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Do you know this musical genre?

I just heard something real strange - A Dancehall track with Asian flavour & and someone MC'ing in French. Man, it sounded ... just wrong.

big subject.
King Tubby dubs were also called dancehall. nowadays the form refers to the current hip-hop inspired tracks with a dj or mc on them. actually, dancehall IS the roots of hip-hop, house, drum&bass, jungle, etc, so it tends to include everything. what influences are at work reveals the period and place it's from, although technically the real stuff only comes from Kingston...

garyb wrote:nowadays the form refers to the current hip-hop inspired tracks with a dj or mc on them.

Not in the UK it doesn't. The Reggie Dancehall scene here is definately not hip-hop inspired, since most of the makers of the genre over here are of Jamaican heritage & retain that sound to a great degree - far more than hip-hop to say the least. You're right about the MC aspect though, as that's just par for course. Check out some UK stuff, which imo is inspired beat-wise by a core of Rhumba. I've been listening to it on & off for years, but my big idea 10 years ago to fuse the style with dark non-black sounding electronic never came to fruition until big names in electronic production did it within the past 5 years. If you're not fast, you're last as the saying goes...

hip-hop IS Jamaican music. NY Jamaicans are at it's foundation.....the first rappers were Kingston JA DJs.

there's a saying in Jamaica that goes something like "N.Y.C. get a headcold and Kingston sneezes"...

but i guess what i was refering to is drum machine/sampler music that is DJ/MC based. the point is that Dancehall is a form that changes week to week. Agustus Pablo, Leroy Smart, Sugar Minott, Bounty Killer and Vybz Cartel are all artists that have been called "Dancehall", but they're a pretty widely diverse group. here in L.A., there's lots of Salsa inna the Dancehall...

those Jamaicans are everywhere, though. the Commonwealth brought them to London, Hollywood brought them to LA and well, NYC....is just a hop, skip and a jump from Miami, which is rafting distance from Jamaica(don't try it at home, though, kids!).

Firstly, I know what the roots of hip-hop are, thanks.

I know what you're saying about the definition of the D/hall genre though & I've listened to early dub & reggie myself, but that stuff - amazing as it is - does NOT have the same sound as the UK Dancehall scene I refer to (talking last 10-15 years here).

Check out Chris Goldfinger on BBC Radio 1 for a rough idea of what I mean. Not ideal, but should be good enough to catch my drift. It's actually quite closely rooted to the current Dancehall scene in Kingston AFAIK.

sure, i know what you mean already..

...aaaand i know you know hiphop roots, just talking about it, since you mentioned the Asian/French connection(!) being wrong in a Dancehall tune.

i'm saying i'm not surprised. almost anything goes in Dancehall, as long as it's not soft. if it's soft, it's p*ssyclot f*ckery... typical ghetto music. it gets wierd when hippies get involved. those Jamaican ghetto youth are no joke. they'll kill you without blinking, kinda like over here in Long Beach(Strong Beach!), Compton, Wilmington, Watts and San Pedro. no soft music allowed.... a guy named Red Rat talking about "Who pooped inna de dance?" is ok, though.

anyway, there's direct lineage of a King Tubby mix to Beanie Man. still, i hate putting the words "reggae" and "dancehall" together, except that "reggae" means "regular, from the street" and the "dancehall" is the place to hear some Reggae and both forms come from Jamaica. the current Dancehall is to Reggae as Gangster Rap is to Hip Hop, only not as philosophically similar....

sorry if i took the thread ot, like i said, just chopping it up wit you.

Gary, you're priceless mate.

You've got it totally nailed down with what you've said above. Very obvious that you know your shit.

Beanie Man.. all I can say is wow! You know it was listening to that guy on Radio 1 10 years ago that got me into this genre. Don't know what it was really. The vibes just took me over. I persuaded my brother (sharc) at the time that we should experiment with the sound in a different direction & it REALLY took some persuading.. but after some experimentation he was totally into it as well.

Thanks a lot for the input. I really wasn't sure that anyone here would dig it at all.

Btw, I hope you're not calling me a hippie...

it's ok man. even if you are one, hippies are my friends too...

For me, Dancehall still means Yellowman, Sinbad, Clint Eastwood & General Saint, General Echo, Barrington Levy and the rest.

This sort of stuff.

The furthest I ever got with the digital stuff was Under me Sleng Teng, and that's (gulp) over 20 years ago now. Still listen to all that old school dancehall today. I've tried to listen to Sizzla, Beanie Man, etc, but they leave me cold. If you could recommend one album to me that would make me change my mind, what would it be?

