University of the West Indies at Mona Lecturer, Clinton Hutton (C.H.). talks with Jamaican popular music historian-aesthete Garth White (G.W.) about the formative years of Jamaican popular music and the impact these had on him in shaping his own career path as a Jamaican popular music scholar. C.H.: The Jamaican popular recording music culture has inspired and spawned a number of professions and interests, including your own. How has this inspired you and shaped your own agency to be? G.W.: The reason for my interest was that, fortunately, I was born on the fringe of Trench Town, on a road named Greenwich Crescent, which leads us into West Road, the main road in Trench Town, which is now Amett Gardens. And so I was exposed from very early to many different types of music. In fact, I had a similar experience as some of the artists who would fashion this music I kind of grew up with it. [I]n the park where [there] is now a round about, at the top of West Road in Trench Town - on a Sunday evening or sometimes during the week, you'd find Revival or Poko people holding their kind of session. There would be sound systems. Any number of them in Trench Town. And in fact, right opposite where I lived, there was a big famous, early dancehall named Live Wire Club. Live Wire Club was the place where they had the famous, some said eleven, some said seventeen sounds, in one of the earliest clashes. But we didn't call it clash then. It was rivalry. But it didn't have the undertones of violence or bad feelings, you know. Seventeen sounds... in one dance. [T]here would also be the occasional Kumina visits, in that same park. And in Trench Town, as most people know, you'd have had several Revival churches. Now this is in addition to Rediffusion. Since many people really didn't have radios or turntables then, but depended on Rediffusion that is the arm of Radio Jamaica. And then now, to top it all off... my yard was kind [of] like the traditional big yard [for] the kind of area, so that in fact, one of the time, a room was rented to a sound man named Granum - not one of your frontline, your A line sound systems, but probably a low B. So I had access to the music, from any number of angles. And from very early, I started to play and even, thief out is the word, (which is going to recur) thief out and go when Mr. Granum [was] playing over Live Wire, as a seven/eight year old. So my exposure to the music is very long, and I suppose, this is what has impelled me to follow it up and to document it, since I know it almost from the start. C.H.: Why to document it? G.W.: Well, in the early stages, we didn't know, or most people didn't appreciate that this was something that ought to be documented. Where this interest first came to me, [I] was in secondary school.... That is JC (Jamaica College)... where there was something of a class [war]. I don't want to call it class war, because we were really on fairly amicable terms. But you'd find that the better off, the so-called upper class folk used to scoff, in no uncertain terms, about this music which we, who were coming from [the] innercity, or down the bottom, [liked]. [W]hen we returned from holidays, we'd be boasting about this new song and so on, and some of the other people, the upper class people, would be saying, cho, that is buff-buff music man, that won't go anywhere. So from very early, [we] embarked on something, for want of a better word, like a crusade. Crusade is not a good word, given what the history of crusades [was], but I think you understand what I mean. So you have to take on the mande of defending the music, from early. Then a fortunate circumstance again was that, numbered amongst the teachers in JC in the '60s, were two very important persons in music scholarship, if you want to put it that way. One, there was Carl McLeod, who incidentally taught me drums, for cadet. Carl McLeod is arguably, one of our best drummers - trap drummer, jazz drummers. …