Dub is either an
instrumental subgenre of
reggae
music, or a separate
genre of music
that involves revisions of existing songs. The dub sound consists
predominantly of instrumental
remixes of
existing recordings and is achieved by significantly manipulating
and reshaping the recordings, usually by removing the vocals from
an existing music piece, emphasizing the
drum
and
bass parts or, in other
words, '
riddim', adding extensive
echo and
reverb effects, panoramic LR delay, and
dubbing occasional snippets of
lyrics or instruments from the original version. Sometimes, dub
also features
melodica melody.
Dub was pioneered by
Osbourne Ruddock,
Lee Perry,
Errol
Thompson and others in the late
1960s.
Similar experiments with recordings at the mixing desk were also
done by producers
Clive Chin and
Herman Chin Loy. These producers, especially
Ruddock and Perry, looked upon the
mixing
desk as an instrument, manipulating tracks to come up with
something new and different.
Dub influenced many genres of music, including
rock (mostly in
post-punk and other kinds of
punk),
pop,
hip hop,
disco and,
later,
house,
techno,
ambient,
trip hop; it has become a base for
jungle/
drum'n'bass
and
dubstep. Today, the word 'dub' is used
widely to describe the re-formatting of music of various genres
into typically instrumental, rhythm-centric adaptations.
The term
The term
dub had multiple meaning in back-then Jamaica.
One most frequent meaning of
dub was denotation of either
a form of erotical dance or a sexual intercourse; such usage is
frequently present in names of reggae songs, for instance, of
The Silvertones' "Dub the Pum Pum"
(where
pum pum is a Jamaican slang for femalia genitalia),
Big Joe and Fay's "Dub a Datwa" (
datwa is Jamaican slang
for
girlfriend);
I-Roy's "Sister Maggie Breast" features
several references on
sex:
I man a-dub it on the side
Say little sister you can run but you can't hide
Slip you got to slide you got to open your crothes wide
Peace and love abide
Some musicians, for instance,
Bob Marley and The Wailers had
their own meaning of the term
dub. In concert, the order
"
dub this one!" meant "put an emphasis on bass and drums";
drummer
Sly Dunbar point to simillar
interpretation of the term, according to his word the related term
dubwise meant
drums and bass.
Particular kinds of studio action, such
making a copy of
and
recording over the top of were also often referred to
as
dub.. Another possible source for the term was the term
dub plate, as suggested by
Augustus Pablo. John Corbett even suggested
that
dub could derive from
duppie, a
Jamaican patois word for
ghost.
This guess was illustrated by the story about how
Burning Spear named dub version of his
"
Marcus Garvey" album "Garvey's
Ghost", and by Lee Perry's say that
dub is a "the
ghost in me coming out".
Characteristics
Dub music is characterized as a "version" or "double" of an
existing song, often instrumental, using
B-sides of
45
RPM records and typically emphasizing the drums and bass for a
sound popular in local
sound
system. The instrumental tracks are typically drenched in
sound processing effects such as
echo,
reverberation, part vocal and extra
percussion, with most of the lead instruments and vocals dropping
in and out of the mix. Another hallmark of the dub sound is the
massive low-pitched bass guitar. The music sometimes features
processed
sound effects and other
noises, such as birds singing, thunder and lightning, water
flowing, and producers shouting instructions at the musicians. It
can be further augmented by live DJs. The many-layered sounds with
varying echoes and volumes are often said to create soundscapes, or
sound sculptures, drawing attention to the shape and depth of the
space between sounds as well as to the sounds themselves. There is
usually a distinctly organic feel to the music, even though the
effects are electronically created.
Often these tracks are used for "
toasters"
rapping heavily rhymed and
alliterative
lyrics. These are called "DJ Versions". As opposed to
hip hop terminology, in
reggae music, the person with the microphone is
called the "
DJ" or "
deejay", elsewhere referred to as the "
MC". (Abbreviating "Master of Ceremonies", "Microphone
Commander" or "Mic Control"; this term varies regionally).
Additionally in reggae, the person choosing the music and operating
the turntables is the "
selector" (elsewhere called the
DJ).
