A sound clash is a musical competition where crew members from opposing sound systems pit their skills against each other. Sound clashes take place in a variety of venues, both indoors and outdoors, and primarily feature reggae and dancehall music. The object is to beat or "kill" their competitors.
24-423: %5B%5BWikipedia%3ARedirects+for+discussion%5D%5D+debate+closed+as+delete #REDIRECT Sound system (Jamaican) Sound system (Jamaican) In Jamaican popular culture , a sound system is a group of disc jockeys , engineers and MCs playing ska , rocksteady or reggae music. The sound system is an important part of Jamaican culture and history. The sound system concept first became popular in
48-515: A song. Elimination continues until two sounds are left, for example Bredda Hype sound vs Sound Trooper. The time interval gets shorter and shorter, with the introduction of television clashes, so when playing returns to one sound again, they may only play a shorter time, 15 minutes. Near the end of the clash they go song on song or "Dub fi dub". Traditionally, all dubplates must feature the DJ's name, marking it as exclusive for that particular DJ, otherwise
72-583: A “singing newspaper” role. Many sound systems, and their owners, were labelled as supporters of a particular political party (such as the PNP or the JLP ), but most of the sound systems tried to maintain political neutrality. Nevertheless, as a cultural and economic phenomenon, the sound system was affected by the vast socio-political changes taking place in Jamaica at this time. An important part of sound system culture
96-467: Is so strong that "sounds carry people, as much as people carry sounds; 'vibes' find bodies to move" (230). Dance acts as a natural, immediate response to dancehall sounds, and as Henriques puts it, "bodies have no musical burden to bear; rather they are borne along, even berthed, by music." According to Henriques, the sound system has also played an influential role in the global influence of Jamaican music internationally. It has "proved itself to be one of
120-474: Is the sound clash , an organized battle between two systems. The Guinness Sounds of Greatness is one of many such clashes. In 2009, the Guinness clash was organized into three parts: a "juggling" round, where each system gets 15 minutes to get the crowd going; a "tune fe tune" exchange of "commercial releases"; and a "dub-fe-dub", when the systems alternate "specials done specifically for the sound system playing
144-548: The 1940s, in the parish of Kingston . DJs would load up a truck with a generator, turntables, and huge speakers and set up street parties. Tom the Great Sebastian , founded by Chinese-Jamaican businessman Tom Wong, was the first commercially successful sound system and influenced many sound systems that came later. In the beginning, the DJs played American rhythm and blues music, but as time progressed and more local music
168-706: The 1950s, when systems like Tom the Great Sebastian and Duke Reid's the Trojan clashed in the old Back-O-Wall (now Tivoli Gardens ) neighborhood of Kingston. Sometimes these clashes turned violent, with one system destroying the other system's equipment. The first reported clash was between Tom the Great Sebastian and Count Nick in 1952. Although sound clashes are perhaps most commonly associated with Jamaica, they also form an integral part of Black British culture in London , with early proponents such as Jah Shaka running sound systems and engaging in sound clashes as early as
192-566: The 1970s Jamaican reggae scene, featuring Leroy "Horsemouth" Wallace with his wife and children and in his own home, and the Harry J Studios in Kingston. The film Babylon , released in 1980, so accurately captured the raw smoldering tensions between White and British Afro-Caribbeans centered around Brixton in the 1970s and 1980s, that it would be given an X rating in the UK and blacklisted in
216-744: The 1970s. Franco Rosso 's 1980 cult movie Babylon offered a look into London's sound system and sound clash culture, focusing on the Deptford and Brixton areas in particular. In the early days of sound clashes, in Jamaican dancehall culture, sound systems would bring their own sound equipment—heavy bass sounds (that can be heard miles away) are especially important. Sound clashes typically play Jamaican music from 1950 up to present recorded singles, and often utilize exclusive dubplates . Occasionally, sound systems would go so far as to pay artists to secure exclusive use of dubplates. Appreciation for
240-622: The Ruler, founded in Bronx, New York , in the late 1970s. DJ Kool Herc , known as the Father of Hip-Hop, was responsible for importing many of the elements of Jamaican sound system culture to New York. Having immigrated with his family to the Bronx from Kingston at the age of 12, Herc grew up around dancehall parties, and despite being too young to enter, he would hang out outside the parties and listen to
264-493: The United States, due to its depiction of institutional racism . Believed to be too incendiary for general distribution, it would be buried and forgotten following its premiere at Cannes , and would take another 40 years before it would be re-released by Kino Lorber in 2019 and made available in the United States on The Criterion Channel in 2020. Menelik Shabazz's 2011 documentary The Story of Lover's Rock tells
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#1732798135632288-468: The dubplates and riddims played are shown in the form of "forwards", a surge of the crowd towards the front of the dance/towards the DJ booth. In particular, a "deep forward" originates from the back of a dance, where the aficionados (or "heads") typically stand. The first round is no elimination, each sound system plays a set time. Second round each sound system plays but one sound system being eliminated by poor performance, poor quality or by playing back
