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$28.84
81. Rastafari: From Outcasts to Culture
$21.31
82. Rock It Come over: The Folk Music
$20.72
83. Three Ancient Colonies: Caribbean
$22.45
84. Folklore Of The Negroes Of Jamaica
 
$67.50
85. Verbal Riddim: The Politics and
 
$35.00
86. Cultural DNA: Gender at the Root
$63.99
87. Diasporization and family relations:
$53.82
88. Verdicts of Juries in Sexual Offenses
$75.00
89. Jamaican Food: History, Biology,
$3.87
90. Weird Fishes
$18.49
91. Dub: Soundscapes and Shattered
 
$4.90
92. LONGBRIDGE-BUSTAMANTE, GLADYS:
 
$5.90
93. BUSTAMANTE, ALEXANDER: An entry
 
$5.90
94. PEOPLE'S NATIONAL PARTY: An entry
 
$2.90
95. LEON, ROSE: An entry from Macmillan
$2.02
96. Gangsta: The Sinister Spread of
 
97. An introduction to Jamaican culture
 
$1.90
98. WEST INDIES DEMOCRATIC LABOUR
 
$2.90
99. LIGHBOURNE, ROBERT: An entry from
100. The Wisdom of Rastafari

81. Rastafari: From Outcasts to Culture Bearers
by Ennis Barrington Edmonds
Hardcover: 208 Pages (2002-12-26)
list price: US$70.00 -- used & new: US$28.84
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Asin: 0195133765
Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars
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Rastafari. The word immediately conjures a host of strong, disparate images. To some, the Rastafarian Movement, which emerged from the ghettoes of Jamaica in the 1930s, is embodied by a dreadlocked youth in a haze of marijuana smoke. To others, it represents an authentic, organic expression of working-class culture, a vibrant movement that has expanded to North America, the British Isles, and Africa. Ennis Barrington Edmonds moves beyond simple stereotypes to provide a compelling portrait of the Rastafarian phenomenon and chronicle how a once-obscure group, much maligned and persecuted as an internal threat to Jamaican society, became an international cultural force. He focuses in particular on the internal development of Rastafarianism as a social movement to track the process of this strikingly successful integration. He also demonstrates how African and Afro-Christian religions, Ethiopianism, and Garveyism were all fused into the Rastafari posture of resistance, organized as it is around charismatic figures. Rastafari presents an intimate account of a unique movement, which over the course of several decades institutionalized itself to become the international cultural, political, and musical force it is today. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

4-0 out of 5 stars Thorough treatment
Rastafari: From Outcasts to Culture Bearers. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. (Pp. x -194). By Ennis Barrington Edmonds.

The publication of Rastafari represents the author's maturing views on the birth and development of a powerful religious movement from the Majority World-a movement regarded by some as the only major religion having its genesis in the 20th century.
Here we learn of the humble beginning of the movement in the 1930s, its consolidation in the following two decades, its flowering in the 70s and 80s and of its global impact particularly in the final decade of the last century.
In seven chapters, Edmonds successfully argues his thesis that the entrenchment of Rastafari was made possible by ` (1) the internal development of the movement, (2) the gradual rapprochement between the movement and the wider society, and (3) the impact of Rastafari on the evolution of Jamaica's indigenous popular culture' (p.4).
The appendix, " A Review of the Literature on Rastafari," significantly updates the material found in the dissertation. One notices too that the writer has carried out his sociological analysis so rigorously that there is little or no evaluation of the theological and historical claims of Rastafari.For example, whereas others of pointed out the lack of documentary evidence for the Garvey prophecy concerning the crowning of Ras Tafari, Edmonds appears prepared to defend the prediction by invoking the reliability of the oral tradition that bears it (p. 147 n.34).
Edmonds is also optimistic that the movement has a bright future but also observes that"during the decade of the 1990s several notable Rastas, including Tommy Cowan and Judy Mowatt (of the I/Threes [sic]), converted to evangelical Christianity. This defection raises further questions about the possible demise of Rastafari.'"In fact, Ms. Mowatt, in an interview on Jamaica's CVM TV, even claims that the late Robert Nesta Marley made a deathbed profession of faith.A similar testimony is to be found in Hannah's book (p. 62). Interestingly, Marley's mother, turned biographer (Bob Marley: An Intimate Portrait), was a Christian before she was converted to the Rastafari by her famous `Jam-icon' son.
I have noticed just a single typo, something looking like an e-mail address on page 49: ` the lying. Preacher.' All in all, Rastafari is recommended as one of the most up-to-date and balanced treatments by a non-Rasta. For the student and scholar in particular, it should be read alongside Dr. Ikael Tafari's monograph, Rastafari in Transition, also from a sociological perspective.

















