Jamaican sound systems

From Jamaica Wiki

A Jamaican sound system is a term crated out of the specific music culture in Jamaica. A sound system includes disc jockeys, engineers and MCs playing ska, rock steady or reggae music. The Jamaican sound system has an important part of the Jamaican music culture. It is the thing that made most of the Jamaican music genres popular.

The concept of creating sound systems became popular in 1950s. the first sound systems were developed in the ghettos of Kingston. These sound systems were set up by several DJs who would load all the equipment (a generator, turntables, and huge speakers) on a truck and throw street parties. The first music genres played at these sound systems were mostly American - rhythm and blues. Later on local genres of music started to play as the local music genres were developed.

The Jamaican sound systems not only helped Jamaican music develop and gain popularity but were a great business as well. Many people started to set up parties in their aim to earn money in the otherwise unstable economy. The person organizing the party – usually the DJ, earns money from the sound system by charging an entrance fee and selling food and alcohol at the party. Since thousands of people attended the party the profits were huge. For that pure economical benefit of the sound system the competition between DJs was quite severe. On the other hand this helped the Jamaican music develop by some new DJs that emerged as the stars of the scene: Clement 'Coxsone' Dodd, and Duke Reid.

The sound systems were very popular not only because of the parties but because these were the places where new music was created and played for the first time. Some of the DJs who were setting up sound systems started to release their records. This was first a process very much resembling the American R&B sound using local musicians. Than it evolved into a uniquely Jamaican musical genre known as ska.