A Taste of Caribbean Technology

African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal, 2008

The propagation of vibrations may provide a better way of understanding diasporic spread than the conventional focus on the circulation of products (Hall

This study explores Jamaican popular music’s changing engagement with globally networked media technologies. I combine ethnographic analysis of the street dance as a site of urban poor and Black resistance to colonial institutions with an analysis of song lyrics about video cameras at street dances. These newly networked technologies for circulating visual media in global networks affect how Jamaicans perform identity and also affect street dances’ social function. Globally networked digital media generate specific race- and gender-related pressures that reinforce existing and historic inequalities. This global visual media circulation can reshape and limit the ability of the street dance to function as site of autonomy and resistance. A better understanding of local practices can offer an alternative conceptual framework to help practitioners, scholars policy and technology designers avoid reinforcing those inequalities.

"Reggae and dub has brought about many changes in production practices internationally. The studio Innovations pioneered by Osbourne “King Tubby” Ruddock and Lee “Scratch” Perry, have revolutionized production techniques in reggae, dancehall and many popular international genres. The Ruddock and Perry Production Techniques have had a significant influence on the development of genres such as hip-hop, house drum and bass, trip hop, trance and techno. Despite this major contribution to pop music production techniques, there has been insufficient recognition for these “Dub Master’s” role in pioneering studio production styles. This paper will examine the role of Ruddock and Perry, in the development of these distinctive techniques and juxtapose them along techniques of Anglo-America, namely Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound, the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds and the Beatles Sgt Pepper Lonely Heart Club band which have been valorized as landmark signposts in the history of pop music production. By exploring the production techniques involved in creating the 1980s pop hit Genius of Love By Tom Tom Club. I will show how the techniques of Ruddock and Perry have been appropriated by mainstream culture and how these techniques have influenced pop music production globally. In the process making a claim for the equal recognition of the work of Perry and Osbourne placing them in the same hallowed space occupied by their Anglo-American counterparts. "

Caribbean Quarterly, 2017

CARIBBEAN POPULAR CULTURE IS THE OUTGROWTH OF ANOTHER volume by editors Yanique Hume and Aaron Kamugisha, who examine Caribbean intellectual tradition through a lens of cultural thought in their 2013 reader Caribbean Cultural ought: From Plantation to Diaspora. 1 eir new anthology provides space for addressing the Caribbean popular, but they give the subject a critically different treatment. Rather than reprise the tactic utilised in their preceding book or yield to an interdisciplinary tendency, as exploited in the more recent volume by Beatriz Peña Acuña and Otto F. von Feigenblatt, 2 the editors establish two axes for understanding the Caribbean popular: function and terrain. Firstly, they assert the popular as having three functionalities: "e Caribbean popular arts. .. has historically provided a space for social and political critique, the performance of visibility and also articulations of a temporal emancipatory ethos with its attendant acquisition of power and status" (xvii). Secondly, in a selfreflexive move that underscores what is at stake in charting a terrain of the popular, the editors take a stance predicated on C.L.R. James's perception of culture. ey insist that "the popular will eclipse the intellectual's ability to explain its meaning" (xviii), and in so doing they attach a crucial urgency and agency to the popular. A highlight of Caribbean Popular Culture is the arrangement of the content. While it is possible to begin the text in an order that suits one's interest, it is not the best way to approach this work. e book demonstrates a careful, strategic chronology, commencing with Sylvia Wynter's "Rethinking 'Aesthetics': Notes towards a Deciphering Practice" and Stuart Hall's "Notes on Deconstructing 'e Popular'". Wynter distinguishes between what she calls

European Journal of Literature, Language and Linguistics Studies, 2021

That Caribbean music forms and their sonic influences are steeped in a vibrant culture of social awareness and ethereal consciousness is incontestable. Roots reggae’s protest appeal, rhythmic syncopations, and deeply religious impulses attest to a rich, aware and reactive tradition forged from post-slavery legacies to engage the rotary realities of mid–late 20th century West Indies. Contemporary Caribbean reggae follows in this tradition. With a very deep root in the religious beliefs of the people, Reggae music developed as the medium for the masses to cope with the social, economic and political realities of the day in Jamaica and many other Caribbean communities. Consequently, the Reggae music has proven to be relevant as long as there is suffering and injustices among the masses, this is not to say Reggae music does not reflect some other aspects of life. The emphasis in this paper is to trace the history and development of Reggae, especially its connection to the Rastafari life...

International Association for the Study of Popular Music, 2016

Howard’s treatise on music production techniques in Jamaica is a comprehensive scholarly work with the bold agenda, “to examine the Jamaican music business from its inception in the early 1950s to ascertain the economic, social, legal and international structures which affected its development” (xv).

Volume !, 2015

This article discusses the impact of globalization on Anglophone Caribbean popular music— calypso and reggae—chronologically addressing its aesthetic and economic transformations from the early 1900s through to the twenty-first century. It explores the artistic and commercial consequences of unequal transcultural interaction in both aural and visual realms, and also assesses the implications surrounding the recent international impact of performers from Barbados.

This paper, based mostly on ground work and interviews, tries to show how hip-hop culture in the caribbean can bridge the gaps created by language, political status and colonial history in the region.

European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, 2016

Review essay of – Radical Moves: Caribbean Migrants and the Politics of Race in the Jazz Age, by Lara Putman. Chapell Hill: University of Carolina Press, 2013. – Remixing Reggaetón: The Cultural Politics of Race in Puerto Rico, by Petra R. Rivera-Rideau. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2015. – Roy Cape: A Life on the Calypso and Soca Bandstand, by Joycelyne Guilbault and Roy Cape. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2014. – Broadcasting Modernity: Cuban Commercial Television, 1950-1960, by Yeidy M. Rivero. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2015.

Making Caribbean Dance: Continuity and Creativity in Island Cultures, 2010