... Read more


82. Rock It Come over: The Folk Music of Jamaica
by Olive Lewin
Paperback: 351 Pages (2000)
list price: US$25.00 -- used & new: US$21.31
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Asin: 9766400288
Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars
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Customer Reviews (1)

5-0 out of 5 stars Jamaican Music-Long Before Marely...
If you are an ethnomusicologist, or even remotely curious how and why Jamaican music is so influential in the Caribbean and abroad, then this book is definitely what you want in your hands. The author, Olive Lewin, is in a good position to know a thing or two about how music evolved in jamaica. She traces many origins to the runaway slave communities that once dotted the island, and how cult and non-cult music survived. There is also an interesting chapter devoted to Kumina. Wonderfully illustrated, there are musical scores and examples, as well as an extensive bilbliography to point a prospective scholar and student to a myriad of research topics. I cannot praise this book enough! ... Read more


83. Three Ancient Colonies: Caribbean Themes and Variations (W.E.B. Du Bois Lecture Series)
by Sidney W. Mintz
Hardcover: 272 Pages (2010-03-15)
list price: US$27.95 -- used & new: US$20.72
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Asin: 0674050126
Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars
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As a young anthropologist, Sidney Mintz undertook fieldwork in Jamaica, Haiti, and Puerto Rico. Fifty years later, the eminent scholar of the Caribbean returns to those experiences to meditate on the societies and on the island people who befriended him. These reflections illuminate continuities and differences between these cultures, but even more they exemplify the power of people to reveal their own history.

Mintz seeks to conjoin his knowledge of the history of Jamaica, Haiti, and Puerto Rico—a dynamic past born of a confluence of peoples of a sort that has happened only a few times in human history—with the ways that he heard people speak about themselves and their lives. Mintz argues that in Jamaica and Haiti, creolization represented a tremendous creative act by enslaved peoples: that creolization was not a passive mixing of cultures, but an effort to create new hybrid institutions and cultural meanings to replace those that had been demolished by enslavement. Globalization is not the new phenomenon we take it to be.

This book is both a summation of Mintz's groundbreaking work in the region and a reminder of how anthropology allows people to explore the deep truths that history may leave unexamined.

... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

5-0 out of 5 stars Understanding the Caribbean
Sidney Mintz, who headed the anthropology department at Yale and helped found its counterpart at Johns Hopkins, is perhaps best known for his recent studies of food, notably Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History(Viking, 1985). His interest in sugar arose from field work in the Caribbean, which he began in Puerto Rico in the late 1940s while still working on his Ph.D. at Columbia. He soon widened his experience to include Jamaica, Haiti, and other regions.

The astonishing wealth to which the Caribbean colonies gave rise, Mintz writes, resulted from "the acquisitive energy of European masters and the cumulative forced labor of millions of workers, nearly all of them African," producing what he aptly calls "the first commercially marketed soft drugs ... tobacco, coffee, chocolate, and the sugar and molasses needed to sweeten them." Those drugs became instruments of power, used to remodel the class structure of Europe -- not least by supplying sweetened stimulants like sugared tea to fuel workers' punishing hours in mines, mills, and factories.

What interests Mintz far more than the fruits of Caribbean labor is the extraordinary creativity with which the mostly West African slaves and their offspring, torn from their homes and cultures, the sources of their identity, assembled new societies and new identities in the New World. The destruction of their histories gave rise to new histories, each markedly different, intimate, and profound. Mintz is an impatient pragmatist when it comes to questions of how history and anthropology relate. He insists that what anthropologists learn from their informants about their culture cannot be understood without appreciating the history that brought these individuals to where they are; nor can history be understood without seeing how it shapes individual lives.

The first of the ancient colonies Mintz discusses is Jamaica, where domination by particularly brutal and implacable British plantation owners at first gave rise to an almost clandestine peasant economy, and after freedom finally came, to rural villages established by Christian missionaries with programs of their own. The modern consequences of this history are, as Mintz learned at first hand in the 1950s, the racial stratification of status and wealth and a sharp division between the roles of men and women. The Jamaican peasantry live "in the shadow of the national history."

