UK Dub Files: Dubkasm

BEGINNINGS

Digistep: Stryda and I have been friends for our life really, but we got in contact with roots and dub during our teenage years when we started to go record shopping and started going to some early sessions in Bristol, and it just went on from there really. We started to build tunes of our own and tried to emulate the sounds we heard. That's when we started making natural tracks and eventually let towards being released on a compilation album called 'Dub out west volume I'.
Stryda: Well, it was about the early nineteen nineties . We were going record shopping as teenagers in Bristol and in 1993 we went to our first Jah Shaka session when we were 15 years old. It was at the Malcolm X centre in Bristol and that was massive impact on us. Then in 1996 I started on the radio show and Digi was doing music at school. We were lucky Dubkasm was kind of forming around that time. Digistep came up with the name Dubkasm in about 1994 and in 1996 we were privileged to have a release on the local album that Digi just mentioned: 'Dub out west volume I' on Nubian Records. So that was the early beginnings.

SUFFERAH'S CHOICE

What was first? The record label or the radio show?
Stryda: The radio show came first, and I started on the radio in 1996, as I said. In 1997 I went to Jamaica and on that journey experiencing Jamaica and being in Kingston and seeing how reggae music was really the heartbeat of the country and radio stations like Irie FM were everywhere from up in the hills and valleys to right in the middle of the ghetto in the city. It really showed me that reggae music was, as Bob Marley said, news and the voice of the people and the crowd, the poor. So returning from Jamaica, it really strenghtened  me to call the show Sufferah's Choice which I decided just previous to my visit to Jamaica, so that was what influenced that and the Sufferah's Choice carried on weekly for a good while. When Digi and I decided to launch our own label many years later, it seemed to make sense to connect it to the radio show and call it Sufferah's Choice recordings.
Digistep: I had quite a strong connection with Stryda and I had been bredrins with Aba Shanti for a long time. That got stronger on my part when I joined the Shanti-Ites band in London, playing with them for many years on sax, with Blood Shanti. So we be working with people who we came in contact with in the scene and made  with over a long period of time and because we were reaching sessions back in the nineties and playing part in the scene, they ended up being close friends who we just naturally ended up working with and doing projects with. So it was definately a kind of a friendship based thing as opposed to a collaborative thing which we always try to do, link people in person, recording sessions in person and just reason with the people you work with rather than just sending files to somebody you've never met in person. We like that approach definately.

VICTORY

Stryda: With that tune 'Victory', it was a tune that was done in Bristol in more recent times. Digistep built the riddim. It was a dub riddim and then a friend of ours in Bristol who plays trumpet said he could pop round, and him and Digi got together and did the horns. It was just a very natural process that came about. When we cut this to dubplate, we were sure that it would have an impact in the dance beaceuse it was a night tune, but we never quite realized how much an impact it would have. We started to play it ourselves first and it was wonderful to end sessions with it. It's such a sort of a jubilant tune, you know, it's very up beat and uplifting, and kind of leaves people with a victorious feeling, hence the name 'Victory'. When we played a session in Nantes, we closed our set with it as usual back then and Aba Shanti was playing alongside us at that same session, so we took the actual dubplate we had cut for ourselves and we handed it straight to Aba there and then, and he's been playing the same dubplate ever since. We give nuff thanks to Aba for doing so because it really highlights how in this modern time of music, sometimes being quite throw-away, dubplate culture does still exist and still work on sound system because this is an exclusive tune that nobody can get at the moment, so it really does live up to the original sense of the whole term 'dubplate'. When sound systems like Aba Shanti champion a tune, they really make it matter and count, and they get behind it. We give thakns to sounds like Aba for kepping that tradition alive really.

N.v.d.r.: 'Victory' is ondertussen gereleased in verschillende oplages op korte tijd, en de dubplate waarvan sprake werd vorige zaterdag ook als laatste tune gespeeld door Aba Shanti op Reggaebus.

SOUND SYSTEM CULTURE AND LIVE SHOWS

Stryda: We love sound system culture and we do get to play on wonderful sound systems, you know. We played on Iration Steppas, Blackboard Jungle and so on, and we have been privileged to play on many actual roots sound systems which is always a pleasure, you know. It's wonderful delivering roots music in that heavyweight sort of sound system way, but we never set ourselves up as an actual sound, we're a production outfit, a label, say. We enjoy going into very intimate clubs and playing to crowds of say 150 people in a small club, as much as we do playing on huge sound systems at say Garance reggae festival in France. I think we just appreciate the whole concept of playing out live and experience. Wouldn't you say, Digi?
Digistep: Yeah, we try to take on elements of the different forms of delivery, really, so sound system culture is built in to our set through, you know, we like to use the live sirens and sound effects, and I use a tape echo pedal with a spring reverb and so on. That kind of draws on the sound system culture but equally we like to have live instruments, you know. I play sax and melodica, and we obviously have MC's passing through as well, so that kind of draws on the other side. We love musicianship and we love live music, so really, our set needs to be flexible, so we could play on a sound system, or we could play, as Stryda said, in a very small club and still deliver the essence what we're about.
Stryda: Yeah, I think sound system has got to be in your blood, you know, because it's a massive commitment, and there's only so much as well that you can do with the time you got and we struggle to fit in everything we're doing at the moment, so I think actually building a sound system would be that one step too much at the moment for us, but we do give actually nuff thanks and respect to the sound systems that keep up the through soundsystem work, you know.
Stryda: Thanks for having us on here, good to be passing through. Belgium's got really good to us. We've come back here very often and we always love playing to the Belgian crew, so give thanks to everyone who's still supporting and buying the records, listening to the music and coming to the dances. And big up to radio shows like this for keeping music alive. Keep up the works, and yeah, keep it conscious, keep it real. Blessed love, guidance.