Sound Reasoning is a compilation of photographs and interview extracts by Anna Arnone, a documentary photojournalist, from her 1980’s UK Reggae Sound System work.
This beautifully designed and produced book provides the reader with a solid chunk of the dancehall culture of the day with words from and photographs of the Sound System men and women, MCs and singers, dub cutters, amp builders, and record shop people. Fatman, Coxsone, Saxon, Unity, King Tubby’s, Channel One, Sista Culcha, Bionic Rhona, amongst others, are featured, as are the MCs like Smiley Culture and Asher Senator, Philip Levi, Jah Screechy, Lorna Gee, Sister Candy, Tipper Irie, Pato Banton, Pepi and Olive, and many more.
Other key people, like the Hassels and Wembley Loudspeakers, feature in this book which serves to educate and entertain in a high style and fashion. This was the key period in UK Reggae Sound Systems when the MCs changed the music from the yard style of Jamaica into the fast style favoured by the first generation of Caribbean rooted youths born and raised in the UK. Peter King, originator of the fast style, features. Lovers’ Rock UK singers like Sandra Cross and Deborah Glasgow UK also took the music and gave it a new twist, Sound Reasoning takes you on the journey from the Sound truck, with the box boys, to the excitement of the dance.
Whether you are a follower of Sounds, a lover of Reggae, studying Black music and culture or photography, this book is essential reading. And last, but not least, there is an introduction, with photographs from performances in Brixton in the early 1980’s, by the great dub poet Benjamin Zephaniah, which gives a personal insight to his Sound System roots and which is illustrative of the importance of the spoken word/poetry within Sound System culture.
Published by Arandora Press
Introduction by Benjamin Zephaniah
180×180 mm, 128 pp
Sewn binding, matt laminate soft back cover (4 pp).
Monochrome photographs. Sound Reasoning is printed in full colour.
Limited print run.
