Beat Street and the Sound System Wars

The rig itself: the amplifier stacks, custom-built speaker boxes, turntables and the operator's mixing controls that make a Jamaican sound system a distinct instrument rather than a PA. Boxes are built for the job — separate scoops for bass, mid-range horns, tweeters — and tuned by ear, with the bass end deliberately felt as much as heard. The engineering is as much a part of a sound's identity as its selector or its dubplates.

Clement Dodd's sound system, and the dominant set of the late 1950s. Downbeat's rivalry with Duke Reid the Trojan is the founding contest of Jamaican sound-system culture — fought with exclusive American R&B pressings, then with Dodd's own recordings once he began producing to feed the sound. Studio One grew directly out of that need.

Arthur Reid's sound system, named for the Trojan truck it travelled on, and Coxsone Downbeat's great rival through the late 1950s. Reid was a former policeman who ran the sound with a well-documented showmanship, and like Dodd he moved into producing to supply it — the path that led to Treasure Isle and the rocksteady catalogue.

A one-off acetate cut for a single sound system — originally a test pressing, then the core weapon of clash culture. A sound commissions an artist to voice a custom version of a known tune naming that sound, and plays it as an exclusive nobody else can answer. The dubplate turns a record into a possession, and its economy sustains a whole layer of the business.

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.

In 1950s Kingston, Coxsone Dodd's Downbeat and Duke Reid's Trojan turned rival dances into the foundation of an entire music industry.

How fenced yards, imported 78s and crowned sound men turned 1950s Kingston dances into an industry.

Before a record plays, the crew builds and tunes a machine to the shape of the room.