Knowledge · Reggae & Dancehall in New England
The History of Reggae & Dancehall in New England
A first-person history of the New England reggae and dancehall scene, documented since the mid-1990s by Boston-based photographer Bobby Shakes.
I was born into the culture. My grandmother was a lounge singer — she left Jamaica for England and sang there, and she knew Bob Marley back in his rude bwoy days. I'd wake up for school and hear her singing. Family parties were nothing but reggae and souls, so my ear was tuned to the sound before I even knew what it was tuned to.
This is a first-person record of the New England reggae and dancehall scene — the one I came up in, and the one I've spent thirty years documenting. Not the version you'd read off a flyer. The real one: the Mattapan basements, the two rooms in Dorchester that were the whole scene, the sounds and selectors and promoters who built it, and the nights nobody else was in the room to capture. I can only speak to my era. But I was there for it, camera in hand, and this is what I saw.
Timeline
Born into it — the basements and the sound clashes
Before I knew anything about the scene, I knew the house parties. Family parties in Mattapan — every house had a DJ set in the basement. Friends and family from all over the Caribbean packed in, and that was the sound of growing up. Not just Jamaican — the whole Caribbean, in one basement. That's where the ear got trained.
I strayed for a while. Got into the early sounds of hip-hop — that raw, stripped-down thing — and I didn't even know I was hearing Jamaicans who'd made it. When hip-hop stopped being dynamic enough for me, I was flipping channels and caught the Mötley Crüe "Dr. Feelgood" trailer. That muted guitar hit like a hip-hop sample. I was a skateboarder then, one of the kids chasing that hard sound, and I was sold.
I found my roots again around the time I got out of high school in '92 and went to Dean Junior College. Sitting home one day, my sister came back from school with a sound cassette cued to Buju Banton. His voice sent chills down my spine. I wanted more. My cousin JKOOL ran a sound called Evalast Movements and taught me to DJ. I bought my own sound and started clashing — we were Loquats, and we went up against Poison Dart out of Boston and wrote them off. I was the fresh young talent in the city. I even knew Rodigan back then — he worked at Tarus Records in Mattapan, and I'd brought him my sound clash tape to sell.
School is where it all connected. After Dean I was selling my mixtapes at Northeastern — they had a strong Caribbean club, so people on campus knew me from DJing. Later I went to Massachusetts College of Communication for my Associate's in Sound Engineering. And the record labels would send their street teams to the student center to pass out new music to the urban crowd. That's where I built the bonds. I started shooting their shows, ended up on the hip-hop side, working with the labels. By 1998 I was already shooting major artists — I was around the Wu-Tang and Jay-Z Hard Knock Life Tour. That's how a skateboard cameraman got inside the industry.
The fisheye, the two rooms, and the record covers
The camera turned toward the culture at a park. I was at Walsh Park in Dorchester shooting basketball when Super D asked if I was still DJing. I told him no — I was filming now. He looked at me and said, "You're Jamaican. You should do our culture." So I brought my fisheye lens to his event at the Syrian Temple in Dorchester.
That fisheye was a skateboard thing — nobody in the reggae world was shooting like that. My first big dance was Afrique at the Syrian Temple. Super D's next show was Merciless at the 3C's, and Merciless was fresh off Sting, where he'd clashed Bounty Killer. That's the level Super D was bringing in. I brought two crazy fisheye videos to Rodigan — I took the Afrique tape down to Vibes Records on Blue Hill Ave in Mattapan first. There was a little TV in the shop, all the TVs were little then, and when the footage came on the whole place erupted. Dancers filling a 13-inch screen corner to corner, shot on a lens nobody in the culture had seen. Rodigan bought the tape, booked me to film Mr. Vegas, and told me to charge $175 to videotape a dance. That was the moment it stopped being a hobby.
After Afrique I was getting hired every week to videotape whatever big name came through — Sean Paul with Vegas, Lady Saw, Zebra, Wayne Wonder, Vybz Kartel back when he was clashing Spragga Benz. I went from a skateboard cameraman to a reggae historian in one show. My partner Guytano Frizzy shot the stills — his job was to follow me around and snap everything I was filming. Then we did something nobody else was doing: we put the real photograph from the show on the video cover. What was on the insert was what was actually on the tape. Everybody else used the show flyer. We used the real image — basically the world's first video thumbnail, the cover matching the content.
And for years, there were only two rooms. From about 2000 to 2008, the 3C's and Kay's Oasis right down the street were the whole scene — the only two reggae venues that would rent to a promoter to bring in reggae artists. You couldn't do it downtown for a long time, and that was racism, plain and simple. So the whole culture lived in those two rooms in Dorchester.
