Lloyd Bradley: Bass Culture: When Reggae Was King (2001)
Filed under book | Tags: · dub, music, music history, reggae
Bass Culture is a complete history of reggae, from its origins in the Jamaican sound-systems dances of the 1950s, through its enormous international triumphs of the 70s, to the current generation of new roots artists who are searching out a way forward for the sound. The story is remarkable: how a downtown music developed out of decades of cultural oppression to become a truly indigenous art form that went on to conquer the world.
In an account that ranges from Kingston’s ghetto areas and the cool hills of Jamaica’s interior to the clubs and record shops of London and Birmingham, Lloyd Bradley tells the full story: the politics and the culture, the producers and the players, the heroes and the villains – but most of all, the music.
Publisher Penguin, 2001
ISBN 0140237631, 9780140237634
592 pages
PDF (EPUB)
Comment (0)Curwen Best: The Politics of Caribbean Cyberculture (2008)
Filed under book | Tags: · caribbean, cyberculture, internet, literature, music, music video, reggae, technology, television, video games
This book covers significant new ground, examining the impact and imprint of new leading technology on a range of popular expressions. This technology includes the internet, the computer, the cell phone, television, and radio, among others. Some of the specific expressions and phenomena treated include: tourism, big budget films, sports, video games, entertainment culture, religious and gospel culture, mobile culture, popular music, writing and technology, and porn. The work shows acute awareness of the wider global contexts–social, cultural, political, and spiritual–that form the backdrop for Caribbean cultural reconfiguration. Curwen Best argues that Caribbean culture has gone wireless, virtual, and simulated in the age of the machines.
Publisher Palgrave Macmillan, 2008
ISBN 0230603769, 9780230603769
260 pages
Sanjay Sharma, John Hutnyk, Ashwani Sharma (eds.): Dis-Orienting Rhythms: The Politics of the New Asian Dance Music (1996)
Filed under book | Tags: · asia, dance music, dub, jungle, music, music history, reggae, remix
Blurring the boundaries between academic and cultural production, this book produces a new understanding of the world significance of South Asian culture in multi-racist societies. One of the first sustained attempts to situate such production within the study of race and identity, it uncovers the crucial role that contemporary South Asian dance music has played in the formation of a new urban cultural politics.
The book opens by positing new theoretical understandings of South Asian cultural representation that move beyond essentialist ethnicity in the cultural studies literature. Contributors narrate the formation of South Asian expressive culture coming emerging from the highly charged context of UK Black politics. Part three assumes the task of historical recovery, looking at the antecedents of political South Asian musical performance, autonomous anti-racist organising and problems of alliance with the white Left. Part four engages with the movements and translations of cultural productions across the world – not just in Britain or South Asia, but also Canada, North America, Fiji, Malaysia, Australia, West Africa, Europe, but particularly in the fractured spaces of a postcolonial Britain in decline.
Publisher Zed Books, 1996
ISBN 1856494705, 9781856494700
248 pages