Holding on to the African Vibration of the Drum

Sistah Sheeba Levi-Stuart speaks about the history of Rastafari livity, or way of life, in the UK. Patois, yard style:

Dub music are the expression of the African spirit, freedom and rhythm, passed on through generations.

In ‘70s London youngsters who fah parents and grandparents come to rebuild the motherland embraced Black music. This included reggae, which includes dub music.

Dub music arrived mainly from Jamaica. Records had A-side with lyrics and music, and B-side, music minus lyrics with emphasis on the drumbeat.

Young Black Londoners embraced dub music with a passion. Why? Africans from the Caribbean was invited to the UK, yet them fight with racism and bigotry daily. Immigrants endured tensions and hardships. Relationships between parents and youths was affected.

The young generation aspired to re-connect with them African heritage and to free up their minds. Music from Jamaica fed this quest and dub music was especially effective. Conscious youngsters were able to fulljoy a sound that fed their sense of freedom through dancing and listening. Dub music in London at that time created a socially cohesive oneness amongst youths, youth who felt excluded from the mainstream society. Them was interested in the cultural heritage of them ancestors and the literature of Black academics and historians.

Rastafari levity offered the way forward to a huge number of young adults and the drum and bass of dub music connected with Africa and Nyabinghi. For a generation seeking to declare them independence from the enforced way of life inflicted on their race, dub music provided an excellent means to express fulljoyment, reasoning and irie sounds for creation steppas.

Dub music is an important part of the history of Black Londoners. It’s a piece of home that I and I well-needed in the wilderness years of insecurity and trauma. A generation took the courageous step of rejecting an unjust and discriminatory philosophy, and them chose to explore them true identity despite centuries of having this beaten out of them psyche. Dub music is an acknowledgement and celebration of I and I creativity and I and I African sense of freedom, rhythm and spirituality.

Image: Flyer from the collection of Mark Gocher