{"id":2445,"date":"2021-11-19T17:23:34","date_gmt":"2021-11-19T17:23:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/?p=2445"},"modified":"2021-11-19T17:23:34","modified_gmt":"2021-11-19T17:23:34","slug":"byron-lee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/?p=2445","title":{"rendered":"Byron Lee"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Lee was born in\u00a0<a title=\"Christiana, Jamaica\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Christiana,_Jamaica\">Christiana<\/a>,\u00a0<a class=\"mw-redirect\" title=\"Manchester Parish, Jamaica\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Manchester_Parish,_Jamaica\">Manchester Parish, Jamaica<\/a>, to a\u00a0<a title=\"Chinese Jamaicans\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Chinese_Jamaicans\">Chinese-Jamaican<\/a>\u00a0mother Evelyn Chung and a Chinese father Oscar Lee (a language teacher) originally from\u00a0<a title=\"Kowloon\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Kowloon\">Kowloon<\/a>, Hong Kong.<sup id=\"cite_ref-Katz_2-1\" class=\"reference\"><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Byron_Lee#cite_note-Katz-2\">[2]<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0The family moved to the Mountain View Gardens area of\u00a0<a title=\"Kingston, Jamaica\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Kingston,_Jamaica\">Kingston<\/a>\u00a0when Lee was around 8 or 9 years old.<sup id=\"cite_ref-Katz_2-2\" class=\"reference\"><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Byron_Lee#cite_note-Katz-2\">[2]<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0He learned to play piano at a\u00a0<a class=\"mw-redirect\" title=\"Convent school\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Convent_school\">convent school<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0<a title=\"Mandeville, Jamaica\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mandeville,_Jamaica\">Mandeville<\/a>, but put music on hold when he was selected to the\u00a0<a title=\"Jamaica national football team\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jamaica_national_football_team\">Jamaica national football team<\/a>.<sup id=\"cite_ref-Katz_2-3\" class=\"reference\"><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Byron_Lee#cite_note-Katz-2\">[2]<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0He taught himself to play bass on a homemade instrument, and around 1950, along with his friend Carl Brady, he formed the first incarnation of the Dragonaires, named after the college football team that they played for, at that time concentrating on mento.<sup id=\"cite_ref-Thompson_3-0\" class=\"reference\"><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Byron_Lee#cite_note-Thompson-3\">[3]<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0The band turned professional in 1956 and went on to become one of Jamaica&#8217;s leading\u00a0<a title=\"Ska\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ska\">ska<\/a>\u00a0bands, continuing since and taking in other genres such as\u00a0<a title=\"Calypso music\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Calypso_music\">calypso<\/a>,\u00a0<a title=\"Soca music\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Soca_music\">Soca<\/a>, and\u00a0<a class=\"new\" title=\"Mas music (page does not exist)\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/w\/index.php?title=Mas_music&amp;action=edit&amp;redlink=1\">Mas<\/a>.<sup id=\"cite_ref-Thompson_3-1\" class=\"reference\"><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Byron_Lee#cite_note-Thompson-3\">[3]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n<p>According to Michael E. Veal in his book\u00a0<i>Dub: soundscapes and shattered songs in Jamaican reggae<\/i>, Wesleyan University Press, 2007), Byron Lee is known to have introduced the electric bass guitar to Jamaica in late 1959 or 1960. However, the reason Lee began to use the electric bass as opposed to the double bass had nothing to do with sound. Rather, it was a way for Lee to avoid carrying the large and heavy double bass to the truck to move from gig to gig. The bass guitar soon gained popularity throughout the country and soon became the standard. The electric bass&#8217;s louder, clearer, and more in-your-face sound soon changed the entire sound of Jamaican music entirely, especially after Skatalites bassist Lloyd Brevett took a liking to it.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Byron_Lee\">Read more&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lee was born in\u00a0Christiana,\u00a0Manchester Parish, Jamaica, to a\u00a0Chinese-Jamaican\u00a0mother Evelyn Chung and a Chinese father Oscar Lee (a language teacher) originally from\u00a0Kowloon, Hong Kong.[2]\u00a0The family moved to the Mountain View Gardens area of\u00a0Kingston\u00a0when Lee was around 8 or 9 years old.[2]\u00a0He learned to play piano at a\u00a0convent school\u00a0in\u00a0Mandeville, but put music on hold when he was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2446,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[235],"tags":[234],"class_list":["post-2445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reggae-icons","tag-facts"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2445"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2445\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2448,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2445\/revisions\/2448"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}