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 […]
Music journalist Lloyd Bradley describes reggae’s origins and development in Jamaica, from ska to rock-steady to dub and then to reggae itself, a local music which conquered the world. There are many extraordinary stories about characters like Prince Buster, King Tubby and Bob Marley. But this is more than a book of music history: it […]
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, […]
Cut’n’Mix tells the story of how sound and sense have been spliced together in music which began in the West Indies but ends up addressing a community stretching across the planet. Dick Hebdige is one of the founding figures of cultural studies and author of the groundbreaking Subculture: The Meaning of Style. In this seminal […]
This book explores the history of reggae in modern Britain from the time it emerged as a cultural force in the 1970s. As basslines from Jamaica reverberated across the Atlantic, so they were received and transmitted by the UK’s Afro-Caribbean community. From roots to lovers’ rock, from deejays harnessing the dancehall crowd to dub poets […]
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 […]