Why Reggae Matters

Commentary and Analysis by Mitch Santell
Producer and Co-Founder, Big Reggae Mix

Since launching Big Reggae Mix (KREG) on November 5, 2014 we have watched our little station grow organically.

While my own background has been producing POP, Smooth Jazz, Alternative and Rock Music, you need to know from me as the Co-Founder of the station that I have learned about Reggae from our Founder Scott T. Brown whom I have known personally for over ten years.

In looking at the spectrum of various music formats, I sincerely know in my heart that in 2015 -- Reggae Music (and most of its sub-genres - no we don't play dance hall), has a profound impact on our world.

The impact and the healing power of Reggae to 2015 is what the Folk and Rock Music Movements were in the 1960's. Reggae Music is literally the one form of music that is still promoted, run and distributed for the most part by music people.

Many of the artists that I now listen to I listen to because of Scott T. Brown. If Big Reggae Mix was more than just an online radio station - let's say we expanded and became a record label - I am now convinced that with Scott T. Brown's ears and Errol Brown (our partner and Executive Producer) we would have a slew of #1 hits.

The music business continues as always to go through tremendous transition. As I learn more and more about Reggae, I am open and willing to share with you, our followers, listeners and fans some more about the depth and breadth of Reggae.

So check this out:

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Reggae is the musical genre which revolutionized Jamaican music. When it emerged in the late 1960s, it came as a cultural bombshell not only to Jamaica but the whole world. Its slow jerky rhythm, its militant and spiritual lyrics as well as the rebellious appearance of its singers, among others, have influenced musical genres, cultures and societies throughout the world, contributing to the development of new counterculture movements, especially in Europe, in the USA and Africa. Indeed, by the end of the 1960s, it participated in the birth of the skinhead movement in the UK. In the 1970s, it impacted on Western punk rock/ pop cultures, influencing artists like Eric Clapton and The Clash. During the same decade, it inspired the first rappers in the USA, giving rise to hip-hop culture. Finally, since the end of the 1970s, it has also influenced singers originating from Africa, the Ivorian singers Alpha Blondy and Tiken Jah Fakoly, and the South African Lucky Dube clearly illustrating this point. Thus, my paper will examine the impact of reggae music on the worldwide cultural universe, focusing particularly on Europe, the USA and Africa.

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Reggae revolutionized Jamaican Music and now this music is waking up the world. - Mitch Santell

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Reggae music not only influenced the skinhead movement, but it also strongly influenced the punk movement, partly thanks to Don Letts, a young black man born in London of Jamaican parents. In 1977, Don Letts was a DJ at the legendary nightclub The Roxy where he introduced reggae and dub to the burgeoning punk rock scene, thereby influencing British punk bands like The Clash and The Sex Pistols. In an interview that I conducted with Don Letts, he explained to me how he happened to play reggae in this famous punk-oriented club:

10“This was so early in the punk movement that there weren’t any punk record to play. So I played what I loved, dub reggae, and lucky for me the punks loved it too, although I did slip in a bit of New York Dolls, Iggy and the Stooges and the MC5 occasionally. They liked the bass lines and the anti-Establishment stance and the fact that the songs were about something (and they didn’t mind the weed either!).”7

The same year, The Clash started mixing punk and reggae rhythms together and they covered Junior Murvin’s reggae hit “Police And Thieves.” As for Bob Marley, whom was actually Don Letts’ friend and moreover had been introduced to the punk scene by the latter, he released “Punky Reggae Party,” a tune that became the anthem to the cultural exchange that Don Letts had created at the Roxy. Another song that deserves to be quoted is The Clash’s “The Guns Of Brixton” which evokes police repression in Brixton and echoes the subsequent riots in 1981:

“When they kick out your front door
How you gonna come?
With your hands on your head
Or on the trigger of your gun
When the law break in
How you gonna go?
Shot down on the pavement
Or waiting in death row
You can crush us
You can bruise us
But you’ll have to answer to
Oh, Guns of Brixton” (The Clash 1979).

11This song clearly represents the anger of the people against a society which makes them live in misery, the police incarnating this society. Actually, punk rock and reggae music, though completely different from a musical perspective, shared some similarities, to begin with the fact that they both were counterculture musical movements, spreading a message of rebellion against the Establishment. In other words, punks and Rastas shared a same idea of freedom and of rebellion against social norms and the setting of these norms8.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, numerous other British pop and rock artists were inspired by reggae and paid tribute to it, among which: The Rolling Stones; Eric Clapton –– in 1974, he cut Bob Marley’s “I Shot The Sheriff” which was a true hit ––; Nina Hagen, who is German by birth but made a career in Britain;  The Police led by Sting –– “Roxanne” was a worldwide hit in 1978 ––; Culture Club led by Boy George and so forth. 

12 Most recently, reggae, dub and dancehall have also greatly influenced the British electronic musical scene which finds its roots in the remix technique quasi-intrinsic to Jamaican music since the emergence of dub in the late 1960s (Veal 2007: 2). It gave rise to new musical genres such as drum and bass, jungle and trip-hop, the latter being pioneered by artists like Massive Attack, Portishead or Tricky. The three of them are originating from Bristol (South West, England). Besides remix, the sound system subculture has also greatly impacted on the British electronic musical scene, resulting in the rave or free parties, namely events held outdoors or in disused buildings. Spiral Tribe, a group of artists originating from London were among the first to organize this type of unlicensed parties in the UK in the early 1990s. It is worth adding that dreadlocks and ganja which belong to the world of ravers also seem to result from the Jamaican reggae universe. 
Last but not least, Jamaican reggae has obviously fathered British reggae whose emblematic figures remain Steel Pulse, Aswad, UB 40, Maxi Priest and Bitty McLean among others. Such musical and social phenomena are not exclusively linked with the UK, but they have spread throughout Europe. France, for instance, is another European country which has been greatly influenced by reggae both musically and culturally.

More here:  http://etudescaribeennes.revues.org/4740?lang=en

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Once I started to do my own research and uncover the “ back story ” on the origins of Reggae I was even more impressed. 

Bob Marley (King of Reggae)

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