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SPLACKADEN REGGAEUGANDA
Reggae & Dancehall
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DEFINITION OF REGGAE
Reggae is Jamaican popular music that developed in the 1960s among Kingston's poor blacks, drawing on American “soul” music and traditional African and Jamaican folk music and ska (a Jamaican and British dance-hall music). Many of its highly political songs proclaim the tenets of the Rastafarian religious movement. Instrumentation usually includes an ensemble of organ, piano, drums, and electric guitars, led by an electric bass played at high volume. Springy, offbeat rhythm characterizes its sound. It is popular internationally and has influenced African music.
ORIGIN OF REGGAE
It's origins can be found in traditional African Caribbean music as well as US & R&B. Ska and rocksteady are 1960s precursors of reggae. In 1963, Jackie Mittoo was asked to run sessions and compose original music by record producer Coxsone Dodd at his Studio One record studio. Mittoo turned the traditional ska beat into reggae. Bob Marley, who later popularized the style on a world-wide basis, also recorded rocksteady records early in his career.
STYLES OF REGGAE
In Jamaica however, new styles are nowadays becoming more popular, among them, Dancehall and ragga (or raggamuffin reggae). Dub is an instrumental sub-style of reggae. Mixing techniques employed in dub probably influenced Hip Hop, drum and bass and other styles. In any case, the toasting or dee jaying of raggamuffin reggae, first used by artists such as Dillinger or U-Roy had a world-wide impact because Jamaican DJ Kool Herc used them as he came up with a new style later called Hip Hop or rap music. In the Jamaican sense of the word, a DJ is an MC or rapper, whereas the DJ is called (music) selector in Jamaica. Therefore what is called dee jaying or chatting in Jamaica is called rapping in most other parts of the world.
Roots
This is the name given to specifically Rastafarian reggae music. It is a spiritual type of music, whose lyrics are predominantly in praise of God or Jah Rastafari, whom they consider to be Haile Selassie of Ethiopia (1892–1975). Recurrent lyrical themes include poverty and resistance to the oppression of government. The creative pinnacle of roots reggae is arguably in the late 1970s, with singers such as Johnny Clarke, Horace Andy, Barrington Levy, and Lincoln Thompson teaming up with studio producers including Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, King Tubby, and Coxsone Dodd. The experimental pioneering of such producers within often restricted technological parameters gave birth to dub reggae, and is seen by some music historians as one of the earliest (albeit analogue) contributions to the development of techno.
Roots reggae was an important part of Jamaican culture, and whilst other forms of reggae have replaced it in terms of popularity in Jamaica (Dancehall for instance), roots reggae has found a small, but growing, niche globally.
Rockers
Rockers is a sub-genre of popular in the mid to late 1970s, existing simultaneously. The name is derived from the Rockers sound system, owned by Dub legend Augustus Pablo. Rockers is also sometimes known as Lover's Rock, referring to the romantic subject matter prevalent in some artist’s' work. Important artists and bands include Gregory Isaacs, Horace Andy, Black Uhuru, Junior Murvun and Denis Brown. Rockers Reggae was also the sub-genre played by British-Jamaican groups Steel Pulse, Aswad and Matumbi.
Dancehall
Dancehall is a type of Jamaican reggae which developed around 1979, with artists such as Barrington Levy and others who went on to become the Roots Radics. The style is characterized by a DJ singing and rapping or toasting over raw and danceable reggae music (riddims). In the early years of dancehall, some found its lyrics as crude and "slack", though it became very popular among the youths of Jamaica and then eventually, like its reggae predecessor, made inroads onto the world music scene. In the late 1990s, many artists converted to Rastafarianism and changed their lyrical focus to "consciousness", which reflects the spiritual underpinnings of Rastafarianism. Various varieties of dancehall achieved some crossover success outside of Jamaica during the mid- to late-1990s.
Dancehall reggae founded itself on the vocals and lyrical toasts of characters such as Yellowman and General Echo and a penchant for slackness (as bawdy lyrics were known). This deejay-led, largely computerised, upstart music seemed to epitomise the 1980s with dub poet Mutabaruka maintaining, "if 1970s reggae was red, green and gold, then in the next decade it was gold chains". So far removed was it from the gentle, almost hippification of roots and culture, that purists furiously debated as to whether it was genuinely reggae or not. Dancehall developed in Jamaica as a result of varying political and socio-economic factors. Reggae as a style of music was heavily influence by the ideologies of Rastafari and was also spirited by the socialist movements in the island at the time. Dancehall the scion of reggae was birthed in the late seventies and early eighties, when many had become disenchanted with the socialist movement and harsh economic realities came to bear in the island. It is during this time that neo-liberalist ideologies and materialism started to factor into the live of many Jamaicans, such these realities came to the fore in the new music.
Raggamuffin (or ragga) is a kind of reggae that includes digitized backing instrumentation. It is a form of dancehall, and has been popular since the middle of the 1980s; "Under Me Sleng Teng" (Wayne Smith; 1985) is usually recognized as the first ragga song. The instrumentation is usually behind dub singing, which is similar to rap music in its focus on rhythmic, assonating and rhyming words. Ragga is also described as a style of reggae music that incorporates hip-hop and rhythm and blues elements. Also called dancehall.
