It was the unlikeliest source imaginable, you'd have thought, to be an introduction to the dub music of Kingston Jamaica, but Black Market Clash by the Clash was where I first heard that bass heavy, mixed down, slowed down groove. In those days of two-sided LP records, side one of album contained some reggae covers and original tunes by the Clash, while side two was more of the same, but also included a dub version of the song "Armageddon Time."
London, England had a large ex-patriot Jamaican community, which by the time the seventies and punk rolled around was into its second generation. Kids grew up with the accent of Kingston, Jamaica on their lips, but the grey rain of England as their environment. It was also an increasingly hostile environment for people of colour in those days with police harassment and skin-head beatings common. Punks, like The Clash, took up fight against racism and formed groups like Rock Against Racism as an attempt to help. Bands like the English Beat and The Specials with their mixed race memberships and ska music, which combined pop sensibilities and reggae back beats, were political messages in their own right.
Mystifying words like "Rockers" and "Rude Boy" made their way across the Atlantic Ocean in the lyrics of songs by these bands, while dubbed versions of Clash and English Beat songs were released on extended play (EPs) twelve inch vinyl singles. It was vaguely understood that this music had something to do with reggae and Jamaica, but since it didn't sound like anything Bob Marley or Peter Tosh were doing at the time, most people I knew weren't quite sure what to make of it. It was known that the Clash had recorded some tracks on their Sandinista triple album in Kingston, Jamaica, but aside from that we didn't know anything about this dub stuff that was so popular in England. 
The name Augustus Pablo wouldn't have meant a damn thing to anybody I knew. Black Uhuru were as adventurous as most people got when it came to listening to reggae, and I doubt there were many people aware that there was any other music coming out of Jamaica at the time. Yet it was in the early '70s when this extraordinary man began recording, first as a performer, then as a composer and producer. It was his collaborations with King Tubby, the man credited with inventing dub music, in 1976, King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown and 1977, East Of The River Nile, that are credited with popularizing dub music in England and providing the early inspiration for hip-hop and rap in the United States.
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