Distillation of Sound focuses on the original music of Jamaica and how, through dub reggae, Jamaican culture was expanded and shifted. It will further the discussion on dub music, its importance to Jamaican culture, and its influence on the rest of the world. Dub music in Jamaica started in the early 1970s and by the end of the decade had influenced an entire population. The music began to use the rhythm track of a song as a song itself and spread quickly throughout the sound systems of the island. The importance of dub music and its influence on the music world frames the discussions in this new book. How dub travelled and distilled to three places in the world is covered in chapters focussing on the rise and spread of dub in New York City, in England and in Japan. Abbey discusses the separation between dub as a product and dub as an act of the engineer. Codifying these two elements, and tracing them, will allow for a more definitive approach to the culture and music of dub. To define it, and its surrounding elements, five of the first albums produced in the genre are discussed in three parameters that help to define and set up the culture of dub music. The albums discussed are Java, Java, Java, Java (Impact All Stars), Aquarius Dub (Herman Chin Loy), Blackboard Jungle Dub (Lee 'Scratch' Perry), The Message Dubwise (Prince Buster), King Tubbys Meets Rockers Uptown (Augustus Pablo). From the Preface: 'Jamaican music has always been about creating with what is at hand. Taking what is around you and making it into something great is the key to dub and Jamaican culture. This attitude is what this project is about. There is not enough written on the music that has inspired and influenced so many people around the world and this is an addition to the conversation. Dub music fixates on the engineer as a musician and, in doing so, allows for the creator to interact with echnology. Through this, the mixing board and other electronic elements become musical instruments. Now, these technologies are dominant in contemporary music and allow for people to easily create in their own homes. Without the engineers and musicians in the following work, these changes and shifts in technology and music would not have occurred. Dub is also a refiguring of already existing music. What this demonstrates is that music is ever evolving and can be shifted through technology. It also suggests that recorded music can always be modified and expanded upon. In our contemporary world, this modification is seen every day online and in people's daily lives. Dub created a way to view these changes through music. The influence of technology in the development of culture is the key to this work and to our development in society. How technology can be modified, changed, and evolved through the interaction of the engineer is the focus of this project. This work will further the importance of dub music and culture in our society. The definition and distinction between version and dub is also an important element in the following work. Jamaican music needs to be discussed more for its influence and creative force in the entirety of the music world. The author is a professional musician with the groups J. Navarro & the Traitors, Detroit Riddim Crew, and 1592 and a producer of dub, reggae and ska, and a professor of English and literature at Oakland Community College in Michigan, USA. Genuine popular and academic appeal. Will appeal to students and scholars of music and Jamaican culture - and to academic libraries. Has genuine popular appeal to those with an interest in Jamaican culture and music.

Jamaican deejay Yellowman divided a country with his bawdy songs and his very body: he has been wildly popular among dancehall fans, yet widely despised by polite society. Even though his contribution to Jamaican musical culture is immense, scholars have ignored him and reggae histories have largely misunderstood him. King Yellowman: Meaningful Bodies in Jamaican Dancehall Culture is the first serious study of one Jamaica's most significant artists and dancehall's first major international star. It is a critical biography designed to satisfy fans while furthering academic discourse on dancehall by offering a new perspective on the way Yellowman negotiates the slackness/culture binary in Jamaican music. Based on years of ethnographic fieldwork, Brent Hagerman begins with the compelling story of Winston Foster's early life as an abandoned ghetto outcast and his hard-fought journey to become the King of Dancehall, then goes on to a critical exploration of the marginalization of people with albinism in Jamaica and the use of slackness in Caribbean music. Through slackness and his mobilization of Rastafarian symbols, Yellowman subverts embedded Jamaican cultural notions of sexuality, gender, and race to overcome his cultural displacement, promote his yellow body as sexually appealing and forge a place for himself among the Jamaican body politic.

An important center of dancehall reggae performance, sound clashes are contests between rival sound systems: groups of emcees, tune selectors, and sound engineers. In World Clash 1999, held in Brooklyn, Mighty Crown, a Japanese sound system and the only non-Jamaican competitor, stunned the international dancehall community by winning the event. In 2002, the Japanese dancer Junko Kudo became the first non-Jamaican to win Jamaica's National Dancehall Queen Contest. High-profile victories such as these affirmed and invigorated Japan's enthusiasm for dancehall reggae. In "Babylon East," the anthropologist Marvin D. Sterling traces the history of the Japanese embrace of dancehall reggae and other elements of Jamaican culture, including Rastafari, roots reggae, and dub music.

Sterling provides a nuanced ethnographic analysis of the ways that many Japanese involved in reggae as musicians and dancers, and those deeply engaged with Rastafari as a spiritual practice, seek to reimagine their lives through Jamaican culture. He considers Japanese performances and representations of Jamaican culture in clubs, competitions, and festivals; on websites; and in song lyrics, music videos, reggae magazines, travel writing, and fiction. He illuminates issues of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and class as he discusses topics ranging from the cultural capital that Japanese dancehall artists amass by immersing themselves in dancehall culture in Jamaica, New York, and England, to the use of Rastafari as a means of critiquing class difference, consumerism, and the colonial pasts of the West and Japan. Encompassing the reactions of Jamaica's artists to Japanese appropriations of Jamaican culture, as well as the relative positions of Jamaica and Japan in the world economy, "Babylon East" is a rare ethnographic account of Afro-Asian cultural exchange and global discourses of blackness beyond the African diaspora.