The history of Haiti, "the single most profitable colony in the history of the New World," was markedly different. Following the American and French revolutions, Haiti declared independence in 1804. The French did not accede until 1825, at an exorbitant price. The first revolution in history to end slavery, says Mintz, Haiti's was consequently the most terrifying: the United States did not recognize Haiti's independence until 1862. What followed was the collapse of the plantation system and the rise of a peasantry on whose backs "petty bureaucrats, coffee exporters, lawyers, military officers and merchants -- intermediaries of all sorts -- soon contrived to rest their collective weight." Much of what the elite skimmed was from a market economy run largely by women; nevertheless, as the first nation populated by emancipated slaves, power was largely undefined by race.

Mintz's third and most ancient colony was the first he visited in person, Puerto Rico. Unlike Jamaica and Haiti, Puerto Rico did not have an important plantation economy until the U.S. introduced mechanized agriculture in the 20th century, when the southern coast became "an ocean of sugarcane" - and then only for a period measured in decades, not centuries, largely because in the beginning Spain's attention had been concentrated on its colonies in mainland Latin America. Thus, Mintz estimates, "the rise in the number of physically mixed people on the island must have been continuous." Historical differences gave rise to differences in gender relations, race relations, and issues of self and violence, a "pattern of fierce chaperonage, elopement, feigned rage, and rapid reconciliation" typical of marriages that "fitted neatly with a strikingly different pattern, one of homicide ... brought on either by insults real or fictive to masculine identity or by sexual jealousy."

In his final and most fascinating chapter, "Creolization, Culture, and Social Institutions," Mintz shows how the enslaved responded to terrible constraints by creating new social institutions within slavery, built from assorted memories of the different cultures from which they came. Creolization is not mere mixture, like paint in a pot, but a synthesis arising from what might seem incommensurates. But while Jamaica and Haiti gave rise to creolized cultures and creole languages, Mintz shows, Puerto Rico, although slavery existed there, never experienced a massive influx of slaves and was never creolized.

Mintz persuasively demonstrates how human history intimately affects human response in cultural terms. Borrowing anthropologist Alfred Kroeber's argument that how culture comes to be is more distinctive of culture than what it is, Mintz says, "the process by which slaves dealt with the immediate postenslavement trauma they faced ... comes as close to understanding how culture comes to be than anything else in the human record I know of."

Three Ancient Colonies is adapted from a series of lectures honoring W. E. B. Du Bois that Mintz delivered at Harvard in 2003, and begins with a deft biographical sketch of Du Bois and the role his acquaintance with the Caribbean played in his own view of the history of African Americans. He honors the memory of Du Bois and the men and women he came to know well in the rural communities of the Caribbean in this passionate, humorous, persuasively argued book.
... Read more


84. Folklore Of The Negroes Of Jamaica - With Notes On Obeah Worship
by Various
Paperback: 48 Pages (2010-07-26)
list price: US$26.45 -- used & new: US$22.45
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Asin: 1445520826
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Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900's and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork. ... Read more


85. Verbal Riddim: The Politics and Aesthetics of African-Caribbean Dub Poetry (Cross/Cultures)
by Christian Habekost
 Paperback: 262 Pages (1993-01)
list price: US$67.50 -- used & new: US$67.50
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Asin: 9051835493
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This is the first book-length study of dub poetry, the musical talkover that has been an important part of the reggae scene in Canada, Britain and of course the Caribbean since the 1970's. Christian Habekost 's qualifications for writing such a book are beyond dispute. He is a German poet who has been involved with the dub movement since it began and knows most of its leading figures. As Ranting Chako, he is featured on the LP Dread Poets Society. The bibliography indicates that he has interviewed many of the 43 poet-performers mentioned, often on several occasions. Verbal Riddim, based on his doctoral dissertation at the University of Mannheim, is a successful blend of the performer and the researcher. ... Read more


