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ENTITY · TECHNOLOGY / GEAR

Sound-system deejay

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The deejay is the voice on the microphone over the record — talking, chanting and riding the rhythm while the selector plays. The role began as the sound's hype man introducing tunes and became an art in itself: U-Roy's 1970 Treasure Isle sessions turned it into a recorded form, and everything from dancehall deejaying to rap traces back through it.

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Story · ProbableFrom Kingston to the Bronx: DJ Kool Herc and the Sound-System Roots of Hip-Hop

How a Jamaican teenager carried the logic of the dancehall sound system into a South Bronx rec room and helped set hip-hop in motion.

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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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