Cultural Heritage, Entrepreneurship and Reggae Enterprise Culture and Style
Part 1: Sound Systems and the Entrepreneurial View: A Case Study
The influence of music from the USA on Jamaica, the largest island in the Caribbean, became more pronounced after the Second World War (Barrow & Dalton, 1997: 11). The flow of communication into Jamaica during the 1950s expanded as a result of increasing travel and the growing popularity of American radio stations. Jamaicans who could afford radiograms would listen to musicians, such as Louis Jordan, Johnny Ace and Fats Domino, on stations like WINZ in Miami or WNOE in New Orleans.
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Louis Jordan - You Gotta have a Beat
However, the poorer majority of pop music lovers heard these sound recordings on jukeboxes and radios in bars and liquor stores. It was in these informal settings that many Jamaican musicians shaped their tonal vocabulary. By incorporating the antiphonal syncopations of the blues and jazz into their local traditions of rhymes, beat, gesture and melody, Jamaican musicians developed their own unique vernaculars. Chang & Chen point out that ‘even though jazz musicians and their audiences were limited in numbers, jazz had an unmistakably strong influence on ska’ (Chang & Chen, 1998: 17). These American-influenced melodic expressions were combined with the rhythmic traditions of Burru, Pocomania, Mento and the revival music issuing from within Jamaica’s many churches.
Pocomania revival meeting (photo: Jamaican Tourist Board)
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Chanting Revival
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MENTO gave birth to Reggae
Powell (1975) has explained that after Jamaica’s independence in 1962, significant demographic shifts took place within the country. In the post-independence era, more Jamaicans moved to large cities to seek employment. Many relocated to the capital, Kingston. In this busy city, they were exposed to more sophisticated musical forms than the Mento, folk and church music that had formed part of the lifestyles of natives who lived in the rural parishes. The drive towards economic prosperity was paramount in the minds of most young Jamaicans, and some viewed music and sound recording as a means by which they could achieve status and, in the case of urban migrants, send money back home to their families. This is typified in the film The Harder They Come (1972), where Jimmy Cliff plays the role of a young, aspiring sound recording artist whose experience personifies this quest for financial success. The film secured unprecedented status for its producer, Perry Henzell, and became an exemplar for the ‘rude boy’ image it portrayed.
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The Harder They Come
The Harder They Come, Jimmy Cliff, 1972
The striking gunslinger pose adopted by Cliff in the film, and the Wild West imagery it evoked, were not far removed from the everyday reality with its undercurrent of violence experienced in many areas of Kingston. The ethos of this film like Rockers (1979), which portrays the experiences of musician Leroy ‘Horsemouth’ Wallace reflected the entrepreneurial imperatives of musicians and producers in the competitive reggae music industry.
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Rockers (trailer)
The visual signatures associated with the styles and fashions portrayed in the film were promoted on a sound recording of popular songs from the film. This album, entitled The Harder They Come (1972) after the film, vividly promoted self-determination and enterprise as principal motivations underpinning reggae’s formation. The film’s focus on the social dynamics of reggae enterprise became mirrored in experiences of black British youth in the 1970s where reggae was used as a means to make money through sound systems and other gregarious business ventures.
Cliff writes:
And I keep on fighting for the things I want
Though I know that when you’re dead you can’t
But I’d rather be a free man in my grave
Than living as a puppet or a slave
So as sure as the sun will shine
I’m gonna get my share now of what’s mine
And then the harder they come the harder they’ll fall,
One and all
Ooh the harder they come the harder they’ll fall,
One and all.
(Cliff, 1972: verse 3)
Dance forms derived from Kumina and Rastafarian rhythms were combined with African-American rhythm & blues music to produce ska.
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Kumina Dance
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Rastaman - Nyabinghi Session
Chang & Chen (1998: 307) claim that this phenomenon is one of the earliest manifestations of reggae in Jamaica. Ska was up-tempo, entertaining and eminently danceable.
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Ska Ska Ska Part 1 - A Regular Ska Session at the Sombrero Club in Jamaica - various artists
A dramatic fashion, style and industry developed around it rapidly, reflecting ska’s dynamic musical evolution.
Derrick Morgan (photo: urbanimage)
This style incorporated hip suits, hats, hairstyles and dresses that were reminiscent of American rhythm & blues culture. Jamaicans travelling between the USA and Jamaica in occupations such as field worker, servant, musician and pastor adopted such styles. However, the majority of Jamaican youths could not afford to buy these expensive commodities and with the use of new technologies, like the Singer machine, they made up their own versions.
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In Search of Singer Sewing Machine TV History (Part 1)
It was in this way that new, hybrid forms of fashion began to appear in Jamaica. Young people designed and manufactured their own clothes to establish distinctive identities. This, in turn, spawned micro-enterprises that interconnected with the reggae subcultures which were adopted and further developed by black British youth. Music is at the core of this method of creation and readaptation and, as a result, many ecclectic styles are formed.
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Beats of the heart (Reggae Documentary-1977)
As a consequence of lack of access to resources, this propensity towards adaptation and versioning has developed as a distinctive characteristic within working-class Anglo-Caribbean communities.
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Rhymstone
Through the 1970s as well, individuals were forced by their social circumstances to draw upon their own creative skills and inventiveness in cultural production and business.
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Reggae in the UK - 1976 (Part 1)
This remix ethos has since become an important aspect of black British life, especially in music. The studio research and new media display showed that this proclivity for adaptation has been tactically translated into concrete business strategies that have allowed reggae music producers like Noel Fraser, aka Mad Professor, to express their creativity and make a living from multiple product sales.
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Mad Professor interview
As sound recordings became more popular in Jamaica, enterprising disc jockeys, such as Coxsone Dodd, Duke Reid and Count C, started to manufacture their own sound systems. A new breed of entrepreneur emerged as a result of the difficulties that most Jamaican young people encountered in accessing this music owing to only a few radios being available. These sound system entertainers would satisfy the demand for dance music, playing discs obtained from New Orleans and Miami through powerful amplifiers linked to large loudspeakers. The boxes housing the speakers were generally hand-made and this generated a small, but lucrative, industry for some sound system producers. Sound systems were built from scratch through the fusion of amateur and semi-professional artistry, carpentry and sound engineering skills of the owners, like Hedley Jones, Coxsone Dodd and their supporters. They were painted and decorated with crude graphic symbols, colours and phrases, both to liven up the parties, and as a code communicating the identity of their owners.
