Dub Reggae's Low-End Legacy

The crowd surges forward in an entranced groove state as a snare shot, soaked in digital delay, ricochets into the night air above a gigantic pier on Manhattan's West Side, decaying over a persistent, throbbing bass line that dives deep into the lower registers. Jamaican dub warriors Black Uhuru are at the top of their game, spearheaded by the locked-and-loaded rhythm section of bassist Robbie Shakespeare and drummer Sly Dunbar. Vocalist Michael Rose, his face hidden in a thick tangle of dreadlocks, intones an arabesque trill over the hypnotic beat, building the tension until the band kicks into the anthemic chorus of "Chill out, chill out, chill out New York!" It's the fall of 1984, and dub--one of reggae's most experimental and groundbreaking offshoots--has been turned loose on America.

Dub is rooted in the Jamaican "sound systems" of the '50s and '60s--mobile-deejay dance parties run by local entrepreneurs--and was developed by such production geniuses as Lee "Scratch" Perry, Osbourne "King Tubby" Ruddock, and Horace Swaby, a.k.a. Augustus Pablo. Dub takes its name from the "dub plates" that were cut as instrumental B-sides to the hit ska, rocksteady, and--later--reggae singles of '60s Jamaica. Producers routinely dropped vocal and rhythm tracks in and out of mixes to test sound levels; legend has it that the singular, spaced-out dub mixing style we know today was stumbled upon during a playback of some rough bass-and-drum tracks at Lee Perry's Black Ark studio in early 1972. King Tubby reportedly leapt out of his chair and exclaimed, "Scratch, this is crazy--we can make them just like that!"

Dub is surrounded by as much mystery as history. Reggae has long ties to the mystical ways of the Rastafarian religion; the traditional nyahbinghi drums of the obeahmen (literally, "sorcerers") were popularized by devout Rastas like Count Ossie and Ras Michael and later worked to stunning effect by Bob Marley & the Wailers in the song "Rastaman Chant" [Burnin', Tuff Gong/ Island]. It's possible to trace a long line of cultural exchange from Africa's west coast to the dark confines of Kingston recording studios like Black Ark, Channel One, Harry J's, and Tuff Gong. Dub's essence lies in a number of elements: the sprawling low end of the bass; the smooth, four-on-the-floor beat of the drums; stripped-down vocal, horn, guitar, and synth arrangements mixed in a cut-and-paste collage style that exploits radical effects. Colored by cavernous reverbs, fluid flanges, and crackling, triplet-feel echoes that regenerate into undertow-like shudders, the dub canvas can reflect moods that are eerily soothing, transcendentally blissful, or wildly irreverent.

The dub aesthetic--its rhythms, bass lines, mixing sensibilities, and vibe--is experiencing a massive resurgence in an eclectic cross-section of contemporary music, from the bass-heavy trip-hop of Massive Attack and Portishead to new instrumental post-rock bands such as Tortoise to the manic, cut-time beats and subsonic rumble of U.K. jungle. Meanwhile, the outside leanings of such producers and deejays as Bill Laswell, Tricky, the Orb, Mad Professor, Adrian Sherwood, the Chemical Brothers, DJ Ninj, DJ Spooky, the Crooklyn Dub Consortium, and others continue to sustain the growth of a thriving space-dub continuum as it expands toward the 21st century.

One Foundation

"Bass is like ... well, you gotta make some mortar to make some foundation," explains Robbie Shakespeare. "You have the sand, the gravel, the cement. The bass is like the cement--half of the building materials. That's a crucial part of the foundation. And with the drums, it's like one can't work without the other. Without a solid foundation, you know, you ain't got nothing."

Alongside drummer Sly Dunbar, Shakespeare is half of one of the most consistently inventive and prolific production teams ever to come out of Jamaica. [Ed. Note: Shakespeare was featured in Jan/Feb '93.] With well over 100 albums to their credit as producers and rhythmatists (including their numerous Taxi Gang compilations, collaborations with Bill Laswell and Material, and a slew of hit albums with Black Uhuru, Grace Jones, and Peter Tosh), Sly & Robbie's crafty innovations with dub techniques have helped to further expose the multifaceted nature of reggae music to an international audience.

