My friend Robert Allen, who has died of a brain haemorrhage at the age of 52, was a youth worker and pioneering DJ who was instrumental in the establishment of Jamaican dancehall music in Britain.
Born and raised in Brixton, south London, to Jamaican immigrants Winnifred Viola and John Allen, Robert was a star pupil at William Penn school in north Dulwich, and his musical journey took off when he met the sound system operator Neville King at Gavton Shepherd's youth centre in Brixton, in the late 1970s.
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