Pop Brixton Presents… Windrush Celebrations

From its early days in the 1950s, London’s diasporic Jamaican soundsystem culture has been filled with a multitude of mysterious characters: Exhibit A, Jah Shaka. There have been innumerable anecdotes passed from one generation to the next about Shaka. What’s his real name? Did he really shut down a rival sound by just putting his finger on his mouth? But throughout these stories, another ghost-like character inevitably appears. His name is Percival Miller, but he’s better known as Metro.

Born in Jamaica in 1941, Metro is the genius sound engineer who built Shaka’s custom tube amplifiers – called “valves” in the UK – the power and quality of which was unrivaled for decades and triggered years and years of questions, pale imitations and general geeking out. Eventually, Metro’s unparalleled works played a key role in Shaka becoming the most acclaimed dub soundsystem in England from the 1970s on.