Whois & Analysis for urbanislandz.com

Dancehall (also known as "Bashment") is a genre of Jamaican popular music that originated in the late 1970s.

Initially dancehall was a more sparse version of reggae than the roots style, which had dominated much of the 1970s.

In the mid-1980s, digital instrumentation became more prevalent, changing the sound considerably, with digital dancehall (or "ragga") becoming increasingly characterized by faster rhythms.

Soca music (also defined by Lord Shorty its inventor as the Soul Of Calypso) is a genre of Caribbean music that originated within a marginalized subculture in the Trinidad and Tobago in the early 1970s, and developed into a range of styles in the 1980s and later.

Soca was initially developed by Lord Shorty around 1972/1973 in an effort to improve traditional calypso which seemed to be on its dying legs in Trinidad by the start of the 1970s with the rise in popularity of reggae from Jamaica and soul & funk from USA with the younger generation.

A sound project was started in 1970 at KH Studios, Sea Lots in Trinidad, to find a way to record the complex calypso rhythm in a new multi-track era.

Musicians involved in the initiative were Robin Imamshah (guitar, project lead), Angus Nunez (bass), Errol Wise (Drums), Vonrick Maynard (Drums), Clarence James (Percussion), Carl Henderson (Keyboards), David Boothman (strings).

Some of the early songs recorded at the KH Studios that benefitted from this recording project are “Indrani” by Lord Shorty and "Calypso Zest" by Sensational Roots both recorded in 1972.

Later came the soca hits “Endless Vibrations” and “Sweet Music” by Lord Shorty recorded in 1974 and 1975 respectively and “Second Fiddle” by Ella Andall recorded in 1975.

In 1976 “Savage” by Maestro and “Trinidad Boogie” by Last Supper (composed by Robin Imamshah) also benefitted from the improving multi-track recording technology at KH Studios.

Reggae is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1960s.

The term also denotes the modern popular music of Jamaica and its diaspora.

A 1968 single by Toots and the Maytals "Do the Reggay" was the first popular song to use the word "reggae," effectively naming the genre and introducing it to a global audience.

While sometimes used in a broad sense to refer to most types of popular Jamaican dance music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that was strongly influenced by traditional mento as well as American jazz and rhythm and blues, especially the New Orleans R&B practiced by Fats Domino and Allen Toussaint, and evolved out of the earlier genres ska and rocksteady.

Reggae usually relates news, social gossip, and political comment.

Reggae spread into a commercialized jazz field, being known first as ‘Rudie Blues’, then ‘Ska’, later ‘Blue Beat’, and ‘Rock Steady’.

It is instantly recognizable from the counterpoint between the bass and drum downbeat, and the offbeat rhythm section.

The immediate origins of reggae were in ska and rock steady; from the latter, reggae took over the use of the bass as a percussion instrument.

Hip hop music, also called hip-hop or rap music, is a music genre developed in the United States by inner-city African Americans in the 1970s which consists of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted.

It developed as part of hip hop culture, a subculture defined by four key stylistic elements: MCing/rapping, DJing/scratching with turntables, break dancing, and graffiti writing.

Other elements include sampling beats or bass lines from records (or synthesized beats and sounds), and rhythmic beatboxing.

Rapping (or emceeing, MCing, or rhyming) is a musical form of vocal delivery that incorporates "rhyme, rhythmic speech, and street vernacular," (slang) which is performed or chanted in a variety of ways, usually over a backbeat or musical accompaniment.

The components of rapping include "content", "flow" (rhythm,rhyme and cadence), and "delivery".

Rap differs from spoken-word poetry in that rap is usually performed in time to a beat (external meter).

Rapping is often associated with and a primary ingredient of hip-hop music (though there is hip hop without rapping, such as instrumental songs), but the origins of the phenomenon predate hip-hop culture by centuries.

Rapping is also used in Kwaito music, a genre that originated in Johannesburg, South Africa, and is composed of hip-hop elements.

Another form of rap that predates hip hop was boxer Muhammad Ali's rhythmic poetry used to taunt his opponents in the 1960s and 1970s.