One of the beautiful things about this country is that it is not short of individuals whose extraordinary genius have contributed to the uniqueness of the Jamaican brand of creativity in various fields of activities. This has been a long tradition from Marcus Garvey, through to Bob Marley and now Usain Bolt.

Today, the radio landscape is proliferated with over 20 radio stations with round-the-clock broadcasting and Jamaican sound systems, such as Stone Love and Merritone enjoy international admiration. But how did it all begin? The name Horace Leslie Galbraith does not resonate among Jamaicans of any age group, but when the history of Jamaican sound system and broadcasting shall have been written, Galbraith will be remembered as a trailblazing pioneer in both fields.

Galbraith built the first television set in Jamaica in 1952, opened his own business, Galbraith’s Electronics, in 1970, and retired in 1994, but above all he is credited as a master builder of amplifiers for sound systems. Against that background, he comes with a rather fascinating perspective about the genesis of the sound system phenomena in Jamaica.

“What really kicked-started the sound system as we know it was politics,” Galbraith told the Sunday Observer.

“In 1944,” he goes on, “the population of Jamaica had been introduced to adult representational politics (one man, one vote). Prior to this you had to earn more than one hundred pounds a year, or be a land owner, a civil servant, or a doctor, or other professional, to be able to vote.”

As he explained, it evolved out of the need to find a creative way of promoting the campaign activities of the early elections after adult suffrage. “In 1949… with ‘election fever hotting up’ for the next election there was a need for portable sound systems for street corner meetings.

“We imported the components and commenced construction of a number of 25 watt amplifiers for use with 12 volt car batteries and 110 volt AC (alternating current). These were supplied with two-horn speakers, a microphone and provision for the connection of a wind-up record player. We had a ready demand for these units and sold to both the JLP and PNP.”

Radio came to Jamaica in the early to mid-1930s. In those years, all radios sold in Jamaica had to be able to tune in to the short wave radio bands as the broadcasts from England, (the BBC), the Netherlands, Germany and France were all short wave transmissions. Medium wave radios could also pick up Cuba and the Dominican Republic, as well as the high-powered American stations WCKY, WLWO and WLNY, but only from after dark until sunrise, when atmospheric conditions allowed for reception.

In the early years, there weren’t many radios and Galbraith recalled that in 1936, when King Edward VIII was crowned, people gathered in the streets outside of the houses of those who owned radios. These radios were then turned up to the maximum.

Galbraith’s inclination towards a radio technician came in the era when Ham radio (amateur radio operator and by extension radio in general) was invoked. Shortly after World War II started in 1939, broadcasting was suspended for all amateur radio operators. These HAM radio operators, although dubbed ‘amateurs’, were highly qualified men who built their own transmitters and communicated with each other and with other HAM operators worldwide. In times of disaster, like hurricanes, they were the only means of communication with the outside world.

With the advent of war these stations were forbidden to transmit by order of the government and so John Grinan, a HAM Radio operator, donated his transmitting apparatus to the Jamaican government. With the expertise of the amateur fraternity and others, they transformed the apparatus into a broadcasting station with a small studio on Fairway Avenue. The first Jamaican radio station, Radio ZQI (which later became RJR) started broadcasting on 4.95MHZ and 3.75 MI with Archie Lindo, Dennis Gick and others.

“It was remarkable how significantly things changed with the advent of ZQI. Before ZQI started broadcasting, all children and many adults were in their beds at 7:00 pm. After local broadcasting with ZQI began all persons with radios listened to the local station until 8:00 pm, when it signed off, and then retired to bed. ZQI eventually extended their hours from 6:00 am to 9:00 pm and then to 10:00 pm,” Galbraith recalled.

The war years

From Central Branch Elementary School, Galbraith moved to Kingston Technical High School and in his second year at Kingston Tech went to war.

“It was 1944. When we were interviewed for the British Air Force in Jamaica, about 30 of us were selected to be sent immediately to Glasgow University where we trained for six months in radio engineering, which included radio receiving and communication apparatus. Thereafter, a group of about six of us were sent to a special course at Cosford to do what was then called radio location (radar technology). I worked on radar equipment,” he explained.

