Sound System Music

The classification of sound system music is that it is a combination of Engineers and Disc Jockeys functioning as a unit to play and produce music. In Jamaica music culture, this scene is usually looked upon as an important part in the history and is regarded as the trendsetter for the growth of the new genres of Jamaican music. These sound system operators all work together to play the Ska, Rocksteady, Jamaica Reggae or Dancehall music.

This was born in the 1950’s when persons would gather in the streets of Kingston and listen to the records of rhythm & blues that they would get from American; this was usually in the ghetto areas. This concept was very popular and you have the DJ’s set up street dances in various places, they would transport their turntables, generator and some enormous speakers.

But as it began to grow, they progressed to playing the Jamaican music as they started creating their own type of music and this added the well needed Jamaican flavor. The people gravitated to this now and they were graving for more, this now started to expand into business where more persons could earn some money. By this time it had moved from just in the streets to places that would call “lawn”. The owner of a bar or a promoter would have a venue, charge a small fee to for admission, selling drinks and food; this would pull in thousands of people from all sectors of the society.

In the later part of the 1950’s the sound system music had cast a shadow on the musicians who were performing live. Later on it extended even further to some specialist building custom-made systems with special speaker size cabinets. As time evolved, the sound systems became deafening as they now able to over 40,000 watts or even more compared to the sounds of the record players before. It was getting so popular and competitive spirit was now growing as to who was the number one sound system, two of them emerged as the stars on the music scene and they were Duke Reid and Clement Dodd.

After all this development new ideas started forming now and it was soon to be realized by the sound system operators that what they need most for their continued success was having new records at all. The Jamaican music at time was developing and was now playing alongside the American records, but more Jamaican records were needed. Therefore these sound system operators started their own production to record songs. At first they just produced what was called dub plates or exclusives, these were just singles for their individual systems and was only limited to one song per record. This was not enough for them and local artist began doing covers of the American R&B, during this process they created a genre of their own, this was called Ska.

This new genre of music further opened up new avenues for the producers; they started introducing the Jamaican elements such as the guitars that produced rhythm of offbeat that emphasized on the beats. The creative juices were now flowing; they started to go deeper into the production of music. Duke Reid went on to form his own label called Treasure Isle and Coxsone Dodd created the label called Studio One.

Another factor that resulted from the sound systems popularity in the 60’s and 70’s, was the introduction of politics. The sound system operators were now being classified as supporters of two political parties in the country at time, namely JLP and PNP. They tried hard to remain neutral, but in the end they were affected by this change.

One of the main elements of the sound system music playing at the dances too was the sound clashes. This was a fierce competition more than one DJ, where they put their selecting techniques at work and match each other song for song. Originally when the sound clashes just started each DJ would use their own system, but today many facilities provided built in sound equipment for them to play from. The main objective a sound clash is to “kill” a popular phrase in dance circular, this is not meant literally but, tune for tune. All of this would need the crowd involvement to decide who selected and played the best songs or dub plate, in order to win the clash.