A question for our reggae experts (especially): have reggae musicians (especially Rastafarians) ever intentionally borrowed from Ethiopian music?

Satta Massa Gana by the Abyssinians' always sounded very African/Arabic, i don't think it directly borrowed a melody, but the lyrics where in Ethiopian..

Ha, this is something I was going to start talking about on the Christgau vs. Ethiopia thread, but I dropped it because I've never been able to untangle things enough to be really sure about it. Basically a lot of stuff from that Jamaican era has loads in common with Ethiopian music, both traditional and modern, and since Jamaicans were biting elements of Ethiopian culture and iconography with a fucking fury -- the flag, the Lion of Judah, Selassie-as-hero (Ras Tafari), "the Abyssinians" and "Ethiopialand" -- it's easy to assume there was a large musical influence as well. But I'm sort of wary, because I don't want to underestimate the amount of influence running in the other direction: Jamaican music has obviously had a massive effect on Africa, and there are clearly elements of it that had gotten over to Ethiopia by the mid-70s at the absolute latest. Once again, H would probably be much better at untangling which directions the influences were mostly running.

have no idea on that one. i'd need to go back and listen to the Abyssinians and Burning Spear to see. off the top of my haed, never haerd something running from Ethiopia to Jamaica but could be wrong.

reggae was huge here in 70s and has def made its way into musical vocabulary so in terms of what nabiscois decsribing, could just be that. not that much help on this one.

Nabisco, I noticed after I posted this question, that you had sort of mentioned it in passing on the Ethiopian music thread. But I think the first time it occurred to me was when I was listening to "Social Living."

So are we arguing that the 'Far East sound'--basically minor key, meditative stuff--is actually springs from Ethiopia rather than the Far East? I don't know much so I'll just ask a few questions:
How similar are the scales used by Arabs and by those further east? Are the attributes of the 'Far East sound' specefic to one place or can they be found throughout the Eastern world? What were the people who developed the 'Far East sound' in JA exposed to? I'm aware of many Chinese being involved in reggae, but have not heard the same of anyone from Ethiopia.

somewhat off topic,
a singer I know here has recently gotten interested in Chinese opera because she hears so many similarities
maybe Nabisco has some thoughts on this (my knowledge of chinese opera being close to nil)

It's impossible to untangle these things. The roots of reggae are in R&B and the blues. I remember reading of Malian guitarist Ali Farka Toure being asked about how much John Lee Hooker influenced him (and he did sound lots like him) and he claimed he sounded like his ancestors, that these styles had been around Mali for generations. There may have been a large element of bullshit in that, I don't know (but all the other Malian music I've heard sounds very unlike Ali Farka Toure), but it makes the point that these things go in all directions. I can hear western sounds in most of the African music I love, and African sounds in much of western music, albeit often farther back in the blend.

I am ignorant of Ethiopian music, but I think the iconography of rastafarian reggae had little Ethiopian substance to it. Africa in general was an icon rather than a musical source. The main reason that Ethiopia was picked out was due to biblical mistranslation. I don't think Jamaican musicians had any interest in Ethiopia on a musical basis. I read a lot of interviews with reggae people in the late '70s, when it became sort of fashionable in the UK, and I don't remember anyone talking in a meaningful way about African music, other than as an almost mythical source of all that was good in music. There was no sense of their having any expectation that Africa might be producing contemporary music worth hearing.

This is my impression, and there are more expert reggae fans here, like Dr C and Tim H. They might tell you something different.

I feel in way over my head with this stuff, both in terms of music theory and history. Yeah, it could be a Chinese influence I'm hearing, for all I know. Or it could just be Burning Spear's imagination on herb?

I remember reading somewhere about the Chinese influence on Latin music, and I thought it was referring to be-bop (since it was sometimes called that), but no, it turns out there might actually have been enough of a Chinese presence in certain key countries for Latin music, that there could be a modest Chinese contribution. (I can't remember the details anymore.)