A hybrid of reggae and rap, reggaeton is a music with Spanish-language lyrics and Caribbean aesthetics that has taken Latin America, the United States, and the world by storm. Superstars--including Daddy Yankee, Don Omar, and Ivy Queen--garner international attention, while aspiring performers use digital technologies to create and circulate their own tracks. "Reggaeton" brings together critical assessments of this wildly popular genre. Journalists, scholars, and artists delve into reggaeton's local roots and its transnational dissemination; they parse the genre's aesthetics, particularly in relation to those of hip-hop; and they explore the debates about race, nation, gender, and sexuality generated by the music and its associated cultural practices, from dance to fashion.

The collection opens with an in-depth exploration of the social and sonic currents that coalesced into reggaeton in Puerto Rico during the 1990s. Contributors consider reggaeton in relation to that island, Panama, Jamaica, and New York; Cuban society, Miami's hip-hop scene, and Dominican identity; and other genres including "reggae en espanol," underground, and dancehall reggae. The reggaeton artist Tego Calderon provides a powerful indictment of racism in Latin America, while the hip-hop artist Welmo Romero Joseph discusses the development of reggaeton in Puerto Rico and his refusal to embrace the upstart genre. The collection features interviews with the DJ/rapper El General and the reggae performer Renato, as well as a translation of "Chamaco's Corner," the poem that served as the introduction to Daddy Yankee's debut album. Among the volume's striking images are photographs from Miguel Luciano's series Pure Plantainum, a meditation on identity politics in the bling-bling era, and photos taken by the reggaeton videographer Kacho Lopez during the making of the documentary "Bling'd: Blood, Diamonds, and Hip-Hop."

Contributors. Geoff Baker, Tego Calderon, Carolina Caycedo, Jose Davila, Jan Fairley, Juan Flores, Gallego (Jose Raul Gonzalez), Felix Jimenez, Kacho Lopez, Miguel Luciano, Wayne Marshall, Frances Negron-Muntaner, Alfredo Nieves Moreno, Ifeoma C. K. Nwankwo, Deborah Pacini Hernandez, Raquel Z. Rivera, Welmo Romero Joseph, Christoph Twickel, Alexandra T. Vazquez

Throughout Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, and America, Bob Marley represents far more than just the musician who translated spiritual and political beliefs into hypnotic, hard-hitting songs such as "Get Up, Stand Up," "No Woman, No Cry," and "Jammin'." Marley was born in rural Jamaica and reared in the mean streets of Kingston's Trenchtown his ascent to worldwide acclaim, first with The Wailers- Peter Tosh and Bunny Livingstone- and later as a solo artist, is a riveting story of the spiritual awakening of a uniquely talented individual.Now, for the first time, a symphony of voices has joined together to offer perspective on one of this century's most compelling figures. Dealing with Bob Marley as a man and myth, from his "rude boy" teens to international fame and his tragic death at the age of thirty-six, Every Little Thing Gonna Be Alright then explores the larger picture, examining Marley as the spokesman for Jamaica's homegrown religion of Rastafarianism, as a flash point for the pressure cooker of Jamaican politics, and his unique status as the first pop musical superstar of the so-called "Third World."

Bob Marley, Jimmy Cliff, Peter Tosh, the Itals, the Ethiopians-they all dropped dazzling proverbs into their best known reggae tunes.

"What come bad in the morning, can't come good in the evening."

"They love to give you a basket to carry water."

"The harder the battle be, ago sweeter the victory."

In "Reggae Wisdom: Proverbs in Jamaican Music" Swami Anand Prahlad looks at the contexts and origins of these proverbs, using them as a cultural sheet music toward understanding the history of Jamaican culture, Rastafari religion, and the music that is that culture's worldwide voice.

Prahlad's fieldwork in Jamaica is extensive. For him, the study of Jamaican sayings and music is not only an academic endeavor. It is also a personal and poetic exploration. Prahlad says, "I am writing not only as a folklorist but also as a member of the international reggae community, a group of people around the globe who look to this music for its joy, wisdom, and strength."

His unique, groundbreaking study argues that contemporary reggae artists are self-styled Rastafari priests for an international community of listeners and devotees. These "warrior/priests" serve as educators, healers, prophets, advisers, and social critics. Their proverbs become sources of strength and inspiration for members of the reggae community.

Several chapters in "Reggae Wisdom" offer important insights into Rastafari ideology, the history of reggae, the life and folk culture of Jamaican communities, and the recording scene that gave rise to roots reggae. One chapter, based on the author's fieldwork in Jamaica, considers the use of proverbs by ordinary individuals in Jamaican society. Other chapters focus on proverbs used by musical artists such as Bob Marley. Chapters also explore the contexts of album cover art, promotional materials, concert venues, and performance styles and conventions.

As Prahlad says, "What better way to enter this rich and powerful, eclectic world of sound and sense than through the magical world of proverbs?"

Swami Anand Prahlad is an associate professor of English and anthropology at the University of Missouri-Columbia. He is the author of "African American Proverbs in Context" (University Press of Mississippi).

One of the twentieth century's most iconic cultural figures, Bob Marley was responsible for popularising reggae music throughout the world. His unique blend of politically conscious lyrics and melody won him legions of fans far beyond the Caribbean. But Marley was no mere pop star: his strong attachment to Rasta beliefs and practices and his fierce hostility to the injustice of 'Babylon' made him an important spokesman for the dispossessed. In this new biography, Garry Steckles follows Marley's eventful life through the early days in rural Jamaica, arrival in Kingston, first recordings and performances to his spectacular status as an international superstar. Throughout he analyses Marley's political and religious beliefs, while also concentrating on his relationships with fellow musicians, family and influential figures such as Chris Blackwell. A chapter focusing on Marley's long-term legacy explores what the musician contributed to world music and what the religious believer gave to Rastafarianism.