page_title: Popular music of Birmingham
section_title: Ska and reggae
hierarchical_section_title: Popular music of Birmingham / Ska and reggae
caption_attribution_description: British Reggae artist Macka B. in the early 1990s. Deutsch: Macka B in den frühen 1990ern Suomi: Englantilainen reggaeartisti Macka B.
context_page_description: Birmingham's culture of popular music first developed in the mid-1950s. By the early 1960s the city's music scene had emerged as one of the largest and most vibrant in the country; a "seething cauldron of musical activity", with over 500 bands constantly exchanging members and performing regularly across a well-developed network of venues and promoters. By 1963 the city's music was also already becoming recognised for what would become its defining characteristic: the refusal of its musicians to conform to any single style or genre. Birmingham's tradition of combining a highly collaborative culture with an open acceptance of individualism and experimentation dates back as far back as the 18th century, and musically this has expressed itself in the wide variety of music produced within the city, often by closely related groups of musicians, from the "rampant eclecticism" of the Brum beat era, to the city's "infamously fragmented" post-punk scene, to the "astonishing range" of distinctive and radical electronic music produced in the city from the 1980s to the early 21st century.
context_section_description: Birmingham's booming post-war economy made it the main area alongside London for the settlement of West Indian immigrants from 1948 and throughout the 1950s. With black music and black audiences often excluded from mainstream clubs in Birmingham City Centre the 1960s and 1970s saw a distinctive West Indian culture of blues parties emerge in Birmingham districts such as Handsworth and Balsall Heath as the urban equivalent of the all-night communal "tea parties" of rural Jamaica. Blues parties were unlicensed gatherings usually held in empty private houses, where visitors paid on the door and electricity was often wired in from outside street lighting. Early Birmingham blues played calypso and rhythm and blues, but the early 1960s saw the rise of ska and from the late 1960s the scene was dominated by dub. Music would be provided by mobile sound systems, who would try to stand out from their competitors through the strength of the bass produced by their equipment; and by DJs toasting over the newest and most obscure dubplates, often going to great lengths to disguise the source of their records.
  Publicity for blues parties was largely through word of mouth or over pirate radio stations and generally did not include precise details of addresses or locations, so sound systems attracted loyal but highly localised followings. Sounds would also often "play out" in neighbouring areas or challenge other sound systems in a competitive sound clash, allowing the more prominent outfits to attract wider attention – during the 1970s and 1980s the better-known Handsworth sounds would attract visitors from as far afield as London, Manchester and Bristol. Notable Birmingham sound systems whose reputations extended beyond the city included Quaker City, which was founded in 1965; Duke Alloy, which was founded in 1966 and featured the toaster Astro who later became part of UB40; and Wassifa, which featured Macka B, the most influential British toaster of the 1980s. The founders of the reggae band Eclipse, who met at a blues party, later recalled "Blues would took place everywhere. You only had to go out in Lozells or down the Soho Rd, there was loads going on, you could stand and listen to the music coming out of the houses, pubs and clubs."
  During the 1960s and 1970s, the West Midlands developed a culture of Black British music that was unique, remaining far less segregated from the white music scene than was the case in London. White and black musicians could routinely be seen jamming together in pubs in districts such as Handsworth and Balsall Heath and, as the cultural commentator Dick Hebdige observed, Birmingham was "one of the few places left in Britain where it's still possible for a white man to get into a shebeen without wearing a blue uniform and kicking the door down". The result was a free exchange of influence and support between the sound systems of the city's Jamaican-influenced musical culture and local bands of all races and genres, with particularly close relationships growing between the city's reggae and punk scenes. A close-knit core community of musicians emerged, combining varied musical influences with a commitment to a common goal. Birmingham bands were showing the influence of Jamaican music as early as 1968, when Locomotive had a minor UK hit with the ska single "Rudi's in Love", and, by 1969, ska nights at Birmingham City Centre clubs were attracting early skinheads dressed in tonic suits and loafers,
  Birmingham's first major home-grown reggae band was Steel Pulse, who formed in Handsworth Wood in 1975 from a group of musicians who had been playing dub plates since the age of 15 and 16. One of Britain's greatest reggae bands in terms of both critical and commercial success, and one of very few bands from outside the island to have a significant impact on reggae within Jamaica itself, Steel Pulse were also the most militant of Britain's reggae bands of the 1970s with a reputation for uncompromising political ferocity. During their early years their music carried distinct jazz and Latin influences, but during the 19
caption: Toaster Macka B
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