This site is all about music, music that we love and hate as long as it stirs some emotion it is worth listening to and talking about.
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This site is all about music, music that we love and hate as long as it stirs some emotion it is worth listening to and talking about.
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Edexcel AS Music Technology - Special Focus Style for Examination 2010
Notes in this document have largely been taken from “This is Reggae Music” by Lloyd Bradley, “The Grove Encyclopaedia of Music”, “AS/A2 Music Technology Study Guide” by Jonny Martin, Wikipedia and various other internet sources. We didn't like the name rock steady, so I tried a different version of "Fat Fat Man". It changed the beat again, it used the organ to creep. Bunny Lee, the producer, liked that. He created the sound with the organ and the rhythm guitar. It sounded like ‘reggae, reggae' and that name just took off. Bunny Lee started using the world [sic] and soon all the musicians were saying ‘reggae, reggae, reggae. Derrick Morgan There's a word we used to use in Jamaica called 'streggae'. If a girl is walking and the guys look at her and say 'Man, she's streggae' it means she don't dress well, she look raggedy. The girls would say that about the men too. This one morning me and my two friends were playing and I said, 'OK man, let's do the reggay.' It was just something that came out of my mouth. So we just start singing 'Do the reggay, do the reggay' and created a beat. People tell me later that we had given the sound it's [sic] name. Before that people had called it blue-beat and all kind of other things. Now it's in the Guinness World of Records Toots Hibbert Introduction to Reggae The Oxford Dictionary of Popular Music defines Reggae as: “An international form of popular music which originated in Jamaica. It is instantly recognizable from the counterpoint between the bass and drum downbeat, and the offbeat rhythm section. The immediate origins of reggae were in Ska and Rock Steady; from the latter, reggae took over the use of the bass as a percussion instrument. Reggae developed in about 1968, particularly as a result of the Maytals' “Do the Reggay”. It also became closely associated with the Rastafarian religion. In the 1970s, Bob Marley and the Wailers (previously performers of ska) achieved worldwide recognition as a result of the dissemination of their music by Island Records. Marley's style of reggae remains the classic form, now referred to as ‘roots reggae’. Since his death in 1981 reggae has changed and given rise to other forms, known variously as ‘rockers’, ‘militant’, ‘bam-bam’, and ‘ragga’. It has also contributed to the development of Rap, Dub and Hip-Hop. History & Culture of Reggae Mento and Calypso The origins of reggae are found in Mento, Jamaica's Cuban-inflected calypso music that dates from the late 19th century. Mento was a celebratory, rural folk form that served its largely rural audience as dance music and an alternative to the hymns and adapted chanteys of local church singing.
As the Jamaican population began to shift in the late 1950s, urban migration and the social changes that accompanied industrialization created a demand for a faster, electrified dance music. In the capital of Kingston and in the larger island towns, entrepreneurs set up mobile sound systems to bring in the powerful rhythm and blues of American stars like Fats Domino and Louis Jordan. In England similar developments occurred as from 1948 immigrants from the West Indies were encouraged to settle in London as a workforce to help re-build the city after WW2. In 1948, the Windrush was en route from Australia to England via the Atlantic, docking in Kingston, Jamaica. An advert had appeared in a Jamaican newspaper offering cheap transport (£28) on the ship for anybody who wanted to come and work in the UK. At that time, there were no immigration restrictions for citizens of one part of the British Empire moving to another part. The arrival of the boat immediately prompted complaints from some Members of Parliament, but legislation controlling immigration was not passed until 1962. Among the passengers were calypso musicians Lord Kitchener and Lord Beginner. The immigrants are now known as the “Windrush generation”, and because of their cultural input into British society, we now embrace reggae, ska, dub and other West Indian music. The first Jamaican recording studio opened in 1951 and recorded mento music. The island was awash in rhythm 'n' blues records imported by the so called "sound systems", eccentric travelling dance-halls run by no less eccentric disc-jockeys such as Clement Dodd (the "Downbeat") and Duke Reid (the "Trojan"). The poor people of the Jamaican ghettos, who could not afford to hire a band for their parties, had to content themselves with these "sound systems". The "selectors", the Jamaican disc-jockeys who operated those sound systems, became the real entertainers. The selector would spin the records and would "toast" over them. The art of "toasting", that usually consisted in rhyming vocal patterns and soon evolved in social commentary, became as important as the music that was being played.