VIDEO
Reggae The Story Of Jamaican Music (Part 1)
Early Coxsone sound system (photo: Studio One)
Campbell (1996: 198206) indicates that the very early sound systems were simple; each consisting of a turntable, a valve amplifier and loudspeakers that were generally built by the operator. According to Henriques (2011) sound systems gradually became more varied in their components, and they eventually became extremely powerful. They became capable of projecting megawatts of sound to audiences in packed dance halls or at open-air festivals. As the audiences grew, so rival sound systems would try to outdo each other in a competitive scenario, playing louder and louder in an attempt to drown each other out. As more emphasis was put on the bass in this way, larger speakers were required. This provided the capacity for playing extremely loud music and this strategy succeeded in attracting more followers. However, it must be made clear that sound systems are not just a conglomeration of inanimate speaker boxes, cables and records; they also include human beings as essential elements. Thus, they are also a dynamic community of like-minded individuals extending from the inspiration of the owners to include immediate supporters and would be musicians to fans and followers devoted to the sound. Occasionally, a sound system would represent an entire village or town and compete in sound clashes against other crews in highly competitive duels. This tactic was later adopted by British sound systems who toured the country to play at parties, clubs and concerts. The dream for youth who followed these mobile discothθques was one day to become a sound system owner, open a recording studio or become a professional musician or entertainer.
In the UK, specialists in customising sound systems, like Hedley Jones, Jah Shaka and Ariwa, serviced speaker-boxes as large as wardrobes. By the late 1970s, speakers for sound systems commonly required huge trucks, supported by large crews, to move them. This tradition has continued in sound system culture, in spite of the fact that smaller hi-fi speaker systems are now available to play very loud music. Therefore, an autonomous trend has historically developed within sound systems culture, encouraging and promoting the construction of large cabinets for speaker systems as icons and status symbols.
Sound system managers would hire halls and play at parties, dances and weddings to earn money from their craft. These soundmen would try new ideas to attract a following to their own systems. This included talking over records (‘toasting’) while they were playing. Extending this strategy, each group tried to outplay rival sound systems, and this resulted in sound clash duels. This competition between sound systems was fierce.
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Reggae Sound Systems 1978
Hebdige maintains that the act of toasting over records was a product of the ‘call and response’ African vernacular tradition (Hebdige, 1987: 846). According to Cone (1997: 10315), this phenomenon was also transmitted through the blues and reinforced in, for example, the gospel music of southern African-American churches. Chang & Chen (1998: 1015) contend that, in Jamaican society, this phenomenon was closely associated with Pocomania and Mento celebrations. They explain that the ‘call and response’ ritual also found popular expression in 1950s Jamaica through rhythm & blues musicians, as many of the singers had been brought up in the church.
According to Jones (1988), toasting or chatting over records was a natural extension of the creative lifestyle and language of many Jamaican musicians. Subliminal narratives were formed among slaves in Jamaica, which were expressed through Creole speech patterns. Jones writes: ‘It is the uniquely syncretic and creolised quality of the forms which, more than any other feature, stamps the distinctiveness of Afro-Caribbean cultures’ (Jones, 1988: 4). These rhetorical expositions were aimed at challenging the power of their owners. The expressions of call and response, versioning and toasting are, thus, not just decorative embellishments to sound recordings. They are a historical product of a cultural heritage rooted in highly politicised responses to colonialism. They mark the psychological and societal transitions of African Diaspora people as they integrated into new worlds.
Campbell explains that, at formal sound system celebrations, the role of the mike chatter, otherwise known as the ‘Master of Ceremonies’ (MC), plays a critical part in directing the course of the event. Campbell writes:
The mike chatter is the selector’s right hand man He is responsible for introducing the records being played (‘intro’), hyping up the crowd (‘building vibes’), encouraging crowd participation and requesting that a record be played again immediately (this is called a ‘forward’ or a ‘rewind’). (Campbell, 1996: 199)
The more successful MCs were called on to perform at weddings and formal ceremonies. Initially, they copied the style and idiom of the British colonial town crier. But the rituals of the chief, leader or individual who calls on or works up the spirits was also familiar to many MCs from their knowledge of Pocomanian rituals. This provided an alternative indigenous style model. In sound systems, the MC became the person who provided a means for the creative vocal and lyrical interaction with audiences. These MCs worked closely with DJs, who played the records. In some cases, a separate selector (one who selects and passes records to the DJ) was also employed while the MC interacted vocally with the audience, but usually one or two individuals carried out all these functions.
Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry (photo: Studio One)
Campbell notes that the MCs were specialists in creating alternative lyrics for records, and that MCs, such as Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, later became producers and singers in their own right. This was an attractive arena wherein creative young poets, writers and would-be preachers might find a route into the lucrative record industry.
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Lee Scratch Perry - Studio Black Ark
The research found that as Jamaican music, dance and fashion styles evolved together, these subcultures and styles were creatively remixed to form diverse reggae music genres and enterprises. Gilroy argues that reggae’s cultural forms are representative of the hybridism of political and cultural discourses throughout the African Diaspora and the wider black world. He contends that reggae’s styles anticipate further supplementation and are often presented as a palette from which additional creative art can be developed. Gilroy writes:
In the cultural and aesthetic histories of diaspora populations, this anticipation of supplementation applies as readily to the visual meanings through which blackness is articulated as it does to its textural, verbal and performative figurations. (Gilroy, 1993a: 251)
Reggae has expressed its vernaculars and voices through visual promotion and style, and sound systems have acted as crucibles for the mixing of these cues and their transmission to the wider communities. The studio research shows that record sleeves have served as an important mechanism for encoding and communicating Jamaican sensibilities throughout the African Diaspora, and their images were constantly redesigned and restructured, like the music itself, to promote new reggae cultural forms and enterprises such as dancehall.
Count Machuki (B. Winston Cooper) is regarded as one of the first sound system DJs. Toasting and chatting over records was his method of embellishing recordings in order to win larger audiences and, thereby, greater sales and profits. Many versions of the same recording were often produced and sold with different lyrics. This ethos was inculcated throughout reggae’s evolution and transmitted through its sub-genres, representing an identifiable precursor to hip hop and rap music styles. The Jamaican form of ‘toasting’ or ‘rapping’ had a distinctive and significant influence on the creation of these popular music genres, which, as West (1999: 47484) has shown, dominated the US music scene in the 1980s.
