This is 99% invisible.

I'm Roman Mars.

When Herbie Miller was growing up in East Kingston, Jamaica in the 1950s,

he and his friends would put on their best outfits and head into the city.

From blocks away they could hear music pumping out through giant powerful speakers set up at

dance halls, bars, and social clubs all over downtown. The sound was irresistible, and so Herbie and

its crew would just follow their ears.

Along the way, they'd run into other kids like them,

everyone looking for the exact same thing,

the perfect dance party.

Pacts of boys are groups of boys

walking from community to community unable to go inside clubs and dance halls

because it was perhaps two shillings and six pence that was big entropy to a dance.

The guys would collect scrap metal and recycle empty bottles just to earn enough cash to

pay the door.

But sometimes they'd still come up short. That's 99-PI producer Christopher Johnson.

These parties were the hottest dance scene on the island,

with DJ spinning the latest tracks by artists like Alton Ellis, Don Drummond, and Roland Alfonso.

That music made the party so live that things were even popping out on the street.

So that's, outside and you listen to the tune outside.

Then you have the orange man, the juice man.

All of these were on the outside of the dance.

...