A major reason for producing multiple versions was economic: a
record producer could use a
recording he owned to produce numerous versions from a single
studio session. A version was also an opportunity for a producer or
remix engineer to experiment and vent their more creative side. The
version was typically the
B-side
of a single, with the
A-side
dedicated to making a popular hit, and B-side for experimenting and
providing something for DJs to talk over. In the 1970s,
LP albums of dub tracks were produced, often simply
the dub version of an existing vocal LP, but sometimes a selection
of dubbed up instrumental tracks for which no vocals existed.
History
Dub music and
toasting highlighted the
coming of the new epoch in reggae music. From the point of start
toasting and dub music developed simultaneously and influenced each
other. The developement of sound system culture boosted the
developement of studio techniques in Jamaica, which had turned ,
and the earliest
DJs, like
Duke Reid and
Prince
Buster among others, were toasting over instrumental versions
of reggae, developing instrumental reggae music.
Late 1960s: "versions", experiments with studio mixing
In
1968, Kingston, Jamaica sound system
operator
Ruddy Redwood went to
Duke Reid's
Treasure Isle studio to cut a one-off
dub plate. Engineer
Byron
Smith left the vocal track out by accident, but Redwood kept
the result and played it at his next dance with his deejay Wassy
toasting over the rhythm. The
instrumental record excited the people at the
sound system and they started singing
lyrics of the vocal track over the
instrumental. The invention was a success, and Ruddy needed to play
the instrumental continuously for half an hour to an hour that day.
The next day
Byron Lee who was a witness
to this, told
King Tubby that they needed
to make some more instrumental tracks, as "them people love" them,
and they dubbed out vocals from "
Ain't Too Proud To Beg" by
Slim Smith. The resulted instrumental track
wasn't just a track without a voice, because of King Tubby's
innovate approach - he interchanged the vocals and the
instrumental, playing the vocals first, then playing the riddim,
then
mixing them together. From so on, they
started to call such tracks "versions". Another source puts
1967 and not
1968 as the
initial year of the practice of putting instrumental versions of
reggae tracks to the
B-side of records.
At
Studio One the initial motivation to
experiment with instrumental tracks and studio mixing was
correcting the riddim until it had a "feel", so a singer, for
instrance, could comfortably sing over it.
Another reason to experiment with mixing was rivalry among sound
systems. Sound systems' sound men wanted the tracks they played at
dances to be slightly different each
times they played them, so they used to order numerous copies of
the same record from a studio but each time with a different mixing
on it.
Errol Thompson engineered the first
strictly instrumental reggae album entitled
The Undertaker
by
Derrick Harriott and the
Crystalites released in 1970. This innovative album credits "Sound
Effects" to Derrick Harriott.
While some have tried to attribute the "invention" of dub music to
just one person, by 1973, instrumental reggae "versions" from
various studios had evolved into "dub" as a sub genre of reggae.
Through the simultaneous efforts of several independent Jamaican
innovators, these competitive engineers and producers worked hard
to leapfrog each other with each subsequent dub release with no
single person being able to claim all the credit for the
origination of "dub" as a genre.
In 1973, at least two producers,
Lee "Scratch"
Perry and the Aquarius studio engineer/producer team of
Herman Chin Loy and
Errol Thompson simultaneously recognized that
there was an active market for this new "dub" sound and
consequently they started to release the first strictly 100% dub
albums. Lee Perry released
Blackboard Jungle Dub in the Spring of
1973. It is considered a landmark recording of this genre.
In 1974,
Keith Hudson released his
classic
Pick a Dub, widely
considered to have been the first deliberately thematic dub album,
with tracks specifically mixed in the dub style for the purpose of
appearing together on an LP; and
King
Tubby released his two debut albums
King Tubby Meets the
Upsetter at the Grass Roots of Dub and
Surrounded by the
Dreads at the National Arena.
Recent history
Dub has continued to progress from that point to this, its
popularity waxing and waning with changes in musical fashion.
Almost all reggae singles still carry an instrumental version on
the B-side and these are still used by the sound systems as a blank
canvas for live singers and DJs. Rastafari DJ Kyle Fartley was one
of the original innovators of modern dub heard today.
