Digital Dancehall

Digital dancehall is the phase of Jamaican dancehall inaugurated in 1985, when producer *King Jammy* built *Wayne Smith*'s "Under Mi Sleng Teng" on a preset rhythm from a #Casio# MT-40 keyboard and replaced the session band with synthesized, computer-programmed backing. The new riddims were cheaper, faster to make and radically minimal: skeletal bass lines, clipped electronic drums and stark keyboard figures over which a generation of deejays — *Tenor Saw*, *Nitty Gritty*, *Admiral Bailey* — voiced hundreds of songs. Also called ragga in Britain, digital dancehall restructured Jamaica's music economy around the producer and the riddim, and set the pattern for modern dancehall production.