/ honouring the goodness and bawdness of jamaican music culture

/ honouring the goodness and bawdness of jamaican music culture

A portrait of Heather “Live Wire” Bubb-Clarke taken by Jorian Charlton. Heather is a fair-skin woman with short brown hair. Heather is positioned in the centre of the frame and she is standing in front of a tall stack of large black speakers (a sound

  • A portrait of Heather “Live Wire” Bubb-Clarke taken by Jorian Charlton. Heather is a fair-skin woman with short brown hair. Heather is positioned in the centre of the frame and she is standing in front of a tall stack of large black speakers (a soundsystem) with the logo ‘40hz’ spray painted on the front. She wears a white zip-up suit jacket, black pants, thin-rimmed glasses, silver bracelets, and a gold ring. Heather’s hands are folded in front of her as she smiles and looks straight towards the camera. Peeking out in the top right of the frame is the ceiling of a white industrial-style space cast in a red hue.

“Selecting at a party [in Jamaica] — you could play until 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning. But by 12 o’clock here, you would have to tone down the music, even at New Year’s. In Jamaica, you could play til sunrise, til the cows come home. The cows dance, too!”

HEATHER ‘LIVE WIRE’ BUBB-CLARKE

SOUNDSYSTEM Starting in the 1970s, Live Wire Disco gave Bubb-Clarke the distinction of being the first female portable DJ in Toronto. She began crate digging back when she was a child taken on family outings to the local record shop in Kingston. After arriving in Toronto in the early 1970s, she cultivated a sound that would appeal to the city’s early immigration influx. (Think Bob Marley for the Jamaicans and Abba and disco for the Italian, Portuguese, and Greek house parties.) When Bubb-Clarke retired, she counted 21 crates of records.

HOMETOWN(S) Kingston, JA

SET UP “Playing in stereo was also a trouble for the men,” reflects Bubb-Clarke as the rare female DJ on the scene in Toronto in the 1970s/1980s. “I would get rumours coming back to me — ’don’t get her the gig, man, because she not have no power behind her.’ Right. Well, my system was a thousand watts! So that power had nothing to do with it.”  

RWD << The recently passed Denise Jones of Jones & Jones Productions, which staged the hugely influential JAMBANA One World Festival and was responsible for “exposing the Jamaican artists to the Canadian environment.”  

FWD >> “It’s up to the next generation.”

A photo of the 40hz soundsystem by Sabrina Sisco. A tall stack of black soundsystem speakerboxes sit in a white industrial-style room. The words ‘40hz’ are spray painted on the centre of the middle row of speakers. A spotlight cast a green hue on the
A flash photograph of the inside of an off-white workspace. In the centre of the frame is a white wall with a printed photo hanging on it, featuring two Black men who have short dark brown hair and wear black clothing. On the same wall, below and tow

    1. A photo of the 40hz soundsystem by Sabrina Sisco. A tall stack of black soundsystem speakerboxes sit in a white industrial-style room. The words ‘40hz’ are spray painted on the centre of the middle row of speakers. A spotlight cast a green hue on the white wall in the background. On the floor in front is a pair of faded white leather sneakers.

    2. A flash photograph of the inside of an off-white workspace. In the centre of the frame is a white wall with a printed photo hanging on it, featuring two Black men who have short dark brown hair and wear black clothing. On the same wall, below and towards the left of the photo, red italicized all-caps state, “NOTICE ANY JOB LEFT OVER (30) THIRTY DAYS WILL BE SOLD!” Below this text is a light switch, which is on top of a red arrow and the words “SHOW ROOM” in the same italicized font. To the right, a variety of tools hang on metal hooks connected to a wooden slate. To the far left of the frame is a dark open space with storage lining the walls.