In 1954 Ken Khouri started Jamaica's first record label, "Federal Records". He inspired Reid and Dodd, who began to record local artists for their sound system. Towards the end of the 1950s, amateurs began to form bands that played Caribbean music and New Orleans' rhythm 'n' blues, besides the local mento. This led to the "blue beat" groups, which basically were Jamaica's version of the New Orleans sound. They usually featured saxophone, trumpet, trombone, piano, drums and bass. By 1959, as rhythm and blues declined under the commercial shock wave of rock and roll, local record producers sought a new dance music. Absorbing the instrumentation of the swing bands and the pulse of rhythm and blues, infused with bass-driven mento, Jamaican musicians developed a native rhythm called Ska. Soon the bass became the dominant instrument, and the sound evolved into the "ska". The "ska" beat had actually been invented by Roscoe Gordon, a Memphis pianist, with No More Doggin' (1951). Ska songs boasted an upbeat tempo, a horn section, Afro-American vocal harmonies, jazzy riffs and staccato guitar notes. Ska Ska used a 4/4 shuffle rhythm close to classic rhythm and blues, with an after beat originally played on piano, whose sound the term sought to approximate. In these ensembles, horns and reeds emphasize the guitar's chordal beat, and the trombone came to dominate solo sections after the Jamaican virtuoso Don Drummond rose to prominence around 1960, playing with the leading band, the Skatalites. In the early 1960s, Ska songs like “Oh Carolina” captivated Jamaica and helped launch a proud post-independence cultural identity, while the style also followed a generation of Jamaicans to England, where the music was known as “bluebeat”. Members of the Skatalites quickly became local celebrities as they began to identify with a new millenarian religion spreading through the shantytowns of western Kingston. The Rastafarians, who worshipped the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie I and preached redemption through African repatriation, began to capture the imaginations of Jamaican artists who saw in the movement a viable spiritual nationality and a soulful alternative to the black power movements sweeping the cities of North America. Theophilus Beckford cut the first "ska" record, Easy Snapping, in 1959, but Prince Buster (Cecil Campbell), owner of the sound system "Voice of the People", was the one who, around 1961, defined ska's somatic traits once and forever (he and his guitarist Jah Jerry) in tracks like “Madness” (where the British band got their name) and “Al Capone”.
The Skatelites Desmond Dekker Prince Buster The Wailin’ Wailers The Wailers, featuring the young Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Livingston, slowed down the beat in Simmer Down (1963). Millie Small's My Boy Lollipop (1964) was the first worldwide ska hit. The charismatic leaders of the ska movement were the Skatalites, a group of veteran ex-jazzmen led by saxophonist Tommy McCook and featuring virtuoso trombonist Don Drummond and tenor saxophonist Rolando Alphonso, that formally existed only between 1964 and 1965 (Ball O' Fire, 1965; Phoenix City, 1966; the instrumental Guns Of Navarone, 1967), but ska's star was Desmond Dekker (Dacres), whose Israelites (1968) launched the even faster "poppa-top", and whose 007 Shanty Town (1967) and Rude Boy Train fuelled the mythology of the "rude boy". Ska music was relatively serene and optimist, a natural soundtrack to that age of peace and wealth, somewhat akin to the music of the "swinging London". Rock Steady Jamaica had become an independent country in 1962, but social problems had multiplied. During the mid Sixties, ska music evolved into "rock steady", a languid style, named after Alton Ellis' hit Rock Steady (1966), that emphasized socio-political themes, adopted electric