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Dennis Alcapone - Wake Up Jamaica - Live 1973
A progressive sound recording industry that stimulated fashion and lifestyle items developed alongside sound systems. After the Second World War, the aesthetic significance of African-American music and fashion icons became increasingly important for young Jamaicans. These cultural modalities enabled them to identify with the growing black rhetoric of liberation and equality. However, they were equally aware of the potential for promoting their own distinctive brands of music, entertainment and style to the expanding youth audiences. Barrow & Dalton (1997: 1113) indicate that sound system managers valued and vied for their audiences, constantly presenting new records and schemes that would gain them the upper hand. Any ploy that enabled them to emerge as the winner was used, including strong-arm tactics to intimidate rival sound system producers. This competitiveness is a distinctive aspect of sound systems culture and enterprise. An example of this can be heard in the recording and viewed in the graphics of, for example, Big Showdown (1980) by Scientist & Prince.
Scientist & Prince, J. Big Showdown, 1980
The studio-based research has shown that, alongside music, dance and dress, the display and promotion of entertainment skills were also routes to entrepreneurial progress in Jamaican society. Marks (1990: 10612) maintains that these skills proved to be essential qualities for Jamaican immigrants to the UK in the 1950s and 1960s, enabling them to survive and even prosper. He explains that many black musicians encountered a society where the natives hated and alienated them, one where they were only considered for menial jobs. Black British self-help community networks and enterprise schemes were indispensable means of economic survival.
To develop a successful business, new sound recordings were crucial for sound system producers and DJs. They enabled them to keep the competition at bay by offering innovative products and, thereby, gain new audiences. In the UK, buying imported records from Jamaica was a way of staying ahead of the game. Sound systems became important means of marketing, promoting and selling these products.
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Sound Business aka Reggae Sound Bizness 1981
At the same time, record sleeves were used to communicate and comment on political themes and concerns while promoting new styles within black communities. High prices were charged for imported records, which is still common practice. Exclusive sound recordings were pressed on to ‘dub plates’.
Limited edition vinyl recordings had no promotional information on their sleeves. Such was the secrecy of record promoters and DJs wanting to conceal their artists that the record label at the centre of the disc was left white for fear that others would poach them if their identities were revealed. Dub plates also kept sound systems on the cutting edge and allowed promoters to test new ideas on their audiences. Popular artists and genres were developed, mass-marketed and played at live events. Dance halls were packed on Saturday nights, where the music of the kings of the sound systems, such as Coxsone Dodd, Prince Buster, V-Rocket and Duke Reid, blasted from speaker-boxes.
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Studio One Story - Dancehall (Coxone Dodd, Sugar Minott)
Making a dub plate (photo: urban image)
The Jamaican station RJR initially played mostly American pop music, but this started to change in 1959, when the arrival of the Jamaican Broadcasting Corporation actively encouraged the rapidly expanding national music industry by its promotion of indigenous recordings. This inspired a new breed of young musicians, who formed bands that played alongside the sound systems in the dance halls. The sound system men were quick to spot these entrepreneurial opportunities. They added live entertainment to their shows and started to promote bands and individual performers in their own right.
In order to give greater value to a record (and also as a result of a lack of adequate finance), many reggae producers made ‘specials’. This was a process involving the recording of an instrumental version of the side A vocal tune on side B of the record. These ‘versions’ have been an important part of reggae’s evolution since the mid-1970s, and some instrumental versions have even become more popular than the vocal side. The bass guitar and drums featured prominently in these versions in order to amplify their rhythmic nature. This technique became the foundation for what came to be known as dub.
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Jamaican Sound System Culture And The Origin Of Dub
The rhythmic interplay between drum and bass in dub later influenced the development of trip-hop, drum‘n’ bass, jungle and garage in the UK. Johnson (1996) explains that, although the rhythm (beats per minute) was varied in order to create the sonic architecture for these new dance music genres, they have many compositional similarities with dub.
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Dub to Jungle Documentary
The Police, Reggatta de Blanc White Reggae, 1979
Rock groups such as The Police appropriated the style and structure of reggae and adapted these for consumption by their own followings, with spectacular financial success. The group combined reggae with rock, pop and jazz ideas to form a popular blend of music that extended their appeal to new and international audiences. The record sleeve of ‘Reggatta de Blanc’ (1979) does not conceal their voyeuristic association with reggae, yet it signifies a genre that is set apart from black life. The record did not deal with the issues that were prominent in reggae during the period. Moreover, the marketing of the music as ‘White Reggae’ (tellingly coded in the ‘highbrow’ French language) communicated a distinctive separation from sensibilities associated with mainstream reggae. The arena of cultural appropriation within sound recordings cannot be fully explored here. However, it is clear that reggae has had a significant impact on the development of modern popular music. Chris Blackwell puts this as follows:
What I think is so great about Jamaican music is that so much of what exists in popular music today started in Jamaica: dub versions, the remixes, rap, so many electronic effects. There are so many things in virtually every new record you hear that started in Jamaica. (Barrow & Blackwell, 1993: 2)
The potent rhythms of dub were also popularised by The Police in tunes such as Walking on the Moon (1979) and Message in a Bottle (1979). In these songs, Sting and Andy Summers lay down drum ’n’ bass tracks, and these constitute the main beat of the record. Melodies and improvised vocals were then later added to these spatial, yet hypnotic, rhythms.
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The Police - Walking on the Moon
This compositional method was similar to the approach used by Jamaican recording artists, Sly (Dunbar) and Robbie (Shakespeare), a popular, if not seminal, reggae drum ’n’ bass partnership. Their collaboration influenced the musical productions of Grace Jones and played an important role in the international development of Jamaican-influenced rap and ragga music.
Grace Jones was born in Jamaica. Although she did not specifically develop her music career around reggae, a strong Jamaican cultural influence was revealed and promoted in her recordings. The imagery surrounding Jones on record sleeves provided some of the most creative and potent examples of style in the 1970s, as demonstrated on Warm Leatherette (1980) and Nightclubbing (1981). Jones’ image can be viewed on these sleeves, representing a quintessential postmodern black aesthetic incorporating high fashion and a militaristic hairstyle to create an ethereal, subversive black chic.
Jones, G., Warm Leatherette, 1980
Jones, G., Nightclubbing, 1981
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Grace Jones sings Nightclubbing @ the Electric Picnic
War Inna Babylon: Reggae in the UK
In the 1960s, ska became the genre that popularised Jamaican youth culture internationally. This provided new markets for enterprising music producers and promoters. Following the development of ska, a series of further genres like rocksteady, lovers rock and dub, evolved, which have continued to promote reggae and to create new business opportunities. A trend was observed in the studio-based research indicating that new derivations of reggae contained and displayed the musical influences of previous styles. For instance, this can be seen in dub where enterprising musicians like King Tubby remixed music to produce versions. Dancehall further demonstrates this where riddims (melodic patterns taken from popular songs) from previous eras are mixed and remixed to form new popular arrangements.
