Jamaica?

Sorry Mark S for use of the i-word there.

yr completely wrong.

nah, not really. but there are other factors working in favor of jamaican music impacting on britain and against it doing the same in the us. damned if i can figure what they are this early in the morning, but they're there.

jamaica has steadily creeped in and out of influence in the u.s. over the last two-three decades. lest us forget, every rocker and popper around the world was game to try their had at cod-reggae in the mid (?) 70s. and as i said somewhere else, everyone thinking timbaland had pinched his whole shtick from drum and bass (including myself) was completely oblivious to what was happening in dancehall for the last decade or so, until seized upon by the hipster consensus in the last few years. (you have a mo wax comp. = yr influence and hipster cred is on the wane?) can we really predict/map cultural tradewind shifts of this sort anymore? is the last 5-10 yrs. of dancehall conceivable without the influence of u.s. hiphop (and british rave)? uk garage = unthinkable without prior influence from u.s. hiphop/r n b? have we just sort of achieved a total afro-carribean meltdown where anything is fair game and nothing is "pure"?

What abt the fact that reggae etc. promotes a v. different religious experience/conception of God from the one celebrated in American music's bedrock Christian styles (gospel, blues etc)?

this a very good line of inquiry andrew, as the religious side to jamaican music is so often lost in translation. (sorta like trying to review "nearer my god to thee" from a secular standpoint, but i digress.) if anything, isn't rasta 10 times more militant than all but the most hardcore fundamentalism?

jess - no. although it does seem to contradict itself, in that it advocates pacifism, forgiveness etc (all the 'nice' Christian attributes) yet has a strong sense of Judgement Day when all sinners will be burnt etc. also politics and social issues are very important - it doesn't ignore the evil of Capitalism (which most Christian churches do)

back to the music - i believe a similar number of Jamaicans went to the US as to the UK (during the main period of movement), but form a higher proportion of the UK population. also, the US had established Black Music scenes, whereas in the UK the jazz scene etc were mostly white.

what a rubbish answer! i will try and dig out a list of some good books on Rasta, but I've got to go now

Well, I am a big fan of many different types of music, but punk and reggae are among those genres that I hold dear. Pardon what will probably prove to be a long and blathering explanation.

Punk rock has a very direct connection with reggae music--not only because legendary reggae producers like Lee Perry and Mikey Dread worked with The Clash--but specifically because of the revolutionary nature of reggae music. Anti-colonialist and anti-establishment, reggae music made use of the apocalyptic and revolutionary language of rastafarianism. Also, the lack of high-end recording equipment created limitations that were overcome by the ingenuity of Jamaican producers and musicians--there was a real DIY, make-do aesthetic that developed by necessity.

Jamaica, as post-colonial nation, has a tumultuous historical relationship with Britain--not too positive. When Jamaicans came to Britain and began to make music there, Jamaican music in England took as revolutionary a tone as that on the island of Jamaica. In Britain, and those Brits reading this can correct me if I am wrong, the class structure is much more prevalent and rigid than what we in North America are used to. Class can prevent someone from being successful and accepted by the socio-economic elite in Britain -- the American dream insists that anyone can be successful, you've just got to have the "pull up your bootstraps" attitude. This class division causes those in certain eschelons of society to stick together.

Hence, lower class kids, be they black or white or whatever, would be more likely to stick together than in North America. This is not to say that racism doesn't exist in the UK, but rather to demonstrate that the social structure of the UK is not the same as that in the US.

Because of the class phenomenon, disenfranchised youth felt a common enemy: the British government. The revolutionary power of reggae was seen as something that took an appropriately reactionary tone. British kids got really interested in Ska--one of reggae's predecessors--and punk rock. Bands like The Clash were particularly interested in reggae's revolutionary power--so much so that they would play versions of classic reggae songs such as "Armigideon time" and their name is derived from the "soundclashes" that happened at Jamaican street dances.

Of course, the repetitive, driving beat of punk rock is similar to the beat of reggae and, as I have said above, both featured (in the 1970s, at least) highly political lyrics.

Unfortunately, youth culture sells, and both punk and reggae were cleaned up and made commercially viable...

In the US, many reggae fans bemoan the "Bob Marley-ization" of reggae (i.e. the fact that very few people in the US know reggae beyond Marleys admittedly good, yet somewhat overrated catalogue) just as punk rock fans were pretty unhappy with the pop sensibility of the British New Wave and now unhappy with the Blink182 popification of So- Cal punk rock.

I think that this initial connection between punk and reggae continued through to electronica/rave/d n' b/etc. etc. etc. It seems that in the UK--and this discussion group is a very good example of what I am about to say--it is essential to know about reggae if you except to think that you know about music. Meanwhile, in the US, we're looking more at hip hop and funk (both, admittedly influenced by Jamaican music, I know) as cornerstones of American music. Hopefully folks like Shaggy--love him or hate him--will change the way folks in the US look at reggae. I hope.

Dancehall (a.k.a 'ragga' in UK) has become popular in the US (at least among Hip hop heads) due to it's similarities with Hip hop, which is nice, since as mentioned above Hip hop owes a lot to reggae soundsystems etc

on a side note, i think everyone in the US seems to overlook the fact that the US is probably almost as class-based as the UK, just in a different way - based on wealth, rather than an undefinable sense of 'class'? plus, until relatively recently you had one major underclass, actually legislated against, particularly in the southern states - i'll leave you to think about that one...

long post about Rastafarianism and fundamentalism to follow sometime this evening

I'm interested to know how much people in the UK connect with "the message" of reggae. That's probably what held it back most in the US, folks’ relative ignorance of global affairs leads them to disregard the lyrical content of reggae (full of unfamiliar religious & historical references) in favor of the "island party music" aspect.( I would imagine reggae’s largest market in the U.S. to be among college-age pot smokers and guys in fraternities.)

Michael:

Yes, I agree that the US has major class problems, and as I wrote, it is more based on capitalist wealth. There's no sense that if you're born a yob, you'll always be a yob in the US--there is a definite belief in the "American Dream" of money and priviledge. The mythos of the "American Dream" is so strong, that people don't realise how much of a farce it actually is. All you have to do is turn on CNN for about 2 minutes and it's evident. There is no equal opportunity in the US, but the propaganda you see in the form of ads, movies, books, tv shows, newspapers, etc etc would lead you to believe in a place where life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness were available for all, instead of the reality that these are reserved for a precious monied few.

You also asked me to think about the civil rights movement in the US. As I mentioned, while I don't believe that the UK is free of racism, I think that the class structure of the UK enabled whites and blacks to spend a lot more time together than in the US.

I think that the "legislation" that you speak of--I prefer to call it systematic oppression--demonstrates the lack of contact between races that would be a very good reason why there weren't groups of white kids hanging out listening to black music. In fact, black music was virtually considered the sounds of the devil until it was highly honkified (think Elvis, Motown).

Steve Barrow has talked about going to sound system dances when he was a kid--this would not have been happening in the US at the same time.