But reggae? Oh, it’s deader than Bob Marley. You get the occasional single from one of Marley’s sons, but that could just as easily play on the pop/rock radio stations. In fact, they do. But before that… what? Maxi Priest? UB40? As much as I like the early work of both of those artists, their success was founded mostly on the commercial, rather than the rebel, tip. And the only radio exposure they receive now, if any, is on urban classics and college stations. It’s safe to say that the only real survivor of reggae’s heyday are dreadlocks, which now ironically signify wealth and celebrity, rather than the hairstyle of the oppressed.

Many (most?) people probably can’t recall the position of strength that reggae was in during the early to mid-70s. It was being championed and covered by mainstream artists such as Eric Clapton and the Rolling Stones for its unique musical structure — a combination of gospel, jazz, R&B and soul. Its very real outlaw reputation didn’t hurt; many of today’s rappers would curl into the fetal position or head for the mean streets of Beverly Hills if dropped into that era’s slums and shantytowns. The 1972 film The Harder The Come influenced a generation of legitimate bad men, wanna-be gunmen, and singers much the same way Scarface would a decade later. Of course, the soundtrack of the former is legendary and still remains one of the essential single-album documents of the genre.

Reggae, like rock, was birthed from a more folksy tradition, in this case mento and calypso. That gentle, largely acoustic music would give way to ska — a more upbeat, dance-oriented music of the 1950s — in a striking metamorphosis similar to how country, blues, folk and “race” music would deliver rock & roll to the youth culture of America and, eventually, the world. Ska was characterized by its walking bass line and rhythms concentrated on the upbeat. It also brought to bear a much faster tempo which demanded dancing. But trends — and teenagers — often have a short attention span and a desire for something new, and music mythology also points to the very hot temperatures in the Caribbean in the mid-1960s as a dominant factor in the evolution of Jamaican music. The sweltering heat produced a slower tempo for both the musicians, and patrons of dancehall and yard dances, the story goes, and thus rocksteady. Perhaps my favorite era of Jamaican music, rocksteady would sadly be a very short, albeit highly influential, “blip” on Jamaican music’s radar, eventually ceding to what we would know as reggae in the late 1960s and 1970s.

As Rastafarianism, Pan-Africanism and black consciousness started to spread in Jamaica, the music again shifted. Nyabinghi drumming and chants started to work their way into Jamaican music, along with a professed love for the sacred herb of marijuana, a desire for repatriation to Africa and the acceptance of Haile Selassie as the second coming of God on earth. To most Jamaicans, Rastas were the bottom rung of the social ladder, confined to the countryside and ghettos of Kingston. However, their revolutionary beliefs soon infiltrated musicians and the music scene, and the golden age of “roots reggae” was soon underway. A young Bob Marley, along with bandmates Bunny Wailer and Peter Tosh, embraced the movement, growing their locks out, and eventually putting an acceptable — and commercial — face on Jamaica’s ghetto music to Western pop culture.

There were exceptions, of course; Bob Marley and The Wailers, Third World, and The Gladiators were self-contained bands. Marley, of course, would become the biggest reggae star in history, and a cottage industry after his premature death at age 36 of cancer. However, it is worth pointing out that black America never really embraced Bob Marley, or reggae music in general, a fact that, according to Ziggy Marley, the reggae king “had (an) issue with, because he wanted African-Americans to hear his message.” Many might argue that the death of reggae began with the death of its superstar, and it’s true that it would never reach the heights, nor produce as magnetic a presence as Bob Marley. But other things that would change both the music and culture of Jamaica were already underfoot.

Read more here: https://bit.ly/2R0ahuz​

Tim Ingham, Founder • MBW

Music Business World-Wide

​Today’s entertainment market is increasingly global. The music industry risks hampering its future potential by thinking too local, too often.

Music Business Worldwide (MBW) is a free, in-depth news, insight and analysis platform for the international music industry.

Whether it’s the colossal US, UK and EU markets, the growing power of Asia-Pacific, Russia and Latin America or the streaming-savvy Nordics, MBW helps artists, managers and music industry rights-holders arm themselves with international knowledge to tackle international ambitions.

Below, a handful MBW subscribers tell us why they read our newsletter and website each day.

