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Even if you’ve never been to Kingston, Jamaica, you’ve likely heard the city’s sounds. Ska, reggae, rocksteady, dub and dancehall — all genres born and bred in the coastal city — have played on airwaves worldwide for the better part of the past century. Kingston is preceded by its musical reputation — and by its cuisine. Jamaican staples like beef patties, jerk chicken and fall-off-the-bone oxtail are now ubiquitous in many American cities. “I often say, if the U.S. is an economic superpower, then Jamaica is a cultural superpower,” says the visual artist Ebony G. Patterson, who was born in Kingston and now splits her time between there and Chicago. “So many roads pass through here.”
Kingston, the island’s capital and arguably its cultural hub, is on the southeastern coast. The city was nearly destroyed on more than one occasion — in fact, it was built in the aftermath of a natural disaster, a 1692 earthquake that wrecked the harbor town of Port Royal, a colonial trading center once frequented by pirates. In 1907, another major earthquake hit, followed by a fire, upending the city’s infrastructure once more. Not long after, in 1923, the parishes of Kingston and St. Andrew were combined, officially forming the roughly 175-square-mile region that many residents now refer to simply as “Kingston.”
About a fifth of Jamaica’s population of 2.8 million people live in this area, which visitors can best traverse by car — or by booking a catamaran to explore the harbor, as the jewelry designer Mateo Harris recommends, where a good deal of the old pirate city is still hidden beneath the waters. In many ways, Kingston’s best gems are just below the surface. “Most people don’t know that we have amazing Indian and Chinese food; [those communities] have left such a stamp on the country,” says Harris. “Our national motto in Jamaica is ‘Out of many, one people,’ and that’s why: because so many different people come here from all walks of life.” And although the music scene is undeniably potent — the city was once said to be home to the world’s largest number of recording studios per capita, including the renowned Studio One, where Bob Marley recorded — Patterson says that “the visual-artist community here is incredibly rich” as well. She adds that despite the fact that there aren’t that many commercial institutions, “people are still committed to making things,” and museums like the National Gallery of Jamaica and visual artist-led initiatives such as New Local Space have made Kingston the island’s “mecca.”