Active Arts, Culture & Design

Library of Congress - Sounding Resistance: Jamaican Traditional Music, Colonial Influence, and Diasporic Memory

Funder AHRC (part of UKRI)
Recipient organisation University of York Source-published name: University of York
Funding £7K
Period Apr 2026 — Jul 2026

In plain English

AI plain-English summary

A 1920s wax cylinder recording of a Jamaican work song, held at the Library of Congress, is about to reveal how enslaved West Africans adapted British ballads and American hymns into the roots of modern reggae and ska. This research fills a gap in music history. Most scholarship on Jamaican music jumps straight to mento and reggae, skipping the earlier folk traditions that shaped them. The project examines rare, undigitised field recordings collected by ethnographers Helen H. Roberts and Martha Warren Beckwith, analysing how British, American, and West African musical structures fused into Jamaican spirituals, work songs, and secular traditions before independence. If successful, this work will rewrite the timeline of Jamaican music’s global influence. It will show how colonial-era transculturation—not just post-war studio innovation—laid the groundwork for genres that later spread worldwide. For the UK, home to Europe’s largest Jamaican diaspora, this matters directly: it deepens understanding of a cultural heritage that shapes British music, identity, and community life today. The research is fundamentally archival and historical, not applied. But similar deep dives into early recorded music have reshaped how we understand everything from the blues to hip-hop, revealing hidden lineages that artists and audiences later built upon.

View original technical description
This project interrogates the influence of colonial musical traditions on early 20th-century Jamaican folk music (rooted in West African traditional music), focusing on rare field recordings and transcriptions held at the Library of Congress. Collected by ethnographers Helen H. Roberts and Martha Warren Beckwith in the 1920s, these materials provide some of the earliest audio evidence of Jamaican musical hybridity. The study will examine transculturation as British ballads, American hymns, and West African folk song structures were adapted into Jamaican spirituals, work songs, and secular traditions, shaping an evolving Jamaican musical identity. By analysing these recordings, this research will illuminate cultural exchanges that shaped Jamaican music before independence and traditional music’s further impact on diasporic traditions. Britain is currently home to the largest Jamaican population in Europe, primarily due to colonial migration. While scholarship often focuses heavily on ska, reggae, and mento, this study investigates an earlier period, revealing overlooked influences on later Jamaican music’s global impact. Hosted by the Library of Congress, this fellowship enables access to primary archival materials that remain undigitised and unavailable elsewhere. This archival work will deepen our understanding of Jamaican music’s early development and its impact on popular music over the past 70 years.

View the original record at the funder ↗

Researchers

Matthew Williams (Principal Investigator)

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Original classification

Training Grant

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