Robbie got his start in Kingston with a group he formed in the early '70s called the Youth Professionals, drawing his influences from such local legends as Jackie Jackson (one of the original bassists for Lee Perry's crack studio band, the Upsetters), George Fulwood from Soul Syndicate, and the Wailers' Aston "Family Man" Barrett. "He was the man who really schooled me on a lot of bass," Robbie says reverently of Family Man. Shakespeare was also listening to jazz and fusion records from America, growing keenly aware of the technical wizardry of Stanley Clarke and other players--"too many of them to know by name."

Early on, Shakespeare's distinctive sound displayed a commanding sense of syncopation and a deep understanding of the melodic range of the bass; eventually his playing came to the attention of a young Augustus Pablo, who was using King Tubby's studio to record for his Rockers label. "I played on most of Pablo's tracks," Robbie remembers. "In those days, as a matter of fact, he wouldn't use anyone else--or sometimes it would be me and Family Man." The partnership led to a spate of now-classic dub sessions with King Tubby during the mid '70s. "He had a real way of working," Robbie says. "Tubby would use the riddim track and make a dub with it; we'd listen back, and Tubby would work the board. Always make the track sound fresh, you know?"

Around this time, recording studios were popping up everywhere in Kingston. The worldwide success of Bob Marley had made reggae one of Jamaica's leading exports--even more lucrative than the ganja crop so essential to the music's ethos--and singles by new acts were released seemingly by the minute. (The Beastie Boys' Grand Royal magazine, in a recent cover story on Lee Perry, cites estimates of roughly 400,000 sides cut in what amounts to a 25-year period. That's almost two songs every hour--and one song for every five Jamaicans!) Dub tracks had become a staple of this output, and Robbie Shakespeare could be found on hundreds of them, as could Family Man Barrett and a youngster named Errol "Flabba" Holt. After teaming up with Sly Dunbar to form the Revolutionaries, Robbie began putting the finishing touches on a style of bass playing and production that would take the music to a new level.

"I play a melody foundation line, not just a line," explains Shakespeare. "Anyone can play a note, but I turn my notes into phrases. I try to look for the perfect bass line. I don't know if I've reached it--or if I'll ever reach it--but I'm always digging for that perfect line, you know? With dub tracks, the kind of approach you take depends on how you're rockin' and how your vibe is at the time. I put on a drum track; I close my eyes, the bass in my hand, and my channel open to God, you know. Sometimes I'll play my instrument and the next time the instrument play me--and sometimes it work out 50-50. Most of the time when you start out, accidentally you start playing something and say, `Whoa, that sound good!' At that time the instrument is playing you. Sometimes you can go between the instrument playing you and you playing it and come up with something wicked."

In constructing those wicked bass lines, Shakespeare uses many different thumb and finger techniques but prefers an alternating index-and-middle-finger method for speed and precision. He's often relied on the instrument of choice among most Jamaican bassists--the Fender Jazz Bass--although he's been enjoying a Paul Reed Smith Custom for the past several years. ("The melodies seem to come a lot easier with that one," he says.) In his stint with Peter Tosh's Word Sound & Power, Robbie played a Hofner Beatle Bass--a move he allegedly copped from Family Man--and with Black Uhuru he could be seen oscillating between a Steinberger and the Jazz. His choice of amplifiers is considerably more random. Robbie generally records direct into the board; onstage, he usually goes straight to the board and back out to a set of amps that serve as monitors. "I don't really know much about amplifiers, to tell the truth," he admits.

Cardiac Rhythm

Of all the musicians on the Jamaican music scene, Aston "Family Man" Barrett is probably the most respected. Along with his late brother, Wailers drummer Carlton Barrett, Family Man represents an entire catalog of crucial and classic reggae tracks. The Barrett brothers' uninterrupted tenure with Bob Marley is well documented, from early studio productions with Lee Perry to the more polished Island albums produced with Chris Blackwell. Recording credits aside, few things on this earth were funkier than Family Man and Carly locking into a seamless, skanking groove. For undisputed proof, check out Talkin' Blues [Island], a live radio performance recorded in 1973 when Marley & the Wailers were touring with Sly & the Family Stone.

Family Man's take on the role of the bass in dub and reggae music stems from the spiritual teachings of Rasta and, no doubt, from his overall calm, insightful disposition. "Well, the drum is the heartbeat of the music, and the bass is the backbone," he offers from his hotel room in Chicago during a tour with a newly reformed aggregate of the Wailers to promote Jah Message, a new album on RAS. "If your heart not beating right, or you having some heart attack, you know, then the backbone don't stand up and the music can't get up in it. So those two things keep it real. And as you know, reggae music is the universal language and heartbeat of the people."

