Tiny desk concerts from NPR music are tiny concerts in small rooms. This time it’s Adrian Sherwood’s living room jamming with legendary Andy Horace supported by drums, cello, guitar, bass, keys, trumpet, guitar and cello while dubbing FXs are preformed by maestro himself. Fulljoy!
On role of the Deejay
Dominant and subversive versions of Africa and African history reproduced the dynamic outlined above but on an international scale.
In Britain in the 1980s imperial relations were being re-imagined in the context of humanitarian aid. Black youths in Britain wielded their African heritage as a tool to build their communities and give voice to their analysis.
Meanwhile the mainstream press, and charitable structures,were also building a version of Africa; one of helpless victims of natural disasters.
Given such a context, the ‘performance’ that is being considered here contains dialogues that traverse the African diaspora and are based on the acquisition of‘oral skills’ in Creolised language, which acted as a mode of response to the imposition of European culture on non-European peoples. Resistance became most evident in the contested spaces constructed around specific types of language-use that expressed an alternative black subjectivity that bridged intergenerational gaps within black communities.
The use of particular linguistic forms, both oral and scribal, continued the type of ‘pan Caribbean consciousness‘ that was necessary for the Windrush Generation’s survival and was passed down to the generations born in Britain thereafter.
For many deejays, therefore, the world view expressed through the usage of Standard English reduced them to the voiceless, passive victims of a Eurocentric historical bias.
By blending several aspects of Jamaican oral culture with their own local argot, deejays verbally presented critiques of certain entrenched ideas, for instance, poetry as an exclusively white domain.
This type of engagement was exemplifed in a lyric performed on Diamonds Sound System by the British deejay Papa Benji, which suggested that
‘poetry me better than Shakespeare, and me voice gone clear everywhere’.
The deejay thus became the veritable keeper of memories, for once the word was performed, recorded and disseminated, it became an artefact; a historical document.
It also enabled the performers to present their own arguments, in their own words and on their own terms in a ‘commonly agreed language’ that countered their ‘social problem’ status.
Photo from:
Without The Windrush Generation, British MC Culture Would Be Non-Existent
Excerpt from:
William ‘Lez’ Henry (2012) Reggae, Rasta and the Role of the Deejay
in the Black British Experience, Contemporary British History, 26:3, 355-373,
DOI:10.1080/13619462.2012.703024
The Sound of Bed-Stuy
Short docu on sound system movements out of New York. Bigup!
A Journey into Reggae from Dub to Dancehall with Ras Jammy
Original Ras Jammy selection on My Analog Journal with just under 50 minutes of finest roots rock reggae and dubwise. 100% vinyl with crackle, hum and nuff warmth.
Max RubaDub & Natty Campbell – Good Ses
Remix machine Max RubaDub comes with original tune featuring Natty Campbell praising the real highgrade. Version on the flip. Nah miss!
Haris Pilton meets Joseph Cotton – Mr Classic
Privileged to listen to some early mixes in the making of this master piece, Jah Billah confirms this album opens up a new chapter for Balkan regggae.
Mr. Pilton says:
After two years brand new reggae album is here.
HARIS PILTON meets legendary JOSEPH COTTON aka JAH WALTON on an album called MR CLASSIC. The album includes 14 songs in an old fashion reggae style.
Enjoy
From press release:
MR CLASSIC is the latest album from Joseph Cotton in collaboration with producer Haris Pilton.
Legend Joseph Cotton aka Jah Walton (born Silbert Walton, 1957, St. Ann, Jamaica) is a reggae deejay and singer active since the mid-1970s. He recorded his first song named “Gourmandizer” with Joe Gibbs in 1976, under the name Jah Walton. He then moved to Harry Mudie owner of Moodisc label, recording popular tracks such as “Stay A Yard And Praise God” and “Touch Her Where She Want It Most” (the title track from his debut album).
