How reggae and dub influenced your favourite music genre

Across history, various forms of cultural production have expanded by virtue of integration or fusion. In music, this practice is commonplace: genres evolve by blending extrinsic palettes, instruments, or sonics into their reservoirs, and at the same time, influence the creation of sounds that follow.

In his interrogation of dancehall, Sean Paul attributes part of its success, on a technical level, to its ability to inform future movements. “Dancehall itself has influenced all these genres: reggaetón, Afrobeats, soca and even pop is integrating it now.” Among the UK-founded Afroswing — a variant of Afrobeats — you’ll find UK hip hop, dancehall, and at times, grime, all alongside the father-genre afrobeats. Political activity, and movements in and around art has also come to inform an array of musicians and artists. America’s civil rights movement, for example, influenced Bob Dylan’s brand of protest folk — as seen in the likes of ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’, as well as Sam Cooke’s soul and R&B infused ‘A Change is Gonna Come', both speaking to African Americans insurgency, through varied musical palettes, both also expanding the realms to which a genre can exist within and what it can speak to.

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In a similar fashion, dub and reggae have helped to bridge the foundations of successor sounds, mighty in both of their construction, public resonance, and cultural expression. “Dub was the first electronic music,” iconic engineer Scientist proclaimed to the Recording Academy. Similarly reggae has both managed to stay its course, living through contemporary artists like Lila Iké, Jesse Royal and Chronixx, but also running adjacent to early conceptions of genres such as hip hop.

Like these Black-originating genres or practices, the Black diaspora communicate with one another in a similar fashion, oral traditions across continents, food and past-times are crucial pillars of the countries they migrate to — take rice and peas in England, for example, and its undisputed influence on Brits, West Indians, and Black diasporans nationwide — and so on. Music, cultural production and people aren't rigid, humans talk to one another, culture continues to adapt by the second, thus rendering its products — be it music, film, and other forms of media — ever-changing. Reggae and dub have continued to communicate, inspire, and direct since their 1960s and early '70s beginnings. Here are five direct examples of their prowess, power and pioneering impact across music.

The birth of hip hop is wedded to reggae customs. Part of dubbing culture - the production process which would remove vocals from records while emphasising the bass and rhythm - was inclusive of chopped and reimagined versions of original reggae songs which which would be included on the B-Side of early records. The B-Sides would often be manipulated (for dramatic effect during parties) across South New York parties of the early '70s. This paved the way for DJs and emcees to talk rhythmically over the reggae cuts, or ‘toast’.

Jamaican soundsystem culture birthed toasting as a convention, arising as a crucial part of the entertainment and competitive sportsmanship of its events. Jamaican vocalists and DJs like U-Roy, I-Roy, and Dennis Alcapone would toast, ranging from comedic leaning deliveries, to lethal, ego, cocksure displays. U-Roy in particular is known for spearheading early depictions of what would become rap. Jamaican-American DJ Kool Herc, who was born in Kingston and emigrated to New York City aged 13, is one of hip hop’s forefathers. Through his influence, toasting was integrated to his Bronx-led parties across the ‘70s, leading to the creation of hip hop as a cultural practice.

Because of his deeply punctuated challenge of authority, and in new-ways of political peace — like his rogue, in-the-moment unification of sparring Jamaican party leaders Michael Manley and Edward Seaga — Bob Marley was often dubbed ‘punk’ in his demeanour. However, the connection between punk and reggae on a technical level extends far deeper than this characterisation. Across the 1970s reggae would inspire The Clash’s Paul Simonon, whose formative years were spent in and around Jamaican communities, learning the bass via reggae records. Band-mate and guitarist, Mick Jones, and his incorporation of deep echoes and spaces and silence — informed in part by dub — went onto provide the foundations of their 1977 reggae cover of ‘Police and Thieves’.