Ben

How strange that this topic should come up.
I was walking across a car park the other day and someone had either a CD or radio station playing (very loudly) old Ska and even older Calypso (which I found quite racist unfortunately).
It got me thinking of the old UK Ska beat/Reggae scene again.
Ah, those were the days............ return of Django et al.

Sorry, gone a bit off topic there.

Went to see the Skatalites 2 weeks ago - only a few of the original line-up left (Lloyd Knibb, Lester Stirling, Vin Gordon (well, he wasn't in the original line-up but he has almost as good a pedigree!)), but they were fantastic. If you love your old Ska, go and see them if you get a chance.

Lloyd Knib was born in 1931 and is still a rock steady drummer. Amazing!

Ben

Ben Walker wrote:For me, Dancehall still means Yellowman, Sinbad, Clint Eastwood & General Saint, General Echo, Barrington Levy and the rest.

This sort of stuff.

The furthest I ever got with the digital stuff was Under me Sleng Teng, and that's (gulp) over 20 years ago now. Still listen to all that old school dancehall today. I've tried to listen to Sizzla, Beanie Man, etc, but they leave me cold. If you could recommend one album to me that would make me change my mind, what would it be?

Ben

Beanie Man and Sizzla are about 10 years old! Sizzla could at least be called "Reggae Dancehall", the current stuff is different(but the same. there's no such thing as progress ). still, if ya wanna BOUNCE around, there's lots of cool stuff out there.....the thing is, a good dancehall track is really a novelty track. there aren't many who can hit with more than one really cool oddity....

I am happy to have seen Desmond Dekker live at least once (with his bro doing the kung fu , lol).
this week we have gregory isaac , then toots and the maytals (they were the best reggae act on live), together with yellowman, which did some memorable gigs over here, much better than on records). The best i've seen was Jimmy Cliff actually, but that was in africa, so a different audience and energy. last week it was ganja tree, some unknow french/jamaicains, strictly roots, but it was really rocking too, not too much 70's style,, with a nice brass section (it always deserves to be mentionned, as many of the old school use crappy synths nowadays) on a boat with 15 people onboard.. the perfect ambience.
In fact, seen from here, it all stopped with Jungle, and the deserved sucess of chackademus and pliers, and years after that the only new thing came from "bollywood dancehall" style.... Jungle just made ragga danchall something of the past now it is purely mainstream and you remember stuff like boombastic etc that brought the riddims in the tracks of céline dion and gwen stefani (both surprisingly good toasters, technically). The latest thing i heard were some of Amy Wihnehouse tracks in a pure rock steady style and with brass please (so this is called "ska") but sung very differently and too dark to be true in fact, nice as a tribute thing though but not the same effect at all. There are some wicked Digital riddims though (that's what i prefer in fact, this and the old studio one production (i don't like much of what happened in the 70's and early 80's myself), and I can't stand sizzla - this is something that sound "just wrong" - and he killed everything good about ragga in my opinion, but he was also a reflect of the youth of that time, very urban, and an evolution of the fashion (it is all very commercial, the danchall stuff). His sucess (overseas) coincided with the bankrupcy of most parisian "historical reggae record shop... does this explain that.. may be, may be not , but his way didn't fit what the youth here was looking for when listening to reggae in general which was not going as people here wanted (which is more chacka/plier stuff than anything else, ie classic music, and great singers/voices). In fact, the ragga i like is now found in puerto rico only (where reggaeton is over done and shouting too much, but there are a few gems here and there, in an ocean of crap, but the spirit is there, and the ambience in the clubs is really hot (too much may be lol)).

Ben Walker wrote: The furthest I ever got with the digital stuff was Under me Sleng Teng, and that's (gulp) over 20 years ago now. ...... If you could recommend one album to me that would make me change my mind, what would it be?
Ben

try this if you still didn't
http://www.discogs.com/release/1016563
1990 so it is only 18 years ago
still one of the best performers
(pre-sizzla era, 90, the good time for digital dancehall)

EDIT: oh i see you may have it already... you got me confused with the "20" years reference.... apparently we stopped at the same time

Ben Walker wrote:If you could recommend one album to me that would make me change my mind, what would it be?

Man, that's hard because you might just not be into it. Also, this is the sort of artist that can make 3/4 albums a year, so erm... some of them are sort of rushed a bit. ... Maybe try before you buy. I quite liked some of the stuff on Y2K & The Doctor.