86. Cultural DNA: Gender at the Root of Everyday Life in Rural Jamaica
by Diana J. Fox
 Paperback: 296 Pages (2010-06-30)
list price: US$35.00 -- used & new: US$35.00
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Asin: 9766402191
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87. Diasporization and family relations: The construction of female identity in Nella Larsen's Quicksand and Jamaica kincaid's Lucy
by Renata Thiago Pontes, Maria Aparecida Salgueiro
Paperback: 112 Pages (2010-07-29)
list price: US$64.00 -- used & new: US$63.99
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Asin: 3838379373
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The main aim of this book is to investigate andanalyze how diasporic movements and family relationsexert influence on the construction of women'sidentities in Nella Larsen's Quicksand and JamaicaKincaid's Lucy. The author's hypothesis is that inthe selected works we will find two journeys, whichhave both similar and distinct aspects, and beginwith the main characters' desire to escapeoppression. Given these facts, the protagonists gothrough a period of many discoveries aboutthemselves and the societies with which they have todeal, which unfolds into two products: the buildingof Lucy's autonomous hybrid identities in herloneliness in Kincaid's work, and the building ofHelga's hybrid identities overshadowed by religion,patriarchy, and family relations in Larsen's work. ... Read more


88. Verdicts of Juries in Sexual Offenses Trials in Jamaica: An Analysis/Study of the Sex Distribution of Jurors in Sexual Offense Trials and their Decisions
by courtney donovan daye
Paperback: 84 Pages (2008-06-08)
list price: US$76.41 -- used & new: US$53.82
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Asin: 3639033779
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Many persons have expressed alarm and surprise at the acquittals of alleged sexual offenders by juries in Jamaica. Women are the main victims of sexual offenses. Their confidence in the system of trial by jury is critical. Some observers assert that men on the jury in sexual cases are biased against women because men are the perpetrators of such offenses. Others counter that it is the women on the jury who acquit men of sexual offenses. These assertions are mainly based on anecdotal experiences.Therefore this study conducted an empirical examination of several jury trials of sexual offenses in Jamaica. Its purpose was to test the validity of these assertions and to ascertain if there is any systemic gender bias in sexual trials. It is the first such study in Jamaica and in the Caribbean.Based on the findings, the researcher recommends strategies for solving this socio-legal problem in Jamaica.Victims, social workers, counselors, lawyers, judges, womens activist and the media can obtain useful insights about some socio-legal issues in the Jamaican and Caribbean society. ... Read more


89. Jamaican Food: History, Biology, Culture
by B. W. Higman
Hardcover: 580 Pages (2008-02-28)
list price: US$75.00 -- used & new: US$75.00
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Asin: 9766402051
Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars
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5-0 out of 5 stars Jamaican Foods
A scholarly and comprehensive study of Jamaican Foods: their origins;history and current usage. Will be a source of background information to all those outside Jamaica interested in its social history.

4-0 out of 5 stars Foods from Paradise
Jamaica, an island where just about anything grows! An island that has a "continent" of foods - you can taste all sorts of cuisines in just a relatively small area! Best of all are the local adaptations of the foods of Africa, the Pacific, Europe, Asia, The Mediterranean and Latin America! The home grown "Jerk" seasoning spices up life!
This is not a cook-book but rather an interesting story told by an excellent historian who brings together all that is now "Jamaican Food" - I have enjoyed reading about what is one of the really interesting background to the cooking that abounds right from the roadside stop and go eateries to the finest restaurants!
Well worth the read! ... Read more


90. Weird Fishes
by Jamaica Dyer
Paperback: 120 Pages (2009-11-11)
list price: US$9.95 -- used & new: US$3.87
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Asin: 1593621779
Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars
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Dee sees giant talking ducks, and The Bunny Boy's worn the same Halloween costume for years. But when the kids stop playing together and turn into teenagers, the ducks become monsters and the bunnysuits become mod suits, and just as things start to settle, the world changes forever. Jamaica Dyer's acclaimed web comic comes to print at SLG with all of the oddness and beauty that you would expect from her work. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

1-0 out of 5 stars black and white print
why did SLG printed this excellent online comics in black and white is really beyond me.
it is really wasted potential. shame on the bad publisher!!
read it online it is GREAT. dont support publishers who print comics just for money and dont give a .... about the art.