312-417: The method in which Jamaican migrants were able to maintain their cultural connection with their roots. They broadcast the remixed samples of reggae beats and created an underground music culture. This culture was separate from the larger population which relied on the radio to provide popular music. These sound systems were played in warehouses, clubs, and street corners. This was not simply just music played on
336-539: The mid-1950s, sound systems were more popular at parties than live musicians, and by the second half of the decade, custom-built systems began to appear from the workshops of specialists such as Hedley Jones , who constructed wardrobe-sized speaker cabinets known as "House[s] of Joy". It was also around this time that Jamaica's first superstar DJ and MC, Count Machuki , rose to prominence. As time progressed, sound systems became louder—capable of playing bass frequencies at 30,000 watts or more, with similar wattage attainable at
360-472: The mid-range and high frequencies—and far more complex than their predecessors. Competition between these sound systems was fierce, and eventually three DJs emerged as the stars of the scene: Clement "Coxsone" Dodd , Duke Reid and King Edwards. Besides the DJ, who rapped over the music, there was also a selector , who selected the music/rhythm tracks. The popularity of a sound system was mainly contingent on one thing: having new music. In order to circumvent
384-520: The most efficient of musical distribution mechanisms," (218) which has resulted in Jamaican music's influence on genres such as Hip hop , Jungle , and Dubstep . While part of its influence can literally be credited to its superior audio fidelity over radio, the sound system also acts as a symbolic transmitter of shared experiences across the African diaspora . The 1978 Jamaican film Rockers featured authentic culture, characters and mannerisms of
408-465: The music. When he started hosting his own parties in New York, he was known for having the loudest and most impressive sound system of anyone in the city, which heavily emphasized bass . He also introduced MCs (Masters of Ceremony) to the Bronx party scene, who are considered by some to be the first hip-hop rappers, as they emulated the toasting style of Jamaican reggae deejays. Sound systems were
432-487: The offbeat and snare-drum emphasis on the third beat, for example. As this new musical form became more popular, both Dodd and Reid began to move more seriously into music production. Coxsone Dodd's production studio became the famous Studio One , while Duke Reid founded Treasure Isle. As sound systems continued to gain in popularity through the 1960s and 1970s, they became politicized in many instances. The DJs would often satirize current affairs and local events, taking on
456-467: The radio for a few people to hear, but a culture that involved many people was developed out of being consumed by sound through large sound systems. Sound system culture presented what Julian Henriques refers to as sonic dominance. He is strategic in his usage of the word dominance because it is visceral and this term embodies the "power and the pleasure of the sonic" (452). The sound is an "enveloping, immersive, and intense experience" (451). The experience
480-466: The recording". The culture of the Sound System was brought to the UK with the mass immigration of Jamaicans in the 1960s and 1970s. Notable UK Sound Systems include Sir Coxsone Outernational, Jah Shaka , Channel One, Aba Shanti-I , Jah Observer, Quaker City , Irration Steppas, Fatman International and Saxon Studio International . One of the first sound systems in the United States was Downbeat
504-522: The release cycle of the American record labels, the sound system operators turned to record production. Initially, they produced only singles for their own sound systems, known as "Exclusives" or Dubplates —a limited run of one copy per song. What began as an attempt to replicate the American R&;B sound using local musicians evolved into a uniquely Jamaican musical genre: ska . This shift
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#1732798135632528-669: The story of the intimate dance, soundsystems, and social backdrop of the Afro-Caribbean community of South London in the ’70s and ’80s. Lovers Rock , part of the 2020 Amazon anthology series Small Axe , is Steve McQueen's paean to the lovers rock genre and its influences across space and between the diaspora communities of the "Black Atlantic" culture of the British West Indian community of 1980s London. Sound clash In Jamaica , sound clashes, with their "violently martial ethos", date back at least to
552-540: Was created, the sound migrated to a local flavour. The sound system remained successful when the conservative, BBC-modeled Jamaican establishment radio refused to play the people's music, while DJs could play whatever they wanted and favored local sounds such as reggae. The sound systems were big business, and represented one of the few sure ways to make money in the unstable economy of the area. The promoter or DJ made his profit by charging admission and selling food and alcohol; often thousands of people were in attendance. By
576-428: Was due partly to the fact that as American-style R&B was embraced by a largely white, teenage audience and evolved into rock and roll , sound system owners created—and played—a steady stream of the singles the people preferred: fast-shuffle boogies and ballads. In response to this shift in supply, Jamaican producers introduced to their work some of the original elements of the Jamaican sound: rhythm guitars strumming
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