In the modern musical world, Kingston, Jamaica, is best known as the progenitor of reggae music.

Reggae coalesced in Kingston's recording studios in the late 1960s and early 1970s, scarcely a decade after the Jamaican popular music recording industry had begun, and ever since has been an ubiquitous presence in the soundscape of Kingston (and elsewhere).

Two other local popular music styles - ska and rocksteady - held a similar sway in the early mid-1960s.

Music culture

But what of the popular music scene in Kingston in the 1950s? What preceded this phenomenon and what led up to it?

This article attempts to sketch the history of the popular music culture of Kingston from the late 19th century up to the final stages of the 'Federation' or pre-Independence period (1947-1961) when the rise of an indigenous popular music recording industry added a significant new dimension.

An examination of the documentary source materials in the print media, supplemented by the testimony of older informants, reveals that the urban popular music culture of Kingston has been closely tied to that of North America since at least the late 19th century.

Impresarios and theatrical agents imported touring vaudeville shows to Kingston in the 1890s and early 1900s, and a contemporary chronicler and church organist complained that "musical performances at that time were 'limited to ballad concerts and entertainment of a vaudeville character'."

A brief, but tantalising, evidence of the impact of American popular music on the general Jamaican populace in the early decades of the 20th century, we have Helen Roberts' observation, made during a 1920-21 field trip, that "even the back neighbourhoods now boast a knowledge of American rag-time tunes'.

Genteel amateur music-making and locally provided public musical entertainment also existed, but evidently with the same low profile as in many colonial North American outposts.

Nevertheless, by the early 20th century, there appears to have been a sufficiently large and competent pool of resident musicians to replicate certain of the popular musical institutions prominent in many North American urban centres of the period. The coming of moving pictures in the early '20s had created a demand for theatre orchestras to play before shows and to accompany silent films.

Orchestras

Orchestras and bands were also used at fairs, garden parties, and on civic occasions.

Some of these orchestras were the Palace Theatre Orchestra, the YMCA Orchestra and Buckley's String Orchestra.

It is possible that ensembles capable of playing on such occasion were staffed entirely by expatriate musicians (or foreign-trained Jamaica musicians).

However, the history of local music education suggests that this was probably not the case; extensive instruction in Euro-African wind band instruments and repertoire was already well under way by that time.

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