Dub Music — the Accidental Pillar of Afrofuturism

Have you ever been to Metropolis? Chances are, whether you know it or not, you have. For, metropolis is funk/R&B artist Janelle Monae’s metaphor for the world we live in today; a world where “You [may be] free but in your mind, your freedom’s in a bind”, meaning: although we live in a world where Africans and African Americans are technically free from the bonds of slavery, today’s African diaspora is trapped in their minds, battered by years of oppression and unable to break the psychological chains of coercion and persecution. This city of Metropolis is synonymous with the Rastafari idea of Babylon, aka western civilization, which is seen as corrupt due to materialism and greed. Many Rastafari express their grief toward the Babylon system through music genres such as reggae dub. However, for all darkness there is some light. And so as Janelle Monae’s metropolis’s paradisiacal counterpart is Shangri-La, Zion is that of Rastafari’s Babylon. And, out of the very struggles that comprise Metropolis and Babylon came a new genre: Afrofuturism, whose Shangri-La is located in space.

Afrofuturism takes serious root in the afore mentioned musical genre of dub, with its technological origins and entrancing sound. Essentially, Dub has influenced the growth of Afrofuturism implicitly through its juxtapositions of nature and technology and of past and future. For, Afrofuturism, as a genre, conjures up and celebrates images of old Africa, the motherland from whence the African diaspora came prior to the strife of slavery and the oppression that ensued. Dub music lyrically celebrates old Africa while invoking hopes of New Africa’s promise of freedom and advancement through its technological and futuristic sound and make up.

Dub is a subgenre of reggae originating in Jamaica and pioneered by artists such as King Tubby and the “sky completer”: Lee “Scratch” Perry. Dub, in a way, was created by accident, as it was born out of the mistake of a sound system operator, Rudolph “Ruddy” Redwood, and a sound engineer, Byron Smith: Smith left the vocal track out of The Paragons’ hit “On the Beach”, and Redwood kept the result and played it as his next song with his deejay Wassy toasting over the “riddim”. This instrumental record excited listeners in the sound system and eventually found its way to the ears of King Tubby and, eventually, Lee Perry, both of whom used their sound engineer backgrounds to cultivate and develop this music into what is now known as Jamaican dub. The creation of dub was paralleled with the influx of new technology that accompanied the Cold War between the United States and Soviet Union. And this new genre, which was created by sound engineers rather than artists, contributed to visions of “New Africa” by black Americans, Europeans, and Caribbeans. These sound engineers, especially Lee Perry, went on to build off this new sound adding reverb, which is a “series of stimulated echoes sequentially to stimulate a spatial dimension within a recording”; toasting, or lyrical chanting by a deejay over the music; and an exploration of the effects sound transduction, which is defined as how sound changes as it traverses media and how it, as a result, changes our comprehension of the sound.

This “New Africa” vision is the embodiment of the movement that is Afrofuturism. Afrofuturism is a space-obsessed African diaspora genre of expression most prominent in the 70s and 80s. Ideologically, Afrofuturism was developed, in a way, as a coping mechanism, post-Civil Rights movement, in order to focus on a brighter future free of the oppression and struggles of the 20th century. Janelle Monae discusses these struggles in her song “Many Moons”, in which she addresses the black population to come with her to Shangri-La, or paradise, when faced with oppression:

“And when the world just treats you wrong, Just come with me and I’ll take you home. Shang, shang, shang, Shangri-La”.

Technologically, Afrofuturism is viewed as an African American trope, reflecting a particular proximity to the apparatus of the Cold War. A movement resulting from the politically and culturally motivated embrace of African culture throughout the African diaspora, Afrofuturism was a liberal and technological utopia to which black people could escape through music and various other types of expression.