instruments, replaced the horns with the guitars, and promoted the bass to lead instrument (virtually obliterating the drums). In other words, ska mutated under the influence of soul music. Most crucially, the electric bass became the most important instrument of the rock steady ensemble. Rhythmic statement and strength took priority over melodic and harmonic considerations. As the foundation of the reggae bass aesthetic, the electric bass was a talking drum that played a definite rhythm, but did not necessarily play a distinct melody line. A great number of the most seminal bass lines (‘riddims’) underpinning reggae are the work of Leroy Sibbles, who played bass in ‘Sir Coxone’ Dodd's Studio One band in this period. Rock steady was identified with the crowd of young delinquents (the "rude boys") who mimicked the British "mods" and the American "punks". Its generational anthems were Judge Dread (1967) by Prince Buster, John Holt's The Tide Is High (1966) by the Paragons, Rivers Of Babylon (1969) by the Melodians. The music took the back seat to the vocal harmonies. This helped bring about the supremacy of vocal groups: Wailers, Paragons, Maytals (the new name of the Vikings of the ska hit Halleluja, 1963), Pioneers, Heptones, etc. Reggae The reggae beat and the word applied to it both date from approximately 1968, when the vocal group the Maytals released the single “Do the Reggay” in Kingston, in which the rock steady pulse was slowed down. A new regular two-chord guitar pattern provided persistent counterpoint to the bass and drum “riddims”. The chords of the guitar and keyboard were meshed so that their accents took on reggae's characteristic pulse-like metre. Producer Clement ‘Sir Coxone’ Dodd has said that the beat and the sound evolved spontaneously during rehearsals within the recording milieu of Kingston, where, in addition to Dodd, producers Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry and Leslie Kong maintained groups of players who cross-pollinated musical ideas in the city's clubs and nightspots. The Maytals' lead singer Frederick ‘Toots’ Hibbert, credited with the first use of the word reggae, defined the term: ‘Reggae just mean comin' from the people, an everyday thing, like from the ghetto. When you say reggae you mean regular, majority. And when you say reggae it means poverty, suffering, Rastafari, everything in the ghetto. It’s music from the rebels, people who don't have what they want’. It also made explicit the relationship with the underworld of the "Rastafarians" (adepts of a millenary African faith, revived Marcus Garvey who advocated a mass emigration back to Africa), both in the lyrics and in the appropriation of the African nyah-bingi drumming style (a style that mimics the heartbeat with its pattern of "thump-thump, pause, thump-thump"). Compared with rock music, reggae music basically inverted the role of bass and guitar: the former was the lead, the latter beat the typical hiccupping pattern. In its formative years, reggae stayed mostly in Jamaica, with a few of the island's singers, such as Jimmy Cliff and Desmond Dekker, occasionally heard on radio in Europe and North America. In 1972 the locally produced film The Harder They Come, starring Cliff and featuring performances by other Jamaican artists, achieved cult status in metropolitan music markets. Jamaican music was very much a ghetto phenomenon, associated with gang-style violence, but Jimmy Cliff's Wonderful World Beautiful People (1969) wed reggae with the "peace and love" philosophy of the hippies, an association that would not die away. In the USA, Neil Diamond's Red Red Wine (1967) was the first reggae hit by a pop musician. Shortly afterwards, Johnny Nash's Hold Me Tight (1968) propelled reggae onto the charts. Do The Reggay (1968) by Toots (Hibbert) And The Maytals was the record that gave the music its name.
