Jessica Lipsky

If you were alive and clubbing in the boroughs in the 1980s and ‘90s, chances are you saw advertisements for a “sound clash.” If you were lucky—and near enough to Flatbush, Jamaica or Wakefield—you attended these wild, bombastic, occasionally dangerous and ultimately legendary dancehall parties.  Born in Jamaica in the late ‘70s, dancehall found its second home in New York (and, specifically, central Brooklyn) in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Often harder, faster and, later, more digital than its progenitor reggae, dancehall relies on instrumental “riddim” tracks that would be the bedrock for a toaster to sing and talk over. At parties and festivals, dancehall music was blasted over massive sound systems and these “sounds” would battle for supremacy in a clash. Held between competing systems from different cities, boroughs and countries, these sound clashes were the Caribbean equivalent of a rap battle. “It's hard to explain to somebody if you weren't there,” says DJ, MC and producer Walshy Fire, one half of the Grammy-winning group Major Lazer. “To experience the level of danger, the level of fashion, the flyness. To see people floss at a time where flossing was never a thing, to see floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall speakers … Thankfully, we have the flyers."  Birth and death by flyer Walshy grew up in Kingston’s Half Way Tree neighborhood—home to many legendary dancehall clubs and sounds—and spent years in Miami’s scene and in Connecticut before moving to Canarsie, Brooklyn in 1994. Whi