alors, et toi?

The Relevance of Reggae

By Nora C. Gruenberg

The Drastics

My attempts to seek out new talent in reggae music revealed how little I actually knew about it and all of its sub-genres. In 1964, Justice Potter Stewart had difficulty defining obscenity, claiming you “know it when you see it.” In the same manner, I felt I knew reggae when I heard it. Writing about it intelligently, however, was a whole other prospect.

I tapped into my sister Lauren’s encyclopedic knowledge of music to start my education. I called her immediately and scratched in my notebook as she rapid-fired names, concepts and derivatives: Selassie. Israel. Ska, rock-steady, roots, dub and dance-hall. Bob Marley, Peter Tosh. Lee “Scratch” Perry. The Scientist, King Tubby and Burning Spear. When I reconstructed her quick breakdown, I got that reggae is the love child born of Jamaican ska and rock-steady melted into elements of Afro-Caribbean beats and American rhythm and blues. It’s evolved since the 1960s, absorbing other genres in its trajectory, spurring derivatives, such like trip hop, drum-and-bass, and dance-hall.

I inevitably Googled “reggae” and it confirmed that I should have asked my sister for help with my homework years ago. She just gave me a rough sketch while she cradled the phone and wrangled my nephew and her enormous dog. I checked out Wikipedia’s write-up while we were still on the phone, and told her how right on she was, thanking her for the direction and accurate lesson. Just as I was thinking how I had to go back to school, my research led to the University of Vermont’s professor Alfred “Tuna“ Snider. He offered The Rhetoric of Reggae Music in 2004. I responded to his invitation to email him with a few questions, just to see what’s stickin’ in the pursuit of academic understanding. Unfortunately, the good professor must have been busy, because I never did hear back from him, but I was able to enjoy the fruits of his students’ labors.

I’m not trying to reinvent the research paper. Really, this article is an exploration of reggae’s relevance today. But I personally love a good research paper, and I spent the afternoon paging through the Dread Library. From technical to spiritual, geographical to linguistic, Snider’s class was kind enough to do the academic heavy lifting, breaking down the very elements of the history of reggae from an academic perspective. But BBC Music gave the most comprehensive and easily digested definition of reggae music and its derivatives.

Having created a foundation of understanding, I began to think more about the impact reggae has had upon popular culture. Once I began to think critically about it, I noticed reggae’s prevalence in commercials and in mainstream popular music. I began to wonder how the assumption of independence from commercial gain and a proclivity toward uplifting messages fit into modern reggae, especially when I heard The Wailer’s One Love encouraging me to pack my bags for an all-inclusive stay in one of Jamaica’s finest resorts. In fact, in the article The Subversion of One Love, Patricia Meschino writes how the Jamaican Tourist Board uses that particular song to sell Jamaica:

“One Love symbolizes the message of Jamaica to the world through tourism as we seek to promote peace and harmony and tolerance of all people,” explains David Shields, Deputy Director of the Jamaica Tourist Board. “The song has been used repeatedly by the tourist board to promote Jamaica and in recent research, our consumers have indicated that not only does the song resonate positively but as a destination Jamaica resonates positively through the song. So Bob Marley's iconic presence and his music continues to represent Jamaica and our work in a positive way and in all of our campaigns we continue to use ‘One Love’ and reggae as one of our unique selling propositions to the world.”

That commercial attitude toward reggae music might be at odds with some of reggae’s founding Rastafarian principles. Rastafarianism is almost invariably linked to reggae music. Loosely rooted in Ethiopian Orthodoxy, it’s a largely organic spiritual belief system that draws heavily from social, historical, and political issues. There are as many ways to follow it as there are derivatives of reggae. As with any politically or spiritually-charged music, commercial gain is often perceived as something that obscures the message. People with spiritual and emotional ties to any kind of independent music tend to rankle when their favorite artists “sell out” in order to shill tourism, or even worse, according to some, beer.