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Dub Echoes - King Tubby
The present research has revealed that there are pragmatic, market-driven reasons for this approach towards re-creating and remixing musical forms in reggae. They involve the highly competitive reggae environment. As a part of their business strategies, reggae artists and record producers have developed creative approaches to expanding the variety of their music and sound recordings. This, in turn, has enabled a prolific output of records.
As a result of steady immigration to the United Kingdom in the late 1950s and 1960s, a market for the importation of music from Jamaica evolved. Disc jockeys imported records and sound systems/record companies were also set up. One of the first record labels to feature the ska style of music was Melodisc’s Blue Beat label. The term ‘Bluebeat’ was also coined in the early 1960s to describe this type of music. In 1961, guitar and brass arrangements in ska music produced a shuffling rhythm, which inspired a dance style involving a rapid flicking of the feet from the heels with a wobbling or shaking motion of the legs. This evolved into what became known as the ‘shuffle’. ‘Pam Pam’ Gifford performed with the Skatalites and was a key exponent of this dance style.
Jones (1988: 335) explains that Jamaican sound systems influenced the development of ska music and style in the UK, which later had an impact on the British mod scene. Reggae has since had a deep cultural influence on the development of youth subcultures in Britain. Hebdige writes:
The succession of white subcultural forms can be read as a series of deep-structural adaptations which symbolically accommodate or expunge the black presence from the host community. It is on the plane of the aesthetics: in dress, dance, music; in the whole rhetoric of style, that we find the dialogue between black and white most subtly and comprehensively recorded (Hebdige, 1979: 445)
While the cultural distinctions of race in Hebdige’s observation are polarised between ‘black’ and ‘white’, it is apparent that the appropriation of reggae style has been more complex; it has been a feature of a vast range of diverse youth cultures in modern popular music.
When the rhetorical modalities of Anglo-Caribbean urban conurbations are examined, it can be observed that subcultural transitions, and interactions within these contexts, have produced an enormous range of new music, media and style vernaculars. For example, by the late 1960s, rocksteady had become the dominant form of Jamaican popular music, and was closely associated with rude boy style. According to Brake (1985), features of ghetto language, heavy patois mixed with black American slang, characterised the rude boy attitude. Jones (1988: 89) has also argued that rude boy style was viewed as anti-establishment and counter-hegemonic (when appropriated by working-class youth). A distinctive dress style emerged from Jamaica which, when mimicked by black British youth, influenced the mods, skinheads and then modern British trends. Hebdige (1979: 52) has shown that this occurred as a result of the reorientation of the British rock music scene in the 1960s, which also incorporated the American hipster style.
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''Dressed 'n' Pressed ''- The Real Reggae Boys & Reggae Girls
In the 1970s, as reggae continued to influence British popular music culture, the rude boy ethos was replaced by a more overtly political black youth consciousness strongly associated with Rastafarian culture. This ‘roots reggae’ music was promoted by a series of groups, such as Bob Marley and the Wailers, Third World, Steel Pulse and Aswad. The roots reggae political expression, styles and quest for equality was adopted by second-generation black Britons, who established a rhetoric that provided them with a distinctive identity connecting them to Jamaica and Africa.
Marley, B., Rastaman Vibration, 1976
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Bob Marley Concrete Jungle @ The Old Grey Whistle Test 1973
Roots reggae also gained popular support from white college students, who were sympathetic to its anti-establishment ethos. However, although the music had gained enormous popularity by the mid-1970s, reggae continued to evolve to produce new sub-genres that stimulated dancehall, ragga and bashment in later eras. The design research established that, throughout each period of reggae’s development, entrepreneurship has been central to the establishment of new music sub-genres. This can be observed in their respective fashions styles, and the application of new techniques or technology in order to produce fresh musical styles and sounds. Each new sub-genre and corresponding remix and reversioning of songs or recordings were expressions of cultural enterprise and evidence of entrepreneurship which produced tangible and intangible reggae cultural heritage. These sub-genres are each supported by innovative dance styles, argot and rhetoric, backed by sound system enterprise.
By the late 1970s, sound systems were flourishing in black British communities. They provided a means for promoters to achieve independence from the major record companies by selling products through the informal distribution network of blues parties. The development of these networks later proved important to reggae and soul bands like Matumbi and Soul II Soul.
Sound systems evolved in the UK alongside social institutions, such as churches, barber shops, blues parties and community centres. These arenas had an important role in the development of Anglo-Caribbean music, youth culture and style. Informal self-help economic networks were established which stimulated entrepreneurial activity in these environments.
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Brixton in the 1970s
As a result of the shortage of native labour after the Second World War, the British government encouraged West Indian immigration. Marks (1990) notes that most West Indians settled in large cities and conurbations, such as London, Birmingham, Wolverhampton and Manchester. In his studies on multicultural societal formations, Fryer (1984) points out that there has been a long history of black immigration to British cities, particularly to portside locations such as Liverpool and Bristol.
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Black Britain (Part 1)
According to Ramdin (1987: 22255), Jamaican immigrants’ anticipation of acceptance and participation in the ‘mother country’ was cruelly dashed by realities of racial prejudice, hostility and economic deprivation. Scobie (1972: 194207) points out that West Indians were encouraged to participate in building an infrastructure in order to revitalise the post-war British economy, but not to enjoy it; they were unable to enjoy fully the opportunities created within its conventional economic structures.
By the mid-1950s, black music venues had already established a strong presence. Popular venues in central London were the 59, Flamingo, 77 and the Contemporanean. These formed a base, alongside a few regional clubs, through which the West Indian community could hear music imported from the Caribbean and the USA. Melodisc, which had been set up in 1946 to import jazz and blues from the USA, also started to promote calypso and Jamaican covers of American rhythm & blues records in the 1950s.
By the early 1960s, Jamaican music was available on the Bluebeat and Planitone (later Orbitone) labels. Daddy Peckings had established a record shop in Ladbroke Grove, West London. He imported Jamaican music and supplied Duke Vin with records on Sir Coxsone Dodd’s Studio One label.
