Junjo, Volcano and the youth-deejay boom

Volcano Hi-Power was the sound system launched by producer Henry "Junjo" Lawes in 1983 from premises off Spanish Town Road in Kingston, serving as a live showcase for his Volcano label productions. A defining sound of the early dancehall era, it helped project the deejays and singers Lawes recorded and cemented his role as one of the period's leading producers.

One of the young deejays who broke through in the Volcano / Junjo Lawes youth-deejay wave of the early 1980s, chatting rub-a-dub cuts over Roots Radics rhythms alongside peers such as Billy Boyo.

A child deejay of the early-1980s dancehall boom associated with the Volcano / Junjo Lawes camp, part of the cluster of young voices who came up with Billy Boyo and Little Harry.

The roller rink at Half Way Tree that became one of the most important dancehall venues of the 1980s. Sound systems and stage shows filled it through the decade, and a great many of the era's defining nights — and the live tapes that circulated afterwards — happened on its floor.

1981 dancehall single by the child deejay Billy Boyo, produced by Henry "Junjo" Lawes over a Roots Radics rhythm and mixed by Scientist, an emblem of the early-1980s youth-deejay boom.

Henry "Junjo" Lawes (c.1947 - 14 June 1999) was the producer who defined the early dancehall sound, and he came out of Waterhouse — the same Kingston district that produced King Tubby's studio, King Jammy's, and the Sleng Teng rhythm that ended the era Lawes had built. Working from the late 1970s with the Roots Radics as his studio band and Scientist mixing at Tubby's, he voiced Barrington Levy, Yellowman, Eek-A-Mouse, Michael Prophet, Linval Thompson, Toyan, Little John, Don Carlos and Frankie Paul across a run of records that reset what a Jamaican rhythm could sound like: sparser, heavier, slower, and built for the dance rather than the radio. His Volcano label carried the results and spawned a sound system of the same name, which for a period was the set to beat. He served a prison term in the United States on drug charges in the mid-1980s, and the momentum did not fully return, though he later worked with Beenie Man and Ninjaman. He was shot dead in a drive-by in Harlesden, north-west London, on 14 June 1999; the case has never been solved.

The early-1980s dancehall deejay style built on sparse, heavy 'rub-a-dub' rhythms, usually the Roots Radics band and Junjo Lawes-era productions, with the deejay riding the riddim in a relaxed, conversational sing-song cadence.

The Roots Radics are a Jamaican band formed in 1978 by bassist Errol "Flabba" Holt, guitarist Eric "Bingy Bunny" Lamont and drummer Lincoln "Style" Scott. They became the dominant studio and stage band of the early 1980s, spearheading the sparse, bass-heavy sound that launched the dancehall era, and were closely associated with Henry "Junjo" Lawes's productions at Channel One. They backed artists including Gregory Isaacs, Bunny Wailer, Eek-A-Mouse and Israel Vibration.

The most prolific of the early-1980s Jamaican child deejays, whose "One Spliff a Day" (1981) was produced by Henry "Junjo" Lawes over a Roots Radics rhythm and mixed by Scientist at Channel One.