Reggaeton is a form of urban music that became popular with Latin American youth in the early 1990s. After its mainstream exposure in 2004, it spread to North American, European and Asian audiences. Reggaeton’s predecessor was originated in Panama asreggae en español. After the music’s gradual exposure in Puerto Rico, it eventually evolved to a new musical style known as reggaeton. Reggaeton blends West-Indian music influences of reggae and dancehall with those of Latin America, such as bomba, plena, salsa, merengue, latin pop, cumbia and bachata as well as that of hip hop, contemporary R&B, andelectronica. However, reggaeton is also combined with rapping or singing in Spanish. The influence of this genre has spread to the wider Latino communities in the United States, as well as the Latin American audience. While it takes influences from hip hop and Jamaican dancehall, it would be wrong to define reggaeton as the Hispanic or Latino version of either of these genres; reggaeton has its own specific beat and rhythm, whereas Latino hip hop is simply hip hop recorded by artists of Latino descent. The specific rhythm that characterizes reggaeton is referred to as “Dem Bow.” The name is a reference to the title of the dancehall song by Shabba Ranks that first popularized the beat in the early 1990s. Reggaeton’s origins represents a hybrid of many different musical genres and influences from various countries in the Caribbean, Latin America and the United States. The genre of reggaeton however is most closely associated with Puerto Rico, as this is where the musical style later popularized and became most famous, and where the vast majority of its current stars originated. Reggaeton lyrics tend to be more derived from hip hop than dancehall. Like hip hop, reggaeton has caused some controversy, albeit less, due to alleged exploitation of women,and to a lesser extent, explicit and violent lyrics. Further controversy surrounds perreo, a dance with explicit sexual overtones which is performed to reggaeton music. Perreo was the subject of a national controversy in Puerto Rico as reggaeton music and the predominantly lower class culture it derived from, became more popular and widely available.

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Soca is a form of dance music which originated in the Islands of Trinidad and Tobago from calypso music. It originally combined the melodic lilting sound of calypso with insistent percussion (which is often electronic in recent music) and local chutney music. Soca music has evolved in the last 20 years primarily by musicians from various Anglophone Caribbean countries including Trinidad, Guyana, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Barbados, Grenada, Saint Lucia, Antigua and Barbuda, United States Virgin Islands, British Virgin Islands, The Bahamas, Dominica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Jamaica and Belize. The nickname of the Trinidad and Tobago national football team, the Soca Warriors, refers to this musical genre.

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Ska is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1950s, and was the precursor to rocksteady and reggae.[1] Ska combined elements of Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazz and rhythm and blues. It is characterized by a walking bass line accented with rhythms on the upbeat. In the early 1960s, ska was the dominant music genre of Jamaica and was popular with British mods. Later it became popular with many skinheads. Music historians typically divide the history of ska into three periods: the original Jamaican scene of the 1960s (First Wave), the English 2 Tone ska revival of the late 1970s (Second Wave) and the third wave ska movement, which started in the 1980s (Third Wave).

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The roots of Lovers Rock lie in the early days of reggae, with Jamaican and American singers such as Ken Boothe, Johnny Nash, and John Holt enjoying international hits with reggae versions of well-known love songs. A style suited to the London reggae scene, Lovers rock represented an apolitical counterpoint to the conscious Rastafarian sound dominant in Jamaica at the time. It combined the smooth soul sounds of Chicago and Philadelphia soul with reggae bass lines and rhythms. Rooted in the Sound systems of South London, the style had particular appeal amongst women and produced many female stars including Carroll Thompson, and Louisa Mark, who aged 14 was the first British artist to have a lovers rock hit with her version of Bobby Parker’s “Caught You in a Lie” in 1975, which was followed by Ginger Williams’ “Tenderness”. The husband and wife production team of Dennis and Eve Harris then had a big hit with T.T. Ross’s “Last Date”, and Dennis Harris then set up a new label, Lovers Rock, along with John Kpiaye and Dennis Bovell, which gave the new genre a name.

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Dub is a music genre, evolved from reggae, that involves revisions of existing songs. The dub sound consists predominantly of instrumental remixes of existing recordings and is achieved by significantly manipulating and reshaping the recordings, usually by removing the vocals from an existing music piece, emphasizing the drum and bass frequenciesor ‘riddim’, adding extensive echo and reverb effects, panoramic LR delay, and dubbing occasional snippets of lyrics or instruments from the original version. It is widely accepted that Jamaican producers Osbourne “King Tubby” Ruddock, and Lee “Scratch” Perry pioneered the style in the 1960s and early 1970s. Similar experiments with recordings at the mixing desk were also done by producersClive Chin and Herman Chin Loy. These producers, especially Ruddock and Perry, looked upon the mixing desk as an instrument, manipulating tracks to come up with something new and different. These early ‘dub’ examples can be looked upon as the prelude to many dance and pop music genres. Today, the word ‘dub’ is used widely to describe the re-formatting of music of various genres into typically instrumental, rhythm-centric adaptations. The use of the Melodica by Augustus Pablo in Dub music has made it a key part of the genre, appearing in many recordings since its first use.

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Digitally Imported Radio presents a fine selection of Gabber.

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Digitally Imported Radio presents a fine selection of Futurepop and Synthpop.

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Digitally Imported Radio presents a fine assortment of Trance and House breaks.

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Digitally Imported Radio presents a fine selection of oldschool electronica.

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Non-stop mixes featuring various forms of electronic music.

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