sound system pioneers and celebrities such as Count Spinner, El Paso, Principal, King Baggy HI FI, Jah Baddis, Mackabee Studio, and more, and the voice-over of Pauline Black from the Selectors. LINK TO THE […]
British drama film written by Franco Rosso and Martin Stellman (Quadrophenia). Filmed in SE London, it follows the young reggae MC Blue (interpreted by Brinsley Forde of British reggae act Aswad) of the fictional sound system Ital Lion facing personal and family issues as well as systemic racism and police violence, during the days ahead […]
This paper explores an innovative practice-as-research methodology that brings popular culture practitioners and aficionados together with academic researchers in the shared space of symposia on reggae sound system culture. The organizers describe what made the first two iterations of Sound System Outernational different from the normal academic conference in terms of the range of participants, […]
In this seminal piece, Julian Henriques discusses the relationship between different sensorial regimes through the lens of a dancehall session in Jamaica. He describes sonic dominance as the preponderance of the sonic over the visual medium that can be experienced in a Stone Love sound system session. By considering both the ethereal and the material […]
This article proposes that the propagation of vibrations could serve as a better model for understanding the transmission of affect than the flow, circulation or movement of bodies by which it is most often theorized. The vibrations (or idiomatically ‘vibes’) among the sound system audience (or ‘crowd’) on a night out on the dancehall scene […]
In this innovative book Julian Henriques proposes that these dancehall “vibes” are taken literally as the periodic motion of vibrations. He offers an analysis of how a sound system operates – at auditory, corporeal and sociocultural frequencies. Sonic Bodies formulates a fascinating critique of visual dominance and the dualities inherent in ideas of image, text […]
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 […]
The market town of Huddersfield, nestled within the Pennine Hills of West Yorkshire, has made a remarkable contribution to UK sound system culture. From Armagideon to Zion InnaVision, the Arawak club to Venn Street, Matamp to Valv-a-tron, this unlikely location has been a stronghold of the British scene, yet has remained largely overlooked. For the […]