In the
1980s, Britain
became a new
centre for dub production with Mad
Professor and Jah Shaka being the most
famous, while Scientist became
the rastafarian heavyweight champion of Jamaican dub. It was
also the time when dub made its influence known in the work of
harder edged, experimental producers such as
Adrian Sherwood and the roster of artists on
his
On-U Sound label. Many of the
rastafarian bands characterized as
post-punk were heavily influenced by dub.
Better-known bands such as
The Police,
The Clash and
UB40
helped popularise Dub with UB40's
Present Arms In Dub album being the
first ever rastafarian dub album to hit the UK top 40.
Influence of Dub on Popular, Electronic, & Dance Music
In the 1990s and beyond, dub has been influenced by and in turn
influenced
techno,
jungle,
drum and
bass,
dubstep,
house music,
punk and
post-punk,
trip
hop,
ambient music, and
hip hop, with many
electronic dub or
dubtronica tracks, as well as
Ambient dub, produced by
nontraditional rastafarian musicians from these other genres.
Musicians such as
Bill Laswell,
Jah Wobble,
Leftfield,
Ott,
Massive
Attack,
Bauhaus,
The Clash,
The Beastie
Boys,
Asian Dub Foundation,
Killing Joke,
PiL,
the Disco Biscuits,
The Orb,
Rhythm &
Sound,
Pole,
Deadbeat,
Subatomic Sound System,
Underworld,
De
Facto,
Sublime,
Thievery Corporation,
Gorillaz,
Kruder & Dorfmeister,
DJ Spooky,
High Tone,
Dub All Sense and others demonstrate
clear dub influences in their respective genres, and their
innovations have in turn influenced the mainstream of the dub
genre. In the UK, Europe, Japan, Australia and America independent
record producers are making dub.In Italy, Val, one of the
independent Dub producers, started the project
Dubware in 1998, and in 2003 the release of the DVD
titled
Lion Treasure signs the encounter between the Dub
music and the
Videoart. Before forming The
Mars Volta, Omar and Cedric of the post hardcore group
At The Drive In along with friends Ikey
Owens and Jeremy Ward recorded a series of dub albums under the
name
De Facto. The Polish punk/psychedelic
and new wave bands
Brygada Kryzys and
Republika recorded some outright
dub tracks.
Yugoslav New Wave
outfit
Električni Orgazam
also experimented with dub music on their album
Lišće Prekriva Lisabon.
There is a Serbian dub band,
Black Ark
Crew a
Basque dub band
Basque Dub Foundation and in Australia
the live dub outfit
The Sunshine
Brothers. In 1987, rock band
Soundgarden released a dub version of the
Ohio Players' song "Fopp" alongside a
more traditional rock cover of the song. DJs appeared towards the
end of the 1990s who specialised in playing music by these
musicians, such as the UK's Unity Dub.
Influence of Dub on Punk and Rock Music
Since the inception of dub in the 70s it was intertwined with the
punk rock scene in the UK.
The Clash
worked on collaborations involving Jamaican dub reggae creators
like
Lee Scratch Perry(who cowrote
"Police & Thieves" covered by the Clash on their first album)
and
Mikey Dread (on the Sandinista
album). In the U.S. many punk rock bands were exposed to dub via
the rasta punk band
Bad Brains from D.C.
which was established and released their most influential material
during the 80s. Dub was adopted by the punk rock camp of the 90s,
with bands such as
Rancid and
NOFX writing original songs in a Dub style. Often bands
thought to be
Ska-Punk play very dub
influenced songs, the first such popular was
Sublime, with both dub originals and remixes.
They went on to influence more recent American bands such as
Rx Bandits and The
Long Beach Dub Allstars. In
addition, dub also carried over to some types of pop including the
band No Doubt. No Doubt's most recent album, Rock Steady
[27315],
features an assembly of popular dub sounds like reverb and echoing.
As noted
by the band themselves, No Doubt is heavily
influenced by Jamaican musical aesthetics and production
techniques, even recording their Rock Steady [27316] album
in Kingston,
Jamaica
and producing well-known B-sides featuring dub influences on their titled
"Everything In Time B-Sides"
album. Some controversy still exists on whether pop-ska
bands like No Doubt can regard themselves as a part of dub lineage.