5-0 out of 5 stars Its great
Im in love with Jamaica Dyers artwork and the story line. I only wish i had a bunny suit. ... Read more


91. Dub: Soundscapes and Shattered Songs in Jamaican Reggae (Music Culture)
by Michael Veal
Paperback: 352 Pages (2007-04-30)
list price: US$28.95 -- used & new: US$18.49
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Asin: 0819565725
Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars
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When Jamaican recording engineers Osbourne "King Tubby" Ruddock, Errol Thompson, and Lee "Scratch" Perry began crafting "dub" music in the early 1970s, they were initiating a musical revolution that continues to have worldwide influence. Dub is a sub-genre of Jamaican reggae that flourished during reggae's "golden age" of the late 1960s through the early 1980s. Dub involves remixing existing recordings--electronically improvising sound effects and altering vocal tracks--to create its unique sound. Just as hip-hop turned phonograph turntables into musical instruments, dub turned the mixing and sound processing technologies of the recording studio into instruments of composition and real-time improvisation. In addition to chronicling dub's development and offering the first thorough analysis of the music itself, author Michael Veal examines dub's social significance in Jamaican culture. He further explores the "dub revolution" that has crossed musical and cultural boundaries for over thirty years, influencing a wide variety of musical genres around the globe. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

5-0 out of 5 stars Great resource for musicians, producers and students of popular culture
This is a book written by an academic, but it has applications for anyone interested in this kind of music. After covering the development of modern Jamaican music from independence in 1962 on, he devotes a lot of space to analysis of the different recording strategies used by most of the well-known originators of dub and breaks down individual tracks in some detail, even detailing the specific equipment used by many producers. As someone who records and mixes my own music I found this kind of information really useful and inspiring and it has already caused me to question some of my own creative strategies and techniques. The second half of the book looks at the music in its political and historical context and follows the influences of dub in modern music. A book like this has long been called for. I remember the frustration of talking to young DJs who were all about 'dub' but actually didn't even know the music had originated in Jamaica. Dub was an extraordinary moment in modern music and deserves the seriousness of this treatment. One presumes that had this music originated in Europe they would be devoting university courses to it. Some readers may find the second half of the book a bit dense, but I loved all of it.

5-0 out of 5 stars Imaginative Work on a Revolutionary Musical Form
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 comments

Then, 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.

3-0 out of 5 stars Overly academic treatis on dub
I was very excited to find a first book dedicated to DUB MUSIC. The book starts off well enough, and I appreciated the contextualizing with experimental electronic music movements in Europe. But overall the problem is that the author has written the book too much concerned with satisfying his musicologist colleagues, and thus the lay reader is left in the cold (and I say this as someone who took musicology courses at University myself!). Veal has taken much of the excitement out of the subject and left academic dryness. I don't mean to dismiss it out of hand, but I am very disappointed and I feel it is only fair to warn the potential reader what they are wading into -- this is not a popular reading title, it is overall an academic work.

5-0 out of 5 stars Droppin' Science
While there may be some readers grumbling about the author's 'dryness' in this volume, I found it to be a unique and invaluable resource in bringing out many heretofore unknown details of dub production techniques from some of its most revered protagonists.

This book authoritatively helps frame Dub in the greater context of Jamaica's musical and cultural landscape in the second half of the twentieth century, with unique innovations which some would argue has had an immense but vastly under-appreciated impact on the rest of the planet's musical development up to this very moment. The author has managed to provide studio rats such as myself with the luxurious wealth of information that -short of being having been there- some of us had been looking for since first hearing some of these recordings more than a quarter of a century ago, and as such is an invaluable addition to any dub creator's tolbox.

The minute and precise details in which some of this is recounted is a unique asset in helping preserve what has up to now been nothing but soon-to-be-gone and more often than not distorted oral tradition, and its many direct quotes from those key players still alive today will make it a solid historical reference point for those planning to further study this subject for years to come!

It is also welcome and refreshing to read such an account from the writer's African-American perspective, as it brings up many crucial facets of Jamaican music and culture into a sorely needed focus, which up to now has been the province of either ethnomusicologists who for the most part somewhat missed the point, or enthusiasts without the necessary research background and clarity of expression to bring it all together.

There are very few books that arguably helped change one's life. In my case, this is most definitely one of them. It comes with my highest recommendation.

4-0 out of 5 stars the author could not translate his enthusiasm for the subject into a compelling read
Reading Michael Veal's Dub: Soundscapes & Shattered Songs in Jamaican Reggae, one understands just how vast Veal's knowledge of Jamaican music is. Unfortunately, the author could not translate his enthusiasm for the subject into a compelling read. Instead of being vibrant and humorous, the text is often academic and dry, stripping away the passion that would usually be associated with the subject matter. Ideally the book would have come with a companion CD, but Veal explained that the licensing would be too expensive, so readers are left having to follow the clinical text to get a sense of the music described.

