Roots Archives Forum

My other post about styles seem to get lots of answers about Ska vs Rocksteady. But other styles were not dealt with.

so...

Define Dub (only in this thread please)

Thanks!

Dub is a remixed, stripped down mix of the reggae riddim.

Please add examples and anecdotes if you can.

I have to make headers for the soon come new RA headings for the database.

It would be cool if we could nail down the definitive first Dub record, or records too.

And also comment about how the Dub style originated.

Thanks all.

Hi, I guess you heard the story of that time they were in a dance and by chance they drop the voices from the mix so only the riddim was heard and the crowd went crazy...I read that was the origin of dub.

hi leggo, according to the rough guide to reggae, ruddy redwood,sound system operator and good friend of duke reid played an instrumental version of the paragons 'on the beach' at a dance and the crowd loved it. he then got more treasure isle riddims for his sound before the duke started releasing tunes himself using his older riddims, using keyboard or guitar to replace the vocals.this soon caught on and by 1970 nearly all 7s had the instrumental on the flip.forward to 1972, the great king tubby purchased a mixing board from dynamic studios, and mixed the flips for several labels. and i guess the rest is history. the way jamacian music has evolved over the years is unique, up to the present day you could hear a tune and can trace the riddim right back to the sixties or 70s, so i reckon dub as we know it today has its roots right back there with the first simple straight flipside of 'on the beach'.same way as elephant man or sean pauls style can be traced back to the legendary 'count machuki'. totally different,it just evolved that way.

ites

ital kemar

Dub is... well what can i say, dub is any reggae song and then mixed by pulling out some of the instruments such as guitar, vocals and horns while much of the time the bass and drums are always there. This varies of course alot and it is not in every dub "song" that it is like that. There are also used many effects such as spring reverb, gunshots etc... I think that the first dub record was "Hippy Boys" with "Voodoo". And dub started like this i think. King Tubby (i think it was him?) did by an accident only leave the bass and drums and he wanted to hear how the people dem like it so he play it on his soundsystem (King Tubby's Hometown Hi-Fi) And all of the people love it and thats how i think it started.

IMVHO, two element push forward the dub process.

First the sound system scene as it was easier for a deejay to really express himself on a version (later a dub) compared to a vocal track. The developpement of U Roy style in the late 60's is a good exemple. The sound sytem tapes collectors can certainly confirm this point as there are less vocal played in the sessions than the flip which were used by the deejays. A kind of "classic way" to play a rhythm was to put the vocal side first for, in many cases, only the first minute or so. Then the flip is generaly played as long the deejay have something to express (and as long the crowed enjoy the rhythm)... Sometime the flip is played 2 or 3 time back to back with all the deejays present to the dance chating over. Especially for the classic riddim.

The second point is the role played by producers and especially Duke Reid. The versions in the late 60's generated a much important amout of 7" released as with only one tune and his version you can release a 7". prior to that you had to put 2 tunes per 7"... We can't overlook this aspect as producers, especially in the Jamaican music, are businessmen. BTW, why Duke Reid? Simply because he was the one who always tried new things. Just consider the "first version" ever produced is the dubplate of "On The Beach" (what a boom tune BTW) as ital kemar explained. DR also launched the deejay recording business in a huge way.

wareika

In some ways, Dub and Toasting seem like opposite sides of the same coin. Dub is the selective removal of elements from music, while Toasting is adding elements to the music that weren't there before.

Not a profound idea or anything, but it just occurrred to me.

There is an album I've heard of Treasure Isle rare dubs, which seems to follow on from the earlier idea in this thread that 'The Duke' was instrumental in the birth of dub - I'm interested to know who led the way from the idea of the instrumental version to a totally remixed version (dub as we know it).

Of course, we all know dub as being a stripped down version of vocal reggae. However, there is much modern dub - such as Burning Babylon, Butch Cassidy Sound System and, of course, MightyZ , who make dub as a specific music - i.e. the tracks are built as dub, they were never vocal tracks to start with. I've been doing it this way since about 1980.

Hi Mighty Z

There is an anecdote in the "Solid Foundation" book describing Tubby creating a reverb unit for his sound system. Annoyingly, I can't remember it exactly or who says it, but will dig out the book tonight. As soon as the reverb unit kicked in, in, in, in.....the crowd went absolutely wild as nobody had ever heard anything like it before.

Presumably the crowds response made Tubby use this technique on record and dub, as we now know it, was born.

Happy to stand corrected here as I am recalling this from my rapidly deteriorating memory.