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A new cohort of Jamaican deejays broke through on YouTube views and streaming charts rather than radio play, without breaking from dancehall's toasting lineage.

In the early 1980s a wave of teenage deejays turned the dancehall over to youth.

The Jamaican deejay grew from a hype-man behind the selector into the star of the record.

Every great Jamaican deejay of the 1960s and 70s served an apprenticeship on a named sound system.

How a toast over a Treasure Isle rhythm helped invent the modern deejay.

How the sound-system deejay's live talk-over became recorded art.

When King Jammy's went digital in 1985, a wave of deejays rode the new Waterhouse computer sound into the dancehall mainstream.

From the rocksteady queens and the first female producer to the I-Threes, the lovers-rock pioneers and the dancehall crown, women have carried Jamaican music from the studio floor to the world stage.

Before jungle had a name, London's ragga deejays were already writing its vocabulary.

In Jamaica the rhythm track, not the finished song, is the durable unit of creativity.

How operators, selectors and live tapes helped turn local deejays into recording artists.

How a handful of session players shaped record after record.

From Lady Ann's toasting through Sister Carol's feminist chat to Tifa and Lisa Hyper's 2000s run, women built a parallel lineage on the mic.

Willie Bounce, Dutty Wine, Gully Creepa: dancehall's dance crazes travelled as a package deal of move, name and tune.

On one Boxing Night stage, the deejay's word became a weapon of pure performance.

How Patois travelled from playground stigma to page, pulpit and microphone.

By the mid-1970s, stripping a reggae master down to drum, bass and echo had stopped being a B-side trick and become an album statement in its own right.

Dancehall history is carried by dancers, crews, fashion, vocal sound effects, intros and the people who energise a dance without always being singers or selectors.

How the fight over 'slack' versus 'conscious' lyrics became dancehall's defining debate.

The rapid-fire deejay style crossed the Atlantic twice, and came home transformed.

As fusion, revival and trap reshaped the sound, the authenticity question came home.

Behind U-Roy, Big Youth and Dennis Alcapone stood toasters whose records shaped the style but whose names rarely make the standard histories.

West Indian canal labourers, Panamanian raggamuffin deejays and a wave of Spanish- and Portuguese-language bands carried Jamaican reggae across Latin America.

A handful of Jamaican rhythm tracks are so familiar that a single drum fill or bassline note identifies them across fifty years and three generations of dancehall.