At age 22, Family Man became the bassist for Lee Perry's Upsetters. He remembers one of his first sessions with Scratch as what later evolved into the basic rhythm tracks for a record called Clint Eastwood [out of print]. Recorded in 1969, the album remains a blueprint for all dub that came after. "That was the time when we first started doing the bass-and-drum dub thing," says Barrett. "Lee had the main stable, you know, and the Wailers--Bob [Marley], Bunny [Wailer, nv©e Livingston], and Peter [Tosh]--were one of our favorite singing groups. We did a lot of session work in the studio with them, until my brother and I went out on tour with them." The Barrett brothers' split from the Upsetters caused a fierce but temporary rift between Perry and Marley; the two had collaborated on a number of songs that were reworked into hits when the Wailers went to the Island label.

Surprisingly, most of Marley's later studio efforts have never received the dub treatment, with the possible exception of "Punky Reggae Party," remixed by Perry in 1977 but never included on any official Marley release. Straight-up dub sessions, as Family Man recalls, were usually reserved for Augustus Pablo. "That's when I first know Robbie," Barrett says with a glint of amusement. "I grew him into music and taught him how to deal with it, and he say he love the bass and he gonna turn into a real bass player. So he's kind of my bass student." Family Man and Robbie also shared bass duties on a string of records for vocalist Winston Rodney and Burning Spear that have become dub staples, particularly Garvey's Ghost [Mango/Island], a bare-bones roots excursion, and the incredibly dreamlike Living Dub, Volume One, which in its original version (unlike the remixed CD reissues on Heartbeat) features songs from the seminal Spear album Social Living [1-Stop; reissued on Blood & Fire], dubbed by Rodney himself.

Over the years, Family Man has explored a number of different ways to get his righteous tone. "You tone the bass from your instrument and your amplifier, get a suitable tone with your feel, and then mike that flat. Sometimes we used two tracks of bass; number one was the DI to the board, and the other one was miked. Then you blend both of them together to get that direct sound with that mike resonance." The inside sleeve of Marley's 1975 Natty Dread LP [Tuff Gong/Island] depicts Family Man playing a sunburst Jazz Bass with a rosewood fingerboard, while 1978's live Babylon by Bus [Tuff Gong/Island] shows him with an early-'70s maple-board J-Bass. He usually plugged into an Acoustic head and cabinet. "You shoot for that original upright bass sound, you know? To get that sound I use my thumb occasionally, but when you use the other two fingers you have a more speedy action and more control over the notes you're hitting. It's when you have your one-drop notes moving on there that your thumb get a more smoother cushion."

One Drop

The "one-drop" of which Family Man speaks--dropping out the bass on the one of the measure--is especially crucial to dub rhythms because it further accentuates the drums' downbeat. A champion of the original one-drop sound is Errol "Flabba" Holt, whose Roots Radics band with drummer Lincoln "Style" Scott provided groove backup for most of the releases on Jamaica's famous Greensleeves label in the early '80s. [Ed. Note: Holt was profiled in December '93.] The Radics were also recruited by British producer Adrian Sherwood for virtually all of his high-tech Dub Syndicate projects, released throughout the '80s on Sherwood's On-U-Sound imprint. As one of the few players who has been involved in the reggae scenes on both sides of the Atlantic, Flabba has a wide perspective on various approaches to the music.

"Dub is the kinda thing you cyaan stop move," Flabba says. "Dub is different from dancehall business, you know. [Ed. Note: Dancehall is the dance-oriented, programmed-drum style currently in favor in Jamaica.] There all kinda different style of dub, that's what I believe. All them old-time dubs--like King Tubby's--are the real dubs. And the ones we did with Scientist on Greensleeves is them kinda effects; it's not really raw drum and bass like the old-time records. With the Sherwood dub, the drum and bass have it tight and sweet. Them all different, yunnerstan'--but them all murder, boss."

While the Radics were recording backing tracks in Jamaica for the likes of Scientist, Bunny Wailer, Barrington Levy, Tappa Zukie, and countless other vocalists and producers, reggae was fully taking hold in England. A sizable West Indian community in London's Brixton section and a punk movement high on musical revolution helped to bring dub influences to the forefront. The Clash was inspired to release its dub-laden opus Sandanista [Columbia] at about the same time Brixton poet Linton Kwesi Johnson had assembled his Dread Beat an' Blood [Virgin] and Forces of Victory [Island] albums; produced by Dennis "Blackbeard" Bovell, they featured a monster rhythm section with Vivian Weathers on bass and Jah Bunny on drums. Soon U.K. sound systems, such as Sherwood's On-U-Sound and Mad Professor's Ariwa studios, were bringing dub into new technological areas.

