Booklist
Veal chronicles how dub music progressed from remixing and altering existing reggae recordings to studio-creating original songs out of music samples, noise, and found sounds. Inventing and developing techniques with effects similar to what turntable scratching and sampling later achieved, Osbourne "King Tubby" Ruddock, Lee "Scratch" Perry, and others paved the way for rap by placing the boasting of "toasters" over bass-heavy charts and fractured soundscapes. Veal traces the development of the drum-and-bass sound central to reggae and dub, noting that "sonically and aesthetically, musicians like DJ Kool Herc," often called the progenitor of rap, "essentially transplanted the Jamaican sound system model" to the Bronx, where it was finally distilled into rap. Drawing on interviews with dub pioneers DJ and producer-recording artist Mikey Dread, Veal posits that dub and hip-hop are "deconstructive compositional strategies" that sensitize "listeners to the microaesthetics of production." Yow! Persuasive if weighty stuff that draws a line of musical development from the studios of Kingston to the bling-encrusted world of hip-hop--and it has a killer discography. Mike Tribby
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