Read more here: https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/​

Minneapolis Central Library opens vinyl listening room to share collection

The library hosted the first event in its new "Vinyl Revival" series, which aims to bring attention to the thriving audio format. 


Right now, thousands of vinyl records are stored in the third floor of the Minneapolis Central Library downtown.

They’re not easy to find — the stacks are in a remote room, far from where patrons usually look for books, CDs and movies. But librarians are now beginning to bring the collection out, little by little, to the public.


On Saturday, the library hosted the first event in its new “Vinyl Revival” series, which aims to bring attention to the thriving audio format. Through June, artists will present vinyl-themed programming and curate records from the library’s stacks, many of which are the works of local musicians.


The library also converted a small meeting room on the third floor into a listening room equipped with a turntable and headphones, which people can reserve to listen to the artist-selected picks.


“We just wanted to connect people again with the collection, because it was being unused,” said associate librarian Elizabeth Cole. “It just felt like a really great tool for connecting generations.”


The vinyl market has steadily grown over the past decade. Record sales last year went up 15 percent from 2017 to a total 16.8 million sold, according to Billboard magazine. (This is still only a fraction of overall album sales, which are on the decline.)


That interest has been reflected in libraries, as well. The St. Paul Public Library system, for instance, allows people to check out vinyl from its collection.

Read more here: http://strib.mn/2U2qG3r​

The vinyl revival has been breathing new life into phonographic records for more than a decade. And it shows no signs of slowing.

Albums sold on vinyl records saw double-digit sales growth in the US last year, according to a new report by BuzzAngle Music.

(The same goes for the compact audio cassette—which has been dead to me since I received my first Ace of Base CD at age nine.)

Counting a 16.2 percent increase in total album consumption, 2018 was a banner year for on-demand streaming services. But individual song and album sales suffered, falling 28.8 percent and 18.2 percent, respectively.

With the advent of pay-to-play services like Spotify Premium and Apple Music, it’s no wonder digital and physical album sales are dropping like flies. I mean, when was the last time you actually bought a CD?

Read more here: https://bit.ly/2Cuuxza​
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Iration Will Perform at One Love In Long Beach 2019

Goldenvoice announced today that the 2019 iteration of One Love Cali Reggae Festival will bring headliners Slightly Stoopid, Rebelution, Sublime with Rome, Dirty Heads, and more to the Queen Mary Events Park in February 2019.

Now in its fourth year, the three-day festival will take place on Friday, Feb. 8, Saturday, Feb. 9 and Sunday, Feb. 10. This is the third year the festival has taken place at The Queen Mary; it was first held at The Observatory in Santa Ana.

As was the case the past two years, a mix of gloomy weather and energetic performances tend to make for a wet, but well received, multi-day experience based on “unity, music and good vibes”.

Check out the full lineup: Alpha Blondy, Anuhea, Atmosphere, Ballyhoo, Bikini Trill, Collue Buddz, Common Kings, Dirty Heads, Dispatch, Don Carlos, Fiji, Fishbone, Fortunate Youth, Groundation, Hirie, Iration, Israel Vibration, Ital Vibes, Iya Terra, J Boog, Josh Heinrichs, Katastro, Katchafire, Landon McNamara, Lee Scratch Perry, Long Beach Dub All Stars, Mad Caddies, Matisyahu, Mike Love, Mike Pinto, Morgan Heritage, Nattali Rize, Pacific Dub, Passafire, Pepper, Rebelution, Sammy J, Simpkin Project, Slightly Stoopid, SOJA, Stick Figure, Sublime with Rome, The B Foundation, The Expanders, The Expendables, The Green, The Holdup, The Movement, Tomorrow’s Bad Seeds, Trevor Hall, Tribal Seeds, Yellowman.

Read more here: https://bit.ly/2ThESGo​

Etana, whose name translates to ‘the strong one’ in Swahili, emigrated from her native Jamaica to Florida where she went on to join a female R&B trio. The overtly sexual stereotypes of the genre juxtaposed with her ideals, and eventually she returned to Jamaica to create a sound that embodied Rastafarian principles and respect for women. Her 2008 debut album, The Strong One, solidified her signature sound – powerful vocals paired with an eclectic fusion of reggae, soul, jazz, and folk – while remaining committed to sending a positive, spiritual message. Her most recent release, I Rise, was listed amongst World A Reggae’s Top 10 Albums of 2014.

