Credit the rhythm section
One side
Front artist
The other
Backing musician labour
What was argued
Reggae histories often foreground singers and producers, but session musicians and rhythm sections require explicit credit trails where sources allow.
Arguments about the same records
Debate
Sleng Teng: digital revival or the ruin of live reggae
One side
Democratizing computer riddim
The other
The death of the session-band sound
Wayne Smith's 1985 'Under Mi Sleng Teng', built by King Jammy and Noel Davey around a Casio MT-40 preset, is widely credited as the first fully digital dancehall riddim. Purists and some session players held that the drum-machine sound cheapened reggae and displaced the live rhythm bands (the Roots Radics and Sly & Robbie's circle) who had defined the music, while champions argued it democratized production — a youth with a keyboard could now cut a hit without costly studio time — and that it launched the most-versioned riddim in Jamaican history. Later writing frames the moment as either a revival that birthed modern dancehall or the ruin of organic reggae craft.
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