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Duke Vin, Count Suckle & the Birth of Ska in Britain trailer
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Studio One Story - Dancehall (Coxone Dodd, Sugar Minott)
The Duke operated the first British sound system to promote Jamaican popular music throughout the country. Island Records and Trojan (Beat and Commercial) were established in the mid-1960s, and over time formed a distribution chain for Jamaican sound recordings through shops specialising in black music. Both these companies have played a significant role in the promotion of Anglo-Caribbean music. As was demonstrated in the interactive media visual research display, a new graphic language had begun to be formed, with the aim of marketing reggae through record sleeves, posters and leaflets for gigs with diverse audiences.
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BBC Radio - Tighten Up - The Trojan Records Story (2006) - (Part 1)
Millie Small, My Boy Lollipop, Island Records, 1964
By the mid-1960s, ease of access to reggae sound recordings was greater. In Britain, the music became popular with young West Indian immigrants and white working-class youth, but, with the notable exception of Millie Small’s My Boy Lollipop (1964), the music received little coverage in the media.
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Millie Small - My Boy Lollipop (1964)
The reasons for the severe under-representation of reggae in the music charts and, most importantly, in the playlists of radio stations, including the BBC, lay in the perceptions and attitudes of the majority of broadcasters. Marks explains that these music aficionados were turned off by reggae’s image, regarding it as unrespectable, irreverent and on the fringe (Marks, 1990: 111). The almost sole exception of Millie Small’s contribution was due to astute promotion by Island boss, Chris Blackwell (Boot & Salewicz, 1995: 1001).
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reggae history ( 5 of 5 )
During the 1960s, a number of sound systems created by a younger generation were springing up in the major British cities. These attracted the young West Indians who had migrated to the UK in the late 1950s and early 1960s. These migrants combined with the new generation of black Britons to create youth subcultures that were readily identifiable, and these were soon appropriated by young people from white working-class communities.
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Reggae In A Babylon
Hebdige (1987: 924) argues that even though ‘rude boy’ culture developed in Jamaica, there was a ‘Britishness’ about it that distinguished the groups that formed in Britain’s urban locales. These young people were alienated from British society. The racial prejudice that their parents had experienced when trying to get accommodation and employment on arrival in Britain was now their experience. Many of them had a more of a cultural affinity with Jamaica. They spoke patois and adopted styles closely aligned to contemporary Jamaican popular culture.
Tighten Up Poster, Trojan Records
The social, political and cultural signs that were prominent in Jamaica were reflected in sound system visual culture. Images and ideas of blackness were presented through iconoclastic symbols, themes and narratives. Black youth in Britain copied and adapted these Jamaican signatures, reinventing their identities in the process.
Groups of young people would travel to the major cities in the UK to hear the new sound systems. Sir Lloyd Coxsone [Dodd] was renowned for rocking the Ram Jam Club in Brixton. Count Shelley entertained crowds at 077 in Dalston, East London. Sound systems were eventually established in all major British cities with a large West Indian presence. These enterprises would host parties and organise sound clashes with the rival sounds visiting their venues. Sound systems became the basis for an informal black music distribution network, as the major record companies did not concentrate on these markets.
Coxsone Dodd (photo: urbanimage)
By the mid-1960s, the records and the music styles of artists, such as Toots and the Maytals, Alton Ellis, Jimmy Cliff and Desmond Dekker, gave them and a few other few Jamaican artists cult hero status. Young blacks growing up in Britain idolised Jamaican reggae artists, especially as local black British reggae music talent offered no viable alternatives at that time. The film The Harder They Come (1972) established Cliff as a popular reggae icon with a ‘rude boy’ image. This term had been previously ascribed to criminals. Despite the poverty young Kingstonians found themselves in, they aspired to the fashions and styles in magazines and movies merging jazz and rock ‘n roll styles with their homegrown fashions.
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Dandy Livingstone - Rudy a Message To You
The look including suits with sharp seams, pork pie hats and thin ties was later copied by groups like the Specials and appropriated by white working class youth during the 1970s.
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The Specials - A Message To You Rudy
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This Is England clip (official)
Cliff’s character in the film brought to life the psychological drama that ensued from the tensions and struggles encountered by a young would-be recording star who became caught up with the police in a ring of violence.
Jimmy Cliff in The Harder They Come, P. Henzell, 1972
This form of representation reflected the promotion of the black male protagonist as a villain or gangster, which became a feature theme of African-American blaxploitation movies during the 1960s and 1970s. It also symbolised, in a deeper sense, the tensions and struggles that black people had experienced in their emancipation from colonial rule. Young people were trying to re-form and recalibrate their cultural, economic and social identities. In the film, Cliff’s character typified these tensions as he worked towards getting a recording contract and, as a result, rising above the hardships of ghetto living to attain prosperity.
James Brown, Slaughter’s Big Rip-Off, 1973
The approach of promoting a ‘rebel’ image became commercially significant in reggae during the 1970s, especially for artists such as Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Desmond Dekker and, later in the 1980s and 1990s, for Yellowman, Buju Banton, Shabba Ranks and Capleton through ragga and dancehall styles. It is important to understand that this rebel image operated as a marketing and promotion mechanism just as much as it reflected the sensibilities of certain Anglo-Caribbean youth and gangs (‘posses’).
In the 1970s, sound systems were a popular means of promoting black music. The interactive media display has demonstrated that there are a number of reasons for this; however, one principal element worth emphasising is that sound systems were the focal point for social gatherings and cultural expression.
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DVD WHA DAT 1985 (Part 1)
Historically, the black church has been a central arena for the development and expression of music and culture. According to Beckford (1998: 96106), revivalist church meetings had a historic similarity to the non-venue based Pocomania festivals in the Caribbean. They echoed the ritualistic gatherings characteristic of African communities. Beckford argues that rhythm, sound and music formed a basis for the substance and the collective expression of these spiritual celebrations.
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jamaican church
The church is an important venue within black communities. It acts as a social extension of black families, allowing them to express their aspirations, desires, fears and spirituality through music and worship. The black church environment was considered relatively ‘safe’, and provided an opportunity for the young to meet in a setting acceptable to parents and extended family, and social clubs and community centres were developed out of church meetings. These gatherings provided informal means of social exchange. Secular music could be heard, and dances were organised in some social clubs, where the beat of dominoes smashed hard on to tabletops, syncopating with the dance music. This thesis has discovered that sound systems operated in a manner similar to the black church as a locus for black cultural celebration, expression and enterprise. Sound systems have provided a bounded and distinct space for the spiritual, emotional, political and entrepreneurial re-formations of black identity.