Afrofuturism shares its roots with dub in that they both originated in part with Lee “Scratch” Perry. Both developing during the 70s, dub provided an apropos soundtrack to the burgeoning genre of Afrofuturism. Lee Perry, however, did not pioneer Afrofuturism on his own; he was accompanied by his jazz and funk counterparts: Sun Ra and George Clinton. One of the main ideologies of “orthodox” Afrofuturism is that of the Mothership Connection. Each of the three of Afrofuturism’s forefathers provided their own interpretation of the mothership connection: George Clinton and the Parliament Funkadelic had the original “Mothership Connection”, Sun Ra had his “Arkestra”, and Lee “Scratch” Perry had his “Black Ark”. Parliament Funkadelic’s George Clinton in his alter ego “Starchild” preached of “certified Afronauts, capable of funkatizing galaxies”. Sun Ra and his Arkestra called to the black population to leave earth with its violence and oppression and “teleport” to space with its promises of freedom and a better future. This call is best exemplified by Sun Ra’s “Space is the Place”, a song that beckons the black population to the future through the organized chaotic sound of jazz. Thirdly, as is apparent in his song “Jah”, Lee Perry incorporates Rastafari lyrics about the glory of God and his blessings upon old Africa into broken down instrumentals, synthesized “intergalactic” sounds, and a deep bass transduction which makes the listener feel surrounded by the music.

Regardless of the form in which it comes, the mothership connection, across cultures, represents the link between the Africa that was lost due to years of oppression and, before that, slavery and the Africa of the future, a land of promise and free of oppression, most likely in space. Despite their work in different genres of music, Clinton, Sun Ra, and Perry shared the same set of mythological ideas, iconography, and, at times, madness. All three believed that music is a mirror of the universe through which we explore our future.

Dub music serves as a strong influence to the Afrofuturistic era. Not only was Lee Perry one of Afrofuturism’s founding fathers, but the ideas explored through dub music the very making of dub music as a genre represent an era of conflicting ideals regarding nature and technology as well as past and future. The sci-fi undertones of Afrofuturism are more implicitly apparent in dub music than explicitly: “The music tends to be less concerned with images of flying saucers and interplanetary travel, and it is more reflective of prominently interwoven dichotomies of nature/technology and past/future.” (Veal 210). The dub genre in itself is an example of the dichotomy between technology and nature, as dub was created based on a technical mistake by a sound engineer, yet the lyricism often has to do with nature, peace, love and resolution and the rhythms are often earthy and tranquil. Also fundamental in this argument is the reference to Kingston, Jamaica, the birthplace of both dub and reggae, as the wired, urban “concrete jungle” located on a tropical Caribbean island, the “site of particularly interesting adaptations of successive forms of sound reproduction technology”. Jamaican music was often used by manufacturers to test sound equipment. Many even thought of some dub sound engineers as prophets. The Scientist, for instance has claimed that King Tubby has “joked about those things years before they were made” (Veal 210), referring to advances in sound technology such as moving faders. Further, dub is widely regarded across music culture as a genre that one feels in addition to hearing; its sound engulfs the listener and takes them on an intergalactic journey toward the Promised Land that is space. Luke Ehrlich elaborates on this aspect of dub in a 1982 essay:

“With dub, Jamaican music spaced out completely. If reggae is Africa in the New World, then dub must be Africa on the moon; it’s the psychedelic music I expected to hear in the ’60s and didn’t. The bass and drums conjure up a dark, vast space, a musical portrait of outer space, with sounds suspended like glowing planets or the fragments of instruments careening by, leaving trails like comets and meteors. Dub is a kaleidoscopic musical montage which takes sounds originally intended as interlocking parts of another arrangement and using them as raw material, converts them into new and different sounds; then, in its own rhythm and format, it continually reshuffles these new sounds into unusual juxtapositions.”

As stated by Ehrlich, it is dub music’s utilization of dichotomies and deep a submerging rhythms that conjures ideas of space and makes dub, as a genre, so unique and enticing. In conclusion, dub music is played a large role in the birth of Afrofuturism, and, in a way, is the aesthetic embodiment of the movement within African diaspora cultures. It is dub’s juxtapositions between old and new Africa and between nature and technology, as well as dub’s engulfing futuristic and intergalactic sound that ties it so closely to Afrofuturism.