​Born in the Bronx in 1979, the multi-award-winning Tarrus Riley, son of reggae legend Jimmy Riley, was recording music by his early teens. Since the release of his debut album, Challenges, in 2004, the star has exploded onto the music scene with high profile performances at Reggae Sumfest and the Jamaican Jazz and Blues Festival, garnering accolades such as the EME Awards’ 2011 Cultural Artiste of the Year. Despite his rapid rise to fame, Riley has remained committed to his roots, emphasizing that making ‘thought-provoking music about Black consciousness and experience’ is the core of his work, a vision that he supports through commitment to movements like BLAKSOIL, which aim to speak to the consciousness of black women and children.

Formed in Jamaica in 2000, Rootz Underground are a six-piece band whose music, while staying true to the seminal sound of 1970s reggae and the positive message of Rastafari, combines an edgy and organic sound that is all their own. With the release of their studio albums Movement in 2008 and Gravity in 2010, they have toured over 22 countries across the globe and performed at high profile festivals like Jamaica’s Rebel Salute and Reggae Sumfest. Rootz Underground has established itself as a major player on the international reggae scene. Their highly anticipated third studio album, Return of the Righteous Vol. 1, was released in France in March 2015 and will be released globally on June 1 this year.

Read more here: https://bit.ly/2Dg06hG​

From ‘Lazy Stoner’ to Casual ConsumerThe Dude is not a product of marijuana usage, but a prime example of what can be birthed out of the product. The stoner trope—ironically, a lazy one in the 2010s—is fading fast in 2018. As more production companies attempt to exploit and/or profit off of America’s love for legal cannabis, television and film is being flooded with on-screen smoking, for better or for worse.

One recent swing and a miss was Netflix’s Disjointed, a show starring Kathy Bates as Ruth Whitefeather Feldman, a woman who runs a cannabis dispensary in Los Angeles. Created by Chuck Lorre (The Big Bang Theory, Two and a Half Men) and David Javerbaum (The Daily Show with Jon Stewart), Disjointed seemed like an obvious cash grab birthed out of the cannabis boom, and yet, aside from its setting and props, the show had little to do with cannabis.

In Disjointed, laugh tracks were cued alongside jokes while cannabis acted as a catalyst for characters stuck in laughing fits, and trippy animations unexpectedly appeared on screen to serve as expired propaganda that marijuana induces hallucinations akin to ayahuasca. Marijuana was simply a background prop that served no substance to Disjointed’s core. The show was canceled at the top of the year after its debut season.
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While it’s admirable that Netflix isn’t afraid to take creative risks with its original programming and strives to bring cannabis culture to the forefront,Disjointed was an unfortunate missed opportunity to educate the masses using humor as a conduit. Hopefully the streaming service’s initial foray into cannabis storytelling gleaned some takeaways that will lead to a small screen win in the near future.

Read more here: https://bit.ly/2McrHXw​

In the cannabis industry, being a multistate operator can mean big profits and broad brand awareness, but brings unique challenges due to the complex regulatory framework that surrounds the burgeoning legal marijuana markets across the U.S.

At Wednesday's Cannabis Capital Conference, three executives from some of the biggest companies in the space offered their perspectives on the ever-changing landscape and what’s ahead in 2019 for this booming business.

Moderator Alan Brochstein, founder of the 420 Investor, focused the majority of the panel on the burning questions so many single-state operators have, asking how to decide which markets to enter and what it takes to stay compliant across borders.

“If you ignore California, you’re ignoring huge opportunity,” said panelist Steve White, CEO of Harvest Health & Rec, a company with medical cannabis licenses in nine states including California.

“If you can create a following in California, you have a real strong probability of being successful elsewhere,” said George Allen, CEO of Acreage Holdings (OTC: ACRGF), which boasts investments in multiple portfolios representing cultivators, processors and dispensaries. "Nationwide awareness doesn’t mean anything if you can't deliver," Allen said. 

Kim Rivers, CEO of Trulieve (OTC: TCNNF) — which holds licenses in Florida and Nevada — implored the audience to focus on smart and strategic growth while making sure to examine any and all challenges posed by each market.
 
“Our responsibility is to provide high-quality products to the consumers,” Rivers said. “Having an eye on national policy, state laws and local regulations is tough. There are a lot of unknowns and lots of balls in the air to juggle at any given time.”