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Victor Romero Evans - Engagement Scene from 'Babylon'
In Britain, these cultural spheres evolved into alternative social spaces, where black communities could develop and express their cultural characteristics and assert their autonomy, power and confidence. West Indian parents generally regarded dance clubs and sound system gatherings with suspicion. By and large, they disapproved of young people attending these parties. For the young, though, these subversive gatherings provided them opportunities to hear the new music, which connected them to the argot and fashions of the Caribbean, and, most importantly, they were gateways to sexual encounters. The music at these events was loud and danceable. These micro-business were often formed into networks allowing sound systems the opportunity to tour and play to new audiences. Parties hosted by DJs and sound system operators became known as ‘blues’ or ‘shebeens’. These were initially held in cellars and front rooms, but soon such house parties were formalised by the sound system operators into clubs. These venues, like the black church, provided permanent and discrete spaces where black youth could express their emotions freely. They enabled a temporary, yet vital, escape from the social hardships that many people faced. Most importantly, they offered financial opportunities to create, promote and sell sound recordings and their related products.
You Can Get It, If You Really Want
According to Fryer (1984), a black presence in Britain has been apparent for centuries. Brake (1980) has argued that the experiences of black people are distinguished by their isolation from British society and their frequent subjection to racial prejudice. This situation has always negatively impacted on their employment prospects. Limited educational opportunities were a consequence of black families being forced into the poverty and squalor of urban ghettoes. However, West Indians carry with them a strong sense of pride and a determination to make a better life for themselves and their children. They continued, despite the hardships and alienation they faced, to provide opportunities for their children to progress. This often required the development of self-help structures, such as community nurseries and Saturday schools, outside of the mainstream institutions which they found closed to them.
In the 1970s, young black Britons were idealising Africa in a manner similar to that in which their parents had idealised Britain as the mother country in previous generations. Inspired by this new focus, they formulated political ideologies around race and resistance. Such notions had long been a feature of Rastafarian communities in their quest for repatriation to Africa, and this phenomenon was behind many important signifiers on record sleeves and posters for the styles, fashion and entrepreneurship of reggae musicians and producers.
Jah Woosh, Religious Dread, 1978
In the 1970s, reggae record sleeves reflected the visual rhetoric of the ‘dread’ style, representing an affiliation with African symbols and sensibilities. For example, this is evident on the record sleeve of ‘Religious Dread’ (1978), where a portrait of Jah Woosh signifies one of the repertories of blackness that emerged during that era to denote the black youth image connection with the Rastafarian ethos. Young Anglo-Caribbeans changed their names in order to affirm and reflect these linkages, and wore fashions that demonstrated their association with the ‘dread’ persona. Jah Woosh expresses his interest in the Bible on record sleeves, and scriptural-cum-political references can be heard throughout the sound recording.
In the 1970s, young black Britons also identified with other aspects of the image and styles of Rastafarians. Their style and dress sense incorporated dreadlocks, red, green and gold symbols, African objects and ‘dread language’. Marcus Garvey was heralded as a significant revolutionary figure, a leader who promoted a philosophy of black pride, black power and self-reliance. Bob Marley, Big Youth and Burning Spear, alongside other reggae stars, became the popular icons, heroes and role models for a whole generation of young black Britons. The political changes that had taken place in the USA, particularly during the 1960s with the Civil Rights movement, also had a role in shaping the political consciousness of young blacks in 1970s Britain. They related to the rise of the Black Power movement and its attendant philosophy of black ownership and control. Black political and cultural awareness was demonstrated and amplified by powerful icons like Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Angela Davis and Leroy Jones. These were among the black political figures that emerged during the period who had an impact and influence on militant reggae artists such as Black Uhuru, Aswad, Steel Pulse and Third World.
Black Uhuru (photo: Adrian Boot)
Access to television and radio was more widespread than ever before; however, reggae entrepreneurs found it difficult to promote their music through mainstream companies. In contrast, the transmission of media images of riots and black struggle against white supremacy, bigotry and hatred in the USA struck a chord with young black people in Britain, who had experienced similar oppressions. At the same time, the exposure and popularity of black music in the USA and Britain were increasing. During this era, groups and individuals from Motown, such as Smokey Robinson, Diana Ross and the Supremes, The Jackson Five, Stevie Wonder and Otis Redding, were having an immense impact on popular culture throughout the world. Black British music also started to develop a wider output of styles and talent. Sound system promoters put on tours in Britain of major reggae artists, such as I-Roy, Big Youth, the Maytals and the Wailers, and these types of enterprise further stimulated the formation of networks for black record shops and clubs.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the music industry was viewed by black youth as one of the more accessible and legitimate means to make money while retaining a certain level of independence. Young Jamaican musicians had observed their predecessors operating successful sound systems, managing musicians, and producing and selling records. Some viewed this as a proven and creative route to an independent and entrepreneurial lifestyle offering considerable rewards. This prospect was attractive to young people, and those who associated with sound systems often became part of a collective.
The visual research has shown that sound systems established their own codes, dialects, fashions and styles. The most successful systems, like Jah Shaka and Coxsone, had powerful status in the black community. Belonging to a successful one was as important as trying to achieve success in the mainstream music industry. Sound systems exerted a great attraction because they kept artists closer to their roots, ultimately providing more power and control, and, therefore, greater autonomy. An informal and independent economic network developed to mature and sustain these enterprises. In the movie Bablyon Jah Shaka sound system is shown using a Synare 3 to create sound effects used to customise live performances and produce dub plates. Reverb, echo, tremolo and modulation of the volume control were used to create soundscapes and rhythms that audiences would dance to. These would be recorded, remixed and packaged and sold to stimulate demand for artist albums or live performances.
Sound systems were one means whereby young black people could establish their own business in the music industry, and they flourished and stimulated other connected enterprises in areas such as live music performance, sound production and recording, distribution, design, fly-posting and promotion, and the selling of food, drink and drugs. Sound systems underpinned and galvanised these other diverse and dynamic enterprises. A network of young people, often unemployed, developed these varied alternative means for economic survival. Some formed their own posses, built speaker-boxes and planned dances.
Following reggae’s golden years, when its pop and roots genres attained international economic success and exposure, new varieties, including dancehall and ragga, emerged. In spite of their disdain for the negative manifestations of dancehall such as violence, misogyny and gun crime, the Jamaican ruling classes used it to preserve social divisions. Youth associated with dancehall were often connected with gangs in the downtown urban working-class areas, and this suited the ruling classes, who did not want these influences spreading to their up-town communities. However, at the same time, dancehall’s commercial and international cultural significance was celebrated.
