JAMWORLD MOVEMENTS ENTERPRISES More About Us

"JamworldReggae.com" is the official website of JAMWORLD MOVEMENTS ENTERPRISES, a non-for-profit organization devoted to promulgating "An Intellectual Approach to Caribbean Music & Culture". We offer a place on the Internet for Caribbean surfers to get together and truly interact with the vast wealth of Caribbean content that exists online. We also serve as an information database for those interested in all facets of Reggae Music & Dancehall Culture, particulkarly Reggae Sound Systems. To put it simply, we are a watering hole for Caribbeans and those interested in Caribbean culture online. Whether your surf begins with us, or we are your last stop on the information highway, we hope to provide you with quality Caribbean content seasoned with a Reggae twist! Even though we have been online in one form or another for over 6 years now (we started in 1995), we feel that we are still growing and developing. Having said that, we look to you, our Visitors, for support and encouragement as we take our motto and our concept into the next millenium. JME also exists offline, and we are always keeping events such as busrides,BBQs, and parties, so look out for us! To check out what we have to offer you at this stage in our development, please use the menu bar to your left to navigate the website! This website will be undergoing a massive rehaul soon, so stay tuend for greater things to come! For some insight as to how we came about, please continue to read. Enjoy!

The concept of "A Intellectual Approach to Caribbean Music & Culture" on the Internet was birthed when we (when "we" is mentioned, it speaks to "Prince TuFFiE's" combined creative efforts) first appeared on the Internet back in 1995 as a small amateur website devoted to my sound system Black Majesty International. This website (Black Majesty International Dancehall Reggae Website) (BMI for short) started out as a hobby, and was one of the first websites of its kind. With the URL http://members.aol.com/baseodyssy/ (named after one of my favorite sound Bass Odyssey), BMI's site offered live music clips, reggae news, reviews of dancehall culture (top ten charts, clothes, dances, etc), artists highlights, a page with links to other Caribbean sites, and even a page devoted to caribbean humor. Back then you could count on your fingers how many reggae websites existed, among them Scrappy D's Dancehall Page and Dessie's One Stop Brik Brak. We started from scratch with no knowledge of HTML or the Internet, but through constant help and support from some very important people - including Prophecy (Desmond), Dime (Merrick), and REMEDY - we were able to make it happen. To my surprise, BMI's popularity grew tremendously in a very short space of time. Emails from Europe, Australia, Japan, the UK, Jamaica, and the US encouraged us that we were on to something, and challenged us to take this little hobby site to the next level. And we did.

As BMI's site grew in popularity and seach engines began to catalogue us, we began receiving a huge amount of emails from people who knew very little about reggae and reggae sound systems. These people were fascinated by what they had seen on BMI's site and wanted to learn more. After finding myself reiterating various aspects of the the sound system culture in my many replies to these emails, I decided why not write piece that broke down the entire culture of reggae sound systems into a thorough, yet easy to read essay, complete with table of contents. So said, so done. I sat down one day and began writing an essay, pulling knowledge from where ever I could - sound system tapes, past converstaions, what I had heard & read, memories of watching my father around his sound system "Teddy's HiFi" - just about everywhere I could pull info on this topic. In that one sitting I completed the essay, and that night I posted the essay on BMI's website. The response was incredible. The essay, entitled "Reggae Sound Systems" became so popular that it was eventually published in a reggae anthology entitled "Reggae, Rasta, Revolution" by Chris Potash (available at any leading bookstore in the US, West Indies, Europe, and worldwide). I was very proud to visit Jamaica in Spring 1999 and see that very book displayed prominently in a bookstore on Half Way Tree Road.

When I began to post an online list of my collection of tapes and videos to BMI's site for people who wanted to trade, BMI's website experienced another rush of positive feedback, urging us to take these lists of tapes and videos and develop another site devoted entirely to just that. Many of these people were not traders themselves, but looked to a source where they could purchase these audio and video recordings of their favorite sound systems and artists. Many of them had never been to a Sunsplash or STING, or even a live sound system dance. Some heard about the various sound systems in Jamaica and abroad but never heard a cassette for themselves. Others never knew what the artists they were listening to on the radio everyday looked like. Still some found it hard to locate the latest reggae tapes and videos in the vicinity where they were resided in the US or abroad. Again we were called upon to take it to the next level. And again, we did.

In 1997, after a brief appearance as "The Bashment Corner", Cassette FrEak Central emerged as the very first website of its kind - a "One StOp ShOp /Trade for Reggae Tapes, and Videos". While sites did exist that offered dancehall mixes, we were the VERY FIRST to offer sound systems tapes (Bass Odyssey, Stone Love, Styur Gav, etc). Cassette FrEak Central gets its name from the term "cassette freak" which is a term used by Jamaicans to describe serious sound system tape collectors. The "Central" connotes that this would be a central location on the Internet for people interested in reggae tapes and videos. Stationed at the URL http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/8545/ (now defunct) - visitors from all over the world could find hundreds of dancehall tapes and videos available for sale or trade. Each tape and video was categorized by year, and included a description of the name, date, venue, and a brief description of the dance. Live tapes and videos included a list of the performers who performed. Likewise sound clash tapes offered info on the sounds involved and the highlights of the clash. An online resource of this kind was unheard of at the time! As demand grew, I linked up with, and enlisted the services of some of the top cassette freaks in the New York City area, including my right hand man Cassette Face and trading buddy Star Bwoy. This combined with heavy local and international trading allowed Cassette FrEak Central's inventory to double, then triple, and so on... Many have visited the site, saw what I did, liked it, and imitated it. Still we have used our knowledge of the Internet and the cassette biz to help many other cassette freaks to come online with their catalogues. After all, its all about a love for the music!

