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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Dancehall is a genre of Jamaican popular music that developed in the late 1970s, initially as a less political and religious variant of reggae than the roots style that 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 with little connection to earlier reggae rhythms.

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Roots reggae is a subgenre of reggae that concerns itself with the life of the ghetto sufferer, and the rural poor. Lyrical themes include poverty, social issues, resistance to government oppression, repatriation, and Rastafari. The heyday of roots reggae is usually considered the latter half of the 1970s – with singers such as Johnny Clarke, Cornell Campbell, Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Burning Spear, Max Romeo, Horace Andy and Lincoln Thompson, and groups like Black Uhuru, Steel Pulse, and Culture – teaming up with producers such as Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, Bunny Lee, Joseph Hoo Kim andCoxsone Dodd. The experimental pioneering of such producers within often-restricted technological parameters gave birth todub, and is seen by some music historians as one of the earliest (albeit analogue) contributions to modern dance musicproduction techniques. Roots reggae, having its origins in the Jamaican landscape, also became very popular in Europe in the 1970s, specially among left-wing white youths in Western Europe. When Jamaicans turned to dancehall, a lot of black, white and mixed roots reggae bands were formed in Europe. Later on roots reggae also made its way into the United States with the mass migration of Jamaicans to New York. This took place with the reforms made to American immigration laws in the early 1960′s. Along with localized traditions and food, reggae music was inevitably brought as well, contributing to the New York Citysoundscape.

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