Music and politics in Jamaica

Jamaican popular music and Jamaican electoral politics have never been separable. Songs were adopted as campaign anthems (and their writers were not always consulted), radio bans marked which sentiments were acceptable, artists were courted and sometimes endangered by association, and the geography of party allegiance — the garrison — was also the geography of sound systems and dances.

The through-line runs from the mento and ska years, through the 1972 Bandwagon, the violence of the 1976 and 1980 election periods, the Smile Jamaica shooting and the 1978 One Love Peace Concert, to the election dubplate arguments of the present. This is the coverage area those pieces belong to.