Bob Marley Chris Blackwell Bob Marley’s Studio Using proceeds from his English rock music business, Island Records' Chris Blackwell pledged international backing to reggae music and especially to its rising star, the singer and writer Bob Marley. As leader of the Wailers vocal trio and band, Marley (1945–81) had been active in Jamaican music since 1962 and had worked with all the leading producers, including Coxone, Leslie Kong and, most successfully, Lee Perry. Heavily influenced by James Brown and the tenets of Rastafarianism, Marley's rebellious lyrics and piercing tenor voice, joined to the infectious swing of the Wailers' band, propelled reggae into cultural arenas all over the world. Beginning in 1973 the Wailers began to experiment with reggae forms in order to appeal to international audiences. By 1975 the re-named Bob Marley and the Wailers accelerated the basic reggae tempo, and added blues-heavy, amplified rock guitar and a gospel-inflected female trio, the I-Threes, to help propel Marley's messages of personal liberation and human rights. The Wailers also integrated the archaic African-Jamaican hand-drumming Burru rhythms, which had been absorbed by the burgeoning Rastafarian movement, into their cosmopolitan reggae ensemble. Throughout the 1970s and into the 80s albums such as Exodus (1977), Survival (1979) and Uprising (1980) established Bob Marley as the leading figure of reggae and a Third World prophet with a worldwide audience. Notable tracks include Stir It Up (1972), I Shot The Sheriff (1974) and No Woman No Cry (1974). Dub As it branched out internationally, reggae still had to serve the needs of its home audience in Jamaica, which continued to get its local dance music from mobile sound systems, as opposed to live performances, and which underlines the origin of reggae as a recorded music rather than a performed one. In the late 1960s and early 70s, sound system DJs began to talk over the instrumental passages of the records they were playing, spreading messages of comically exaggerated braggadocio and social awareness, and developing into popular entertainers rivalling the leading singers of the day. To accommodate early talking DJs like U Roy, I Roy and Big Youth, reggae producers began to release singles whose flip-sides contained a version of the same song with the original vocals dubbed-out, or deleted, by the studio engineer. Consequently, the DJs could ‘toast’ or ‘rap’ over the pared-down drum and bass “riddim”. These versions, sometimes enhanced with echo and sound effects, quickly became a popular new form, known as dub, which evolved in time into various forms of pop, including Hip-Hop. The rapping Jamaican DJs in turn heavily influenced the early practitioners of American rap music.
King Tubby Lee “Scratch” Perry Engineers became more and more skilled at refining the instrumental textures, especially when they began to employ sophisticated studio devices. Eventually, "dub" became an art form on its own. The first dub singles appeared in 1971, but the man generally credited with "inventing" the genre is Osbourne Ruddock, better known as King Tubby, a recording engineer who in 1970 had accidentally discovered the appeal of stripping a song of its vocal track, and who engineered the first dub record, Carl Patterson's Psalm Of Time Dub (1971). When he got together with producer Lee "Scratch" Perry, Blackboard Jungle (1973) was born: the first stereo "dub" album. It was a revolution: the engineer and the producer had become more important than the composer. It also marked the terminal point of the "slowing down" of Jamaican music, a process that had led from ska to reggae to rock steady. Compared with the original, dub was like a slow-motion version. a collaboration with melodica player Augustus Pablo led to another seminal work, King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown (1976). Rainford Hugh Perry, better known as Lee "Scratch" Perry, who had nursed the Wailers, pretty much set the reference standard for generations to come with Double Seven (1974), the first reggae album that overdubbed synthesizers, Revolution Dub (1975) and Super Ape (1976), one of the genre's masterpieces. "Rapping" originated from the complementary tradition of the "talk-over". The disc-jockeys of the sound systems used to accompany the dance tracks with impromptu melodic and spoken-word vocals, often simply to add enthusiasm to the dance. This eventually became an art in itself. U-Roy (Edwart Beckford) was possibly the first great talk-over artist, the man who turned dub into a highly-effective vehicle for socio-political messages (Dynamic Fashion Way, 1969; Runaway Girl, 1976; Wake the Town, Wear You to the Ball). Other pioneers of rapping were Dennis "Alcapone" Smith, with Forever Version (1971), Prince Jazzbo and I Roy. Big Youth (Manley Buchanan) upped the ante with his wild socio-political raps (S-90 Skank, 1972; The Killer, 1973; House Of Dread Locks, 1975; Every Nigger Is A Star, 1976), most effectively on Dreadlocks Dread (1975). Originally, the technique of these "toaster" consisted in remixing other people's songs, removing the original vocals, emphasizing the rhythmic base, and overdubbing their own rhyming stories on the resulting track. The Golden Years of Reggae While Bob Marley served as the spearhead of the reggae