Edward George’s Strangeness of Dub is a unique and thoughtful exploration of dub music, blending deep listening with critical theory, cultural history, and live sound practice. At the heart of this project lies a passionate engagement with dub not just as a musical genre but as a way of experiencing sound, identity, and space. Through radio broadcasts, live events, discussions, and performances, Edward George invites listeners to rethink what dub music means, how it functions, and why its strangeness is so compelling. His work highlights how dubfrom its origins in reggae to its lasting influence on contemporary sound culturecontinues to shape how we understand rhythm, repetition, and sonic space. This topic explores the life and ideas behind Edward George and the Strangeness of Dub series, unpacking its cultural significance, philosophical depth, and enduring impact on music and sound studies.
Who Is Edward George?
Edward George is a writer, broadcaster, researcher, and cultural commentator based in London. He is a founding member of the Black Audio Film Collective (BAFC), a seminal artistic group active between 1982 and 1998 that produced innovative work addressing Black cultural experience, history, and media representation. One of his best-known projects with the BAFC is the science fiction documentary Last Angel of History (1996), which he wrote and presented. Beyond film, George has collaborated in musical and multimedia projects such as the duo Flow Motion and the electronic music group Hallucinator. His eclectic artistic practice bridges academic thought, creative performance, and sound culture, and is deeply shaped by Afro-diasporic histories and sonic traditions.
The Strangeness of Dub An Ongoing Project
At the centre of George’s recent work is the series The Strangeness of Dub, a regular broadcast on Morley College Radio. This show challenges conventional ways of talking about music, foregrounding dub’s capacity to open up ideas about space, repetition, silence, and identity. For George, dub is not simply a style of music but a sonic processa practice of remixing sound that generates new meaning through transformation, echo, and absence. Drawing on a wide range of musical sources and critical theory, George deconstructs how dub operates on both auditory and conceptual levels.
What Makes Dub Strange?
To understand the idea of dub’s strangeness, it helps first to know a bit about dub music itself. Originating in Jamaica in the late 1960s and early 1970s, dub emerged as a remix culture built around reggae recordings. Producers like King Tubby, Lee Scratch Perry, and Scientist stripped down tracks to their rhythmic cores, emphasizing bass and drum, and using echo, reverb, and other effects to create new soundscapes. Dub was born from experimental manipulations at mixing desks, turning existing recordings into fresh, abstract compositions.
George’s concept of strangeness goes beyond the technical aspects of dub. For him, the strangeness of dub reflects how the sound destabilizes ordinary listening habits, inviting listeners to experience music in new ways. In his broadcasts and talks, George often emphasizes how dub creates space and silence as meaningful elements, opening up new possibilities for understanding sound, memory, and identity. His approach draws on critical theory, especially ideas around absence, repetition, and the body’s orientation to sound.
Critical Theory and Sonic Experience
George’s work situates dub within broader cultural and philosophical frameworks. He often connects the music to concepts like the uncannya term from psychoanalysis that describes something familiar yet alien at the same time. This sense of the uncanny resonates with dub’s use of echo and repetition, which can make familiar sounds feel unfamiliar, deepening listeners’ engagement with what they hear. By framing dub as a sonic process that unsettles conventional listening, George prompts audiences to think about how sound affects perception, memory, and identity.
Methodology Listening as Research
One of the defining aspects of George’s Strangeness of Dub is his emphasis on listening as a form of research and knowledge production. Rather than simply presenting music, he encourages deep attentive listening, where sound becomes a tool for thinking and reflection. This methodology challenges listeners to slow down, to attend to spaces between sounds, and to appreciate how musical structures communicate beyond melody or lyric. Through this practice, dub becomes a way of knowingan epistemology rooted in vibration, memory, and cultural heritage.
- Dub as a sonic process that creates new musical meaning
- Emphasis on space, echo, and repetition in listening
- Connections between dub and critical theory
- Historical ties to Afro-diasporic sound cultures
- Listening as an active, embodied research practice
Live Events and Public Engagement
The Strangeness of Dub is not confined to radio. Edward George has presented live sessions and discussions at cultural venues and events where he plays dub recordings, mixes sound live, and engages audiences in conversation. These events showcase dub’s power as a communal experience that brings theory and practice together. Through performances, lectures, and collective listening sessions, George builds a community around deeper listening and reflection on the music’s cultural implications.
Broader Cultural Impact
While dub music originated in Jamaica, its influence has spread globally, shaping many other musical styles, from hip hop and electronic dance music to post-punk and ambient genres. George’s work highlights this broad impact, situating dub as both historical practice and living tradition. By linking dub to wider cultural historiesincluding diaspora, identity, and resistanceStrangeness of Dub underscores how the music resonates far beyond the recording studio or sound system.
Connecting Music and Identity
For George, dub’s significance is tied to broader narratives of cultural identity and belonging. He often explores how dub reflects and shapes experiences of diaspora and marginality, linking its sound and history to questions of memory, place, and difference. By situating dub within this wider context, George frames it as not only music but a form of cultural expression that speaks to shared histories and lived experience.
Edward George’s Strangeness of Dub offers a rich, multifaceted exploration of dub music that goes beyond genre boundaries. Through his radio series, live events, and critical reflections, he invites listeners to engage deeply with sound, history, and culture. By framing dub as a process that unsettles conventional listening and opens up new ways of knowing, George’s work encourages us to listen with curiosity, attentiveness, and an openness to the unexpected. In doing so, he reminds us that music is not just entertainment, but a powerful medium through which we experience the world, understand ourselves, and connect with broader cultural currents. The strangeness of dub, then, becomes a lens through which we can rethink sound, identity, and the many forms of music’s influence on our lives.