Dirty Harry, Negusa Negast + Steve Bedlam Forward The Reggae Revolution

Dirty Harry drops some history on us, via the KingBeatSound website. He talks about how he got into soundsystem culture, how Steve Bedlam and Negusa Negast brought the reggae/dancehall/jungle ting to the London party scene and how he established KingBeatSoundsystem in ’99 and found his niche alongside raging teknivals….

DIRTY HISTORY…

KINGBEATSOUNDSYSTEM’s owner/ production manager DirtyHarry caught the soundsystem bug at thirteen watching sounds like Jah Shaka, Youth Sounds, and Jah Trinity play the Dub Club at the Dome Tufnell Park in 1993. Harry became a “box boy” for UK reggae outfit RDK HI-FI Soundsystem at sixteen years old, touring Europe, selecting tunes and engineering as part of the sound’s crew by the age of eighteen.

Harry launched KingBeat in 1999 as a roots and culture sound playing dates at Aba-Shanti’s resident club the House of Roots and the RootsGarden in Brighton, but clubs were closing their doors to the soundsystems. Touring soundsystems don’t suit club owners needs; staff have to be paid to come early and stay late, the speaker boxes and flight cases scratch walls and chip the paint on the way through, and any good soundsystem would make their crapy noise restricted in-house P.A look bad. Possibly more importantly as our goverment fought “antisocial behaviour” on multiple fronts club owners who exceeded strict council noise limits lost their licences. This meant only the biggest sound men could get dates, as club owners simply wouldn’t risk it for some little youth who may not get a crowd. “Dirty” Harry had been a squatter since 1998 and regularly attended squat parties and outdoor raves. This was where Kingbeat found its audience for the next few years.

The way reggae and dancehall has blown up on the London party scene is something to be very proud of. Harry, Bashment Bish (Negusa Negast), Steve Bedlam (Spiral Tribe/Bedlam Sound), and a very few others pioneered that sound playing to 20-30 people while hundreds raved to tekno somewhere else in the building. With such small numbers early on when Negusa Negast and KingBeat were both out they would either link up or Harry would host hip-hop, jungle, drum’n'bass and breakbeat DJs.That’s where KingBeat found it’s current blueprint playing reggae, reggae infused, and reggae inspired music, week in week out (2000-04) at one of the London parties, Southern outdoor raves or European Teknovals blowing up the reggae dancehall sound.

More at KingBeatSoundsystem.com

Tagged:  , , , , , , , ,