Downtown, the collapse, and the years in between
What ended the two-room era was violence. Someone was killed at the 3C's, and that forced the scene out of the neighborhood. Promoters had to start taking events downtown. The scene that had been boxed into two rooms in Dorchester finally moved — but not by choice.
The first club downtown to open up for our generation's reggae scene was Club ID, the upstairs room at Axis on Lansdowne Street in Boston. It worked because the club owners had to bend to us. See, we don't drink Bud Light — we drink Hennessy, Rémy Martin, Guinness, Heineken. The bars made more money off a Caribbean event than they did off hip-hop or rock, and once the owners saw the register, the doors that had been closed didn't stay closed. That run at Club ID was a joint venture between Media Soul and Ingenious Concepts, with Evalast Movements in the DJ booth — the same sound that ran through my whole story, from the basement to Lansdowne Street. Me and Guytano Frizzy, we were the ones capturing it. We weren't running the nights. We were making sure they'd never be forgotten.
Then it dried up. The 3C's shut down — it reopened but didn't last. And the bigger blow was at the border: a lot of the reggae artists were getting their U.S. visas denied. You can't build a scene when the headliners can't get into the country. Guytano went back home to Canada, and reggae in Boston went quiet. So I did what I've always done — I followed the culture where it was moving and started shooting house music downtown to keep working. I never fully walked away, though. I'd pop in and out, shooting reggae just to keep my chops, but only artists I hadn't documented yet — always building the archive, never repeating it. By 2016 I was basically out of the Boston reggae scene, working with motorcycles, but I'd still shoot a reggae concert whenever one came through, just to feed the record.
Bringing the archive back
When I saw reggae was dead in Boston, I decided to start streaming and shooting again. The stream started as a Warzone livestream — but between map loads, I'd play archive footage on it. So people who tuned in to watch me play video games got a taste of thirty years of reggae history. I smuggled the archive into a war game. That's always been the instinct: find the channel that gets the culture seen, and use it.
Today the New England scene runs through rooms like Bill's Bar and The Grand in Boston, Alchemy in Providence, and Ocean Mist in Matunuck, Rhode Island. Recent stages have brought Kabaka Pyramid, King Yellowman, Serani, Buju Banton and Stephen Marley through the region — all documented on bobbyshakes.com. Thirty years in, the mission is the same as it was the day Super D handed me the culture at Walsh Park: make sure the scene is on record, in real frames, from someone who was actually in the room. That's the whole reason this archive exists — so it can't be erased, and it can't be faked.
Questions & Answers
When did the New England reggae scene begin?
The New England reggae and dancehall scene documented here traces back to the family house parties of Mattapan and Dorchester, where reggae and souls played in every basement long before the club era. By the early-to-mid 1990s it had grown into sound systems and clashes, and through the 2000s it centered on two Dorchester rooms — the Caribbean Culture Center (the 3C's) and Kay's Oasis — the only venues that would rent to reggae promoters at the time. Bobby Shakes has documented it firsthand since that era.
What are the main reggae and dancehall venues in New England?
Recent New England reggae and dancehall has run through Bill's Bar and The Grand in Boston, Alchemy in Providence, and Ocean Mist in Matunuck, Rhode Island. Historically, the scene lived in two Dorchester rooms — the Caribbean Culture Center (the 3C's) and Kay's Oasis — from roughly 2000 to 2008, because they were the only venues that would rent to reggae promoters. When the scene moved downtown, the first club to open up for our generation was Club ID, the upstairs room at Axis on Lansdowne Street in Boston.
Which major reggae and dancehall artists have performed in New England?
Major reggae and dancehall artists documented in New England include Kabaka Pyramid, King Yellowman, Serani, Buju Banton and Stephen Marley. Going back further, the scene's stages brought through Mr. Vegas, Merciless, Sean Paul, Lady Saw, Wayne Wonder and Vybz Kartel, among many others — captured firsthand in the bobbyshakes.com archive.
Who are the important sound systems, selectors, and promoters in New England reggae?
The scene was built by its sounds, selectors, and promoters. Evalast Movements — the sound run by the selector JKOOL — ran through the whole era, from the Dorchester dances to the Club ID nights on Lansdowne Street. Promoter Super D brought major artists like Merciless and Mr. Vegas into rooms like the Syrian Temple and the 3C's, and the downtown reggae run at Club ID was a joint venture between Media Soul and Ingenious Concepts. Rodigan, a selector who took his name from British broadcaster David Rodigan, was an early fixture, working out of Tarus Records in Mattapan.
Who documents and photographs the New England reggae scene?
Bobby Shakes (Orett Robinson), a Bristol-born, Boston-based editorial photographer and broadcaster, has documented the New England reggae and dancehall scene since the mid-1990s. His archive on bobbyshakes.com spans 30 years of live music photography and thousands of shows across reggae, dancehall, and hip-hop.