Christoph Härter

The Dub Renaissance – Reflections on the Aesthetics of Dub in Contemporary British Music

This essay will argue that the aesthetics of Jamaican sound system culture dominates recent developments in British dance music. Particularly the dubstep scene, rising from the margins of London in the early 2000s, can be located within the Jamaican tradition, as it widely draws from dancehall culture and the form of the dub mix. However, dubstep music does not simply apply forms of sound system culture, but transforms the aesthetics of the sound system with the sound system’s own narrative means. Sound system culture is equipped with a range of forms that break down temporal linearity and spatial containment. In this context, it is crucial that form is not just surface. Be it traditional reggae or contemporary dubstep, both represent a cultural tradition which rather produces functional forms than merely superficial formalism.

1. Introduction After jungle and garage, dubstep music is the latest significant addition to a range of computerised dance music styles that stem from London’s multi-ethnic, youthful subculture. Since its inception in the early 2000s, dubstep enjoyed little publicity until 2006. Today, music critics, academics and film makers show tremendous interest in what used to be no more than a regional subgenre of UK garage known as ‘the Croydon sound’. Thus, The Wire magazine makes a dubstep LP its record of the year in 2006, two dubstep tracks appear on the soundtrack of the Academy Award-nominated film Children of Men, and in 2008, even the Sun features a portrait of dubstep protagonist DJ Skream. Naturally, this essay does not explain the huge popularity of dubstep at the moment. However, I would like to shed some light on the textual structure of dubstep music in order to locate it within a larger cultural frame, the Jamaican sound system tradition. As dubstep reflects and therefore transforms the aesthetics of Jamaican sound system culture, we can conclude that Jamaican culture, in its fragmentation, dominates the culture of certain urban areas in Britain. The specific aesthetics of the sound system is characterised by a variety of performative modes and the formal aspects and narrative strategies of dub. Both apply to dubstep music. This essay will focus on how this works in terms of aesthetics, rather than exploring the socio-political context that surrounds cultural production. In order to do so, I will firstly comment on the cultural history of the sound system and analyse the types of media and the modes of performance that have been used in that context. This will also touch upon forms of literary expressions which are informed by or are part of sound system culture. Then, 264 Christoph Härter

I will examine how dubstep takes up and transforms these media and modes of expression. The examples in the final section will cover different types of media: Caspa’s vinyl album Ave it Vol. 1, Shackleton’s 12” vinyl singles ‘Blood On My Hands’ and ‘Hamas Rule’ and finally Kode 9 & The Spaceape’s CD Dubstep Allstars Vol. 3, which itself compromises two different types of carrier media, the 12” vinyl single and the one-off acetate or dubplate.

2. Sound System Coordinates: Dub Mix and Dancehall Performance As for the cultural history of the Jamaican sound system, one cannot deny that the sound system was born out of economic pressures right from its inception. Starting in the early 1950s as a cheap alternative to expensive dance bands, the sound systems still stand out as Jamaica’s loudest medium of social comment for the ‘ghetto dwellers’. The people who operate the sound system, the talking DJs, function as mediators between crowd and machine. While at the microphone, they refer to the everyday concerns of the Jamaican lower class, similar to the role of the Calypsonian in Trinidad. Sound system culture, and the local record industry that surrounds it, meets these concerns through corresponding genres. The most consistent genre is certainly that of the love song. However, as far as the talking DJ’s performance is concerned, two stage characters seem to be crucial: the Rudeboy and the Rasta. Both seem to be each other’s alter ego, however, and the characters overlap when it comes to the dancehall performance. By the early seventies, the radical social, political and religious agenda of the Rastafarians eventually became an audible part of Jamaica’s cultural production. These so-called ‘rebel music’ or ‘roots records’ associated with the Rastafarians became the dominant genre within the sound system culture of the 1970s. One can discern two groundbreaking developments that sprang from this period. Firstly, the talking DJs became increasingly important figures. They started recording, smoothing the way for the development of dancehall music or ‘ragga’, as DJ-dominated reggae is called in the UK. Secondly, the dub mix emerged. Both developments are linked to the principle of ‘versioning’, i.e. the recycling of previously recorded material. A ‘version’ or ‘riddim’ is a basic, circular pattern of bass and drum interplay. By the first half of the 1970s, it became common practice among music producers to use one and the same riddim over and over again.1 This development was possibly triggered by the advent of multi-track recording in Jamaica. Another source of inspiration is, however, linked to the most impor-

1 Crucial in that respect was Osbourne ‘King Tubby’ Ruddock, a sound system owner who had set up a multi-track voicing studio where post-production of previously recorded material could be done.