A critical reflection
Bare feet on beer-drenched venue floors, harem pants and ponchos straight from the local Nepalese store, incense that gives you an immediate headache, and white people with dreadlocks cluelessly burying their heads in a speaker box while throwing their dapostar (yes, I had to Google it as well) into the air.
If you live in Europe and are into sound system culture or reggae music in general, a combination of the examples above might seem very recognisable to you. They are a product of cultural appropriation, rooted in the misconception that sound system culture is all about peace and love. For over fifteen years, these examples (and many more) have made me re-evaluate my vision and position in relation to the culture I love and am passionate about, both as a soundman and as a music historian. Hence my appeal to put a stop to the continuing hippiefication of European sound system culture.
Warning: this is going to be a long read and might pull some triggers.
Rastafari aren’t hippies. At all.
I used to be just like them, as some readers might remember. Growing up in Belgium and getting to know reggae music and sound system culture at the age of 14 in the early 2010s, my role models were mostly white soundmen wearing long dreadlocks and praising Jah Rastafari. As I made my first steps into the sound system world, it was a logical move to grow dreadlocks myself and to start reading about Rastafari, as many of my generation did at the time.
Mind you, I am not writing this article to judge white people wearing dreadlocks. Although the original Rastas saw white men as inferior to black men and thus considered the Rastafari movement a black movement, this radicalised vision is less present among modern-day Rastas such as the Twelve Tribes of Israel, who allow white people to join the order, in which wearing dreadlocks is optional.
Rastafari link wearing long dreadlocks and not shaving their beards to the biblical Nazarites. The locks symbolise freedom, natural African beauty, and rebellion against Western values. Hippies also grow their hair as a form of rebellion, but as opposed to Rastas, they experiment with ‘free love’ and psychedelic drugs. In my opinion, hippies were (and in their modern-day version still are) the first cultural appropriators, as they blindly adopt elements from Native American, East Asian, and Romani cultures, mainly for aesthetic reasons.
As my locks grew longer, I read more books and got to know more and more Jamaican artists and soundmen, with whom I openly discussed this subject. At the same time, I was constantly mistaken for a ‘modern-day hippie’, based on the visual aspect of my dreadlocks. I wore my locks with pride for over 7 years, but I felt less and less connected to them and finally became a baldhead.
Once more, I am not judging white people who wear dreadlocks and/or identify as Rastafari, as there also is a huge difference between those wearing locks for ideological reasons and those who do it for fashion reasons. But please let it be clear that the path of the Rasta and that of the hippie are ideologically very different.
Peace and love is a beautiful illusion.
Sound system culture as we know it originated in the Southern United States in the 1940s, but migrant workers quickly brought it to Jamaica and, of course, gave it an inventive twist, as Jamaicans always do. At first, sound systems had a purely economic function, and as soon as the entertainment element emerged, they became deeply rooted in Jamaican culture. As Beth Lesser wrote:
“Sound system sessions were more than mere entertainment. They became the life-sustaining cultural and economic centre of a community. Some sets were small affairs, mainly used for weddings and private parties. Some were massive and played to large crowds in established venues. Some played funk and others rockers. But even the tiniest community had someone playing music for public consumption.”
There was a huge competitive element to these sessions, which led local ghetto rude boys to join sound system crews and mash up rival equipment—and each other—with regular casualties as a result. I could write a book on Jamaican rude boys and their political motives for committing violent acts, but that is not the point here (also, Thibault Ehrengardt already wrote a book on this). This rough character marked Jamaican sound system culture and did not fade when the post-war period saw a huge migration of Jamaican workers to the United Kingdom.
Competition is an essential part of sound system culture.
I got to know quite a few Jamaican people with an active sound system presence in London and the UK in general. Each and every one of them grew up in a hostile environment, having to fight against a society that did not want them and racist National Front supporters who would kill them if they had the chance. To them, the sound system dance was a safe haven and a means of making a living by competing to be the very best. Sound system culture was a black thing, and we, European white people, have adopted it and turned it into a success story, with festivals hosting didgeridoo-crafting workshops and white producers playing techno-dub with Hindustani mantra samples as they hippity-hoppity behind the control tower or in front of their smartphone camera. In Jamaica and the diaspora abroad, the sound system is, although often tackled by the authorities, deeply rooted in musical and leisure-related culture. In Europe, it’s a fairly recent subculture.
The sound clash, where two sounds compete to win by relying on musical, lyrical, and technical talent, has always been an essential part of the culture. When two sounds play, it’s a clash, not a tree-(or speaker-)hugging party. Nowadays, the sound clash has almost become taboo in the European sound system scene because it doesn’t fit the false peace-and-love ideology and is widely associated with dancehall and slackness. Well, sorry to disappoint, but the dancehall has always been the place where reggae music flourished, and the heavily competitive sound clash was, is, and will always be central to Jamaican sound system culture.
Once again, don’t get me wrong, I’d also like to see world peace and a lot of us could do with a little more love in our lives, but I’d like to make a point here that it’s highly important to respect the foundation and the origins of the musical culture that we all love. If you run a sound system, it’s important to make sure you know about the history of the music that you’re playing and the culture that you’re representing. Nowadays, one can attend a European sound system dance and see so-called feminists jump around to anti-abortion tunes or songs with homophobic lyrics, played by selectors who are stuck in the illusion that they are spreading a ‘positive message’ just because they play Jamaican music or a watered-down version of said music they refer to as ‘dub’. At the same time, there’s loads of selectors playing music with a clear message and loads of deejays writing and chatting strong lyrics, while their crowd is not giving a single fuck about that and is only there to get drunk or high, jump around and bury their head in a speaker box (and then the next day they‘ll wonder why their ears are ringing).
I’m no cultural purist, but if we don’t want our beloved sound system culture to end up the way house or techno did, we have to be aware that we are borrowing, adopting and transforming black cultural elements; we have to be aware that we all live in countries with a dark colonial past and an active neo-colonial present where foreign cultural activities and traits are being monetised in a capitalist context.
The sound system has always been both a means of entertainment to some and a serious, spiritual or vital occupation to others. Cultural transfers are always accompanied by cultural changes, so in the past 80 years, sound system culture has naturally changed as well, but let’s keep in mind that responsible entertainment in every way possible should be central.
Article by Dries Talloen
