Kingston

Kingston, Jamaica: ska, rocksteady and early reggae from the 1960s, the sound hip hop grew out of. Jamaica’s sound systems, with their huge speaker stacks and deejays toasting over records, crossed to the Bronx with Kool Herc, whose family moved there from Kingston in 1967. Leslie Kong’s Beverley’s label, Coxsone Dodd’s Studio One and Duke Reid’s Treasure Isle cut the records, and in the UK Trojan Records carried them onto the charts. Desmond Dekker’s “Israelites” topped the UK chart in 1969 and went top ten in America, one of the first reggae hits anywhere.