Dub music is reggae music that has been reinterpreted through the use of sound effects, echo and reverb - the title refers to dismantling of prerecorded music. The music is often seen as a precursor to popular dance music. Dub has also leaked its way into mainstream pop music, as evident in "dub mixes" of top 40 hits by artists such as Madonna or Janet Jackson. The original dub music is a spin-off of reggae, though, as with any form of music, it has been diluted for mainstream popular consumption, as well. Pioneer engineers like Osbourne "King Tubby" Ruddock, Lee "Scratch" Perry and Errol Thompson all revolutionized dub music, and get deserved mentions in the book along such luminaries as Clement "Coxsone" Dodd and Sylvan Morris, and institutions like Studio One and the Black Ark - studios where some of the earliest works of dub music were created.

The book has some interesting points; the section on the influence of marijuana on dub music is particularly fascinating, as was his discussion of how producers would abuse their equipment to obtain a certain effect, but Veal often buries them with an avalanche of facts, figures and names (he has an unfortunate tendency to name drop), that will leave the reader overwhelmed. He has the germ of a great idea - he cites specific songs and discusses them in length, going over the details of the sounds of the songs and describing notable instrumental sequences and effects, though he gets mired in technical jargon (sometimes even including musical notes), that the reader may often find him or herself skimming through the passages.

To Veal's credit, he does put dub music into a political and historical context, which gives importance to his subject, and the background information on the cultural influences that shaped dub music is very interesting; his passages about dub music and marijuana is illuminating, as the author attempts to debunk the myth that Jamaican music is "pot music." He also does the reader a service by including a detailed discography of the artists cited in the book.

If Veal had trimmed down his writing a bit, and not overstuffed the tome with so much dry information then the book would've been a fascinating read. The text would have flowed better if the author had not tried to present the subject in such a textbook manner; the impulse is understandable, as Veal was obviously trying to make a claim for dub music an important academic or scholastic subject, but given the cultural impact of dub music, such a labored attempt in not needed. As such, one comes away from the book feeling as if there was an interesting book in there somewhere, done away by the author's zeal for overwhelming his audience with facts. ... Read more


92. LONGBRIDGE-BUSTAMANTE, GLADYS: An entry from Macmillan Reference USA's <i>Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History, 2nd ed.</i>
by Aleric Josephs
 Digital: 2 Pages (2006)
list price: US$4.90 -- used & new: US$4.90
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Asin: B001RV3EUE
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This digital document is an article from Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History, 2nd ed., brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses.The length of the article is 1134 words.The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase.You can view it with any web browser.The Early Civilizations in the Americas Reference Library provides a comprehensive overview of the history of the regions of the American continents in which two of the world's first civilizations developed: Mesoamerica (the name for the lands in which ancient civilizations arose in Central America and Mexico) and the Andes Mountains region of South America (in present-day Peru and parts of Bolivia, northern Argentina, and Ecuador). In both regions, the history of civilization goes back thousands of years. ... Read more


93. BUSTAMANTE, ALEXANDER: An entry from Macmillan Reference USA's <i>Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History, 2nd ed.</i>
by George Eaton
 Digital: 4 Pages (2006)
list price: US$5.90 -- used & new: US$5.90
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Asin: B001RV3AOY
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This digital document is an article from Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History, 2nd ed., brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses.The length of the article is 1663 words.The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase.You can view it with any web browser.The Early Civilizations in the Americas Reference Library provides a comprehensive overview of the history of the regions of the American continents in which two of the world's first civilizations developed: Mesoamerica (the name for the lands in which ancient civilizations arose in Central America and Mexico) and the Andes Mountains region of South America (in present-day Peru and parts of Bolivia, northern Argentina, and Ecuador). In both regions, the history of civilization goes back thousands of years. ... Read more


