A History of Reggae Music (2024)

(See Background: The 20th Century)

The first Jamaican recording studio opened in 1951 and recorded "mento"music, a fusion of European and African folk dance music.The island was awash in rhythm'n'blues records imported by the so called"sound systems", eccentric traveling dance-halls run by no less eccentricdisc-jockeys such as Clement Dodd (the "Downbeat") and Duke Reid(the "Trojan").The poor people of the Jamaican ghettos, who could not afford to hire a bandfor their parties, had to content themselves with these "sound systems".The "selectors", the Jamaican disc-jockeys who operated those sound systems, became the real entertainers. The selector would spin the records and would "toast" over them.The art of "toasting", that usually consisted in rhyming vocal patterns and soonevolved in social commentary, became as important as the music that was beingplayed.

In 1954 Ken Khouri started Jamaica's first record label, "Federal Records".He inspired Reid and Dodd, who began to record local artists for theirsound system.Towards the end of the 1950s, amateurs began to form bandsthat played Caribbean music and New Orleans' rhythm'n'blues,besides the local mento. This led to the "bluebeat" groups, which basicallywere Jamaica's version of the New Orleans sound. They usually featuredsaxophone, trumpet, trombone, piano, drums and bass.

Soon the bass became the dominant instrument, and the sound evolved into the "ska". The "ska" beat had actually been invented byRoscoe Gordon, a Memphis pianist, with No More Doggin' (1951).Ska songs boasted an upbeat tempo, a horn section, Afro-American vocalharmonies, jazzy riffs and staccato guitar notes.

Ska

(See The Age of Revivals)

Theophilus Beckford cut the first "ska" record, Easy Snapping, in 1959,but Prince Buster (Cecil Campbell), owner of thesound system "Voice of the People", was the one who, around 1961, definedska's somatic traits once and forever (he and his guitarist Jah Jerry).

The Wailers, featuring the young Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Livingston,slowed down the beat in Simmer Down (1963).Millie Small's My Boy Lollipop (1964) was the first worldwide ska hit.The charismatic leaders of the ska movement werethe Skatalites, a group of veteran ex-jazzmen led by saxophonist TommyMcCook and featuring virtuoso trombonist Don Drummond and tenor saxophonist Rolando Alphonso,that formally existed only between 1964 and 1965 (Ball O' Fire, 1965; Phoenix City, 1966;the instrumental Guns Of Navarone, 1967), but ska's star wasDesmond Dekker (Dacres), whoseIsraelites (1968) launched the even faster "poppa-top",and whose007 Shanty Town (1967) andRude Boy Train fueled themythology of the "rude boy".Ska music was relatively serene and optimist, a natural soundtrack to thatage of peace and wealth, somewhat akin to the music of the "swinging London".

Jamaica had become an independent country in 1962, but social problemshad multiplied.During the mid Sixties, ska music evolved into "rock steady", a languidstyle, named after Alton Ellis' hit Rock Steady (1966),that emphasized sociopolitical themes, adopted electric instruments,replaced the horns with the guitars, and promoted the bass to leadinstrument (virtually obliterating the drums).In other words, ska mutated under the influence of soul music. Rock steady was identified with the crowd of young delinquents(the "rude boys")who mimicked the British "mods" and the American "punks".Its generational anthems wereJudge Dread (1967) by Prince Buster,John Holt's The Tide Is High (1966) by the Paragons,Rivers Of Babylon (1969) by the Melodians.The music took the back seat to the vocal harmonies. This helped bring aboutthe supremacy of vocal groups: Wailers, Paragons, Maytals (the new name ofthe Vikings of the ska hit Halleluja, 1963), Pioneers,Melodians, Heptones, etc.

Reggae

(See Re-alignment)

The word "reggae" was coined around 1960 in Jamaica to identify a "ragged"style of dance music, that still had its roots in New Orleans rhythm'n'blues.However, reggae soon acquired the lament-like style of chanting and emphasizedthe syncopated beat. It also made explicit the relationship with theunderworld of the "Rastafarians" (adepts of a millenary African faith, revivedMarcus Garvey who advocated a mass emigration back to Africa), bothin the lyrics and in the appropriation of the African nyah-bingi drummingstyle (a style that mimicks the heartbeatwith its pattern of "thump-thump, pause, thump-thump").Compared with rock music, reggae music basically inverted the role of bass andguitar: the former was the lead, the latter beat the typical hiccupping pattern.The paradox of reggae, of course, is that this music "unique to Jamaica" isactually not Jamaican at all, having its foundations in the USA and Africa.

