Dub is an innovative music genre that arose in Jamaica in the late 1960s and early 1970s as an experimental offshoot of reggae. Its creators, above all sound engineers, took ready-made songs and radically reworked them, creating instrumental “versions.”
The essence of dub lies in the art of mixing: the producer removed the vocal, brought the powerful bass and drums to the foreground, and treated individual sounds and fragments of phrases with echo and reverberation effects, creating a spacious, “three-dimensional” sound. Pioneers of the genre were King Tubby and Lee “Scratch” Perry. Dub is of colossal historical importance: it essentially invented the concept of the remix and the role of the producer as an independent artist, deeply influencing the development of hip-hop, electronic, and dance music around the world.