In 1998 - due to customer demands and requests - we began to offer several CD titles from time to time. Positive customer feedback motivated us in Spring 1999 to add a permanent catalogue of various mixed and sound system CDs in addition to our Tapes at Videos. Now we had become the One StOp ShOp /Trade for Reggae CDs, as well as Tapes and Videos. It was then that we decided that a name change would be in order. We sought a name that would be more descriptive of Cassette FrEak Central's purpose, hsitroy, and destiny - after all, we weren't just limited to cassettes! With great insight into the future, and a lot of suggestions from relatives, friends, and even customers/visitors to the site, the name was changed to its present name: MusicFrEaKCentral.com (MFC for short). The response was overwhelming and we immediately experienced an increase in visitors and customers. This increase in traffic to MusicFrEaKCentral.com's website demanded that we move to a larger, faster server. With that end in mind we enlisted the aid of my good friend and technical consultant Leslie Jones of Frelans Associates (www.frelans.com), and within a month the site was upgraded and moved to its present home at MusicFrEaKCentral.com.

As MusicFrEaKCentral.com continued to provide customers with the latest CDs, Tapes, and Videos at affordable prices, some of our customers saw the need to provide dancehall news in addition to our massive inventory of Cds, Tapes, and Videos. In 1998 we started out with a bi-weekly newsletter - The Reggae WaTcH Cafe' - that updated people on the latest buz in the dancehall biz. This newsletter was very different from the regular news you get from your average reggae website which merely regurgitated articles from popular Jamaican and West Indian publications. The Reggae WaTcH WaTcH CaFe' Newsletter approached dancehall news from an insider's point of view and told it like it is, drawing from our knowledge of as well as contacts in the sound system and music business. We did not care about steppting on anybody's toes because we were an independent entity. People liked our stories and appreciated our indepth knowledge of the business (after all, I am a sound system selector). Again we were asked to take it to the next level. Alas the birth of The Reggae WaTcH CaFe' Magazine (to be later named the JAMWORLD MOVEMENTS MAGAZINE) - updated every week and posted on MusicFrEaKCentral.com website.

Both Black Majesty Intland MusicFrEaKCentral.com flourished simultansously. They both appealed to the same visitors, but for different reasons. BMI had all the the latest sound clips on The Music Page, the Latest Dances, the "Reggae Sound Systems" Essay & Sound System List, and continued to Feature Artists each month. MFC had the rarest and latest CDs, Tapes, and Videos for the hardcore dancehall reggae fans, as well as a newsletter and magazine designed strictly for the dancehall fan in mind. After a while we began to notice that many people had no idea that it was the same force and concept behind all of these projects. It was then in late 1998 that we (when I speak of "we" I again speak of my creative efforts combined) decided to launch a name that would encompass the all of our efforts:

Black Majesty Intl Reggae Website (original 1995 site)

MusicFrEakCentral.com

JAMWORLD MOVEMENTS MAGAZINE

Caribbean Humor Exchange

Jamworld Message Board

Reggae Link Up Page

"Reggae Sound Systems" Essay

After looking at all the projects that I had attempted thus far, it was clear that they all had one major characteristic in common: these Enterprises were all part of a Movement to make people aware of Caribbean culture. This movement (for me) started from my birthplace in Jamaican, and hopefully will spread across the World. The name was inevitable:

This new name and URL (http://wwwJamworldReggae.com/) meant a total restructuring of all the projects (name changes, redeveloping & relocation of pages, etc) so as to provide a cohesive delivery of our services to the online Caribbean community. This is a process we are still undergoing and we thank you for your patience. With the popularity of our new website on the rise, JAMWORLD MOVEMENTS ENTERPRISES (JME for short) looks to the new millenium as an opportunity to further our motto: "An Intellectual Approach to Caribbean Music & Culture". We will continue to strive to bring you quality Caribbean content at a price we can all afford: "FREE"! JAMWORLD MOVEMENTS MAGAZINE will continue to be true to the art, using our indepth knowledge of the biz to bring you hardcore news an views without the politics, plugs, and ads that saturate so many online Caribbean publications. Simultaneously, MusicFrEaKCentral.com will continue to be the "One StOp ShOp/Trade for Reggae Tapes, and Videos" - be it CDs, Tapes and Videos from the 1980's or ones that just came out yesterday! To all our visitors both old a new, we thank you for your on-going support (you made it happen!), and we hope to continue serving you well into the next millenium! Nuff Respect!