What's your favourite dancehall tracks?

I don't think dancehall was a term that was used when I was heavily into reggae, so I'm not sure what is and isn't.

I'm sure I'd love it though, from what I've read of it.

Beenie man especially looks great.

First I heard it (fifteen years or so ago), it was called raggamuffin ... then I heard it just be called "ragga" ... but I think its just called dancehall ...

Shabba Ranks first made it big with the unforgettable ... (oh yeah):

Mr. Loverman dem call me Mr. Lover
Mr. Loverman dem call me Mr. Lover
Dem call me
Mr. Loverman dem call me Mr. Lover
Mr. Loverman dem call me Mr. Lover

Because a woman tek a trip she coming from England
To satisfy her soul you know seh she want a man
But is Shabba Ranking she buck upon,
A gwain mek she explode just like a bomb
Every hour, every minute, and every second

Mr. Loverman dem call me Mr. Lover
Mr. Loverman dem call me Mr. Lover
Dem call me
Mr. Loverman dem call me Mr. Lover
Mr. Loverman dem call me Mr. Lover

15? That's right precisely at the tail end of when I was in to it -- was going to every club that had reggae through the summer of '89, then pretty much stopped when I went off to college (got more interested in blues.)

Here's a definition - hey, from your thread! That was a good one. Did you ever check out Tiken Jah Fakoly? I'm sure you'd love it!

i'm not sure nimh, bein' old and forgetful, but i think that when i first got turned on to jamaican music in the early '70s, (i was playing with a mixed race r&b band. the drummer was getting off on bob marley years before anybody else heard of him ), there was a type of music called "dance hall". i think that reggae and dub sort of grew out of it. guys like yellowman i seem to remember were part of that. really, really liked reggae, but kind of lost sight of it when it got diluted and abused in the new wave thing.

i could be wrong though...

marley's babylon by bus is a real smasher! not wrong about that, fer sure!

Ha, well, I'm consistent! Nope, haven't checked it out, would like to.

What I really need to do is get situated enough to start going to to see live music more -- I have the impression there's some good stuff 'round here, and live music is the only way that really works. Miss it terribly. Last time I went to live music was Angelique Kidjo (sp?) a year or so ago -- I could tell she was good, but she was NOT into the show (during a summer festival, not many people in attendance, she was really in the area to headline at House of Blues later that evening) and it wasn't that great.

Mr. Loverman came out in '88 ... you musta just missed it!

Some time before that tho, you had Shinehead and stuff ... perhaps that was my first tape in that vein ...

<looks it up> Yeah, Shinehead's Unity - but that too was only out in '88

Part of it is that I was going to see the live stuff, so they had to actually come through Minneapolis. More people than you'd think did make it to the frozen north -- I mentioned Lucky Dube in the other thread (best live show ever ever ever), Toots and the Maytalls, Steel Pulse, etc.

Oh yeah Yellowman!

And he's been around forever.

I should look up some kinda history on dancehall or something ...

Because it goes back to the toasting tradition ... and toasting goes way back. Hence the confusion ...

EDIT: whats up with having to log back in all the time? Every time I try to post now I gotta log back in! Annoying ...

<curses under his breath: really annoying>

I never got to see much live reggea concerts ... for some reason, their concerts always TWICE as expensive as other ones.

(Well, duh, nimh: reason is they had to be flown in all the way from JAMAICA, hello)

People have complained about the logging out thing before -- there's a fix I think -- lemme see if I can find it.

If this is what I'm thinking of, not a fix so much, just resolved itself.

http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=40313

yeah! "toasting". i'd forgotten about that stuff. nimh, it was absolutely refreshing to get such a big blast of new influences in music. jimmy cliff was a biggie. burning spear, black ihuru, peter tosh (though his solo stuff was deemed "too commercial). wound up working in, what appeared at the time to be, huge record store on hollywood boulevard. the jamaican import section was staggering!




did ya check that the cookies are turned on ?

oh, sureeeee.... that's what theyed like for you to believe... more likely they had to restock on "the sacrement" from one of your cafes. cheaper to buy it there than to pay the big bail for possession.

"id's da way dat i and i speakwid ja, dint dya know, mon ?"

