2008
Want to talk about two things for 2008 – daggering & the death of vinyl.
On the dancehall scene the sex-simulation daggering craze was at full thrust (ha ha) leading to pretty crazy scenes as dancers look for a new twist.
Some daggering action
(couldn’t find the video of people jumping off 3 meter high speaker stacks straight into a fellow dancers crotch…it’s a shame)
Early in 2009, partly in response to the daggering craze and associated songs and partly in response to Vybz Cartels explicit track Rampin’ Shop, Jamaican broadcasting authorities placed a blanket ban on all sexually explicit content, even if it was beeped or blanked out. Some people say this was just middle-class moralising on behalf of the authorities, but for what it’s worth (Jamaican radio and tv has by accounts long been restricting music coming from the streets) the ban remains.
In other news, after years of decline, and with pressings mainly for export for a long time anyhow, 2008 is as good a year as any to mark where vinyl passed into history in JA. Even the 20 vocals on one track Riddim CDs started to retreat, with mixtapes, dance recordings and bootleg CDs become the preferred formats. In fact many tunes don’t get released in any format in JA.
The death of vinyl put together with what some felt was an out of control dancehall scene felt like the end of an era for Jamaican music, and the growing role of producers outside of JA was brought increasingly into relief…which is fair enough considering some of the great music still being made abroad, such as this Manasseh production from ‘08
Bob Skeng The Lion - Version A De Priciple - from the Roots Garden Showcase Part
Now working my way through the tunes - currently up to around 1966. Keep em coming! (although I see things are nearly up-to-date)
