Mains

CRUNCHY SKA - 1962
Indipendence time. Jamaica looks for its identity. And this can be achieved also through music. A few young talented jazz-educated musicians start mixing together calypso vocal lines on a rhythm 'n blues pattern. And to bring it all together that distinctive offbeat tempo that will be the trademark of the Jamaican sound for the decades to come.
Mission accomplished!

SWEET ROCKSTEADY - 1966
Summer of '66. Baking hot, no way to dance to ska. The rhythm slows down, the bass stops "walking" and starts pulsing, and the vocals sweat their SOUL out.
Sweet music for sour times.

HOT REGGAE - 1967
Streggae, Reggay, Reggae. Whatever you wanna call it it wasn't Bob Marley who invented it. Late sixties: the pace speeds up again, gets sticky and syncopated and the sound starts smelling of funk. This new music conquers the UK. First were the immigrants, then the sound systems, then the newly born skinheads and finally the charts. Climbing up and up again, sometimes until reaching the #1 spot, for the first and only time in history!





 
 
Sides

APPETIZING CALYPSO - 1950's
The roots of the roots. From Trinidad to the Jamaican shores, where it becomes Mento. Party music par excellance. Warm, teasing and funny. Some may think of palmtrees and holiday resorts with Harry Belafonte singing. Others of the rough sound and dirty lyrics of Lord Kitchener.
Which side are you?


FRESH JAMAICAN RnB - 1958
The wave from the "north". Jamaican radios get the airplay from the USA and RnB takes the island by storm. The first sound systems make their entrance on the scene and the first rivalries between dj's start to appear. Some adventurous producers start cooking it on their own, and that's where the story really begins...


SPICY DJ STYLE - 1968
Late sixties again. A turntable, an old instrumental rocksteady version playing and a dj toasting on it. Nothing more nothing less. But -believe it or not- modern dance music starts here.