In the mid-1980s he began recording under the name Joseph Cotton, immediately having success. He reached No.1 in the UK charts with “No Touch The Style”, leading to a television appearance on Channel 4’s Club Mixprogramme in 1987. Several more reggae chart hits followed in the form of “Things Running Slow”, “Pat Ha Fe Cook”, “Tutoring”, “Judge Cotton”, and “What Is This”.
Cotton continued to perform and record into the 1990s, 2000s and the present day. He now lives in France where he performs at venues throughout the country and elsewhere in Europe both solo and in collaboration with other reggae artists
On Sound System as tool against oppression
How have the protest anthems of the classic era of reggae been transformed into support for Jamaica’s tourist industry?
Stephen King tackles such general questions of co-optation in his monograph a revision of his dissertation that at times suffers from an overly academic presentation, particularly when he attempts to fit data to the categories of his particular social movement theory.
The study attempts to “comprehensively trace how Jamaica’s protest music has changed both lyrically and musically over a twenty-one year period, and how the Jamaican government has attempted to silence or co-opt these voices of protest”.
King concludes with a look at how Rastafari claims for social justice in reggae have been co-opted first in the service of the island’s emergent nationalism and then to assist Jamaican tourism.
King locates the roots of reggae in ska (1959-65) and rocksteady (1966-67), the two musical forms that preceded it. It was ska, a music that blended mento , the indigenous Jamaican version of calypso, with American jazz and rhythm and blues, that reflected the optimistic mood of the country during the run-up to Jamaican independence.
As economic conditions worsened for the majority of Jamaica’s blacks during the mid-1960s, the more aggressive lyrics of rocksteady gave voice to the frustrations and alienation of the island’s under- and unemployed ghetto dwellers.
And then there was the advent of reggae in the late 1960s and through the 1970s, the period that is remembered as the high- water mark of Rastafari influence on an emergent Jamaican nationalism. Reggae, of course, began as a Rasta-inspired music that not only articulated the pan- African vision of the movement and its demands for social justice, but that celebrated the cultural practices and symbols of Rastafari.
King does a credible job in mapping the general contours and themes of these musical developments against the backdrop of a changing Jamaican society. In the course of this he shows how the roots of Rastafari musical protest are organically intertwined with the development of both preceding forms. While this is hardly newsworthy to many aficionados of Jamaican music, King provides some interesting examples that illustrate how critical commentary and protest themes, however restrained, existed within ska lyrics from the outset.
The occasional presence of Rastafari drumming, biblical references (e.g., River Jordan, Mount Zion), and allusions to repatriation through the idiom of the “promised land” were all important resonances in
this music that portended the development of popular music as an important communicative medium for the Rasta movement.
King describes rocksteady as a music that is more aggressive, that speaks more directly to the collective frustrations and suffering experienced by the island’s lower classes. Frequently, this music celebrates the “Rude Boy” or new male ghetto rebel as he has been memorialized in popular discourse.
Prince Buster’s “Too Hot” and Derrick Morgan’s “Tougher Than Tough” are both examples of this figure, an individual who sought social and political justice with a ratchet (knife) or a gun.
King points out that rocksteady lyrics tended to condone more aggressive protest against the oppression of the “sufferah” class, while in specific cases evoking linkages with the general Rastafari critique of the “Babylonian” neocolonial system.
Of critical importance to the dissemination and popularization of this music, King notes, were “sound systems” developed to carry high-fidelity playback equipment to rural and urban dances throughout the island.
This portable technology, he argues, enabled the development of a community of dissent by transporting music to sites where “the voice of the poor could be heard without interference by local authorities”, a development that continued from the era of ska through reggae to the present. It is certainly true that
sound systems served to strengthen an already extant discourse of protest, but King fails to recognize that long before sound systems, the Rasta movement itself was about creating alternative spaces for face-to-face communication in which counter-hegemonic discourse was reproduced and disseminated.
Text from:
Review: UNDERSTANDING A MODERN ANTIQUE: CHALLENGES TO REPRESENTING RASTAFARI IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
Author: John P. Homiak
Source: NWIG: New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids, Vol. 79, No. 1/2 (2005)
Wosui – Wicked Babylon EP
Wosui coming in hot on future dubwise label Reggaewise outta Greece.
