Raving Kings: Alric and Boyd + The Untold Story of Dance Music in Jamaica

Words by Jesse Serwer, Photos and Flyers Courtesy of Alric and Boyd—

Jamaica is known for dancehall, not dance music. Recently, however, we’ve noticed a surge in the number of EDM records coming from the island (as with everyplace else in the world), from dubstep and trap to house. And one needs to look no further than Major Lazer—who made a triumphant return to Kingston in January, four years after flopping there in their worldwide live debut—to see how dancehall and rave culture are intersecting. (If you go back far enough, as our Gabriel Heatwave did here, you already know raving is a direct child of Jamaican sound system culture).

But dance music in Jamaica is nothing new. DJs Alric Anglin and Boyd James, collectively known as Alric and Boyd, have been bringing house, techno and all manner of four-on-the-floor club records (and hip-hop, too) to Jamaica’s nightspots and airwaves for two decades. Known for their long-running FAME FM radio show and their legendary Monday night raves at Kingston nightclub Asylum, the duo (perhaps best known stateside for their role in Max Glazer and Kenny Meez’s Federation Sound) are the godfathers of a small but vibrant Jamaican rave scene that reached its peak in the late ’90s and early ’00s. Fresh off the release of “Seleckta,” their production unit Jamroc’s collaboration with acid-house legend DJ Pierre and Rory of Stone Love fame for Dim Mak Records (read more about that here), Alric and Boyd sat down with LargeUp to break down the story of rave/EDM culture on the island of reggae.

BOYD JAMES: Our music tastes are very eclectic. We have always taken the international side of things and brought it to Jamaica. We don’t only play dancehall and reggae. Yes we do, and we do it well, because we are Jamaican. But I was actually introduced to hip-hop before I was introduced to dancehall. I have one of those lucky families that would send for my brother and I. From when I was 11, 12, every summer we would spend in New York. And I lived in Mount Vernon from 1988 to 1990. I had a cousin who was a big DJ there, and I used to go to the basement parties and so on, and the Tunnel, went to Palladium, Studio 54, and these things blew me away at the time.

Boyd at the controls, at legendary Kingston nightclub Asylum

I was introduced to dance music as well from early out. That helped me to solidify which direction I wanted to go into as a DJ. I started DJing from 1984. In 1986, I linked up with Mixmaster Marvin here and we used to do a thing called Upper Room Sessions in his bedroom. All of the cutting-edge DJs at the time in Jamaica were privy to that circle. Out of that circle came Delano from Renaissance, Chris Goldfinger from BBC Radio 1, and we all shared ideas. The template of the Jamaican style of DJing was made from in that room, which is the cutting, scratching, remixing, playing different forms of music genres, house, hip-hop, dancehall and blending those genres together. I knew from an early age there was an international way of playing different from how Jamaicans played music. I was exposed to a New York side of things, and I brought that at that time. And Marvin brought his style back from England as well. And I knew Alric from way before that.

ALRIC ANGLIN: My DJ career started in ’88. At that time, 1991, I was residenting at three top night clubs in Kingston simultaneously—Illusions, 24K and Godfather’s. In ‘92, Boyd came to me, because we knew each other through martial arts, and said I’ve just come back from New York, I have some wicked tunes that will blow whatever tunes you are playing now out of the water, I’d like a chance to showcase that. I was employed to a soundsystem, Renegade Disco, owned by Andrew Henry. It was through Andrew that I got my training in selection, reading crowds and being able to keep a vibe. I spoke to Andrew and he liked what he heard so he paired Boyd with me to start working in 24K. From then to now, we have been working together, 21 years.

Click here for Part 2 of Alric and Boyd’s oral history of dance/EDM/rave culture in Jamaica

ALRIC: Jamaicans, we always listened to a wide range of genres, but we listen wide, not deep. The only thing you could go deep into is reggae and dancehall. Everything else is whatever was popular in the day. That’s where I’m coming from. Boyd joined me and brought a deeper edge to the music at the time. At the time, hip-hop would be looked upon as just another part of the dance music set, or what we in Jamaica used to call the “disco” set. You would start playing hip-hop and gradually come up in the tempo—just one round, no separation. When Boyd came with that New York style, that was the first time the genres were played separate. We ended up developing a style where every genre is played in its true format. Not the bastardized format. How hip-hop is played in New York, that’s how we played it. How dancehall and reggae is played here, that’s how we played it. How dance music is played in New York and Europe, that’s how we played it.

We started to carve a niche in the Jamaican pop culture that was ours, and created a unique space where everybody now was like, “what are these guys doing?” People who were exposed to it having traveled, they’d get what we were doing and say wicked, keep it going. A lot of people couldn’t understand what we were doing and we got boxed in a little.

BOYD: We joined Fame FM in 1995, and brought that approach to radio because that same bastardization of the genres used to happen on radio as well. In 1994, we had a chance of playing with DJ Squeeze on a show called Twin Towers. We used to play a lot of dance music on that show, and maybe 45 minutes of hip-hop. No dancehall. Wu Tang and Beatnuts, Pete Rock and CL Smooth—people were like how is that possible in Jamaica? And we used to take it to the dance side.

In the club now, we used to do a live remixing section where I would run the tracks I wanted to play under the commercial tracks that were popular in every club at the time—your Robyn S., [Cece Peniston’s] “Finally,” Crystal Waters— and create a whole different vibe, and show there’s other forms of club music that has a deeper vibe to it. Most of the tracks I wanted to play didn’t have vocals so I’d run it under and make the original track I was playing—that everybody knows—sound totally different. In Godfather’s, I’d play “Plastic Dreams” by Jaydee, a very dark techno song, and the dancers would go crazy. At that time they had dancers too, like how you had Bogle and everybody same way. Before Bogle was a dancehall dancer, he was a disco bwoy. Everybody don’t know that. He used to perform [as a dancer] on Ring Ding and TV entertainment shows back in the ‘70s, dancing to disco dance, not dancehall. He comes from the disco age, with the big shiny disco ball.

