ENTITY · INSTRUMENT
Casio MT-40
Probable
The consumer keyboard whose preset underpinned the Sleng Teng riddim.
At a glance
- Type
- instrument
- Confidence
- Probable
- Era
- Open era →
Connections
Debate & reception
How people argued about the music — praise, criticism and public debate. See all debate & reception →
debate
Sleng Teng: digital revival or the ruin of live reggae
Wayne Smith's 1985 'Under Mi Sleng Teng', built by King Jammy and Noel Davey around a Casio MT-40 preset, is widely credited as the first fully digital dancehall riddim. Purists and some session players held that the drum-machine sound cheapened reggae and displaced the live rhythm bands (the Roots Radics and Sly & Robbie's circle) who had defined the music, while champions argued it democratized production — a youth with a keyboard could now cut a hit without costly studio time — and that it launched the most-versioned riddim in Jamaican history. Later writing frames the moment as either a revival that birthed modern dancehall or the ruin of organic reggae craft.
Stance: democratizing computer riddim vs. the death of the session-band sound