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Dance-community term for the street-dance style that followed the 1990s 'old school' Bogle era, credited in scene oral history to dancer John Hype as part of the video-light generation's transition into 2000s Kingston street-dance culture.

A documented international public debate over homophobic content in some reggae and dancehall lyrics, focused on tracks such as Buju Banton's 1988 'Boom Bye Bye' and artists including Bounty Killer, Sizzla and Capleton; the 'Stop Murder Music' campaign (from 2004) led to widespread concert and sponsorship cancellations, and the 2007 Reggae Compassionate Act saw several artists pledge against inciting violence, though observers noted uneven compliance. Framed here neutrally as a documented debate over lyrics, free expression and human rights.

The single-genre reggae station — IRIE FM, on air from 1990 as the first all-reggae broadcaster, made the format real in Jamaica. Before it, reggae shared national airtime with everything else and much of the music never reached radio at all; after it, the question became which reggae radio would recognise.

The tuning practice of grouping bass bins so their outputs couple: builders recommend three or more scoops together because a single bin dips, while an array fills the dip and "produces a note" that is heavier and more musical.

Jamaican music communities mark deceased entertainers through tribute dances, radio memorial specials, murals and annual anniversary events - a consistent, decades-long practice of public mourning and remembrance that this atlas records as part of the culture's history.

What an archive owes someone whose legal matter is closed. A resolved case is part of a life, not the whole of it, and a record that leads with it — or that keeps a settled matter permanently at the top — is making an editorial judgement it has no basis for. The music is the subject; the disposition is recorded, dated and left in proportion.

The recurring 'keep it real' argument in dancehall over whether the 'badman', gun and street personas express lived authenticity or are performance and marketing, a core thread in reception of clash culture and hard lyrics.

An award tells you what an industry thought was significant in a particular year, which is a real fact and a narrow one. It is evidence of reception rather than of quality, and it says as much about who was voting as about who won — useful in an archive precisely as long as it is labelled for what it is.

In Rastafari discourse 'Babylon' names the systems, governments, police and institutions seen as being in rebellion against the will of Jah and as inheritors of colonial and slave-era oppression; the notion of 'chanting down Babylon' through word, sound and Nyabinghi drumming is a core theme carried into reggae and dancehall lyrics.

Bam Bam is not a riddim, though it is routinely listed as one. It is a title and hook that has travelled across several different rhythms since Toots and the Maytals took the 1966 Festival Song Competition with the original. The best-known cut, Sister Nancy's 1982 "Bam Bam", is voiced over the Stalag riddim (Ansell Collins, Techniques, 1973) — not over any rhythm called Bam Bam; Nancy has said she reached for the phrase after hearing Yellowman and Fathead cut their own version, which was on the Taxi rhythm, in a nearby studio. Chaka Demus and Pliers returned to the Maytals' words for their 1992 hit. Sister Nancy's record has since been sampled more than a hundred times, making it the most sampled Jamaican record ever cut. This entry exists to keep the distinction straight: follow each cut to the rhythm it actually sits on.

Jamaican word for a big, high-energy dance or party that also came to name the up-tempo dancehall it soundtracks; a term threaded through session names, riddims and record titles.

The engineering pursuit of deep, physical low-end and even full-range reproduction, chased through transformer design, amplifier headroom and speaker tuning, and captured in King Tubby's wish for bass 'jus' like a volcano in yuh head'.

Jamaican dancehall expression of respect and acknowledgement, made from 'big yuself up', that spread through UK and US usage to become one of the most widely exported Caribbean contributions to English.

A framework, after Paul Gilroy's 'Black Atlantic', for reading the circulation of rhythm, language and performance among Jamaican reggae and dancehall, hip-hop, Afrobeats, soca and Latin genres as reciprocal diaspora exchange. Invoked in debates over influence, credit and ownership.

Term for the mid-2000s dancehall aesthetic of conspicuous jewellery, designer and customised fashion, and displayed wealth performed at street dances and captured on video light, exemplified by acts whose names invoked the look directly, such as Black Blingaz.