The band continued cross-pollinating their punk aesthetic with reggae, covering ‘Pressure Drop’ with vigorous licks of the electric guitar adding adrenaline to the balm-infused Toots and the Maytals number. Vanguard Lee “Scratch” Perry would go onto produce The Clash’s ‘Complete Control’, further bridging union between both communities, with Bob Marley himself directly addressing the adjacencies between punk and reggae in his 1977 ‘Punky Reggae Party’. Further connections with reggae and dub would persist in the likes of Patti Smith, Generation X (and releases like ‘Wild Dub’), and The Ruts’ ‘Babylon’s Burning’.

Dubplates were the secret weapons of soundsystems across Jamaica. Often consisting of limited, or one-off recordings of reggae or dub vocals, dubplates, crafted with metal and acetate, would empower a soundsystem with a unique drop and make them stand out against their rivals. This culture spread to the UK's dancefloors when the Windrush generation settled and raised new generations across the late ’70s and ’80s. Early adopters of dubplates Fabio & Grooverider were DJs who came up through the acid house era, blending sounds such as breaks, house, hardcore and techno into something new, building their reputation with access to exclusive cuts that would send dancefloors berserk and becoming two of jungle's foremost pioneers, inspiring the likes of Goldie, Kemistry & Storm.

Fellow pioneers The Ragga Twins were also crucial to jungle’s creation by incorporating the gritty ragga basslines of Jamaican reggae and dancehall in their tracks. Take ‘Spliffhead’ which arrived onto dancefloors at the turn of 1990 A hybrid of dubbed and sped up hip hop beats, reggae-infused samples and a bold ‘Ragga Twins de bout’ sample, the pair helped unleash the new genre onto the world — whether they knew it or not. DJs like Terry T, Dizzy and DJ Ron would also kindle the emergent genre, regularly incorporating reggae vocals atop percussive 808 basslines and breakbeats.

Dubplates remained a fixture across the bulk of the 1990s, helping to inspire successive genres like drum 'n' bass, before CDs and digital evolution rendered it a niche pick, however their reputation and fundamental part of both genres beginnings is undoubtable.

The wide, pulsations of an array of drums, and elaborate bass that define dub’s evolution of reggae would also come to benefit techno’s expansion in 1993 and beyond. German duo Basic Channel are oft-regarded as the fathers of the hybrid sound, with formative songs including ‘Quadrant Dub I’, ‘Phylyps Trak’ and ‘Octagon’ setting the foundations for the manifesting soundscape. Intricate and entrancing in their basslines, punctuated by ethereally contorted hand-drums, dub techno would grow with artists like Monolake and Rod Modell adding to the vastly new terrain.

At the dawn of a new millennium, dub techno began directly building bridges with reggae acts themselves. On 2003’s ‘Rhythm & Sound’, for example, Basic Channel (under the name Rhythm & Sound) usher in the likes of Shalom, Cornel Campbell and Jennifer Lara, authenticating the sound and tying together its roots in real-time.

A product of the late '90s and particularly the new millennium, dubsteps roots are wedded to Croydon, Brixton, Streatham and South London at large. A direct descendant of garage, dubstep also utilised dub and reggae, with crucial components of the latter genres, such as upbeat chords and toasting culture proving pivotal across large swaths of the early genre.

Kode9 & The Spaceape’s 2004, ‘Sine of The Dub’ speaks to the poignancy and personality of toasting amongst the trancing bassline, whilst Digital Mystikz’s ‘Anti War Dub’ and Pinch’s ‘Qawwali’, which followed in 2006, speak to the technical incorporation of reggae into dubstep's universe, with reggae's classic hembra drums pouncing across the bassline in ‘Anti War Dub’. Eventually, East London’s FWD>> events would house the growth of dubstep — and successive and predecessor genres like grime and garage — paving a way forward for Kode9, Benga, El-B and other dubstep architects.

Nicolas-Tyrell Scott is a freelance music and culture journalist, writer, critic and podcast host, follow him on Twitter

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