I don't think it's especially important to sort these things out--I just find it intriguing. In fact, Martin is probably right that it's not even possible to sort out such questions.

I think we're just running into the big problem with diaspora studies. Just as a weird example: I can't tell you how many times I've seen Africans watch black Americans dancing and say "they dance just like [any given group of Africans]." You do want to recognize some truth in this -- general modes of doing things that survived or were just reflected even over long periods of time and separation -- but obviously a big part of it is just recognizing familiar things and not the rest.

Martin, I think the Ethiopia-in-reggae thing going slightly beyond just Biblical mistranslation: it was and is the only African nation without a colonial history (unless you count Liberia), which I think was essential as well. Having its own Christian history and iconography was pretty important too, of course.

I really doubt that many Jamaican artists were consciously listening to Ethiopian stuff -- for one thing, it's hard to imagine how they'd have gotten their hands on very much of it. But there are moments where I just sort of wonder.

Also, I don't know nearly enough about music theory or mid-Eastern music to say much about this, but while -- from a western perspective -- there are similarities to the approach to melody from Indian all the way across into Ethiopia and north Africa, I think there's a lot of distinction as well. I mean, it could just be a familiarity issue again, but I would never think of Ethiopian music as sounding more than very vaguely like anything Arabic.

I haven't heard enough Ethiopian music to say. On the one hand, I can, say, make distinctions between Iraqi and Egyptian rhythms; or between Arabic and Turkish styles of singing; but at the same time I think I still have a sort of "generic" sense of what "Eastern" music sounds like.

The cross referencing between Brazil and Portuguese-speaking Africa springs to mind here. Angolans that I've met have been wild about Brazilian music, whereas Brazilians - even those with broad musical tastes - tend not to be too aware of contemporary African styles. While it's true that Jorge Ben and Gilberto Gil have both played in Angola, it doesn't appear that they have ever inflected their music with any current style from Angola (even on J Ben's Angola song!). However, the historical influence of African rhythms on Brazil in undeniable and well documented. Not to mention the fact that one popular style in Angola is called SEMBA, which I understand predates samba. (Afri-philes, please correct me if I'm wrong). As for the matter in hand, Augustus Pablo always manages to sound vaguely Eastern to me (cf Java), but like some in this discussion, I cannot be any more than vague.

Well Pablo was courting that. East of the River Nile, etc.

This isn't really a question, it's more of a request. I'm doing a project for the 8th grade and i've decided to do it on reggae music. If you can answer a few interview questions for my project, that would be wonderful. you can post your answer on here but it would be better if you just email me. give me your email address too so i can email you the questions if you say yes. Reply as soon as possible and thank you for your time.

I wrote about reggae when we had a mandatory ethnomusicology project during my studies, and the point here is that Ethiopia is a metaphor i the rastafarian faith rather than something concrete. And, from my knowledge, they have never ever borrowed anything from Ethiopian music, no. At least not any more than reggae in general borrows from African music in general.

There simply wasn't that much Ethiopian music available to the outside world prior to the late 80s. There were a couple of albums by a jazz artist from Addis Adaba named Mulatu Astatke, and some ethnographic recordings of village trumpet music from Eritrea (then a Ethiopian provence). But for the most part, the roots of reggae a mixture of Jamaican drumming (maintained through centuries of slavery and emancipation) from West Africa (the ancestral home of nearly all African slaves in the West Hemisphere) with American rhythm and blues from the 60s (also West African, in a roundabout way).

Geir OTM. Ethiopian traditional music (judging by scales and meters) is much more in the Arabic/North African musical axis than in the West African/griot tradition. The reason Haile Selasie was revered by rastas was that he was the leader of the only African nation to have successfully resisted European colonization. It had little to due with musical borrowings from Ethiopia.

Maryam might check out Count Ossie's classic "Grounation" album and compare it with some West African (esp Ghanaian) traditional drum music to hear the folk links that run outside recorded influence.