94. PEOPLE'S NATIONAL PARTY: An entry from Macmillan Reference USA's <i>Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History, 2nd ed.</i>
by Don Robotham
 Digital: 4 Pages (2006)
list price: US$5.90 -- used & new: US$5.90
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Asin: B001RV3GJ8
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This digital document is an article from Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History, 2nd ed., brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses.The length of the article is 1554 words.The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase.You can view it with any web browser.The Early Civilizations in the Americas Reference Library provides a comprehensive overview of the history of the regions of the American continents in which two of the world's first civilizations developed: Mesoamerica (the name for the lands in which ancient civilizations arose in Central America and Mexico) and the Andes Mountains region of South America (in present-day Peru and parts of Bolivia, northern Argentina, and Ecuador). In both regions, the history of civilization goes back thousands of years. ... Read more


95. LEON, ROSE: An entry from Macmillan Reference USA's <i>Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History, 2nd ed.</i>
by Robert Buddan
 Digital: 1 Pages (2006)
list price: US$2.90 -- used & new: US$2.90
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Asin: B001RV3ELI
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This digital document is an article from Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History, 2nd ed., brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses.The length of the article is 667 words.The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase.You can view it with any web browser.The Early Civilizations in the Americas Reference Library provides a comprehensive overview of the history of the regions of the American continents in which two of the world's first civilizations developed: Mesoamerica (the name for the lands in which ancient civilizations arose in Central America and Mexico) and the Andes Mountains region of South America (in present-day Peru and parts of Bolivia, northern Argentina, and Ecuador). In both regions, the history of civilization goes back thousands of years. ... Read more


96. Gangsta: The Sinister Spread of Yardie Gun Culture (A Vision investigation)
by John Davison
Paperback: 208 Pages (1997-08)
list price: US$15.95 -- used & new: US$2.02
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Asin: 1901250024
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This text looks at the violence created by the Yardie "gangsta" culture. The author, an award-winning journalist, spent years researching this book, having gained access to the gangstas, their ghettos and police operations. He argues that Yardie violence and the spread of drugs are out of control in Europe and America. ... Read more


97. An introduction to Jamaican culture for rehabilitation service providers (CIRRIE Monograph Series)
by Doreen Miller
 Unknown Binding: Pages (2002)

Asin: B0006RW13Q
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98. WEST INDIES DEMOCRATIC LABOUR PARTY: An entry from Macmillan Reference USA's <i>Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History, 2nd ed.</i>
by Robert Buddan
 Digital: 2 Pages (2006)
list price: US$1.90 -- used & new: US$1.90
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Asin: B001RV3IQO
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This digital document is an article from Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History, 2nd ed., brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses.The length of the article is 451 words.The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase.You can view it with any web browser.The Early Civilizations in the Americas Reference Library provides a comprehensive overview of the history of the regions of the American continents in which two of the world's first civilizations developed: Mesoamerica (the name for the lands in which ancient civilizations arose in Central America and Mexico) and the Andes Mountains region of South America (in present-day Peru and parts of Bolivia, northern Argentina, and Ecuador). In both regions, the history of civilization goes back thousands of years. ... Read more


99. LIGHBOURNE, ROBERT: An entry from Macmillan Reference USA's <i>Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History, 2nd ed.</i>
by Dave Gosse
 Digital: 1 Pages (2006)
list price: US$2.90 -- used & new: US$2.90
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Asin: B001RV3EOA
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Editorial Review

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This digital document is an article from Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History, 2nd ed., brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses.The length of the article is 530 words.The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase.You can view it with any web browser.The Early Civilizations in the Americas Reference Library provides a comprehensive overview of the history of the regions of the American continents in which two of the world's first civilizations developed: Mesoamerica (the name for the lands in which ancient civilizations arose in Central America and Mexico) and the Andes Mountains region of South America (in present-day Peru and parts of Bolivia, northern Argentina, and Ecuador). In both regions, the history of civilization goes back thousands of years. ... Read more


100. The Wisdom of Rastafari
by Rastafarians
Kindle Edition: Pages (2008-02-14)
list price: US$2.99
Asin: B00140CA7Q
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CONTENTS

PREFACE

THE BIBLE

RELIGION

MORALITY

HUMAN RIGHTS

UNITY

GOVERNMENT

LEADERSHIP

EDUCATION

RESPONSIBILITY

PLANNING

WORK

SELF HELP

DEVELOPMENT

LAND POLICY

RESOURCES

AGRICULTURE

FINE ARTS

HEALTH

INTER AFRICA

ETHIOPIA'S POSITION

INTERNATIONAL POLITICS

FATE

LIFE

DEATH

MISCELLANEOUS ... Read more


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