STORIES
The written histories
Longer pieces about how the music actually happened — a studio, a rivalry, a rhythm, an argument that would not settle. Each one is tied to the records it concerns, and carries how firmly the atlas stands behind it.
144 published
How Kingston's record shops, and their heirs in London and New York, worked as A&R desk, bank, distributor and meeting point for Jamaican music.
Session bands built the reggae soundFrom the Skatalites to the Firehouse Crew, uncredited studio bands built every era of Jamaican music while record labels named only singers and producers.
Lovers rock and the British reggae homeHow black British teenagers turned reggae towards romance in 1970s London, and why the front-room blues dance became the music's true home.
A label map from Studio One to VPHow Jamaica's one-producer labels, London's licensing houses and a family firm in Queens joined into a single map of the music business.
From ska's first pop hit to dancehall's sample afterlifeA path from Millie Small's 1964 crossover to Sister Nancy and Marcia Griffiths in global dance memory.
In front of the camera: the video vixen's own accountWhen Jamaican video vixens talk about the job themselves, the story is less about spectacle than about bookings, contracts and a path into other work.
The directors who shot the danceDancehall's music video directors turned VHS-era stage footage into a global visual language, and rarely got their names remembered for it.
How a dance becomes a song becomes a movementWillie Bounce, Dutty Wine, Gully Creepa: dancehall's dance crazes travelled as a package deal of move, name and tune.
The crew era: Black Roses to OuchFrom a Waterhouse dance troupe to a fashion collective archived in art museums, Jamaica's street-dance crews built a lineage of their own.
The video light and the flossWhen the camera came on, the dance began: how a handful of videographers turned being seen into the point of the party.
Van culture and the street danceOutside Passa Passa, Uptown Mondays and Weddy Weddy Wednesdays, the parking lot was its own runway.
2 Tone and the Jamaican sourceA Coventry label built its entire sound, and its politics, on records its founders had spent years studying.
British ragga and the jungle turnBefore jungle had a name, London's ragga deejays were already writing its vocabulary.
On-U Sound and the UK dub continuumHow a London label turned King Tubby's mixing-desk science into a post-punk-era sound of its own.
Reggae's European festival circuitLong before streaming, a ring of summer festivals across Germany, Italy, France, Spain and the Netherlands turned reggae into one of Europe's most durable live-music economies.
How Jamaica argued about its own musicFrom Grammy categories to TikTok trends, Jamaican music has always come with an argument attached.
The critics, the columns and the airwavesHow a scattered corps of print critics and radio DJs first wrote and broadcast reggae into international recognition.
The Entertainment Report eraHow Jamaican television built a daily newsroom for dancehall - and what happens to it when artists broadcast themselves.
First ladies of the dancehall micFrom Lady Ann's toasting through Sister Carol's feminist chat to Tifa and Lisa Hyper's 2000s run, women built a parallel lineage on the mic.
The women of dub poetry and the spoken wordJamaican-born women carried dub poetry's reasoning voice from Kingston yards to Toronto stages and a Halifax poet laureateship.