Although involvement with sound systems represented only a small proportion of the independent careers and occupations of Anglo-Caribbeans in the 1970s, it has been shown that they played a significant role in developing micro-business opportunities for youth. They provided important arenas where black youth autonomy and identities were established. The studio-based research and interactive media display have demonstrated the diverse cultural and economic enterprises that sound systems and their related activities have provided. This counters the stereotyped impressions that young blacks were lazy and unenterprising, and principally engaged in riots, crime and deviant behaviour.
In Cut ’n’ Mix (1987), Hebdige recounts the experience of Count Shelley, one of the most popular sound system DJs in the late 1960s. Shelley arrived in Britain in 1962. By supplementing the income from his day job with a sound system he operated in the evening, he eventually acquired the money and expertise to set up a record business:
I was a bricklayer first seven years here. And naturally I check out the sound scene, ’cos back home I used to hang around the systems. I keep quiet: working away a bit, then I start doing my own sound. Laying down bricks day, laying out sounds night. By 1969 I chuck the bricks and make a system full-time. (Hebdige, 1987: 94)
This section has synthesised the findings of the studio-based graphic design research. It has argued that entrepreneurship has been a critical element in reggae’s evolution. Additionally, it has been demonstrated that sound systems provide an important example of the gregarious micro-enterprises that exist within reggae culture.
The following section provides a case study of Soul II Soul. The group initially emerged under the leadership of Jazzie B as a sound system. They exemplify the sort of evidence required to establish the research hypothesis, demonstrating the significance of entrepreneurship, self-help and enterprise in the black British music experience. Soul II Soul combined reggae beats with modern urban soul and chic fashion to produce a unique and popular brand of British music. The group also used graphic designs, symbols and logos to great effect in the promotion of their styles and in the distribution of their music.
Part 2: Soul II Soul: A Case Study of the commodification and marketing of a black British cultural style
Introduction
Soul II Soul emerged in the 1970s, at the culmination of what, in the music industry, is regarded as the golden age of reggae music. The group exemplifies many of the phenomena described in this thesis relating to enterprise, entrepreneurship and visual design styles connected to sound system culture.
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Jazzie B on Soundsystem Structures @ RBMA London 2010
Emerging from relatively humble origins, Soul II Soul served their apprenticeship on the touring circuit as a sound system, plugging into, and in many ways presaging, the subsequently popular acid house party culture. They have had a significant influence on black British youth culture in terms of its music and image. Generally regarded as one of the most popular black British music exports, Soul II Soul broke into the tough US market, where an almost unending cycle of home-grown artists regularly swamp any hint of competition from abroad. In 1980s Britain, the group were regarded as music entertainment superstars. They attracted a youthful following who attended their sound system and live music concerts, also buying their records, videos, posters and t-shirts. It is this aggressive merchandising element of Soul II Soul’s marketing strategy, alongside its sound system ethos, which effectively ‘branded’ the group.
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Jazzie B on putting soul into the soundsystem @ RBMA London 2010
The anti-pop image that the group adopted as a part of its marketing style was developed in order for them to promote their own particular brand of popular culture. Right from the start, Soul II Soul’s marketing style went hand in hand with the promotion strategy of the group as self-sufficient artists who designed their own visual images, motifs and labels, as well as symbols as well.
Beginning with large banners and posters that featured prominently at their sound system discos, enlivening the ill-decorated halls they performed in and giving the group a distinctive visual identity, Soul II Soul soon recognised the economic value of brand merchandising as an activity in its own right. They developed and promoted the ‘Funki Dred’ brand and image. This signature symbol was emblazoned on large dark curtain fabric and adapted for sale on t-shirts, sweatshirts, hats, posters and other merchandise.
Rose (1991) contends that the phenomenal success of this marketing strategy encouraged Soul II Soul to launch their own fashion label. This solidified links between their music, art, graphic design and fashion. This approach typifies the dynamic manner in which black popular music has developed through the African Diaspora, and illustrates the entrepreneurial drive that was central to the establishment of this group as a successful business. Music, design and fashion were combined to produce an enormously popular package of symbols, style and commercial success for the group.
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Soul II Soul - Jazzie's Groove
Soul II Soul represent an effective combination of the sound system ethos of the 1970s and the sensibilities of the designer decade of the 1980s. Their art became their business, and vice versa, and they became a symbol of the young, radical, black entrepreneur. Soul II Soul are an example of sound system musical innovators with a taste for business, marketing and packaging. Their enterprising approaches emphasise the pragmatic and concrete business dynamics, which, this thesis has concluded, have been central to the development of reggae music and culture throughout.
Design became a means by which their ideas could be mediated and commercially exploited through the music business. Once seen as black new style gurus, Soul II Soul, while still commercially successful and having set the stage, were soon, in typical fad-/fashion-/pop-culture style, eclipsed by a new generation of black British artists. In 1980s Britain, artists such as Mark Morrison, Nu Colours and Truce emerged, influenced by Soul II Soul’s accomplishments.
Soul II Soul’s hairstyles fused Rastafarian-inspired dreadlocks with more intricate modern hair designs. Dark sunglasses, the penchant for black as the colour of fashion and the promotion of Afro-psychedelic-cum-religious motifs are key elements of their brand and style.
Soul II Soul, Funki Dred brand
The group’s achievements include Rolling Stone’s Best New Foreign Band, Billboard’s Top Dance Artist, two Grammy awards, three US Soul Train awards, four UK DMC awards, one of the fastest-selling LPs in the history of Virgin Records and, for front-man Jazzie B, a NAACP role model award in America. All of this places them among the most important British music groups.
Their success was founded upon their professional experience as DJs, which provided them with an extensive knowledge of black music and a bedrock of support in the clubs. Founding members, Nellee Hooper and Jazzie B, were popular DJs during the rare groove club scene of the mid-1980s (where 1970s funk rarities were recycled for a young, cosmopolitan crowd). Consequently, Soul II Soul were in a position to analyse the construction of popular dance music and the response of audiences to particular songs from the ‘rare groove’ era. The group also utilised new technology and sounds borrowed from rap and dub music to further enhance their musical style.
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Jazzie B on Dubplate Pressure @ RBMA London 2010
As a sound system that played reggae as well as soul and funk, they were also aware of, and supported, the development of British reggae groups such as Aswad and Mutumbi. Given their knowledge of ‘classic’ dance music and their affiliation to reggae, it was natural for them to merge these styles when they came to making and playing their own brand of music. For example, their debut single ‘Fairplay’ (1989) was a self-consciously retrogressive drum ‘n’ bass style song, designed to please their initial supporters from the Africa Centre in London.