A headline from the Roots Archives Forum announced last December that after a two-decade break-up, the veteran roots trio, The Congos, reunited and netted a big commercial deal with Heineken International. While it would be uncharitable to fault them for wanting to make a comfortable living while celebrating their reunification and launch of their new album, some of the forum’s comments reflected a common perception of the deal.

Plenty of critics sounded off about the Congos’ deal, but other comments underscored the fact that reggae has a wide appeal. With commanding rhythms and evocative lyrics, it is an effective marketing device. It’s no surprise that something that is able to reach an international audience on such a deep level has been apprehended by the money-making machines of Babylon. Yet, many of the comments bring home the fact that it’s music for the people, and feel that any means to get the positive message of the music to a wider audience, even to sell beer, can’t be all bad.

It’s almost impossible to separate Rasta from reggae. Most of the seminal reggae artists were and are devout Rastafarians. Whether it was due to a confluence of artistic, economic, and cultural factors or pure charisma, of all of the artists from the sixties and seventies who helped popularize reggae internationally, it is generally Bob Marley who is thought of as the face of reggae music. Despite the argument that reggae and Rastafarianism aren’t mutually exclusive, much of my research indicates that Rasta is the base of reggae music. And reggae is the base of many other types of popular music.

Although Bob Marley is the first name the average person associates with the term reggae, the artists that made it an international cultural movement exert influence in places I never expected. As the Rastafarian philosophy and lifestyle gained popularity in Jamaica during the 1960s, the reggae style began to emerge in Jamaican dance halls. The music featured rhythmic vocalists and singers who would “toast” or talk over DJs’ “riddims.” The practice of “chatting” or “toasting” is often thought of as a precursor to rap and hip hop, influencing the new kinds of music coming from black communities in urban America. But reggae’s influences go beyond rap.

With such a strong Jamaican presence in England, I shouldn’t have been surprised to discover seminal reggae artists have had a profound impact on modern British music, too. For instance, the influence Horace Andy had on Massive Attack wasn’t something I had even considered until I started digging into the roots of reggae. The Bristol group is often credited for leading the trip hop movement, which was England’s interpretative blend of hip hop and house music. It combines ethereal beats, samples, high tech effects and layered production. As the style gained popularity in the 1990s, Andy collaborated with the trip hop trio, bringing a version of his song You Are My Angel to a whole other world of listeners in the 1998 album, Mezzanine. Massive Attack’s record label, Melancolik, continues to produce with Andy, who’s been a seminal figure in reggae music since recording in Kingston’s Studio One during the 1960s.

Since beginning a collaborative relationship with Massive Attack, he’s contributed vocals to all of their records and they’ve even reworked some of his earlier music. But that’s only one example of how deeply influential and pertinent reggae musicians are in music today. With artists like Shabba Ranks, Shaggy, and Sean Paul bringing modern dance-hall to American clubs and radio charts, it almost seems as though reggae and its many derivatives are permanently embedded into our popular culture.

Of course, no exploration of reggae music would be complete without checking in with my friend, D. She’s a Jamaican native who came to the States to marry one of my college friends. The culture shock of leaving the tropics for the Midwest has abated in the almost six years that she’s been here, but one thing she really misses is the music culture of her homeland.

“I miss it, all of it; the whole thing. I really like the old stuff, you know, like the rock-steady and the roots, the Rastafarian music,” she said. When I asked her if she thought there would be reggae without Rastafarianism, she replied, “Yes, for sure there would still be reggae music. It’s just because of Bob Marley that it became popular worldwide and moved beyond Jamaica. He was Rasta, but reggae already existed. He just made reggae famous and sang about Rasta. There are actually much better singers than Bob Marley, though. You should come over and listen to my records and hear for yourself.”

I wanted to know what she thought of the newer brand of dance-hall, and she laughed. “It’s okay, but I don’t think it has the same kind of positive vibe as the roots. New dance-hall is all ‘booty this’ and ‘booty that.’”

“Kind of like American R&B and hip hop?“ I asked.