Read more here: https://yhoo.it/2FJ4nMe​
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Tougher requirements for marijuana purity that kicked in this year in California aren’t triggering the high failure rates that emptied shelves at cannabis shops last summer, when the state began phasing in mandated testing.

The better results signal that the cannabis industry is stabilizing in its second year of regulated sales, despite a roller coaster first year that included one testing lab caught falsifying marijuana test results, industry officials and others said.

There’s still concern about what will happen once marijuana shops sell off products grandfathered in before the latest testing rules took effect. But with tests showing that California cannabis is now cleaner than most fruits and vegetables, experts are encouraged.

“The consumer is getting a better product,” said Matt Haskins, chief of Certus Analytics, a licensed testing lab in Murrieta.

Though California launched legal recreational marijuana sales on Jan. 1, 2018, retailers were allowed to sell untested product through mid-year, giving the industry time to ramp up for testing and sell out old inventories.

In July, when the first tests were required, just 80 percent of the cannabis was approved for sale. But as of Jan 11 — with new, tougher rules in place — the pass rate was up to 86.8 percent, according to the latest report from the Bureau of Cannabis Control.

“I think people are just more ready,” said Chris Hoo, an attorney with Emerald Law in Los Angeles, which specializes in testing compliance.
“If you didn’t survive the first round,” Hoo added, “you’re not here to complain about it now.”
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In the first round of testing, more than two thirds of the cannabis that failed did so because the product didn’t match up with claims made on the label. Typically, suppliers were overstating the level of THC, the compound that makes users feel high. Other problems included pesticides, microbial impurities and residual solvents.  

Read more here: https://bit.ly/2TX6jot​

To kick off the 2019 state legislative season, NORML is pleased to release our 2019 Gubernatorial Scorecard. This extensive database assigns a letter grade ‘A’ through ‘F’ to states’ governors based upon their comments and voting records specific to matters of marijuana policy.

“Following the publication of our 2018 Scorecard, there has been a dramatic shift in opinion among elected officials in favor of marijuana policy reform,” NORML’s Political Director Justin Strekal said. “Never before have we seen so many governors go on record and pledge their support for legalizing the responsible use of cannabis by adults. As a result, we expect there to be unprecedented levels of legislative activity at the state level surrounding the need to regulate the commercial cannabis market in 2019 and in 2020.”

Key Findings
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Twenty-seven US governors received a passing grade of ‘C’ or higher (22 Democrats, 5 Republicans)

Of these, nine US governors – all Democrats – received an ‘A’ grade; this marks a significant increase since 2018, when only two governors received ‘A’ grades.

They are:

Gavin Newsom: California
Jared Polis: Colorado
Ned Lamont: Connecticut
JB. Pritzker: Illinois
Gretchen Whitmer: Michigan
Tim Walz: Minnesota
Phil Murphy: New Jersey
Kate Brown: Oregon
Jay Inslee: Washington

The Takeaway

There exists now, for the first time, significant political support among US governors for marijuana policy reform. However, this support is more partisan than ever before. While almost half of all Democratic governors are now on record in support of adult use regulation, no Republican governors publicly advocate for this policy. This partisan divide is not similarly reflected among the general public. According to national polling data compiled by Gallup in October 2018, 66 percent of the public – including majorities of self-identified Democrats, Republicans, and Independents – favor legalization.

The results of the 2018 midterm elections also show that advocating for marijuana legalization is a successful campaign issue. Several newly elected governors – such as Ned Lamont of Connecticut, J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, and Tim Walz of Minnesota – actively campaigned on a pledge to legalize the commercial cannabis market, while two additional governors – Gavin Newsom of California and Jared Polis of Colorado – have prominent histories as marijuana law reform advocates. One governor, New York’s Andrew Cuomo, moved decidedly in favor of legalization during his re-election campaign.

This shift in political support among governors bodes well for the prospects of the passage of successful legislative reforms in various states in 2019 and beyond. While to date only one state – Vermont – has moved to legalize adult marijuana use via legislation (as opposed to the passage of voter initiatives), NORML anticipates that as many as four to five additional states (e.g., Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Illinois, and Rhode Island) may similarly do so in the near future.

Read more here: https://bit.ly/2VYla3J