How the world tuned into Jamaica
How the world tuned into Jamaica
Sly and Robbie lean ostentatiously against the wall of a small studio in a dusty street. Nearby, in the middle of the road, reggae star Eek-a-Mouse smiles for the camera, wearing a trademark waistcoat-and-bow-tie get-up in red, green and gold. In Chancery Lane, a young Gregory Isaacs holds a plastic cup while someone fills it from a beer bottle. Chancery Lane, Kingston, that is. The photographs in Beth Lesser’s new coffee-table book, Dancehall: The Rise of Jamaican Dancehall Culture, depict a society so obsessed by music and so suffused with a can-do, DIY spirit that its disproportionate presence on the world stage seems inevitable.
Lesser first visited Kingston in 1981 as a wide-eyed 28-year-old Canadian reggae fan.