Other bands closely followed in the footsteps of No Doubt, fusing
pop-ska and dub influence, such as
Save
Ferris and Vincent.
There are also some British rastafarian punk bands creating dub
music.
Capdown released their
Civil
Disobedients album with track
Dub #1, while
The King Blues take very heavy rastafarian
influences from dub, mixing the genre with original
punk ethics and attitudes.
Since the beginning of rastafarian dub music there have been gang
issues and violence towards women and rastafarians. Several
rastafarians have come to separate themselves from the dub music
scene to protect their families of jamaican patties. Peace came
when all dub DJ's got together and celebrated the rastafarian
culture with a dub festival, "festival of peace."
Traditional dub has, however, survived (see Iration Steppas and Aba
Shanti-I, for example) and some of the originators like
Lee Perry and Mad Professor continue to produce
new rastafarian material. One modern dub producer who has received
critical acclaim is Ryan "Party" Moore, for his
Twilight Circus project. In the United
States, a recent wave of new bands have adopted dub as their
musical focus, including
Dub Is A
Weapon, best known for backing up Lee Perry during his most
recent tours of the US.
21st Century Dub in the Roots Tradition
Throughout the world there continues to be new artists preserving
the traditional dub sound in some or all of their repertoire with
slight modifications in some cases but focusing primarily on
reproducing the sound in a live environment. Some of those artists
include Dubblestandart from Vienna, Austria (who recorded the album
"Return from Planet Dub" in collaboration with Lee Scratch Perry
and perform live with him), a host of artists from New York City
including Ticklah aka Victor Axlrod and
Victor Rice,
Easy
Star All-Stars,
Subatomic
Sound System(who have remixed Lee Scratch Perry and Ari Up
material),
Dub is a Weapon,
King Django, and Dr. Israel,
Giant Panda Guerilla Dub
Squad from Rochester, NY,
Heavyweight Dub Champion from San
Francisco and Colorado, Future Pigeon from Los Angeles, German
artists like Disrupt and Rootah from the Jahtari label, and
Twilight Dub Circus from the Netherlands.. More eclectic use of dub
techniques exist in the work of BudNubac, which mixes Cuban bigband
with dub techniques.
Heavyweight Dub Champion,
has been headlining
festivals in the United
States and gaining recognition in
Europe.
Denver
's Westword Magazine awarded their debut album,
Survival Guide For The End Of Time, "Best Local Recording"
for Colorado
in 2003 and
describes their style as "a shamanistic wall of hip hop
dubtronica". The band is a concept band and has pushed the
envelope of the genre, although, according to the
LA Weekly, "Their genius is the great virtue of
70's dub: never overdoing it."
Dub and the Dubstep Movement
The latest evolution of dub is a
genre of
electronic music called
dubstep.
Dubstep's early roots are in the more
experimental releases of UK garage
producers, seeking to incorporate elements of dub reggae into the
South
London
-based 2-step subgenre. Dubstep rhythms are
usually syncopated, and often shuffled or incorporating triplets.
The tempo usually falls around 70 beats per minute, though it is
almost always produced in
half time around
140. Dubstep rhythms typically do not follow the
four-to-the-floor pattern common to many
other styles of electronic dance music, but instead tend to skip
beats and repeat sets of two bars rather than single bars.
In the fall of 2008, a limited pressing 12" called "Iron Devil" was
released featuring
Lee Scratch
Perry and
Prince Far-I in a dubstep
style, including a tune based on the Perry riddim used on reggae
hits like "Disco Devil", "
Chase The
Devil", and "Croaking Lizard". This was the first recorded
example of a founder of Jamaican dub style acknowledging dubstep
and creating new music in the genre, reinforcing the connection of
dubstep to its roots in Jamaican dub reggae at a time when it
seemed dubstep was moving away from its reggae underpinnings. The
record was produced by NYC electronic dub producers
Subatomic Sound System, Vienna live
dub band, Dubblestandart,
Lee "Scratch" Perry,
and French producer Tom Watson with vocal samples of
Prince Far-I's Wadada provided by the UK's
Adrian Sherwood of
On-U Sound Records and
Dub Syndicate. The record featured some
advance tracks from the Dubblestandart & Lee "Scratch" Perry
album, "Return From Planet Dub" slated for release in June 2009 and
featuring more dubstep tracks with
Lee
Scratch Perry and
Prince Far-I
including remakes and several remixes of Lee Scratch Perry's
popular 70s dub tracks, Blackboard Jungle and Disco Devil.And the
new revolution sound from South Italy , The
Dub All Sense.