OK, I was googling some and came upon this lengthy log from rec.music.reggea (usenet), and they had a big discussion on hip-hop vs dancehall, who influenced whom ... they all agreed that it was dancehall and the toasters who influenced hip-hop (but then they would ;-)). This because they trace dancehall (logically and predictably enough) back to the days of DJ's first toasting over reggea riddims, back in the early 70s, and the style that came from that, U Roy and such.

Now I got the Trojan D.J. Box Set (I also got the Trojan Rocksteady Box Set, its so good - those box sets are really objects of desire), and of course it makes sense, that. And I love U Roy and I Roy - it's just that - though I can see the connection - I hadnt immediately associated U Roy with Shabba or Cutty Ranks, you know, fifteen years on by the late 80s - just because the kinda music is so different. After all, U Roy's music is pretty dubby, laid-back ... whereas even the early raggamuffin of the eighties was positively crackling, high-intensity, with a big dose of testosterone.

But its both DJs toasting over beats (riddims), so yeah, sure. And that such early Jamaican DJs like Dennis Alcapone and Sir Lord Comic would have influenced American rappers in the eighties whose origin was Jamaican, as well, also totally makes sense. After all, like someone on that page points out, Afrika Bambaata, Heavy D, KRS1, Grand Puba, they're all of Jamaican origin. As one poster puts it:



And another, more succinctly:

Oh my God! Thats too funny. I was reading along in this usenet archive and came across this bit, found it interesting:



That kinda resonated with me, because you know, yeah. My high school friends played Bob Marley of course, and later at the cafe I worked at they were deep into, like the really dubby stuff for example - Lee Scratch Perry (the genius), The Congoes, that was the stuff that was passed along on must-have tapes. But noone listened to dancehall.

I kinda got frustrated because back then (long before Napster), I relied mostly on the CD-rent around the corner for my music input, since it had all the new, cutting edge music that the public library wouldnt stock for some time to come. And this held true for, you know, everything from breakbeat to lo-fi to the whole on-u-sound school - but not dancehall. Just the few Shabba CDs and an odd sampler, that was it. Mostly cause the hip white kids just werent - aware of it, at all - and if they were ("Mr. Loverman", "Informer"), they thought it was a bit, you know, vulgar ... King Tubby was so much more deliciously obscure, and it was "responsible".

(Same happened later with jungle - just didnt register with the college-radio type clientele of the CD-rent place - not until Goldie came along and it became drum'n'bass and stuff).

But, anyway - I was like, but - is that true still?! So I look at the date of this post, of this Usenet log - and it's from bleedin' 1993!! LOL

So - how is it nowadays - I'm not in touch with, you know, whats in the charts and all - but hasnt dancehall long since invaded the chart stuff nowadays? I remember someone referring to it as this tired old thing, you know, every new r'n'b hit or whatever gotta have this dancehall flava ... so, I mean, you wouldnt find this racial divide anymore now, or would you? Or perhaps it'd differ between the UK and the US?

ya know? i have real hard time telling you nimh. the radio, television and print resources are so damn narrow in the u.s. anymore. i'm still very active in music, but it seems like, even at my age, i'm still more interested in what's going on beyond the top 10 than most that i encounter. my neices are into music, but one favors the acoustic esoterica (probably from going to school in alaska for 5 years. but, she just got accepted to cornell, (says dtom, with the pride popping buttons off his shirt ) so i'm hoping she'll be able to turn me on to something tasty. the other two are doing the green day / linkin park shuffle.

they're both 21 and really, really cute. why don't you marry one nimh? then i'd have family in the netherlands. (as i pointed out to mctag on the poli board, there's a difference between benevolence and altruism )

rap definitely came out of the toaster and dancehall thing. that's where the "rubba da, rubba da, dubba dubba, rub dub " rolling vocal thing came from. strangely, i worked at a studio that did nothing but rap (coolio, ice cube, snoop ) 10 years ago. those cats didn't even wanna know about that stuff. it was all about nwa and such.

jeeezzzz. i haven't talked about this stuff with anyone in years. thanks for the thread idea, man...

<realises>

<slaps his head - brusquely>

Sorry, Soz ...

LOL! Well, for one ... with 33, I'd be a bit old for 'em already ;-)


Hey - cool