While there, Galbraith would read every textbook, technical manual and magazine that he could get his hands on and continued to ‘fool around’ in his spare time. One of his achievements was a portable, 4″ square radio which he built with miniature tubes.

“The end of my military life in the Royal Air Force and my return to Jamaica meant that it was time for me to find a job and to start earning a living. But, in fact, it was the great music man, Sonny Bradshaw, who got the first radio that I built to actually work. One day Kenneth Wong, Edward Wong’s brother, came to see me, asking me to repair a small radio. He told me that Edward and Milton Edwards were starting a radio repair business upstairs Hyatt’s Drug store, near East Street on East Queen Street. Shortly after my 22nd birthday I went to see them and asked if I could join them,” the 83-year- old genius said.

In his biographical document tracing the evolution of the sound system and radio in Jamaica, Galbraith states that although he had gained invaluable knowledge and experience from the war, the war had kept things here in the country pretty much the same and, up to 1950, there were still many people who did not own a radio.

He recalled that radios available at the time were all large table models in large cabinets. Some models had provision for connecting a phonograph or electric turntable externally.

“This provided an opportunity for us and we obtained orders to convert these radios into ‘radiograms’. These were, effectively, small sound systems for home use. We fitted the radios into new and larger, locally made, mahogany cabinets with a separate compartment for the new electric turntable which we connected to the radio,” he explained.

The electric turntables used at that time were adaptations of the old spring wound gramophone. The sound reproducer head was replaced by an electrical device which converted the sound waves recorded on the discs into electrical signals which could be amplified and reproduced by a loudspeaker. The quality of the music reproduced from the 78 RPM records available in the forties and fifties, however, was barely acceptable.

During that time, and from before the war, Times Store was the largest store of its kind in Jamaica with its various departments and merchandise. Stanley Motta’s was similar, although smaller. Stanley Motta’s was the leader in the rental of public address systems, juke boxes and radio phones, which were big commercial radios with a turntable that could play records.

After a while, Stanley on Barry Street also started Stanley’s Sound System to rent out units for radio phone parties. As this name indicates, the radio phone was the earliest ‘sound system’ for parties.

“From the early thirties to the fifties there were exclusive clubs in Kingston with live orchestras led by George Moxey, Redver Cooke and Mapletoft Poulle, amongst others, which were patronised by the St Andrew well-to-do. For us ordinary people there were no live orchestras but, instead, large homes on Victoria Avenue, upper King Street and elsewhere, where they hired a radio phone with popular 78rpm records and the patrons paid from two to five shillings entrance fee,” Galbraith recounted.

“But the music from the scratchy 78rpm records at a radio phone dance was very poor and could only be heard by about 20 people. The sound quality needed to be improved. The music had to be enhanced — less noise, more clarity, “rounder” bass, voices to be brought out — and more power was needed. Having built the 25 watt amplifiers, I was sure I could build a better amplifier to improve our radio phone dances and set out to do so,” he stated.

Admitting that his trailblazing amplifier exceeded his expectation Galbraith concluded, “This first, ground-breaking model was sold to Tom Wong and was used to start his sound system called Tom the Great Sebastian. Within a few months there were sound system dances all over Kingston at various lodge halls, open air lawns and anywhere that could hold a crowd of 100 people and up. We supplied amplifiers to sound systems all over Kingston and the country parishes. Among the sound systems we supplied amplifiers to were Nicks, Prof, V Rocket, Hoshue, Duke Reid, Coxsone Dodd (Downbeat) and many others all over Jamaica.”

Having said that, Galbraith declared that there is no mystery to the local music phenomenon. “People loved music … talented people made music … enterprising individuals got the music recorded and the radio stations and the sound systems took the music to an enthusiastic public. To this day it continues.

“Mr Graham Goodhall made it happen for some early singers and they were able to record a session in studio. A master was produced and a stamper press turned out the first local 78 and 45 discs. Then, of course, the dam broke and a deluge of rocksteady, ska, and reggae erupted. Music and the sound systems have been and remain the voice of the Jamaican people,” he emphasised.