This new book explores the Art of Dancehall, and features Toronto in a massive way
Right from the genre's inception in the early 1980s, Toronto has been a hub for dancehall music.
That's evident in Art of Dancehall, the new book from DJ/producer Walshy Fire — best known for his work with Grammy-nominated genre-bending trio Major Lazer.
Art of Dancehall compiles historic dancehall flyers from Jamaica, New York, Japan, and Canada. Walshy Fire was born to Jamaican parents in Florida and grew up between Jamaica and Miami, but he has a deep familiarity with Toronto, having spent childhood summers in Scarborough and Pickering.
In the 1960s and '70s Canada experienced a surge in immigration from the Caribbean, with Jamaicans flocking to Toronto in particular. They brought a rich musical history and culture with them. By the 1970s, neighbourhoods like Eglinton West became centres for the creation and sale of reggae records. By the time dancehall emerged in the 1980s, Toronto's Jamaican diaspora had its own musical ecosystem.
Most of the flyers in the Canada section belong to podcaster Sheldon "Muscle" Bruce, who began collecting at a very young age and hasn't stopped since. The flyers show a lot of history. Many of dancehall and reggae's most decorated acts performed at some of the country's most iconic venues, including Tony Rebel and Freddie McGregor playing The Opera House in 1994, or Buju Banton performing at Ontario Place a year later.
Muscle started collecting flyers in the late 80s when he asked a relative travelling to the UK to bring him back something from their trip. They returned with a flyer for a dancehall party, and that is where his fascination was formed.
"Very basic flyer, eight-by-eleven flyer," he says. Simple writing on it, but I was so amazed by it. Even stuff where you'd see the dollar sign was the pound sign, so stuff would make me say 'Holy smokes!'. Because you've never seen this, and I'm touching this thing from another country."
He was around 13 years old at the time, and although he was too young to go to the actual parties, that didn't stop him from going to the local barbershop or West Indian store to grab whatever flyers were available.
"I really wanted to know what was going on at that particular time there," he says "Even if I can't go, I just want to know. Who was the hot DJs? Who are the hot sounds? Oh, this artist is coming. I just wanted to know. And then after a while, I knew that as long as I have these things, this is going to be a snapshot of history."
The relationship between Canada and Jamaica has always been strong, particularly among musicians, Bruce adds.
"A lot of artists, the first time they ever left [Jamaica], Canada was the first place they came to," he says.
Beyond becoming a go-to tour stop for Jamaican artists, Toronto developed its own DJ collectives, known as sound systems, who would have soundclashes. A soundclash is a musical battle between two or more sound systems or DJs where they try to outplay each other with better selections. It originated in Jamaica, and was a large part of the dancehall culture in Toronto during the '90s.
One of Bruce's most notable flyers is for the legendary bout between local sound systems King Turbo and Super Fresh. King Turbo were the consensus top crew in Canada at that time. Super Fresh were the newcomers gunning for Turbo's spot.
"That was legendary. That was August 1997 at Marina Banquet Hall," he says. That was a big thing because Super Fresh was from the west [end of the city] and King Turbo was from the east… It was a real standoff. You're defending your song tonight, and we're defending ours. It was crazy, a gunshot actually ended the dance."
Clashes were often territorial, with sound systems representing different parts of the city. They were usually dark, smoky and even hostile affairs. It was not uncommon for a soundclash to end in violence.
DJ Ron Nelson is one of the pioneers of Black music in Canada His show Fantastic Voyage on community station CKLN was Canada's first radio program dedicated to hip-hop. Towards the end of his tenure he started playing dancehall once a week — the last Saturday of every month. He would later launch ReggaeMania, which became one of the premier shows playing reggae and dancehall in the '90s.
He was around for some of those unsavoury endings to a night of fun.
"There's a lot of bad boys in dancehall," he says. You know, gunmen. We went through periods of having many incidents of dances where there [were] shootouts. Every… person who's a patron of dancehall probably knows somebody who's gotten shot or killed or murdered, so that's the sad side of it."
Community radio station logos were a constant presence on the flyer. Stations like CKLN, CHRY and CIUT, which had been integral in the growth of hip-hop in Canada, were now playing an essential role in the maturation of dancehall.
"Community radio was huge," says Bruce. "Remember back then — we're talking about the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s — there wasn't any internet. There was no way to really disseminate this information so people could get it. These were big, big platforms and to this day they still have a place in the community, because they're community driven."
Ron Nelson played a huge part in that, giving members of the local dancehall community their first opportunities on the air, often turning his show over to local sound systems, letting them be stars in their own right.
"The one thing that I did that most people don't do is humbled myself," he says. I brought our local sound systems on the radio for their first time. I said, 'Come on down, and I'm going to let you play and let you talk too.'"
The Art of Dancehall is more than a book, it's a time capsule that captures a movement that took root in Canada and blossomed into a full-fledged culture. They're more than just promotional material; the flyers are visual reminders of the golden era of dancehall in Canada. They tell a story about migration, identity, and how music travels, transforms, and ultimately takes root in places far from its origin.
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