movement, in the 1970s other musicians began to transform the music. In 1975 the drummer Carlton ‘Santa’ Davis originated the flying cymbals or ‘flyers’ reggae pattern. While his left hand played the steady reggae beat, his right hand played the half-open hi-hat cymbal in a sizzling pattern of afterbeats. The following year, drummer Sly Dunbar and bass player Robbie Shakespeare, in association with Dunbar's mentor, the drummer Leroy ‘Horsemouth’ Wallace, began to play an even faster reggae style, known as rockers, or militant. More strictly patterned than before, this style featured a military-sounding snare figure on top of an eight-to-the-bar marching figure on the bass drum. With the advent of the rockers style, the original ticking reggae beat was relegated to a rhythmic category styled roots reggae, where it languishes today as a respected if dated form. Bob Marley's death in 1981 from cancer signalled a broad change in reggae. While pop singers like Gregory Isaacs and Dennis Brown crooned a sub-genre known as lovers rock, DJs like Yellowman injected a misogynistic stream of boasting and invective into the music. Soon this ‘slackness’ style merged with the new digitized rhythms called dancehall. Dancehall originated around 1982 when a Jamaican producer accidentally sped up the pre-set reggae rhythm on a digital synthesizer and became intrigued by the possibilities of mechanizing the essential beat. This style has ruled Jamaican music ever since, spawning other pop variations such as bam bam, effectively dancehall without bass as the guitar carries the rhythm with the drums, and ragga, played solely on digitized instruments. Roots reggae, however, remains the heartbeat of Jamaica, and no other modern form of popular music can claim reggae's astonishing success in its global dissemination. As reggae became a world attraction, styles multiplied and inbred with the American genres. Burning Spear, the project of Rastafarian visionary Winston Rodney, unleashed the supercharged Marcus Garvey (1976), perhaps the highest artistic achievements of reggae music. Joseph Hill's vocal trio Culture were equally passionate, and the title-track from Two Sevens Clash (1977) became the anthem of the rasta-punks and coined "rockers reggae". Ijahman Levi (Trevor Sutherland) was perhaps the most spiritual vocalist of his generation. His songs were religious hymns (Jah Heavy Lord, 1975; I'm A Levi, 1978; Are We A Warrior, 1978). Ex-Wailers Peter Tosh, or Winston Hubert McIntosh, crossed over into rock territory with Legalize It (1976). Other popular classics include Junior Marvin's Police and Thieves (1976) and Gregory Isaacs' Love Is Overdue (1974). Jamaican revival in Britain Reggae and ska enjoyed a major revival in Britain during the punk age. Starting in the mid-1970s, ensembles such as Aswad, Steel Pulse, Matumbi and UB40 offered a westernized version of Jamaican music that was rather uninspired, but were lucky enough that the audience found affinities with the implicit protest themes of the political punks. At the same time, British sensations of the ska revival included Specials and Madness. British dub music was a more serious affair, and took longer to emerge. But, over the long term, it was dub music, and not ska or reggae music, that stuck around, thanks to the quality productions of Adrian Sherwood (the brain behind African Headcharge, Dub Syndicate and New Age Steppers), Jah Shaka and prolific Guyana-born Neil Fraser, better known as Mad Professor, who penned Beyond the Realms Of Dub (1982), and even Aswad's own New Chapter of Dub (1982).
Aswad UB40 Madness The Specials Artistic peaks were reached by dub pioneer and experimentalist Keith Hudson, with Pick A Dub (1976), and instrumental soundpainter Dennis Bovell (a former member of Matumbi, an engineer who coined the soul-reggae fusion called "Lovers Rock"), with Strictly Dubwise (1978), I Wah Dub (1980), probably his most intense release, and Brain Damage (1981), a cosmopolitan work that also mixed calypso, rock and funk. Linton Kwesi Johnson, a Jamaican poet living in England, transposed reggae's mood into dub-based sermons, arranged by Dennis Bovell, on contemporary issues. These dub poets were as musical as their producers managed to be. Jamaican music in the 1980s and beyond Vocal trio Black Uhuru, supported by the rhythm section of Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare, wrapped reggae and Rastafarianism into a slick production of drum-machines and synthesizers, especially on Red (1981). Third World offered a commercial fusion of reggae, funk and soul. Innovators of the next generation included toaster and turntablist Yellowman (Winston Foster), a pioneer of "dancehall" (reggae music with rock drums) who established his reputation with Mister Yellowman (1982), crossover artists such as Eddy Grant, with the electronic Afro-rock-reggae-funk fusion of Walking on Sunshine (1979), Eek-a-Mouse (Ripton Joseph Hylton), who invented a unique vocal technique that harked back to the early days of toasting, as displayed on Wa Do Dem (1982), and Mikey Dread (Michael Campbell), who crafted African Anthem/ At The Control Dubwise (1979), with help from Scientist, King Tubby, Augustus Pablo and Sly & Robbie, and World War III (1981), with help from Scientist, after collaborating with the punk-rock band Clash.
