Dub: Soundscapes and Shattered Songs in Jamaican Reggae (Music / Culture)

A book like this is long overdue. The simple fact that it was published makes it good. Of the two most important strains of contemporary black music, hip-hop has generated thousands of books and articles, but dub has been largely ignored by the ethno-musicological world.Dub - Soundscapes And Shattered Songs In Jamaican Reggae by Yale ethnomusicologist Michael E. Veal, is a scholarly work, but don't let that scare you. I know some of you might dislike the book because of its somewhat academic tone, scoff at many of its themes and find them pretentious, but I strongly disagree. This is a terrific analysis. Prof. Veal examines dub in a variety of contexts not only as an expression of Afro-Caribbean culture and the Jamaican music business but as an art form and creative process comparable to just about every modern, futurist and post-modern movement from dada and surrealism to conceptual art, from Luigi Russolo and John Cage to its influence on hip-hop and worldwide dance-pop culture.It's not all dry, academic stuff. The man knows, and more importantly, loves his dub music. First, Prof. Veal shows us his dub credentials by going into detail about Jamaican music. But instead of the more familiar reggae legends about impoverished young ghetto singers and gun-toting producers, Veal's emphasis here is on recording studios, audio equipment, and the engineers themselves. After all, dub mixed at the various studios sounded the way it did because of the improvised, often homemade technology the early reggae engineers used. Syd Bucknor, Sylvan Morris, Graeme Goodall and Byron Smith are all mentioned, moving on to Tubby, Errol ET Thompson at Randy's, Channel One etc. There's a lot of interesting information about how JA studios developed during the late 60s and 70s.Veal also compares dub with rock psychedelia and the use of ganja, but also notes that many of the most famous dub originators didn't smoke (Tubby and ET, for example) and while some reggae figures insist dub is not "ganja" music, others insist it most certainly is. Dub can be seen as similar to psychedelia's liberation from sonic slavery, but it seems unlikely that Jamaican engineers were listening to Pink Floyd's Ummagumma. On the other hand, a certain amount of psychedelia's production techniques like echo/delay and phase shifting made their way into some American R&B and Soul records of the late 60's and early 70's, which have some rather proto-dubby-sounding parts. These records would've been familiar to Jamaican musicians at the same time dub began to appear, and are likely to have influenced them.Prof. Veal conducted dozens of recent interviews with various figures connected with dub's 70's heyday. "Fortunate survivors" would perhaps be a more accurate way of describing them, given the all too common murders and early deaths which are a tragic fact of life in JA. The dark, moody and aggressive nature of much dub is also considered as a reflection of the crime and violence in Kingston's ghettoes. These interviews contain a wealth of comments which help shed new light on the development of dub. Sadly, the fact that a book on dub has taken 30 years to appear means that King Tubby and several others aren't around to offer their commentsThen, he takes us through a few carefully analyzed mixes by various engineers. It's good to see others besides Tubby and Scratch getting their due credit. Here, Prof. Veal shows us he really listens to this stuff like a truly obsessed fan. Starting with some late 60's Studio One productions, he describes the recordings in great detail, noting the peculiarities of the mixes, instrument placement, sound quality and tape hiss. He describes how the mixes were done based on his interviews with the engineers, what key the tunes were played in, how echoed/delayed chords and vocals create strange rhythmic and harmonic juxtapositions, even noting the echo/delay rates used, the qualities of various types of reverb equipment, and how the signal path through the mixing board created certain sounds. There's a lot of interesting comments by the engineers; Jammy says his best mix ever was "Jammy's A Shine", his powerful, mind-blowing dub of Ronnie Davis' cover of the Wailer's "Sun Is Shining" produced by Bunny Lee around 1977-78. "That record mash up Jamaica and England and Europe and them places completely!" says Jammy.Professor Veal explores the concept of dub as a process rather than product, which transforms the "truth" and "reality" of a normal reggae tune, its sounds unfolding and being turned inside out in the mix, causing the listener to question the authority of their preconceived notions. This was similar to the goal of dada/surrealism (to take one example) and thus dub can be considered to be part of the 20th century's avant-garde tradition. Many of the themes have been briefly discussed by music critics in the pages of The Wire and the liner notes to the Macro Dub Infection compilations for instance, but Veal devotes 300 plus pages to it, and expands on dozens of the same thoughts and feelings about dub as I (and others) have had for these last 25 years. Slavery and colonialism, the Afro-futurist sonic sci-fi of Sun Ra and Lee Perry, class and race issues, technology and information, all get name checked. The fact that Veal's themes are sprawling yet coherent demonstrates the importance of this music.I've always felt it is probably one of the most revolutionary developments in late 20th century "pop", and Veal also touches on this line of reasoning. Dub radically subverts traditional structures of harmony, rhythm and composition. Dub disrespectfully ignores the notion that every recording of a musical performance is sacred and must not be technologically tampered with because it destroys the integrity and authenticity of the musicians' "artistic expression" as caught on tape. The implications of this subverts the idea that a piece of music (or any art) is "complete" in only one, final form, as intended by its "creator", and ignores ownership and copyright issues. Thus it can be compared to such figures such as Cage, Stockhausen, Warhol, Duchamp, Derrida, Deleuze and Guatarri, post-structuralism and deconstructionism (etc bla bla bla). Dub wallows in gimmicky, anti-musical sound, using echo, fade-ins and outs and other sound effects in totally inappropriate ways which an "authentic" "serious" musician would find absolutely appalling. It not only re-mixes, but it re-thinks, ignores, or gleefully violates practically every rule in the book. The same things were said about bebop back in the 40's, but ironically it is often the jazz purists who loathe musical developments like dub and hip-hop. Like the use of sampling, dub's entire assault on musical convention infuriates traditional, conservative musicians, and on balance, this is certainly a good thing. That's what makes dub so innovative and important, and of course so much fun.These days, when there are so many people creating what Adrian Sherwood calls "designer dub" - a reggae composition intended to be "dubby" from the start, Veal reminds us that "dub" cannot really exist without a "vocal" version to compare it with - dub is a process of transformation. That's what makes dub so powerful. It's far more dramatic when you hear the vocal followed by the dub (or perhaps vice-versa). A "dub" tune by itself may sound good on its own terms, but it will be far more thrilling when heard in contrast to its traditionally-mixed vocal cut. Obviously, the 12" and "showcase" LP are the ideal formats for this.I'm really impressed with this book, and it's about time someone from the academic world gave dub some serious consideration as a major, influential musical art form.

