This shift 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. What began as an attempt to replicate the American R&B sound using local musicians evolved into a uniquely Jamaican musical genre: ska. Initially, they produced only singles for their own sound systems, known as "Exclusives" or Dubplates-a limited run of one copy per song. In order to circumvent the release cycle of the American record labels, the two sound system superstars turned to record production.
The popularity of a sound system was mainly contingent on one thing: having new music. Besides the DJ, who rapped over the music, there was also a selector, who selected the music/rhythm tracks. Competition between these sound systems was fierce, and eventually two DJs emerged as the stars of the scene: Clement "Coxsone" Dodd, and Duke Reid. As time progressed, sound systems became louder-capable of playing bass frequencies at 30,000 watts or more, with similar wattage attainable at the mid-range and high frequencies-and far more complex than their predecessors. It was also around this time that Jamaica's first superstar DJ and MC, Count Machuki, rose to prominence. The promoter or DJ made his profit by charging admission and selling food and alcohol often thousands of people were in attendance.īy 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 of Joy". 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 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. In the beginning, the DJs played American rhythm and blues music, but as time progressed and more local music was created, the sound migrated to a local flavour. 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. DJs would load up a truck with a generator, turntables, and huge speakers and set up street parties. The sound system concept first became popular in the 1940s, in the parish of Kingston.
( May 2017) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) Statements consisting only of original research should be removed. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding inline citations. This article possibly contains original research.
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