Digital media, digital communication, digital currency – “Digital” is a word, that indicates innovation. Therefore, it’s often used to describe the future of things. However, in the Dancehall context it means pretty much the opposite: Although current Dancehall, like most of the music nowadays, is produced digitally, “Digital Dancehall” stands for the style of Jamaican music, that was popular in the ’80s after the “Sleng Teng” riddim completely changed the aesthetics of Dancehall. The studios, where until then bands like the Roots Radics produced the riddims for the vocalists, were now the playground for a new set of musical wizards like Steely & Cleevie, who used keyboards and synthesizers instead of live musicians.

Fast forward to 2018: The results of the creative explosion, caused by this generation change, are now the focus of the fourth edition of Sentinel’s Dancehall Foundation mixtape series. 47 tunes of raw energy and simple beauty, that give you a clue why the arrival of digital production technologies caused such an earthquake in the Jamaican music scene.