"Dub inna Inglan," as Flabba describes it, evolved on a slightly different plane than Jamaica's original dub style, making more use of the sampled drum beats and drum machines that later found their way into Jamaican dancehall--a style Holt dismisses for its notable lack of bass lines. Still, Flabba admits not all progress is bad for dub. "In the music business," he allows, "you have to be versatile, yunnerstan'? I give you example: I hear [U.K.-based producer Jah] Shaka come with some Mafia & Fluxy kinda style again, right? [Ed. Note: Mafia & Fluxy were one of the first U.K. production teams to use computers in dub mixing.] And it really impressed me, because him really capture that old-time sound with the drum machine. Him sample some old-time thing, and I tell you, if someone who don't know music hear it, him say it be a live drums."

Ironically, with more sophisticated equipment and more tracks to work with, dub in the '80s--from Black Uhuru to Dub Syndicate--acquired an even more stripped-down feel while maintaining its futurist bent. Style Scott's friendship with On-U vocalist Prince Far-I, and the Roots Radics' work with Scientist--particularly the classic Scientist Meets the Space Invaders--prompted Adrian Sherwood to approach the Radics for work on a string of Dub Syndicate projects. Flabba soon began tweaking his bass sound, coming up with a deep, almost wood-knocking bottom end that fit perfectly with the loping grooves constructed by Style. "I run my bass through a little private gadget that give it that real low sound," he hints, stopping short of giving away his trade secret. "I got a thing I put on my bass sometime that make it sound out of key, but only because it's so very low; it's not really out of tune. I listen to some old dub, like some Studio One dub, and when the drum and bass play, it's like the bass is out."

Flabba uses a beat-up Jazz Bass for most of his dub work. "That's the bass I use on all the Greensleeves stuff. It's a very old one," he says. "Robbie Shakespeare tell me, `Flabba, bwoy, that bass is wicked!' Even Family Man say the same thing." He's also picked up a Hofner and a Steinberger to add to his arsenal, running them through either a Gallien-Krueger 800RB or an Ampeg SVT-II Pro head with various Trace Elliot cabinets. The Jazz and the Hofner are reggae standards, but the Steinberger has raised a few eyebrows. "One time I'm playing for the Itals and somebody in the crowd say, `Flabba Holt! Why you put down the Fender Jazz for the Steinberger? It don't sound like Radics!' And I thought, Wow, somebody's listening to my sound. But the only reason I don't tour with the Fender is because it's just too heavy for my neck." Flabba currently records and tours with Israel Vibrations, which also has a new release on RAS.

Dubmission As some of the more obscure Jamaican records of the '70s and '80s find a new audience and dub becomes further absorbed into popular styles of music, some interesting hybrids--such as jungle and trip-hop--have arrived on the scene, melding ambient "chill-out" and electronic-music sensibilities with fat bass lines and infectious beats. Meanwhile, forays in the traditional dub style are pushing the limits of even 24 tracks--a far cry from the 4-track studios in Kingston--and are incorporating sounds from a kaleidoscope of sources, expanding the dub palate into unfamiliar sonic territory.

"The dub thing, right now, it a come back," Flabba speculates, "because me have some fresh idea. Right now everybody got a sampler, everybody got a drum machine, and it all start to sound the same. If you want it drum and bass--crucial dub, right?--it's basically about the riddim, mon. Then you slick it back, you set it up, and boop, boop, boop. That's how you make a wicked album, boss!"

It may sound simple, but dub is both a science and a ritual that escapes explanation. As with any tribal music that enhances knowledge through rhythm, the low end is of utmost importance. "The first instrument in music is the drum," explains Family Man, "so at all times you have to make your drums outstanding--your foot, your snare, your hi-hat, your floor toms, your smash cymbals--all in the rightful time, and then keep that groove. It's like the same kind of coordination within jazz and blues and soul, of course. You must hold that groove at least five minutes steady, locking the bass with the drums so the both of them become one--to make it dubwise."

Respect to Andy Hawkins, Tom Terrell, James Rotondi, Lucas Cooper, and Ernie B. for their invaluable input.