“Exactly. It’s just a lot more commercial, and that’s not bad, really. But it’s not what I like. In Jamaica, people tell about their lives with the music. That’s how we communicate. And that’s what I miss the most. It’s why reggae is so popular all over the world—it’s the music of the people.“

Next stop on my journey to understanding the phenomenon and current state of reggae, I visited with Chicago dub band, The Drastics. I first sat down with Tom Riley and his lovely lady friend, E, to discuss reggae in general and the Drastics specifically. The whole discussion was supremely casual and, for the uninitiated like myself, informative. We went over some of the points that I had recently learned about the history and foundation of reggae and its derivatives, and this background information became more interesting to me as we began to talk about how the connection to the community and the organic nature of reggae is why it’s still so relevant today.

When I asked them, “Why reggae? What makes it so popular?” E thought for a moment and responded: “It’s because of the positive vibrations, Nory.”

That statement was the perfect segue into a discussion of how a bunch of guys from all over the Midwest came to dominate the Chicago dub scene since 2004. While their five studio releases with Jump Up Records track their progress over the last three years, the connection they have with their audience at live shows is what defines the Drastics, as does their penchant for collaboration with a variety of talented artists. That collaborative spirit is celebrated in their two-disk 2006 album, Chicago Massive, which features twenty-four musician credits and a strong presence of talented vocalists from King Django to Dayna Lynn.

Tom was kind enough to break down the whole dub concept for me, describing its origins as an offshoot of traditional roots reggae. Producers and artists, such as King Tubby and Lee “Scratch” Perry, were doing B-side versions of records’ A-sides, which were essentially instrumental. The purpose was to allow artists room to “chat” over, or “toast” as DJ's played these versions. This developed into its own reggae-based derivative. True to the technical roots of dub, the Drastics' 2007 release, Waiting, is instrumental-intensive. In my research and talks with people who love reggae, I had come to expect politically charged lyrics as a matter of course, so I asked Tom why their latest album was so instrumentally rich. What was their message? He simply said, “The music is the message.”

I decided to go beyond listening to the album and went to see them at Chicago’s Beat Kitchen. The sold-out show demonstrated that their signature experimental blend of roots, ska, and dub seasoned with frequent jazz-intensive frameworks provides yet another example of reggae’s organic nature. Vocalists Zulu and Fada Dougou rocked, playing off each other and the horn-rich tones, echoing reverb effects and classic reggae rhythms. Their energized two-part vocals incorporated singing, chatting and toasting, challenging the audience to groove hard. They played much from their newest album and I got to experience firsthand the effect of not only the dub music live, but the effect of the vocalists improvising over the already familiar songs. The venue was packed and everyone, both on stage and off, was moving to the perfect balance of kick-ass music and energetic stage presence.

It seems a fitting end to my search for answers. What is reggae? It’s so much more than the rhythm style that technically defines it. It’s more than Rastafarian roots, Bob Marley, or all of its derivatives combined. Although I’m glad to finally understand the social, cultural, and technical origins, the spirit, energy, and humanity embedded in the soul of the music is what makes it so appealing. Once I began to critically consider the impact reggae has had upon popular culture, I began to notice it absolutely everywhere. Every day as my son and I tune into Arthur, we groove to Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers singing the theme song, “Believe In Yourself.” I hear reggae in elevators, transformed into Muzak, and also when I turn on the radio I hear Top 40 artists trying their hands at the sound. Does the fact that popular culture and mass marketing campaigns have appropriated reggae mean that the original spirit has been devalued? I don’t think so. I think it’s like my friend, E, said: It’s all about the positive vibrations. Despite all of the variations, changes, and permutations of the reggae sound, the positive energy and ability to bring people together demonstrates that reggae isn’t just relevant; it’s a thriving part of popular culture.

Sources cited:

About The Author

Nora Gruenberg is a thirty year old wife and mother of one. She lives in Chicago’s southwest suburbs and writes as often as possible. She has been published on 34th Parallel and is currently seeking publication for her first Novel “Delia”.

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