Black Uhuru Shabba Ranks Ziggy Marley Yellowman As far as dub goes, King Tubby raised an entire generation of recording engineers, who went on to become innovators of Jamaican music, such as Prince Jammy (Lloyd James), who concocted the all-digital reggae Under Me Sleng Teng (1985), credited with inventing "ragga" (a fusion of reggae, rap and electronic dance music), and Scientist (Overton Brown). Popular reggae musicians of the 1980s included Judy Mowatt, who, as a backup vocalist for Marley, was one of reggae's first female performers, and, as a soloist, crossed over into pop-soul balladry, Ivory Coast's socio-political bard Alpha Blondy (Kone Seydou), and David "Ziggy" Marley, son of the prophet, who sold out his father's myth to the international disco-pop crowds. Dancehall toaster Shabba Ranks (Rexton Gordon) and Shinehead (Carl Aiken) were the stars of ragga hip-hop. The star of the 1990s was Buju Banton (Mark Anthony Myrie), his best work being Til Shiloh (1995). Bob Marley – A Biography Born: Robert Nesta Marley, 6 February 1945, St. Anns, Jamaica, West Indies, Died. 11 May 1981, Miami, Florida, USA. This legendary singer’s vocal group, the Wailers, originally comprised six members: Marley, Bunny Wailer, Peter Tosh, Junior Braithwaite, Beverley Kelso and Cherry Smith. Bob Marley And The Wailers are the sole Jamaican group to have achieved global superstar status, together with genuine penetration of world markets. The original group was formed during 1963. After extensive tuition with the great vocalist Joe Higgs, they began their recording career later that year for Coxsone Dodd, although Marley had made two singles for producer Leslie Kong in 1962 - ‘Judge Not’ and ‘One Cup Of Coffee’. Their first record, ‘Simmer Down’, released just before Christmas 1963 under the group name Bob Marley And The Wailers, went to number 1 on the JBC Radio chart in January 1964, holding that position for the ensuing two months and reputedly selling over 80, 000 copies. This big local hit was followed by ‘It Hurts To Be Alone’, featuring Junior Braithwaite on lead vocal, and ‘Lonesome Feeling’, with lead vocal by Bunny Wailer. During the period 1963-66, the Wailers made over 70 tracks for Dodd, over 20 of which were local hits, covering a wide stylistic base - from cover versions of US soul and doo-wop with ska backing, to the newer, less frantic ‘rude-boy’ sounds that presaged the development of rocksteady, and including many songs that Marley re-recorded in the 70s. In late 1965, Braithwaite left to go to America, and Kelso and Smith also departed that year. On 10 February 1966, Marley married Rita Anderson, at the time a member of the Soulettes, later to become one of the I-Threes and a solo vocalist in her own right. The next day he left to join his mother in Wilmington, Delaware, USA returning to Jamaica in October 1966; the Wailers were now a vocal trio. They recorded the local hit ‘Bend Down Low’ at Studio One late in 1967 (though it was actually self-produced and released on their own label, Wail ‘N’ Soul ‘M’). This and other self-produced output of the time is among the rarest, least reissued Wailers music, and catches the group on the brink of a new maturity; for the first time there were overtly Rasta songs. By the end of that year, following Bunny Wailer’s release from prison, they were making demos for Danny Sims, the manager of soft-soul singer Johnny Nash, who hit the UK charts in April 1972 with the 1968 Marley composition, ‘Stir It Up’. This association proved incapable of supporting them, and they began recording for producer Leslie Kong, who had already enjoyed international success with Desmond Dekker, the Pioneers and Jimmy Cliff. Kong released several singles and an album called The Best Of The Wailers in 1970. By the end of 1969, wider commercial success still eluded the Wailers. Marley, who had spent the summer of 1969 working at the Chrysler car factory in Wilmington, returned to Jamaica, and the trio began a collaboration with Lee Perry that proved crucially important to their future development. Not only did Perry help to focus more effectively the trio’s rebel stance, but they worked with the bass and drum team of brothers, Aston ‘Familyman’ Barrett and Carlton Barrett (b. 17 December 1950, Kingston, Jamaica, d. 1987, Kingston, Jamaica), who became an integral part of the Wailers’ sound. The music Bob Marley And The Wailers made with Perry during 1969-71 represents possibly the height of their collective powers. Combining brilliant new songs such as ‘Duppy Conqueror’, ‘Small Axe’ and ‘Sun Is Shining’ with definitive reworkings of old material, backed by the innovative rhythms of the Upsetters and the equally innovative influence of Perry, this body of work stands as a zenith in Jamaican music. It was also the blueprint for Bob Marley’s international success.
