Champion Sound: roots, youth, community in motion
Champion Sound System, Meanjin Reggae Festival, 2024
I grew up in Sheffield in the north of England and have been listening to reggae music since I was very young. A friend of my dad used to run a yearly outdoor reggae festival called Music In The Sun, where I first saw live reggae artists perform and experienced sound system culture.
I remember one year the event got rained out, and was moved to an old indoor factory complex. I had my mind blown by the power of the bass filling the room, and the speakers stacked to the ceiling. It was a spiritual experience for me, and the memory of this has stuck with me and in no small part helped shape my life.
I moved to Australia in the mid nineties, and spent years traveling around.
Everywhere I went I would ask where I could find reggae playing, but apart from a random Shinehead gig in Canberra in ‘96, and a local reggae cover band in the same town, I never did find any until around 2004 when I met the Rhythm Collision crew in Brisbane: Selecta Basmati and a small group of people who put on DJ gigs in Brisbane.
They didn’t have a physical sound system; instead they rented turntables, cdjs and speakers - usually just a couple of 3 way powered units either side of the booth and a sub on the floor. It wasn’t a heavy sound by any stretch of the imagination, but that didn’t stop venues complaining about the bass!
“Our sound is named Champion Sound, and we use to it to champion justice, opportunity and equality”
Chris and John aka Mista DC, at Meanjin Reggae Festival, 2025
Through them I discovered there was a thriving, semi-underground reggae band scene in the city, a few DJs and a number of people who, like myself, wanted to listen to Jamaican reggae music and support it.
I was never a DJ but I loved the music and so I helped as I could, promoting, moving gear, etc. There were a few other promoters around at that time - Hemi Tuff from Vanuatu, Morgyn Quinn from Rudekat records, Ras George from Zimbabwe, and one or two others.
Around 2005, Ranking Yoni, from Melbourne, started an online forum called ozreggae.com. This was back in the early days of the internet. No social media back then, hardly any websites really. Promotion was done with posters and flyers and contacts were made in the dance.
When ozreggae.com started it had an explosive effect on the scene that cannot be overstated. Suddenly reggae people from across the country were finding each other, getting connected, talking.
Promoters in different cities started making links. Incredibly, international artists started performing in Australia, made possible because now national tours could be arranged.
John, Stryka D and Chris, 2007.
Around this time we started running blues parties and the occasional sound clash at our rental house in Brisbane. People used to fly in for them, even from overseas. There was a time when anyone in the Australian reggae scene who passed through Brisbane would stay at our house, and often perform there. Those were the days!
In 2007 I met Chris Jay while he was DJing at a regular night run by Rudekat at a corner bar in West End. The sound system there was literally just some little tin pan tannoy things hanging off the ceiling. Chris had recently moved to Australia from the UK.
Chris has a long history with reggae music, as a musician, sound man, and producer of Dubwise Productions, a well respected record label that has released some massive, high demand tunes that get played by sounds worldwide; not least his first release, a wicked, iconic jungle track called Champion Sound.
Chris and I got talking that night about the lack of purpose built sound systems in Australia, and how we couldn’t experience the music properly. We started talking about building a sound together, a conversation that continued over the next few months.
Meanjin Reggae Festival, Musgrave Park, Brisbane
Chris used to be part of a sound in London, Maccabee Sound, and had direct experience and a wealth of knowledge backed up by a massive selection of records he’d shipped over from the UK. I had experience promoting in Brisbane, and by now knew a large number of Australia’s reggae heads. We decided to give it a shot.
Ranking Yoni put us in touch with Stryka D, owner and builder of Heartical HiFi. Heartical ran it’s first dance in 2004, I think, and them times was finding it hard to find venues to play in. We flew to Melbourne in June 2007 and struck a deal for Derek to build our first sound system for us. I won’t tell you what we paid, but I will say that, afterwards, Derek said if he ever built a sound again he’d charge at least double!
He finished the sound and shipped it up to us in December 2007, and we became the fourth reggae sound system operating in Australia, alongside Heartical in Melbourne, Soulmaker in Sydney (although we didn’t know of them at the time), and Earthshaker in Adelaide run by Milton Westcarr, who used to run Jah Trinty sound in the UK.
It’s interesting to note that all 4 Australian sounds were run by English and Jamaican immigrants, who had direct experience and influence from the UK sound system scene, as well as the original Jamaican scene.
Meanjin Reggae Festival, Musgrave Park.
We played our first event at the Jagera Community Centre in Musgrave Park, a venue we continue to use and which has been our spiritual home for the last 18 years. We use the sound as the heart of the charity we established, teaching skills and fostering connection using music and the creative industries.
We put on free community events that aim to provide opportunities for and give a voice to the local community. Our sound is named Champion Sound, and we use to it to champion justice, opportunity and equality.
Sound systems offer far more to the communities where they operate than just heavy-like-lead bass and wicked music. For me, they’ve always been about people first. A reggae sound system creates a space where anyone can come, connect, and just be themselves.
You see all walks of life in the dance, different ages, backgrounds, cultures, all drawn together by the music. It gives people a place to express themselves, to create, and for new voices to step forward and be heard.
Over time, those spaces build real relationships and a strong sense of belonging. And it’s not just social, there’s opportunity there too. Dances create a platform for people to hustle, selling food, crafts, records, and merchandise, supporting local artists and small businesses.
It’s community in motion, culture and commerce side by side, strengthening local economies while giving people a place where they feel accepted and part of something bigger.
For me, it all comes back to that feeling I had as a kid, standing in that room with the bass rolling through my chest. That same energy, that same connection, is what we’re still building today. It’s more than music, it’s a movement, a community, and a way of bringing people together. As long as the sound keeps playing, that spirit will keep growing.
Bio: Active in Australia’s reggae scene since 2005, hosting some of Australia’s most legendary underground reggae parties and international sound clashes, co-founder of Champion Sound Mista DC (John) has always seen music as more than entertainment - it’s a tool for empowerment. His mission: to uplift the voiceless, spark social change, and spread reggae’s message of unity, justice, and love. Spinning strictly roots and culture, Mista DC brings deep, conscious selections that resonate with purpose - music with a message, grounded in the spirit of resistance and resilience.
This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Attribution: Lumley, J. (2026). Champion Sound: roots, youth, community in motion. Beats + Bass Cultures Network. https://beatsnbasscultures.org/new-blog-1/championsound