Black Uhuru's revolving door

The Grammy category established in 1985, and the main international award the music competes for. Its history is also a running argument: the category has been criticised for how broadly it reads "reggae", for repeatedly favouring established names and diaspora acts, and for a nominating process Jamaican artists have periodically said does not reflect what the island is actually producing.

Black Uhuru are a Jamaican roots-reggae group formed in the early 1970s, with Derrick "Duckie" Simpson as the constant founding member, joined during their classic era by singer Michael Rose and American-born harmony vocalist Sandra "Puma" Jones. Backed by the rhythm section of Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare, they released acclaimed albums such as "Sinsemilla," "Red" and "Chill Out." Their 1984 album "Anthem" won the first-ever Grammy Award for Best Reggae Album in 1985.

The West Kingston district that produced an outsized share of the music's engineering and voices — King Tubby's workshop and sound, King Jammy's studio, and singers and deejays including Black Uhuru and Junior Reid. Dub was effectively invented here, and the digital turn was launched from here fifteen years later.

Don Carlos, born Euvin McCallus Spencer in Waterhouse, Kingston in 1952, is a Jamaican roots-reggae singer and an original member of Black Uhuru alongside Garth Dennis and Derrick “Duckie” Simpson. He sang lead on the Prince Jammy-produced Love Crisis, later reissued as Black Sounds of Freedom, before establishing a prolific solo catalogue in the early 1980s. Albums and songs including Suffering, Day to Day Living, Harvest Time, “Laser Beam,” “Dice Cup,” “Hog and Goat,” “Just a Passing Glance” and “I Love Jah” made his light, high tenor a signature of the roots revival. He has periodically rejoined Black Uhuru and built an especially strong international live following, including major East African audiences.

Waterhouse-born singer (b. 1957) whose distinctive vocal style helped define "the Waterhouse sound" as Black Uhuru's lead singer through the group's Grammy-winning run, including 1985's Anthem, the first Grammy Award for Best Reggae Album; he left for a long solo career in 1985 before periodically rejoining Black Uhuru from 2004.

Jamaican vocalist documented as an original member of the Wailing Souls and, in the early 1970s, one of the three founding voices of Black Uhuru alongside Don Carlos and Derrick "Duckie" Simpson, before Don Carlos and later singers took the group's lead role.

Delroy "Junior" Reid, born 1963 in Kingston's Waterhouse district, who at thirteen recorded "Speak the Truth" for Hugh Mundell on Augustus Pablo's Rockers International label, later served as Black Uhuru's lead singer (1986-88) on the albums Brutal and Positive, and defined his solo legacy with 1989's "One Blood.".

Derrick "Duckie" Simpson, a Waterhouse-raised singer who founded Black Uhuru in the early 1970s alongside Garth Dennis and Don Carlos and remained the group's one constant member through its many lead-singer changes, including the Michael Rose and Junior Reid eras.

Lloyd James, the engineer and producer who came up under King Tubby in Waterhouse and then changed the music twice over. He built and ran his own sound before turning to production, and in 1985 issued "Under Mi Sleng Teng" — the Casio-preset rhythm that ended the live-band era and opened the digital one. Through the late 1980s his Waterhouse studio was the busiest room in Jamaica, cutting for Half Pint, Admiral Bailey, Chaka Demus, Ninjaman and most of the era's voices, and his Super Power sound carried the same material into the dance.

When King Jammy's went digital in 1985, a wave of deejays rode the new Waterhouse computer sound into the dancehall mainstream.

How a preset rhythm on a consumer keyboard turned Jamaica's oldest studio economy into the digital age.

One category, a whole family of genres, and a recurring question: who counts as reggae?

How a cheap keyboard preset in 1985 reset the sound of dancehall.