3 tracks+1 dub made primarily and foremost with task to shake the scoops and rumble the tweeters of any good sound system.
Full support!
On essence of Rasta
Extracting the essence of Rasta
The internal conflicts and contradictions of the movement which surfaced in the centenary celebrations illustrate the problems of the last twenty years. Relations have sometimes been so poor that one night when two Rastafarian groups met at a radio station to do a programme on the movement, one group
decided to leave if the other was allowed to speak. Some groups are more willing to speak to white foreigners than to each other. Leading up to and during the centenary, Rasta houses forgot about areas of common interest and focused more on idiosyncratic differences and personal feuds between the leaders.
Each leader struggled to contain the movement under his vision, while projecting religious rituals over intellectual arguments. The result is that the movement devolved closer to empty symbol status while the society continued to extract the useful substance of the social theory.
This process of extracting the essence of Rastafari will continue until and
unless the movement produces leadership with five essential capabilities:
- spiritual insights to unite the various houses;
- intellectual acumen to engage the Afrocentric thinkers;
- managerial capabilities to build transnational sustainable businesses;
- cultural engineers to build the necessary rituals for living; and
- brand management.
Text from:
From Peace and Love to ‘Fyah Bun’: Did Rastafari Lose Its Way?
Leahcim Semaj (2013)
https://doi.org/10.1080/00086495.2013.11672485
Feldub & Earl Sixteeen – Stand Firm
Heavyweight stepper riddim with flying horns in combination with soulful rasta lyrics by legendary Earl Sixteen followed by dubwise cut.
Full support!
On impact of music genres on brain activity
Jah Billah intro:
This research presents measurements of various neurophysiological effects of different music genres, but it seems to be just a sneaky way of settling age old debate of :
“Which is more cerebral, Psy Trance or Goa Trance?”
Just kidding. Some people say we should not take music too seriously.
Should we take science of music seriously?
Genres included in study were:
-Classical, Tribal Downtempo, Psychedelic Trance (Psytrance), Goa Trance, and Subject Choice.
Among other results, study finds that people with prior musical training will exhibit higher neurophysiological response to music in delta waves range of brain activity.
“Higher percentages of delta frequencies were found to be most strongly associated with Psytrance within individual cortical regions. Goa Trance also exhibited a significant but weaker association.
The superior association observed between Psytrance and higher percentages of delta frequencies may again be attributed to its unique sixteenth note rhythmic beat structure. However, the finding that Goa Trance also had a significant association, although far less robust than what was observed for Psytrance, suggests that the compositional structure of Goa Trance may be similar enough to that of Psytrance that there is some overlap or sharing in their ability to increase delta frequency activity in the cerebral cortex of listeners. Goa Trance has a very similar compositional structure to that of Psytrance, and although it lacks the sixteenth note beat structure found in Psytrance, it still is typically composed of melodies and harmonies made from sixteenth notes layered over a standard quarter note beat structure.
Further investigation is warranted to better clarify the reasons why Psytrance exhibited a superior association with higher percentages of delta frequencies compared to the other studied music genres. Given that increased delta frequency activity is observed during stages of NREM sleep, these findings support those of previous music therapy studies which suggest that various types of music may impact the central nervous system by promoting changes in cerebral cortex activity that have similarities to NREM sleep, while the listener remains awake.“
Text from:
Neurophysiological effects of various music genres on electroencephalographic (EEG) cerebral cortex activity
Authors: Abraham Hafiz Rodriguez, Sarah Nath Zallek, Michael Xu, Jean Aldag, Lori Russell-Chapin, Tobias A. Mattei, and N. Scott Litofsky
Publication Date: 15 Oct 2021
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1556/2054.2019.027
Kali Fat Dub – Životinjska Karma
“Post-apocalyptic DUB” is not an easy load, but Kali Fat Dub carry the flag and spearhead Balkan DUB charge.
Full support for 11 track 2021 album now available on BandCamp!
OUT OF MANY COME DUB AND OUT OF DUB COME ONE 