We found a way of breaking down the barriers between commercial and underground music. We’d throw in harder techno songs. And we realized there were people who liked that style of music. So when we brought it to radio in ’95, we expanded on it to get those people liking and digging for it more. Those were the days of turntables and vinyl. Label heads in the States think that the Caribbean is not a market that buys records. [Because] we would go to a store in New York or Miami and buy up a trailer load of records and ship them down. We had to import records from England, Germany, France. Literally all of our money went into buying records.  You’re probably buying one record, one song, for maybe 8 to 15 pounds. But yet when you play the record, you are the only one in this hemisphere that has it. That really set us apart at the time. We made sure we mastered all the genres. If you want soca all night, we can give it to you, if you want hip-hop all night, we can give it to you. if you want dancehall all night, we can give it to you. And of course we can mix them up.

Click here for Part 3 of Alric and Boyd’s oral history of dance/EDM/rave culture in Jamaica

Germany-based, Jamaican-born DJ Rix Rax at Club Asylum, with owner Ribby Chung (in white shirt)

We had DJ friends abroad who, when they would come to visit, we would set them up in a club tell them [don’t] I don’t want no trying to please the crowd ting. If you’re German, play like how you would for a German crowd. At the time, we were playing in the biggest and the most beautiful club in Kingston, called Mirage. It was almost like a Ministry of Sound, or a Space. It was big. When our friends came down from wherever, we would put them in that club. What sealed the deal was when our friend from Germany,  Rix Rax, came to play in Mirage. It was the first and only time I have seen a DJ get a standing ovation in a club. They stopped and they just clapped.

ALRIC: You have heard how notoriously hard a Jamaican crowd can be. When he’s able to win over a Jamaican crowd with European dance music, you must realize waahgwan deh suh.

BOYD: The first rave party we did was called Hill House, at a mansion that could house about 500 people in the living room. We played on a balcony looking down. It went until 10a.m. the next day, and we only played dance music—jungle, techno, drum and bass, in 1996. It was amazing to see the reaction of the people. We said, “OK, there is a market for this.” Then we went to [Kingston club] Mingles, and did our Friday night after-hours party there. It was free, so everybody came. That lasted for about three years. There was a spinoff at a new venue called Harry’s Bar, and that was when glowsticks were introduced to the Jamaican audience, in 1998.

That party had maybe over 1,000 people. It got the word of Ribby Chung, who owns [legendary Kingston club] Asylum, and he said I have Monday nights free, what would it take to do what you did at Harry’s Bar, in Club Asylum? We never thought it would have been commercial but we found out that it could be done. And we called it Alric and Boyd Monday Night Rave. Every Monday, you’d get the best of what the scene has to offer. You’d be up to date on what was happening in Ibiza. People from Jamaica actually go to Ibiza and, when they come back, they’d say these are the songs I’d hear playing over there. You don’t have to leave, you can come here and get the same thing. That lasted between 1998 to 2003.

ALRIC: In 2004, we did it in the [successor club to Asylum] Quad.

Click here for Part 4 of Alric and Boyd’s oral history of dance/EDM/rave culture in Jamaica

BOYD: Because Asylum was an all-dancehall club, every Monday night we’d have to transform Asylum into something totally different. That’s how [Jamaican set designer Michelle Simone Clarke, aka Siim] got started in set design. She did our set design. We’d have a theme every year, whether it be Mardi Gras, or skeletons, or Ministry of Sound-looking things with acid pills and smiley faces coming down from the roof. They’d bring in all different lighting, lasers, techno beams and so on. To give you a proper show. So when you go into Asylum you’re saying, “This can not be Asylum.”

Raving at Asylum

In 2003, Smirnoff Experience came to Jamaica because of the heightened awareness of the music. Smirnoff puts on these parties, it’s a big rave, actually, around the world, and they came to Jamaica for about two years. [During] that two years, they sent us as the Caribbean entity to different places in the Latin American region like Argentina and Mexico, playing big stages for 10,000 people. They came down here and brought down DJ Alfredo, Nicky Holloway, Jazzy B from Soul II Soul, Roy de Roach. Big people.

I would say now there is a new resurgence of dance music in Jamaica that is good and bad. You have people who only want to see people fist pump, so they only play what they think is popular. We left Fame in 2009, and after we left it went back to just playing the popular songs, where we were not playing popular songs, we were giving you the energy of trance, the energy of techno, progressive house or whatever to understand what it is. You are not going to hear energies. People don’t know Avicii did “Levels,”and it is actually two to three years old. They think it is a Flo Rida track. We were watching a documentary on the history of house music and clubbing, and all the songs that changed the world that they embarked on were big here, and we used to play on the radio here in Jamaica. Jungle—Shy FX and them—and when jungle went into two-step and speed garage, funky house and hardcore drum and bass. We used to play all of that on Jamaican radio here.

We are very happy that dance music is the No. 1 genre again. Why? Because there are no cultural differences in the dance music. It is easy to reach people. Barbados and Trinidad have the jump on Jamaica right now [as far as EDM]. We had the jump on them back in the day, but they are  taking it to another level now. Big names like Armin Van Buuren play at their big club in Trinidad called Zen. In Barbados, you have the Music Factory, a big festival partnered with Ministry of Sound. In Jamaica, we are trying to get there again now.

Alric on the decks at Barbados’ Music Factory festival

For more on Alric and Boyd, read our feature on their new EDM production unit, Jamroc