Women in the control room and on the mic

Phyllis Dillon was a Jamaican rocksteady and reggae singer recorded almost exclusively for Duke Reid's Treasure Isle label in the late 1960s, where her ballad style - including "Perfidia," a rocksteady rework of the classic Spanish-language standard - made her one of the genre's defining and most consistently celebrated women vocalists.

Marcia Aitken is a Jamaican singer most associated with "I'm Still in Love with You Boy," a late-1970s female-voiced answer/version in the Alton Ellis song family that shows how a rocksteady ballad continued to generate reggae versions.

Sonia Pottinger-associated label whose catalogue documents rocksteady/reggae production and artist development.

Sonia Pottinger-associated Jamaican label important to rocksteady/reggae and women-led production history.

Jamaican singer whose Lee Perry-produced recordings helped define a 1970s reggae/lovers repertoire.

Sonia Pottinger (1931-2010), known as "Miss P," was Jamaica's first female record producer, active from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s. Working from her Tip Top Records shop, she released rocksteady and reggae hits on her Gay Feet, High Note, Tip Top and Rainbow labels for the Ethiopians, the Melodians ("Swing and Dine"), Delano Stewart, Ken Boothe and others. She acquired Duke Reid's Treasure Isle catalogue in 1974 and produced Culture's Harder Than the Rest (1978).

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.

Producers, executives and one dancer whose stand-off with a promoter opened a stage to Rastafarian drumming -- the women who ran the business side of Jamaican music.

When the tempo dropped, harmony and bass moved to the front.

How the B-side and the mixing desk became instruments.