An independent label, Island, distributed Jamaican records in the UKthroughout the 1960s, but reggae became popular in the UK only whenPrince Buster's Al Capone (1967) started a brief "dance craze".Jamaican music was very much a ghetto phenomenon, associated with gang-styleviolence, but Jimmy Cliff's Wonderful World Beautiful People (1969) wed reggae with the"peace and love" philosophy of the hippies, an association that would not dieaway.In the USA, Neil Diamond's Red Red Wine (1967) was the first reggae hitby a pop musician.Shortly afterwards, Johnny Nash's Hold Me Tight (1968) propelled reggae onto the charts.Do The Reggay (1968) by Toots (Hibbert) And The Maytals was the record that gave the music its name.Fredrick Toots Hibbert's vocal style was actually closer togospel, as proved by their other hits(54-46, 1967; Monkey Man, 1969; Pressure Drop, 1970).

A little noticed event would have far-reaching consequences:in 1967, the Jamaican disc-jockey Rudolph "Ruddy" Redwood had begun recordinginstrumental versions of reggae hits. The success of his dance club was entirelydue to that idea.Duke Reid, who was now the owner of the Trojan label, was the first one tocapitalize on the idea: he began releasingsingles with two sides: the original song and, on the back, the instrumentalremix. This phenomenon elevated the status of dozens of recording engineers.

Reggae music was mainly popularized by Bob Marley (1), first as the co-leaderof the Wailers,the band that promoted theimage of the urban guerrilla with Rude Boy (1966) andthat cut the first album of reggae music,Best Of The Wailers (1970); and later as thepolitical and religious (rasta) guru of the movement, a stance that would transform him into a star, particularly after his conversion to pop-soulmelody with ballads such as Stir It Up (1972),I Shot The Sheriff (1973) and No Woman No Cry (1974).

Among the reggae vocal groups, the Abyssinians' Satta Massa Gana (1971)is representative of the mood of the era.

In 1972 reggae became a staple of western radio stations thanks tothe film The Harder They Come.

Dub

More and more studio engineers were re-mixing B-sides of reggae 45 RPM singles,dropping out the vocals and emphasizing the instrumental texture of the song.The purpose was to allow disc-jockeys to "toast" over the record. Engineers became more and more skilled at refining the instrumental textures,especially when they began to employ sophisticated studio devices.Eventually, "dub" became an art on its own.The first dub singles appeared in 1971, but the man generally credited with"inventing" the genre is Osbourne Ruddock, better known asKing Tubby (2),a recording engineer who in 1970 had accidentally discovered theappeal of stripping a song of its vocal track, and who engineered the firstdub record, Carl Patterson's Psalm Of Dub (1971).When he got together with producer Lee "Scratch" Perry,Blackboard Jungle (1973) was born: the first stereo "dub" album.It was a Copernican revolution: the engineer and the producer had becomemore important than the composer.It also marked the terminal point of the "slowing down" of Jamaican music,a process that had led from ska to reggae to rock steady. Compared with theoriginal, dub was like a slow-motion version.a collaboration with melodica player Augustus Pabloled to another seminal work,King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown (1976).

Rainford Hugh Perry, better known asLee "Scratch" Perry (3), who had nursedthe Wailers, pretty muchset the reference standard for generations to come withDouble Seven (1974), the first reggae album that overdubbed synthesizers,Revolution Dub (1975) and Super Ape (1976), one of the genre'smasterpieces.

Melodica virtuoso Augustus Pablo (2), aka Horace Swaby, penned the instrumental albums This Is Augustus Pablo (1973) andEast of the River Nile (1977), two of the most atmospheric worksof the genre.

Talk-over

"Rapping" originated from the complementary tradition of the "talk-over".The disc-jockeys of the sound systems used to accompany the dance trackswith impromptu melodic and spoken-word vocals, often simply to add enthusiasmto the dance. This eventually became an art in itself.U-Roy (Edwart Beckford) was possibly the first great talk-over artist, the man who turned dub into a highly-effective vehiclefor agit-prop messages (Dynamic Fashion Way, 1969;Runaway Girl, 1976; Wake the Town, Wear You to the Ball).Other pioneers of rapping were Dennis "Alcapone" Smith, with Forever Version (1971), Prince Jazzbo and I Roy.Big Youth (Manley Buchanan) upped the ante with his wild sociopolitical raps(S-90 skan*, 1972; The Killer, 1973; House Of Dread Locks,1975; Every nigg*r Is A Star, 1976), most effectively onDreadlocks Dread (1975).Originally, the technique of these "toaster" consisted in remixing other people's songs, removing the original vocals, emphasizingthe rhythmic base, and overdubbing their own rhyming stories on the resultingtrack.

