Jamaicans Have Ditched Dancehall’s Drum Pattern While Afrobeats Embraced It, Says Producer JonFX

Platinum-selling producer Jon FX says Dancehall has been losing its international appeal since 2007, all due to the fact that many Jamaican artists and producers have discarded the music’s unique identifier (its drum pattern), which Afrobeats has now subsumed. 

In fact, the producer says the ditching of Dancehall’s drum pattern, for Hip-Hop/Trap beats, had a massive negative impact on the performance of Jamaican music on Billboard’s now-defunct Reggae Digital Song Sales chart, the removal of which he did not find surprising.

In an interview with Television Jamaica’s Anthony Miller, Jon FX rued the fact that the Reggae Song chart was discontinued in 2020, because it no longer appeared to serve any purpose.  Many Jamaican music connoisseurs have seen the removal as additional evidence of the genre’s decline, when compared with the commercially-successful Afrobeats, which was given a UK Official Afrobeat chart in 2020, and a Billboard US Afrobeats Song chart in March 2022. 

“I am here to be a little bit in your face and to let you know that we have changed our drum patterns,” the … producer said in explaining the downward spiral of the music.

“In the international world, put all your opinions aside, genres are categorized by drum patterns.  If you are supposed to get a guy that does blues… one-two-three, you know that is blues when you hear that one-two-three count,” he said in explaining the blues drum pattern.

“That record that Jada Kingdom just did (GPP) is a blues pattern.  What Reggae is, normally one drop one-two-drum-four… everything is really a four beat, you know.  So our Dancehall was always close to the two hand because the world dance to a “two”,” he added in explaining the science behind the music, while giving Michael Jackson’s Billy Jean and Mr. Eazy’s Drive Me Crazy on Tony Kelly’s Buy Out riddim, as examples of internationally-loved danceable musical hits.

“That’s what the world likes.  And it gave a different kinda style to the one-two that we are used to.  Our Dancehall (industry) decided to drop on a ‘five’ and it has been happening like this since like 2007 and it has steadily declined,” the Nah Let Go producer said.

In furthering his arguments, Jon FX also explained that the Dancehall drum pattern – which many artists have now tossed aside as ‘old people music’ and swapped for Trap and Hip Hop – is what Afrobeats artists are now using to take the musical world by storm, resulting in many people believing the genre coming out of the African continent, is Dancehall.

“So the Afrobeats is sharing the same drum pattern as the Dancehall.  The world don’t understand the words that we are saying; they are just categorizing it by the beat.  So a lot of people think that Afrobeats is Reggae,” he explained.

As for the Billboard Reggae Digital Song Sales chart, Jon FX said that in reality, Jamaicans unwittingly gave up the chart (by default), as due to the sub-par performance of the new music, in terms of sales, Billboard was left with no choice.

“Our Reggae charts that was there; they didn’t take the charts away from us.  The charts was always there, but it was dormant.  They turned it into what you call a years end chart…. because nothing wasn’t entering ‘cause there were no sales and there were no proper streams,” he explained.

“So nothing wasn’t changing in the top 10.  So they just said the charts is dormant; it is Afro sound that is coming out of Jamaica and it is similar to this Afrobeats, so they just decided to just call this chart – because they had more people supporting this Afro sound,” he added.

Jon FX is not the first music producer who has pointed out that the widescale change in drum patterns and the steering away from Dancehall beats, towards a more American sound, was to the detriment of the genre.

Kyng Midas producer NotNice, in January this year, while admitting that he was regarded as one of the producers who instigated Trap’s appeal on the island, had said that the genre doesn’t belong to Jamaica and that “a lot of the riddims are built by some international persons and the kids who sell them online”.

Some commenters had agreed, contending that Dancehall started going downhill when producers such as NotNice himself, Stephen “Di Genius” McGregor and Rvssian “started doing the hip hop riddim thing” which evolved into “Trap Dancehall”.

Also in August this year, Dancehall icon Papa San had pointed out that he had noticed that many of the “new sounds” coming out of Jamaica and are being labelled Dancehall are bereft of the genre’s  “drum patterns”.

Bounty Killer, in 2019 radio interview in Trinidad, had argued that the new sounds of music coming out of Jamaica are simply Trap fusions, which are American sounds, and should not be conflated with the Dancehall genre of music, which he said is an authentic Jamaican sound with a distinct drum pattern.

In the interview, Bounty had outlined the scientific reasons why the sounds could not be deemed Dancehall, noting that the notion of “Trap Dancehall” was a misnomer.