Dub: Musical Connections

Mento - A style of Jamaican folk music of local stories using acoustic guitar, banjo, hand drums and rhumba box to sit on whilst playing
Listen to: Louise Bennett, Count Lasher, Harold Richardson, Lord Flea

Calypso - Deriving from the West African Kaiso music. Enslaved Africans working on sugar plantations of Trinidad and other Caribbean Islands were forbidden to talk. Singing French Creole in rhythmic, harmonic songs was often politically charged and a form of protest against their owners. Sung to upbeat sounds, it is strongly associated with carnival (which the French brought to Trinidad) using brass instruments and steelpans. Lord Kitchener is credited with introducing calypso to London with the song London is the Place for Me.
Listen to: Mighty Sparrow, Harry Belafonte and Lord Kitchener

Ska - With American R’n’B playing on radio stations, Jamaican producers started to record local artist versions mixed with influences of mento and calypso. By the early 1960s ska was created, mixing it up with DJs, MCs and sound systems. The Skatalites were one of the first bands associated with ska having learnt to play at the Alpha Boys School in Kingston, taught by Sister Mary Ignatius Davies who owned the Mutt and Jeff sound system. Producers Coxsone Dodd and Duke Reid are influential within the genre creating high – energy music with very quick rhythms. It later re-emerged in Britain in the form of two-tone, incorporating attitude and elements of punk
Listen to: Don Drummond, Jackie Mitto, Tommy McCook, Bobby Ellis, Alton Ellis, Prince Buster, Delroy Wilson, Lord Creator

Rocksteady - Evolving out of ska, with a much slower tempo the music introduces the one drop beat drum pattern that would go on to be very influential in mainstream reggae music. Strongly influenced by American soul and vocal groups, rocksteady music reflected a time of financial hardship in Jamaica. It was both criticized and celebrated for creating the ‘rude boy’ movement popularizing small-time criminals dressed in a particular style. This fashion would later have a large impact on British culture through its influence on early skinhead and two-tone style.
Listen to: Hopeton Lewis, Alton Ellis, Phyllis Dillon, Delroy Wilson, Ken Booth, Toots and the Maytals, Bunny Lee and producers Leslie Kong, Joe Gibbs, Coxsone Dodd, Duke Reid

Reggae - a catch-all term for the genres that had come before in Jamaica, such as ska, rocksteady and mento as well as influences from rhythm & blues and jazz, early reggae was typified by songs such as Cherry oh Baby by Eric Donaldson. The sounds of Jamaican patois expressing pain, struggle and hope alongside the bass and African nyahbingi drumming style, as the syncopated beat grew in popularity. The 1973 film The Harder they Come starring Jimmy Cliff and its soundtrack helped establish reggae in the mainstream. A few years later Bob Marley and his solo album Exodus achieved international acclaim and reggae became a truly global phenomenon.
Listen to: John Holt, Dennis Brown, Marcia Griffiths, Bob Marley, The Heptones, The Pioneers and many more. Producers include Leslie Kong, Coxsone Dodd, Duke Reid, Bunny Lee

Roots - A more politicised form of reggae music influenced by political unrest and financial poverty in 1970s Jamaica. People began to sing about the everyday pressure and struggles of Africans linking with ideas of spiritual repatriation, Black Nationalism and Pan-Africanism as put forward by Marcus Garvey and the Rastafari Movement. This had been strengthened by the visit of Emperor Haile Selassie I to Jamaica in 1966.
Listen to: Burning Spear, Bob Marley, Prince Lincoln and The Royal Rasses, The Abyssinians

Rub-a-dub - also known as rub-a-dub style, is a form of reggae that evolved out of dub and what is known as dancehall. The music often includes ‘toasting’ style vocals over dub and dancehall rhythms. The name is also linked to a style of dance.
Listen to: Barrington Levy, Nitty Gritty, King Kong and Tenor Saw

Toasting - A form of talking on the microphone often in in rhyme and over an instrumental track (usually the vinyl B-side). Jamaican toasting is often credited as a precursor of American rap and hip-hop.
Listen to: Lord Comix, Count Machuki, U-Roy, I-Roy, Big Youth

Rockers - A particular sound of roots reggae that became very popular in the late seventies. Reggae style playing became more mechanical and militant, where drum and bass would drive songs forward in an aggressive way with its greater use of syncopated drum patterns
Listen to: Sly and Robbie, The Revolutionaries, Augustus Pablo, Peter Tosh, Steel Pulse, Aswad, Black Uhuru

Lovers Rock - A form of reggae that is much softer and often with romantically lyrical themes, made for slow dancing and developed in the UK. Many of the singers were still at school when they made their first records and it became a popular genre with known producers such as Dennis Bovell, Mad Professor, Sir Lloyd Coxsone and Neville King
Listen to: Janet Kay; Carroll Thomson; Jean Adebambo; 15,16,17; Matumbi; Louisa Mark

Dancehall - From the late 1940s in the inner-city of Kingston, Jamaica, music was geared towards playing popular Jamaican recordings through local sound systems in dance halls for local people. It enabled those who were poorer and without access to a radio to hear music. As the social and political landscape in Jamaica started to change in the 1970s, a new wave of DJs and sound systems started to emerge speaking of social injustice and repatriation alongside the growing Rastafari Movement. Dancehall experienced mainstream success in the 1980s and 90s as sound systems embraced technology, remixing older rhythms and voicing over with Jamaican patois lyrics. Today, the genre is heavily influencing mainstream western artists, UK acts and producers
Listen to: Yellowman, Barrington Levy, Frankie Paul, Junior Reid, Sanchez

Image: mind maps showing the development of research into musical connections for Dub London