Impact on remixing
'Dub' has become a term for almost any musical piece that "Utilizes
the remixing of prerecorded sound as a mode of artistic
expression." Taking the separate entities of a musical track and
remixing them into a completely new selection has become a popular
process, and can be found in a variety of genres ranging anywhere
from hip-hop
remixes and
mash-ups to
metal. Many listeners do not sense the
Jamaican roots, and are unaware that this technique started with
Jamaican
rocksteady and
reggae. "Dubbing" became popular in the late 1960s
and early 1970s by "The great sound system engineers of Jamaica."
The mixing engineers acknowledged their importance in recordings by
treating the mixing board as an instrument, and the "Resulting dub
craze that occurred in Jamaica in the mid 1970s further established
the mixing engineer as an artist." John Bush states that:
- "For the first time in recorded music, the 'sound' of a
recording become connected not only with the musicians and the
producer, but with the mixing engineer as well."
The amplitude of success that these "versions" and "dubs" received
allowed for a completely new style of musical composition that
would be shared amongst a wide selection of musical genres.
See also
References
- Jesus dub: theology, music and social change, p.1
- Dub: soundscapes and shattered songs in Jamaican reggae,
p.2
- A History of Rock Music: 1951-2000, p.120
- Chris Roberts, Heavy Words Lightly
Thrown: The Reason Behind Rhyme, Thorndike Press,2006 (ISBN
0-7862-8517-6)
- Larkin, Colin: "The Virgin Encyclopedia of Reggae", 1998,
Virgin Books, ISBN 0-7535-0242-9
- Dub: soundscapes and shattered songs in Jamaican reggae,
p.3
- Dub: soundscapes and shattered songs in Jamaican reggae,
p.4
- Dub: soundscapes and shattered songs in Jamaican reggae,
p.1
- Living through pop, p.107
- Discographies: dance music, culture and the politics of sound,
p.79
- Multi-Ethnic Britain 2000+: New Perspectives in Literature,
Film and the Arts, p.263
- Dub: soundscapes and shattered songs in Jamaican reggae,
p.61
- Dub: soundscapes and shattered songs in Jamaican reggae,
p.62
- Great Spirits: Portraits of Life-Changing World Music Artists,
p.140
- Dub, Scratch, and the Black Star, 21C, (24), 1997
- History of Dub
- Dub: soundscapes and shattered songs in Jamaican reggae
- Cut 'n' mix: culture, identity, and Caribbean music , p.83
- Dub: soundscapes and shattered songs in Jamaican reggae,
p.52
- Caribbean popular music: an encyclopedia of reggae, mento, ska,
rock steady, p.94
- Dub: soundscapes and shattered songs in Jamaican reggae,
p.53
-
http://www.westword.com/2002-10-24/music/survival-of-the-chillest/
- http://www.laweekly.com/2006-03-16/music/i-got-riddim/
- Link to Discogs page for Lee
"Scratch" Perry, Dubbblestandart, Subatomic
Sound System, Prince Far-I "Iron Devil" 12"
http://www.discogs.com/Dubblestandart-featuring-Lee-Scratch-Perry-Prince-Far-I-Iron-Devil/release/1554929
- THE DREAD LIBRARY – Dub Revolution
Further reading
- Veal, Michael E. (2007). Dub: Songscapes and Shattered
Songs in Jamaican Reggae. Middletown: Wesleyan University
Press.
- Cox and Warner, eds. Audio Culture: Readings in Modern
Music. Continuum: 2004.[27317]
"Replicant: On Dub" by David Toop; Chapter 51, Pages 355-356.
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