Reggae and dancehall culture have long attracted the attention of scholars, researchers, and curators, giving rise to a rich field of study where diverse approaches intersect (see the SST selected bibliography on reggae sound system culture from JA to the UK). However, reggae literature tends to focus on artists, music producers, record labels and so […]
With this first blog of 2025, the SST Goldsmiths team reflects on the achievements and challenges of the past year. Research-wise, we find ourselves in a strong position, having accomplished many objectives and successfully completed numerous tasks. This progress is largely thanks to the enthusiasm and hard work of our global team of researchers and […]
What does the future hold for sonic street technologies scenes? While we don’t know the answer to this, we do know the intergenerational transmission of the culture is an issue for many scenes around the world. We also know that one of the project’s briefs is to try to find out. Hence the need to […]
Sonic street technologies’ relationship with music is organic and two-folded. The music can go from the street sessions and the house parties to the charts, and back again. The case of lovers’ rock is particularly representative. A homegrown British subgenre of reggae infused with soulful melodies and romantic lyrics, since the mid-1970s lovers’ rock found […]
The 8th Global Reggae Conference provided two major opportunities for the project. One was to share our work, with members from the global SST team presenting papers across many of the conference panels. A major feature of this sharing of research results was the entire day of SSO#10 Frames and Frequencies film festival with no […]
The long term objective of the SST project is to establish sonic street technologies as an area of study. Therefore, having students and younger scholars getting involved is very important. We are pleased to welcome to the SST blog PhD candidate and sound system practitioner Giovanni Mugnaina from UNIBO (Italy) to report on the 8th […]
Sound System Outernational (SSO) in association with Sonic Street Technologies (SST) and the 8th Global Reggae Conference proudly presents: SSO#10 Frames and Frequencies: Films on Sound System Cultures Worldwide SSO#10 Frames and Frequencies is a one-day film festival premiering sound system films from six continents. Taking place on Thursday 15th February 2024, as a contribution to the […]
As our most attentive readers will already know, February 14th to 17th 2024 will see the 8th staging of the renowned Global Reggae Conference (GRC) celebrating and investigating the culture and technology of Jamaica’s most famous musical instrument – the sound system. Organized by the Institute of Caribbean Studies & Reggae Studies Unit, the GRC is an […]
SST has just published an article in the peer-reviewed journal Performance Matters entitled Jamaican Sound Systems and Knowledge Systems: Practice-Based Research (PBR) in Popular Culture. The article is authored by principal investigator Julian Henriques and senior research assistant Brian D’Aquino, and discusses the theoretical and methodological implications of conducting practice-based research on sonic street technologies in […]
by Julian Henriques “For me Shaka was doing something different to the other DJ’s: his dancing and creative performance throughout the night. I was drawn to Shaka’s sound because of his individuality and that he didn’t isolate himself from his audience, always performing on the same floor level, as a part of the crowd. He […]
Sonic street technologies take many forms and play many different kinds of music, but one amongst them – the reggae sound system – has travelled particularly far and wide. Historically its journey has been in the company of the Jamaican diaspora who are very well represented in Canada. As Jamaican music and culture has taken […]
SST is proud to support Sound System Outernational #8, to be held in London on Saturday 5th of November 2022. SSO#8 UK Sound System Reasoning Day: Continuities and Disruptions, brings together sound system operators from around the UK and across different generations. We aim to celebrate and exchange knowledge about how sound system culture and […]
One of the downsides of doing academic research on popular and street cultures is that it is quite difficult for the research outputs to reach out to those who have contributed to the research in the first place – those practitioners who have and continue to build the richness of the culture. As part of […]
The visual side of the popular music and sound system cultures has always been an interest of the SST project as able to capture subtle nuances and foster interrogations (see some previous blog posts here, here, and here). Best known for his iconic images of Bob Marley and the Sex Pistols, British photographer Dennis Morris […]
In this blog post, friend of the SST project, Dr. Enrico Bonadio of City, University of London reviews the just published Rude Citizenship: Jamaican Popular Music, Copyright, and the Reverberations of Colonial Power by Larisa Kingston Mann. Here at the SST project, we have been attending to the many ways that different kinds of technology […]
Every culture needs adequate archiving of spaces and practices unique to that culture, whether through […]
Held in Kingston Jamaica on Sunday the 20th of February 2022, ‘Sounds of the Future’ has been a research event bringing together professionals from the sound system scene to discuss the current state of the industry in Jamaica. The one-day event […]
SST has been a proud partner for the 7th staging of the Global Reggae Conference, organised by the Institute of Caribbean Cultural Studies and the Reggae Studies Unit together with the Perry Henzell Estate, and held at University of the West Indies, Mona Campus (Jamaica) between the 16th and the 19th of February, 2022. As […]
Over the years, certain SST cultures may grow to a level which the very same practitioners wouldn’t have ever expected. This is certainly the case for the Jamaican sound system: a globally spread, massively celebrated and widely inspiring culture – but also a local industry, which employs hundreds of professionals in different roles who together […]
There are so many ways in which legacies get overlooked in a world where the concept of the ‘archive’ is often read as static and lifeless. In this post, we seek to breathe life into the legacy of Hedley Jones whose contribution to Jamaican music has enabled not only technological shifts but collaborations to further […]
SST is excited to be partnering with the Institute of Caribbean Studies and the Reggae Studies Unit for the 7th Global Reggae Conference, to be held at University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, Jamaica, between 16 and 19 of February, 2022. Over the last fifteen years […]