Paul D. Miller, also known as DJ Spooky, That Subliminal Kid, has been producing beat-heavy electronic music for more than a decade. From his early solo trip-hop efforts to his more recent collaborations with jazz giants, Spooky has always approached music from multiple angles at once. He has the chops of a musician, the genre-blending ear of a disc jockey and the conceptual vision of a performance artist.
It was therefore no surprise when Trojan Records, a reggae label entering its 40th year, asked DJ Spooky to put together a mix showcasing tracks from its massive archives. When assembling >In Fine Style: DJ Spooky Presents 50,000 Volts of Trojan Records, one of several mixes commissioned to mark the Trojan birthday, Miller found countless parallels between the Jamaican reggae scene of the 1960s and ’70s and the digital mashup ecosystem of today. (See Upgrading Jamaica’s Cultural Shareware: Trojan Records at 40.)
Despite its large Mexican and Asian communities, and a black neighborhood that’s more distinctive than the black community in Seattle, Portland seems isolated and singular. Isolated because its architecture, laws, and civic infrastructure are unique, as if the municipal and design trends radiating from the big centers of the world failed to reach this remote outpost, and in this splendid isolation Portland established its own ideals. Singular because its cultural products seem of one mind, one lifestyle, one world (white, middle-class), and not like, say, hiphop, whose parts were fused in boroughs that contained various ethnic groups (African American, Jamaican, Puerto Rican, Jewish).
Portland, however, is not completely isolated as an artistic community, being intricately connected with cities like Seattle, Vancouver, BC, and San Francisco, and it isn’t confined solely to the production of postmodern novels or rock music. In fact, Portland is one of the North American capitals (in terms of production and distribution) of dub music, an abstract form of reggae that originated on the streets of Kingston, Jamaica. The reason for Portland’s dub capital status is the presence of Systemwide, the house band for a thriving dub label called Bucolic Sound Investigations (BSI).
A SHORT HISTORY OF DUB
If you already know what dub is, then I recommend you skip this part and resume the feature in the next section, titled “Portland’s System.”
There is a famous story of a Rastaman and a hippie dancing at a reggae concert. The hippie dances wildly, flapping his arms and moving frantically. The hippie’s expressive dancing irritates the chilled-out Rastaman, who, when accidentally struck by the hippie’s hand, finally tells him to stand still and dance. This is precisely what one must do when listening to reggae: stand still and dance. Reggae is less dance music and more soul music. It’s the soul, not the body, that dances when one listens to Bunny Wailer or the Roots Radics or the Itals. Reggae is so preoccupied with the soul (its condition, its qualities, its shivers and shades) that a whole subcategory of the music is devoted to reproducing soul worlds or geist dimensions. That subcategory is dub.
1Xtra’s ‘Remix Kid’ Seani B uncovers the origins of remixing…
How has the art has changed over the years?
First developed by Jamaican reggae producers in the 1960s to create dub music, remixing was picked up by hip hop pioneers and disco DJs to develop new styles.
P Diddy is one the most famous remixers of all time – if that title is in your sights, listen up for Seani’s tips on how to put together your own remix track.
Who’s the remixer of the remixers? How has remixing blurred the boundaries between different musical genres in the UK?
Mix, mix again, remix: copyleft, cut ‘n’ paste, digital jumble, cross-fade, dub, tweak the knob, drop the needle, spin, merge, morph, bootleg, pirate, plagiarize, enrich, sample, break down, reassemble, multiply input source, merge output, decompose, recompose, erase borders, remix again. These are among many of the possible actions involved in what can be broadly labeled “remix culture” – an umbrella term which covers a wide array of creative stances and initiatives, such as: plunderphonics, detritus.net, recombinant culture, open source, compostmodernism, mash-ups, cut-ups, bastard pop, covers, mixology, peer to peer, creative commons, “surf, sample, manipulate”, and uploadphonix. (more…)
09/03/2006
To american dub producer and musician Slade “Burning Babylon” Anderson reggae in his begginings reggae was just a side thing. He started his musical career by playing guitar in punk/metal bands like The Straw Dogs and The Freeze, where he builds himself in solid guitar player. But when he, in mid 90’s, swiched the guitar with bass, and punk with reggae the remarkable part of his career begins. With his first album “Roots and Heavy” from 1999. Slade tried to imitate his idols, King Tubby and Mad Professor, in his own way, as well as his nationales Thievery Corporation, in which he succseeded. Next album, “Garden of Dub” from 2001. passed even better, as it comes with remarkable cover of Clash’s “Bankrobber” and few hits made on his own, “Into Twilight” and “Dub of Thieves”. Following year he started to work with excellent english dub/roots label & distribution Tanty for which he publishes a maxi single “Dub Shack”, as well as he contributes to their compilation “Roots of Dub Funk” vol.3 with song “Living Soul Dub”.
The mixing desk as an instrument and the DJ/remixer as an artist John McCready
Around 1969 Kingston-based reggae producers started to issue singles with instrumental “versions” on the flipside of vocal releases, which were actually the basic riddim tracks. To these “versions” one could add further instrumentation or deejay accompaniment. Within a year the inclusion of instrumental versions on the flipside was common practice among the majority of Jamaica’s producers. In 1971 the first real dub recordings began to appear, with The Hippy Boys’ “Voo Doo” – the version to Little Roy’s “Hard Fighter”, which was mixed by Lynford Anderson a.k.a. Andy Capp – now widely acknowledged to be the first recording in the genre. But it was pioneering sound engineer and sound system operator Osbourne Ruddock who did more than any other to popularize and develop the sound. He explored the possibilities of sound from his small studio, located at the back of his home, at 18 Drumilly Avenue, Kingston 11. — Teacher & Mr. T.
This is dub revolution . . . music to rock the nation.
-Lee “Scratch” Perry
In the modern age of electronic music, the word ìdubî has become a buzzword for virtually any style of music that utilizes the remixing of prerecorded sound as a mode of artistic expression. The idea of taking apart the various instruments and components that make up a recording and remixing them into something that sounds completely different is a common practice today, being used in various styles of music such as jungle, house, hip-hop, and even metal. It is often overlooked, however, that the dub technique and style originated in Jamaican rocksteady and reggae. The great sound system engineers of Jamaica in the late 1960s and early 1970s pioneered the instrumental remix and were the first to make the style popular. Using only primitive recording and mixing equipment, the mixing engineer took a lead role in defining the sound of the recording, using the mixing board as his instrument. The resulting dub craze that occurred in Jamaica in the mid 1970s further established the mixing engineer as an artist. For the first time in recorded music, the ìsoundî of a recording become connected not only with the musicians and the producer, but with the mixing engineer as well. Dub became a tradition and a part of the musical culture in Jamaica. The proliferation of instrumental mixes, known as ìversions,î as well as radically remixed ìdubsî that resulted opened the doors to a vast new field of musical expression that would eventually be embraced not only by Jamaican music but by popular music all over the world.
