Then, they’re filtered until it becomes hard to determine where the original version ends and the dub version begins, as on Johnny Clarke’s “Ites Green and Gold” and Bob Marley’s “Rebel Music.” Vocals are often removed, and sometimes new melodies or instruments are added, in essence creating an entirely new song. I couldn’t have asked for a better introduction to the world of dub music, a sub-genre of reggae in which multitrack recordings-usually of previously released songs-are recycled, remixed, and treated with shimmering layers of reverb and delay. It was during this time that I bought King Tubby’s Freedom Sounds in Dub, a collection of deeply hallucinogenic and hypnotic reworkings of tunes from the vaults of Bertram Brown’s Freedom Sounds record label. A bell was rung that day that continues to vibrate through my life.īy the time I was in my early 20s and collecting records in earnest, we were in the midst of one of the first golden eras of reggae reissues, led in large part by the sorely missed Blood & Fire Records, an iconic label whose cover imagery alone was a stamp of approval for reggae newbies and serious heads alike. Marcus Garvey remains, in my opinion, one of the high-water marks of recorded music-a hauntingly melodic, joyfully righteous, deeply funky elegy on slavery, liberation, joy and faith. In retrospect, it was a bit like tripping over the Rosetta Stone on my first day as an intern on an archeological dig. I’ve been drawn to reggae music since the day I ditched high school with my friend Aaron Thompson and he played me his brother’s copy of Burning Spear’s Marcus Garvey while we smoked cigarettes around his pool. Specifically, the songs I listened to were of the roots or devotional Rastafarian variety, recorded roughly between 1970-1985 in and around Kingston, Jamaica, but sometimes also in small, makeshift studios in Toronto or New York City. I’ve listened to a lot of music in the past year and a half, and most of it was reggae. The Hiss Golden Messenger leader presses on with the help of som e sweet Jamaican soun ds.