The golden age of Reggae

As reggae became a world attraction, styles multiplied and inbred with theAmerican genres.

Burning Spear (1), the project of Rastafarian visionary Winston Rodney, unleashed the supercharged Marcus Garvey (1976), perhaps the highest artistic achievements of reggae music.

Joseph Hill's vocal trio Culture were equally passionate, and the title-track from Two Sevens Clash (1977) became the anthem of the rasta-punks and coined "rockers reggae".

Ijahman Levi (Trevor Sutherland) was perhaps the most spiritual vocalist of his generation. His songs were religious hymns (Jah Heavy Lord, 1975; I'm A Levi, 1978; Are We A Warrior, 1978).

Ex-Wailers Peter Tosh, or Winston Hubert McIntosh, crossed over into rock territory with Legalize It (1976).

Other popular classics include Junior Marvin's Police And Thieves (1976)andGregory Isaacs' Love Is Overdue (1974).

Jamaican revival in Britain

Reggae and ska enjoyed a major revival in Britain during the punk age.Starting in the mid-1970s, ensembles such as Aswad, Steel Pulse, Matumbi andUB40offered a westernized version of Jamaican music that was rather uninspired,but were lucky enough that the audience found affinities with the implicitprotest themes of the political punks.At the same time, British sensations of the ska revival included Specialsand Madness.British dub music was a more serious affair, and took longer to emerge. But, overthe long term, it was dub music, and not ska or reggae music, that stuck around, thanksto the quality productions of Adrian Sherwood(the brain behind African Headcharge,Dub Syndicate andNew Age Steppers), Jah Shaka and prolific Guyana-born Neil Fraser, better known as Mad Professor, whopenned Beyond the Realms Of Dub (1982),and even Aswad's own New Chapter of Dub (1982).Artistic peaks were reached bydub pioneer and experimentalist Keith Hudson, with Pick A Dub (1976),and instrumental soundpainter Dennis Bovell (a former member of Matumbi, an engineer who coined the soul-reggae fusion called "Lovers Rock"), withStrictly Dubwise (1978), I Wah Dub (1980), probably his mostintense release, and Brain Damage (1981), a cosmopolitan work that also mixed calypso, rock and funk.Linton Kwesi Johnson, a Jamaican poet living in England, transposed reggae's mood into dub-based sermons, arranged by Dennis Bovell, on the contemporary issues of the lumperproletariat.Ditto for the other poet of dub, Mutabaruka. These dub poets were as musicalas their producers managed to be. Kwesi owed a lot to Bovell.

Jamaican music in the 1980s

Vocal trio Black Uhuru, supported by the rhythm section of Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare, wrapped reggae and Rastafarianism into a slick production of drum-machines and synthesizers, especially on Red (1981).

Third World offered a commercial fusion of reggae, funk and soul.

Innovators of the next generation includedtoaster and turntablist Yellowman (Winston Foster), a pioneer of "dancehall"(reggae music with rock drums) who established his reputation withMister Yellowman (1982),crossover artists such as Eddy Grant,with the electronic Afro-rock-reggae-funk fusion ofWalking on Sunshine (1979),Eek-a-Mouse (Ripton Joseph Hylton), who invented a unique vocal technique that harked back to the early days of toasting,as displayed on Wa Do Dem (1982),andMikey Dread (Michael Campbell), who crafted African Anthem/ At The Control Dubwise (1979), with help from Scientist, King Tubby, Augustus Pablo and Sly & Robbie, and World War III (1981), with help from Scientist, after collaborating with the punk-rock band Clash.

As far as dub goes,King Tubby raised an entire generation of recording engineers, who went on tobecome innovators of Jamaican music, such as Prince Jammy (Lloyd James), who concocted the all-digital reggae Under Me Sleng Teng (1985), creditedwith inventing "ragga" (a fusion of reggae, rap and electronic dance music),and Scientist (Overton Brown).

Popular reggae musicians of the 1980s included Judy Mowatt, who, as a backup vocalist for Marley, was one of reggae's firstfemale performers, and, as a soloist, crossed over into pop-soul balladry,Ivory Coast's sociopolitical bard Alpha Blondy (Kone Seydou),and David "Ziggy" Marley, son of the prophet, who sold out his father'smyth to the international disco-pop crowds.Dancehall toaster Shabba Ranks (Rexton Gordon) and Shinehead (Carl Aiken)were the stars of ragga hip-hop.

The star of the 1990s wasBuju Banton (Mark Anthony Myrie), revealed by Til Shiloh (1995).