Jamaican sound system culture and the legacy of dub have had a profound and lasting impact on modern music, extending far beyond their Caribbean roots. By reinventing the way sound is manipulated, it reshaped our approach to bass, rhythm, and spatial sounds, leaving a deep imprint on many genres.  

The history of sound system culture and the creation of dub  

Dub is heavily linked to sound system culture, which became popular in the late 40s as an affordable alternative to the live jazz scene in Jamaica. As sound systems parties became popular, building your own sound system was one of the few ways to make money in the unstable economy of Jamaica. An important part of the culture took place in the Sound Clash, a friendly battle in which each sound system tried to prove that its features sounded better.  
 
One of the biggest name in the game was Ruddy Redwood, a sound system operator, whose relationship with record producer Duke Reid allowed him to distinguish himself with the finest latest records. One day, Reid’s engineer forgot to add the vocal to a track, and Reid was satisfied with the track like that. Reggae bands then started to release instrumental versions on the B side, and due to the loose copyright laws in Jamaica, producers began to use these records as raw material for new tracks. This is basically the ancestor of the sampling in hip hop, where “breaks” from soul, jazz  and funk are cut and recycled to create new tracks.  

 
But what about dub? In the late 60s, Duke Reid started to employ King Tubby to produce instrumental versions, and King Tubby quickly discovered that many instrumental layers could be reworked, emphasized and processed with effects. He would record new versions of songs by layering instrumentals and live-processing them with effects, treating the mixing desk as an instrument itself. The videos below shows how this process can be made, each fader is an instrumental layer, and each knob is an effect. And this is what dub is : the process of actively transforming the sound, drowning it under several effects to give it a more psychedelic atmosphere. King Tubby’s experimentations on already existing audios do not only represent the creation of dub, but also the birth of the remix, even though this particular word will be used only in the 80s, in genres like house and techno.  

Jacob Miller – Baby I Love You So and it’s B side dub version (at 2:30) :

At the same time, the increasing demand for exclusive tracks from sound systems led to the creation of dub plates: one-off records, often pressed onto vinyl, featuring unique dub versions of a track that were not available to the public. These dub plates became a powerful tool in the sound system culture, allowing operators to showcase their distinct versions of popular tracks, further pushing the boundaries of musical experimentation. It also popularized the term “dub” to call these alternatives versions of a track.

Echoes in the UK 

In the late 60s, the sound system culture arrived in the UK with the mass immigration of Jamaicans, introducing reggae and dub sonorities to the punk scene. The song Revolution Rock on the popular record London Calling by The Clash is one the best examples of that influence.

However, dub impact is deeper on the UK electronic scene, where dub productions techniques are a pillar of many 90s genres such as jungle and its little brother drum & bass. The emphasis on the bass in the mix, the recycling of audio parts, especially the famous percussion “breaks”, and the sound processing of the high-end elements through delay, reverb and phaser-flanger come directly from dub production techniques.  
 
But the closest parallel between dub and UK electronic music lies in the infamous dubstep.  
This genre is often misunderstood or dismissed, mainly because it was popularized in the 2010s by Skrillex, whose music, while influential, doesn’t truly represent dubstep. Skrillex’s style, often referred to as “brostep”, features aggressive, high-energy drops and distorted basslines, but it lacks many of the subtler, foundational elements that define dubstep. True dubstep, which emerged in the early 2000s in the UK, is rooted in the same deep sub-bass frequencies and processing techniques than dub music, with a two-step rhythm.  

The profound impact of dub music on these niche scenes is the reason why UK is one of last places where the tradition of dub plates remains alive today. DJs still cut exclusive versions of tracks to gain an edge in their sets, keeping the spirit of sound clashes alive in the modern scene. 

The skanks legacy

One of the most iconic elements of reggae music is the skank: the offbeat guitar stab that became heavily processed with reverb and delay in dub music. This particular sonority has an important posterity, and the music genre that pays him tribute the most is dub techno.  
 
Dub techno is a genre that recreates the skank digitally, calling it a “dub chord”, and uses it as its core element. Created in the 90s by the German duo Basic Channel, it is one of the most influential sub-genres of techno music, especially in the 2000s with artists such as Deepchord, Fluxion, Quantec, and Luke Hess.  
 
In the following track by Len Faki, the dub chord reminds us easily the famous skank:  

In this genre, beyond the dub chord, we can find the same processing techniques than in dub music but pushed even further to the extreme. Since it’s techno, the tracks are very repetitive, but those techniques allow the elements to be constantly modulated and to drown everything under delay and reverb, resulting in very atmospheric tracks.  
 
While Len Faki’s example was perfect to show the connection between the dub chord and the skank, this track by Basic Channel is more representative of the genre in general :

Today, the genre is still alive, with artists from outside the dub techno scene occasionally experimenting with it (such as Stef Mendesidis in its track below), and artists like LDS continue to push the genre’s boundaries and drive its evolution.

Thomas Roehri