Babylon Falling • sevensclash: The history of Jamaican popular...

sevensclash:

The history of Jamaican popular music converges on Orange Street. Its function as a principal artery carrying traffic north from Ocean Boulevard up to Cross Roads — the de facto boundary between downtown and uptown Kingston — makes it a locus of activity. Known locally as Beat Street, the record stores and small studios that began to line the thoroughfare during the prosperous post-war years transformed it into an important music corridor. Overlapping layers of music history spanning genres and generations unfold along almost any stretch of the strip. On the corner of Orange and Beeston Street, for example, at the height of the ska era Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry conducted his infamous Sunday afternoon Studio One auditions out of Coxson Dodd’s Music City, only a couple blocks from the childhood home of future Crown Prince of Reggae, Dennis Brown. In later years aspiring musicians congregated one short block to the east at the Idler’s Rest, an outdoor gathering place on Chancery Lane where a draw of herb could be enjoyed in peace and you could be easily reached to record. Like a musical Galapagos, Orange Street and its environs operated as a self-contained eco-system incubating the evolution of the nation’s nascent music industry.
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Record Shopping at Rockers International. Latest piece from Sevens Clash.

The history of Jamaican popular music converges on Orange Street. Its function as a principal artery carrying traffic north from Ocean Boulevard up to Cross Roads — the de facto boundary between downtown and uptown Kingston — makes it a locus of activity. Known locally as Beat Street, the record stores and small studios that began to line the thoroughfare during the prosperous post-war years transformed it into an important music corridor. Overlapping layers of music history spanning genres and generations unfold along almost any stretch of the strip. On the corner of Orange and Beeston Street, for example, at the height of the ska era Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry conducted his infamous Sunday afternoon Studio One auditions out of Coxson Dodd’s Music City, only a couple blocks from the childhood home of future Crown Prince of Reggae, Dennis Brown. In later years aspiring musicians congregated one short block to the east at the Idler’s Rest, an outdoor gathering place on Chancery Lane where a draw of herb could be enjoyed in peace and you could be easily reached to record. Like a musical Galapagos, Orange Street and its environs operated as a self-contained eco-system incubating the evolution of the nation’s nascent music industry.

Read More

Record Shopping at Rockers International. Latest piece from Sevens Clash.