Beaches, ovals and lawns: where the dance actually happened

Barrington Levy (born 1964, Clarendon) is a Jamaican reggae and dancehall singer who rose to prominence in the late 1970s and early 1980s with a soaring, distinctive vocal style. Working with producer Henry "Junjo" Lawes and the Roots Radics band at King Tubby's studio, he cut a run of foundational early-dancehall hits including "Collie Weed," "Skylarking" and "Here I Come." He is widely regarded as one of the originators of the dancehall style and sustained his popularity into the 1990s.

Open-air entertainment and sports complex in Montego Bay that has served as the primary home of Reggae Sumfest, the island's largest annual reggae and dancehall festival. Its main stage and grounds host the festival's flagship nights each July.

Reggae Sumfest is Jamaica's longest-running major annual reggae and dancehall festival, launched in Montego Bay in 1993 after the end of Reggae Sunsplash's original Jamaican run. Summerfest Productions, led for many years by Johnny Gourzong and Robert Russell, developed the festival around international nights, dancehall programming and its long-time Catherine Hall home. In 2016 the festival entered a new ownership era under Josef Bogdanovich and DownSound Entertainment, expanding its digital presentation while retaining Montego Bay as its cultural base.

The fishing beach across the harbour from Kingston in Portmore, and the city's Sunday morning institution — fried fish, festival and sound systems on the sand. Its place in the music is as dancehall's day-off: the scene where the culture relaxes in daylight, photographed and filmed for decades.

The resort town at Jamaica's western tip, and the island's beach-show capital. Its seven miles of sand filled with music venues as tourism grew from the 1970s — Roots Bamboo, Alfred's, MXIII — and the Negril stage show, played to a mix of visitors and locals with the sunset behind the band, is its own genre of Jamaican performance.

Beachfront live-reggae venue on Negril's Seven Mile Beach, established in the late 1980s (formerly DeBus), long a leading stop for live roots and reggae performances. Artists seen there over the years include Culture with Joseph Hill, Gregory Isaacs, Yellowman, John Holt, Toots and the Maytals and Bunny Wailer.

Jamaica's flagship roots-reggae festival, and the clearest case in the archive of a stage built around a refusal. It began as a birthday party. Tony Rebel — Patrick Barrett, born 15 January 1962 — put on the first Rebel Salute at Fayor's Entertainment Centre in Mandeville, Manchester on Friday 14 January 1994, around his own birthday. More than 15,000 people came, which settled the question of whether there was an audience for a strictly conscious billing. It has run every January since, growing from one night to two, moving from Fayor's to Brooks Park in Mandeville, then Port Kaiser Sports Club in St Elizabeth, and on to Richmond Estate in St Ann. The thirtieth staging was held in January 2024. What makes it matter here is the policy. Rebel Salute sells no alcohol and no meat on site, and bills itself as drug-free, violence-free and family-oriented — an ital festival in the Rastafari sense rather than a themed one. Every other large Jamaican stage show in this archive runs on a bar, and several are named after what is sold at it; Rebel Salute took that revenue off the table and filled the ground anyway, for three decades. It is the counter-argument to the drinks collection, made annually and at scale, and it is inseparable from its promoter: Tony Rebel is not a name on the poster but the founder, curator and the artist whose own catalogue set the terms.

Multi-use sports oval in Spanish Town, St Catherine, beside the St Catherine Adult Correctional Centre, immortalised by Barrington Levy's Volcano dubplate-turned-hit 'Prison Oval Rock'.

The open-air venue on Negril's seven-mile beach, and one of the fixtures of Jamaica's live circuit outside Kingston. Its long-running weekly reggae nights matter because they are where a working band plays to a mixed room of Jamaicans and visitors, the tourist economy and the music economy meeting on the same sand.

The beach at Hellshire in St Catherine, and a long-running venue for stage shows and beach parties. Its significance is that the dance did not have to be indoors or in a lawn: a sound could be strung up on the sand, and a good part of the summer season has happened there.

Seaside events venue at Priory, just west of St Ann's Bay, best known as the home of the roots-reggae festival Rebel Salute since it relocated there in 2013.

Peninsula beach and concert lawn at Oracabessa Bay, St Mary, that has staged reggae and international shows; named for the Dr. No scenes filmed nearby.