If you're a true dub reggae fan, the most amazing thing about this book is that you can instantaneously search any obscure song on YouTube that the author is describing in painstakingly accurate detail and listen to exactly what he is contextualizing. This book could take a while to get through if you're a reggae nerd like me and listen to the referenced material as you read to fully understand what the author is academically emphasizing, but that's ok because you just don't want it to ever end. But like all good cultural phenomena, dub reggae is finite and rare in nature, created by a few great curators during a short period of time and it's fascinating to learn how it came to existence and ultimately influenced countless modern genres.

This is a mind blowing piece of work by Michael Veal. I highly recommend it if you want a well researched account with a detailed analysis of the contribution Jamaica's dub music made to contemporary pop music (hip-hop, techno, house, jungle, ambient, and trip-hop). He argues that it is not overstating the case that this music has changed the way the world conceives of the popular song. Through this book he expertly demonstrates that the production style of Jamaican music has helped transform the sound and structure of world popular music. It is a page turner and well worth the time. I was not disappointed with what I learned and in fact I crave more, I was truly fascinated.

This book is the bomb. Academic in design, but eminently readable.It explains so much about the music that Kool Herc brought to the Bronx in the beginnings of Hip Hop (this book is not about the hip hops).It explains so much about the burgeoning reapplications of technology to their unintended usage.It's the very unappreciated story of one of electronic dance music's major foundations.I tend not to write long reviews about books I love, because I can't find anything wrong with them, and singing their praises would be an exhaustive effort, when I should be writing my own articles, instead.

If you love Reggae and you're a music nerd, you'll love this book. It get's a bit technical in certain areas, but I like that about it. If you want a more straightforward history of Reggae, there are probably better books out there. This one deals with the progression of Reggae from Rocksteady to Dub and explores the similarities between Jamaican Dub and American Hip Hop. Interesting read indeed.

Amazing research work. Very interesting thematic choices. Excellent book for understanding the novelty within that important musical genre. I warmly recommend!

... but it's a little too scholarly and dry. It reads like it was written as a master's thesis. But the level of research and the quality of information is second-to-none.

Must have for reggae specialists

Great info! Hideous, convoluted, academic writing style, though. The author should take a look at the stripped-down aesthetics of the artists he writes about. It was the same with the Fela Kuti book by the same author, too. Reading the book is like swimming through treacle.

Just finished reading Michael E Veal's fantastic Dub: Soundscapes & Shattered Songs in Jamaican Reggae. What is so impressive is how many perspectives Veal manages to approach the subject from in such a relatively short space (338pp) i.e the social, political, aesthetic, technical, religious, historical, economic and cultural. Along the way contextualising dub in relation to the theories of, among others, Jameson, Deleuze & Barthes. Among the most interesting ideas Veal suggests are dub's fragmented narratives as a response to the collective Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder of the African diaspora and dub's privileging of space and absence providing a meditative insight into the divine. I particularly enjoyed the comparison between dub and classical Japanese music by way of wabi-sabi and Zen Buddhism. This may all make the book appear rather dry and academic and though it is certainly is both academic and scholarly in the best sense of the terms it is also clearly written by a fan and enthusiast (also in the best sense of the terms) meaning that as well as being intellectual and thorough it is always interesting and engaging. Along with the theories and histories of dub and it's influence on other genres you get the low-down on all the leading players such as King Tubby, Prince Jammy and Lee 'Scratch' Perry. My only criticism is an underplaying of the Jamaican/NYC connection. I don't feel it is an exaggeration to state that the birth of Hip Hop resulted directly from the recontextualization of the Jamaican Dub format - outdoor Sound System, DJ Toasting (Rapping) and the stripping down of records to their essential of drum and bass elements - to NYC and applied to funk as opposed to reggae by Jamaican emerge Kool DJ Herc in the late 70's. House and garage (emerging form Chicago as well as NYC) where also born of stripping down to the essentials of drum and bass of, in this case, disco records. Francois Kevorkian has attributed Larry Levan, resident of the legendary Paradise Garage, of bringing the dub sensibility to disco. By somewhat underplaying this vital connection I feel dubs influence may have been done a slight disservice especially when there is quite a lot about such less paradigm shifting genres such as trip hop and minimal house which are really just sub genres. This aside, Dub: Soundscapes and Shattered Songs in Jamaican Reggae is still, along with  Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music , the most informative and engaging book about music that I have ever read and I highly recommend that you do too if you have any interest in, not only dub but, hip-hop, house, d'n'b, grime, dubstep or whatever - none would exist but for dub. Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music

excelent work, academic approach with accesible language

Shows the roots of jamaican music and the roots of roots reggae. Well researched and very exhaustive. A must buy.