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Desnoes & Geddes

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The Kingston firm behind most of what the dance drinks. Eugene Peter Desnoes and Thomas Hargreaves Geddes combined their shops in 1918 to sell aerated water and imported liquor, opened the Surrey Brewery in downtown Kingston about nine years later, and brewed the first Red Stripe there in 1928. The portfolio grew to carry Dragon Stout, Ting, Malta, Dandy Shandy, and — under licence — Guinness and Heineken, which is how one company came to supply nearly every bottle held up in a Jamaican dance.

Diageo took control in the 1990s; Heineken bought Diageo's 57.9% stake in 2015 for US$781m, taking its own holding to 73.3%.

Dragon Stoutmorebyless · CC BY 2.0 · Source ↗

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Story · Well supportedThe bar in the dance: how liquor built, named and paid for the music

A brewery, a rum house and a tonic wine have shaped Jamaican music as surely as any studio — and what the dance drinks has changed twice, from a crate at a man's foot to bottles held up in the video light.

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Compiled and researched by The Jamaica Music Atlas music desk. The sources that informed it are credited above.

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