Reggae 1970s
Gaby Zenz
The first disc features ska and other precursors to reggae.[6] Colin Escott's liner notes point out the influence of American R&B on Jamaican acts.[4] The set begins with "Iron Bar", a traditional by Lord Tanamo, reflecting reggae's early mento roots. Derrick Morgan follows with the Latin-influenced "Fat Man".[7] Millie Small's 1964 offbeat version of "My Boy Lollipop", previously recorded by Barbie Gaye, was the first ska song to achieve international success.[1][8] Several of the songs, such as the Clarendonians's "Rude Boy Gone to Jail" and Desmond Decker & the Aces' "Rudie Got Soul" display a preoccupation with the "rude boy" culture of post-colonial Jamaica that was fashionable in the lyrics of much of ska and early reggae.[9] Several other numbers by Desmond Decker & the Aces are featured in the set, and the disc also includes "007 (Shanty Town)" (1967) and their worldwide 1968 hit "Israelites", which heralded the transition from ska to reggae.[10]
Disc 2 concentrates on (post-ska) rocksteady and reggae tracks recorded between 1968 and 1970, such as Toots & the Maytals' "Do the Reggay", "Monkey Man" and "Pressure Drop", as well Jimmy Cliff's "Wonderful World, Beautiful People" and "Many Rivers to Cross".[1][11] The Slickers' "Johnny Too Bad", like several of the other tracks on this compilation were featured in the movie, The Harder They Come starring Jimmy Cliff, and its soundtrack album.[1][12] Tony Tribe does a rendition of "Red Red Wine", originally written and performed by Neil Diamond, which later became a hit for UB40.[13]
The third disc continues with more early examples of early reggae, stretching into the early 1970s. Freddie Notes & the Rudies sing a version of Bobby Loom's hit, "Montego Bay".[14] Also featured is Greyhound's version of "Black and White", originally composed by David Arkin and Earl Robinson, which later supplied a major hit for Three Dog Night.[15] Several pre-fame songs recorded by Bob Marley and Peter Tosh with the Wailers are included on disc 3, which were produced by Lee "Scratch" Perry.[1][16] Tosh sings the lead vocal on "400 Years" and Marley on "Duppy Conqueror", "Small Axe", and "African Herbsman".[1][16]
The final disc in the set covers the period between 1972 and 1975, when reggae was beginning to reach a much wider audience.[17] Other songs by Bob Marley and Peter Tosh recorded with the Wailers appear on this side, such as "Trenchtown Rock" and "Brand New Second Hand".[18] "I Can See Clearly Now" provided a worldwide hit for Johnny Nash in 1972.[19] He also does a rendition of Bob Marley's "Stir It Up", included here.[19] Also featured is "Better Must Come" by Delroy Wilson and "The Time Has Come", by Slim Smith.[1] The set ends with "Marcus Garvey", a tribute to the black nationalist, by Burning Spear.[20]
Panamanian writers demonized the West Indian population in hopes of impeding North American imperialism and to encourage the new immigrants to repatriate to their native homelands. El peligro antillano en la Amrica Central (West Indian Danger in Central America 1924), for example, also articulated anti-West Indian sentiment and the perceived differences between Afro-Hispanics and West Indians in Panama. Panamanian critic, Alfaro, writes:
These comments reflect nationalistic opposition to black West Indians. The message is clear: unlike Afro-Hispanics, West Indians were culturally and linguistically different from other Panamanians and did not reflect hispanidad. Anti-West Indianism contributed to several laws directed against those who did not abide with Panamanian nationality. In 1926, law 13 prohibited non Spanish-speaking blacks from entering the country. In 1941, President Arnulfo Arias made it a requirement to speak Spanish to become a citizen. Ultimately, West Indians were encouraged to give up their own culture and adopt that of Panama or leave (Conniff 4). As a result, many West Indians decided to repatriate to their native homelands. Reggae en espaol artists such as Renato are a product of anti-West Indian sentiment, the Canal, and Panamanian national identity politics.
Basch, Linda, Nina Glick Schiller, and Cristina Szanton Blanc. Nations Unbound: Transnational Project, Postcolonial Predicaments and Deterritorialized Nation-States. Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach, 1994. Print.
