Music, which most people associate with Caribbean culture is a powerful tool in assembling and reinforcing migrant identity.

In the Caribbean, advances in recording technology had begun to create a domestic music industry, and the first post-war migrants brought with them the records they enjoyed. Apart from the traditional calypso, this music was a form of Jamaican rythmn 'n' blues, heavily influenced by the African-American music charts. Such music was unobtainable in Britain and it became exclusive to clubs and private parties frequented almost entirely by West Indians.

'Blues parties' - parties in private houses, or even rooms, where you paid at the door - became an institution, and a well-known way of raising money quickly. The areas where migrants lived were often littered with printed sheets inviting passers-by to a 'blues night'.

The development of Ska music in Jamaica grew in tandem with increasingly sophisticated listening equipment. The first thing most migrants did with their first wage packet or income, after they had sent a remittance back home, was to buy a radiogram which could reproduce the heavy bass beat.

Once again migrant culture became a two-way dialogue. The growing popularity of the music in Britain provided a wider market for the Jamaican productions and artistes, and the development of the Jamaican industry broadened its appeal in Britain. Throughout the 1960s, migrants' music attracted and inspired a generation of white working-class youth, partly because of its rebellious sound and associations.

Trinidadian director, Horace Ove's, film Reggae(1971) charts the progress and popularity of Jamaican music in Britain in the early sixties, but even at that time migrant music was absent from the airwaves, was never played on the popular radio shows or appeared in the music charts. The arrival on the scene of reggae music's international superstar, Bob Marley, changed the picture.

Marley had been a migrant himself, working in Canada before returning to Jamaica and, ironically, his career was initially fostered by a white Jamaican music producer, Chris Blackwell. Blackwell took advantage of the expanding market created by the spending power of the migrant population in Britain to build up the resources and reputations of himself and the musicians. It became a spring board for popularising his bands in the wider British market.

Marley's success helped to spawn a Black British music industry based on reggae. His connection with the Rastafarian movement and the language of his lyrics gave him an authenticity and depth which inspired and influenced waves of young people, who, reared in Britain, were beginning to want to discover their Caribbean roots.

Conversely Ska music inspired young whites and marked the beginning of an influential movement spearheaded by Black British music culture. The entrepreneurs who brought over records from the Caribbean, and played them at their clubs and blues parties, had spawned a method and a style from which present day club DJs are descended. 'Toasting', the technique of improvised oratory over music which originated in reggae, is now a staple of British youth culture. In the same way a dance culture, which the migrants had brought with them, emerged with the music from the clubs and shebeens and added a new impetus to youth culture.

Read more: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/blackhistory/culture/music.htm