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Jazzie B on Rocking The Africa Centre @ RBMA London 2010
The drum ‘n’ bass approach that underpinned this record was built on the ‘drum and bass’ music of Jamaican artists like King Tubby, The Scientist and Sly (Dunbar) and Robbie (Shakespeare). Singer Rose Windross can be heard on the record, affirming to listeners that the place to be on Sunday night is the Africa Centre with Jazzie B and Soul II Soul. The group maintained their links with clubs and radio stations, and in the late 1990s, Jazzie B was a regular DJ on stations like Kiss FM.
Sound systems often developed in Jamaica as a way of sharing the expense of a PA unit. Instead of one DJ, there was a collective that included MCs and engineers in the sound system crew. In Britain, Soul II Soul’s sound system became a unit around which DJs, rappers, vocalists, graphic designers and entrepreneurs congregated. Soul II Soul copied and developed elements of the Jamaican sound system practice and ethos. As a result, the use of new technology was an important business strategy when creating and promoting their music.
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Panel Jazzie B
According to Rose (1991), consolidation of the unit meant more defined roles for group members: Jazzie B (executive producer); Nicole Bean (designer); Aitch B (shop management). Other important members are Nellee Hooper (production), and Caron Wheeler and Victoria Wilson-James (vocals). With a management/creative team established, the group approached major labels as a multi-skilled group. The group changed and adapted throughout its development, but the artistic ethos of a collective was maintained. This approach gave them more control over their image and recordings than any previous black British group had enjoyed. They claimed to represent the 1980s sounds and attitudes of urban, multicultural Britain; a challenging, imaginative marketing strategy promoted the group as a multicultural collective with a strong and positive message. The ‘Funki Dred’ idea was developed to represent a new subculture in Britain with which black people could identify. Soul II Soul’s principal selling point was the inter-racial cross-gender membership of the group, and the ‘Funki Dred’ brand image and their stance as positive role models culminated in Jazzie B’s NAACP award.
Soul II Soul, Club Classics, Vol. One, 1999
The diverse nature of the group, incorporating Jazzie B, black front man, Nellee Hooper, white producer, and Caron Wheeler, black female vocalist, was, at the time of the release of their first album (the platinum-selling Club Classics, Vol. One), a reflection of their origins. This image aimed to represent the rare cosmopolitan groove club scene of multicultural London. For Jazzie B, the purpose of Soul II Soul has been to serve as a vehicle for up-and-coming talent. Such a line-up, along with their collectivist structure, was advantageous when promoting their records. It differentiated the group from other urban music artists and underscored their newness and postmodernity. They also drew on a collage of elements derived from 1970s funk and reggae music, incorporating Rastafarianism, the colours red, gold and green, and dreadlocks.
These signatures were combined with chic soul music fashion and sound system sensibilities. This combination aroused intense media interest for the group and won them genuine popularity among young people, who recognised that the line-up mirrored their own multicultural identities in urban areas. Advertising agencies recognised and utilised their connections to black retro music to promote goods and services to multicultural consumer markets.
Nicole Bean designed the Funki Dred brand. It gave Soul II Soul a highly individual and immediately identifiable image. Bean focused on developing an entire merchandising range. The Funki Dred brand was a stylised version of the personal fashions of group members, Jazzie B, Aitch B and Daddae Harvey. They wore short, neat dreadlocks, tied in a topknot, with casual designer clothes and displayed tokens of material success the mobile phone and expensive cars. With its hairstyle and sound system references, ‘Funki Dred’ symbolised the group’s attachment to reggae music and its centrality to their sound. However, the shortened form of the dreadlocks and the corrupted spelling of ‘dread’ suggested that they were more concerned with reinterpreting reggae culture than with faithfully copying it.
Jazzie B, Soul II Soul
This commodification and entrepreneurship was central to their ideological development. The group’s economic aspirations and enterprising stance enabled them to open two shops, establish their own recording studio and set up a record label.
In the 1980s, Soul II Soul was a barometer of success for young British black music groups, not just musically and economically, but also in terms of their reflection of black British culture and style politics. They effectively took the ethos of reggae and sound systems and combined it with urban street soul style and modern marketing techniques to develop their own successful enterprises. This status set them apart as they could present themselves as more than just music-makers, and, ultimately, they promoted the group as one of business people running a successful company. This position was recognised by the launch, through Motown in 1991, of the Funki Dred record label, headed by Jazzie B. Since then they have become a model for young up and coming groups.
A crucial antidote to such up-scale ambition has been the Soul II Soul philosophy a commitment to the talent of the black community and to developing the strength of black British culture through individual and collective effort. The group’s slogan, ‘A happy face, a thumpin’ bass for a lovin’ race’, is deemed an expression of these ideals ? as are their songs, which promote positive, inspirational messages like ‘Keep On Movin’’ (1989), ‘Back to Life’ (1989), and ‘Our Time Has Now Come’ (1990).
The studio-based research uncovered the entrepreneurial initiatives of Soul II Soul, as a major example of how reggae was fused with British urban style to form a significant music business enterprise. Affirmation of the positive talents present and active in the black community has been often bypassed by social/media commentators and academics in favour of spotlighting negative trends. Soul II Soul’s combination of Jamaican sound system culture with soulful music themes have been skillfully marketed internationally. This business savvy, alongside his songwriting and composition skills, earned Jazzie B the Ivor Novello Inspiration award.
So we have seen in this chapter an evaluation of reggae and notions of cultural heritage. The chapter has examined how these ideas connect to music entrepreneurship and self-enterprise strategies used by young black musicians. An investigation of cultural entrepreneurship theories was followed by concrete examples of reggae entrepreneurship. This rhetorical exposition is accessed through interactive social media texts as a means of signifying narratives of reggae cultural heritage, style and enterprise. An extended analysis of reggae cultural entrepreneurship is provided through a case study of reggae sound systems and community enterprise with hypermedia links. The final part of the chapter studies the connections and divergent practices apparent in the black British group Soul II Soul showing further evidence of the studio practice of reggae’s rhetorical narratives. These case studies provide concrete examples of reggae entrepreneurship and community enterprise phenomena. The case studies and hypermedia links also substantiate the connection between the theoretical research and the interactive new media display outlined in the next chapter. We now go on to look at a synthesis of the visual design schemes, plans and explorations arising from the interactive design and media studio-based research practice.