Sonja Stephenson Watson is an Assistant Professor of Spanish at the University of Texas at Arlington. She received her PhD in Hispanic Literature from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. Her areas of specialty are Afro-Panamanian Literature, Hispanic Caribbean Literature, and reggae en espaol. Dr. Watson has published articles in the Afro-Hispanic Review, Cincinnati Romance Review, the College Language Association Journal, the Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies Journal, PALARA, Callaloo, and Hispania. Her forthcoming manuscript, The Politics of Race in Panama: Afro-Hispanic and West Indian Literary Discourses of Contention (University Press of Florida) deals with the forging of Afro-Panamanian identity.
You could hear it on mainstream radio in 1978, courtesy of The Police, and if you're in Britain, you can hear it on the airwaves today, in the music of Birmingham-born MC Lady Leshurr: reggae's influence on British music.
Lately called "bass culture," the wide range of music influenced by reggae in the U.K. is as prominent as the rock that was inspired by R&B and blues half a century ago, says Mykaell Riley, the lead singer of the reggae band Steel Pulse, which formed in Birmingham in 1975.
"We look at the impact of it; we look at how it's changed production; we look at the story of the remix culture, rave culture and the relationship to sound systems; we look at current youth and what they use as a key reference when making popular music in the U.K., and we'll see that the resonance of the black community in the U.K. has a major contribution that has never been fully recognized," Riley says.
The contribution began in the 1950s, when Jamaican immigration to the U.K. spiked. By the early '60s, British sound systems flourished and British ska music by artists like Millie Small topped the Billboard charts.
Where in America, West Indian immigrants could be absorbed into existing African-American communities, in Britain, where there was no real black community to speak of, Caribbean people found themselves isolated. Riley says that reggae became a potent way of dealing with that alienation.
"Disenfranchised working-class youth identified through this music," Riley says, "which was rebellious, it was anti-state, anti-government, it was very politically charged and very militant, so the black youth were very motivated and socially aware at the time. And all of this came through reggae. It was not present in the schools, on television, in the books, in radio."
In the 1970s, reggae exploded in the U.K. Bob Marley lived in London. Eric Clapton and the Rolling Stones recorded reggae songs, and a soulful British genre known as Lover's Rock was born. But when U.K. reggae bands like Steel Pulse and Aswad hit the scene, they struggled to be accepted by black audiences who deemed them less authentic than Jamaican-born acts. Instead, these new bands found an unlikely fan base: punks.
But it was punks who ended up taking reggae into the mainstream. The Clash famously recorded a cover of Junior Murvin's "Police and Thieves" for their debut album. By the 1980s, U.K. reggae had a white face. Labels signed bands like The Police, Culture Club and Madness over black British bands. And just as in America, where R&B turned to rock 'n' roll as its performers grew whiter, these "blue-eyed" reggae bands in the U.K. were suddenly reclassified.
"One of the things that happens in the U.K. with underground music is that [at] the point it crosses over and enters the charts, there is a rebranding," Riley says. "And in that rebranding, there is generally a disconnect with the source or the origins. With regard to reggae we find that the instant it enters the charts it's suddenly called 'pop.'"
During the 1990s, reggae influenced a younger generation of British artists coming out of the rave scene. Jungle music was essentially rave music with Jamaican dancehall-style vocals, and the musical hybrids influenced by Jamaican-style bass just kept coming: U.K. garage, drum-and-bass, dubstep and the new mashup dubbed "electro-bashy."
Producer Res Kwame says the U.K. music scene produces innovative hybrids because it's less confined by genre than in the U.S.: "Our producers are just doing it in our neighborhood and we have the means of getting it out: pirate stations. Because we're coming from a culture where radio in the main has not been receptive to black music, we've had to find our own way and means of doing things. And that's led to a creativity at the street level."
Rasites, "Hit Fit" & Bob Marley and The Wailers, "Concrete Jungle"
Rasites lead singer and bassist Jahmel Ellison describes his band as "traditional roots reggae from the U.K.," a la Aswad and Steel Pulse. But he admits the influence of other genres on his band's style, much in the way Bob Marley's "Exodus" album, recorded in London, had a rock feel. The band has toured with Black Uhuru, performed at eminent Jamaican stage shows and released two albums, all the while paying homage to the classic Jamaican roots reggae acts, like The Wailers, who inspire them.
DJ Kenny Ken, "Murda Ya" & Shabba Ranks, "Ting-A-Ling"
Jungle music was born in the early '90s when British DJs began lacing dancehall-style vocals over rave tracks. Drum-and-bass toned down the dancehall influence and delivered a more minimalist, industrial sound. DJ Kenny Ken has been lighting up clubs in the U.K. and beyond with both genres since 1989. Listen to one of his jungle remixes alongside dancehall's original crossover star, Shabba Ranks, and the influence is loud and clear.