Just as the band was poised on the brink of wider success, internal differences caused Tosh and Bunny Wailer to depart, both embarking on substantial solo careers, and Lindo left to join Taj Mahal. The new Wailers band, formed in mid-1974, included Marley, the Barrett brothers and Bernard ‘Touter’ Harvey on keyboards, with vocal harmonies by the I-Threes, comprising Marcia Griffiths, Rita Marley and Judy Mowatt. This line-up, with later additions, would come to define the so-called ‘international’ reggae sound that Bob Marley And The Wailers played until Marley’s death in 1981. In establishing that form, not only on the series of albums recorded for Island but also by extensive touring, the band moved from the mainstream of Jamaican music into the global market. As the influence of Bob Marley spread, not only as a musician but also as a symbol of success from the so-called ‘Third World’, the music made locally pursued its own distinct course. 1975 was the year in which the Wailers consolidated their position, with the release of the massively successful Natty Dread and rapturously received concerts at the London Lyceum. These concerts attracted both black and white patrons - the crossover had begun. At the end of the year Marley achieved his first UK chart hit, the autobiographical ‘No Woman No Cry’. His first live album, comprising material from the Lyceum concerts, was also released in that year. He continued to release an album a year until his death, at which time a spokesman for Island Records estimated worldwide sales of $190 million. Marley survived an assassination attempt on 3 December 1976, leaving Jamaica for 18 months in early 1977. In July, following a harmless incident when he stubbed his foot during a game of football, he had an operation in Miami to remove cancer cells from his right toe. Marley’s music career remained bright, with the albums Exodus and Kaya enjoying massive international sales. In April 1978, he played the One Love Peace Concert in Kingston, bringing the two leaders of the violently warring Jamaican political parties (Michael Manley and Edward Seaga) together in a largely symbolic peacemaking gesture. The band then undertook a huge worldwide tour that took in the USA, Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. His label, Tuff Gong, was expanding its interests, developing new talent. The album Survival was released to the usual acclaim, being particularly successful in Africa. The song ‘Zimbabwe’ was subsequently covered many times by African artists. In 1980, Marley and the Wailers played a momentous concert in the newly liberated Zimbabwe to an audience of 40, 000. In the summer of 1980, his cancer began to spread; he collapsed at Madison Square Garden during a concert. Late in 1980 he began treatment in Munich, Germany with the controversial cancer specialist Dr. Josef Issels. By 3 May, the doctor had given up. Marley wanted to end his days in Jamaica but the severity of his illness meant his flight home was diverted to Miami, Florida, where he died on 11 May.Marley was rightly celebrated in 1992 with the release of an outstanding CD box set chronicling his entire career, although his discography remains cluttered due to the legal ramifications of his estate. His global success had been an inspiration to all Jamaican artists; his name became synonymous with Jamaican music, of which he had been the first authentic superstar. His contribution is thus immense: his career did much to focus the attention of the world on Jamaican music and to establish credibility for it. In addition, he was a charismatic performer, a great singer and superb songwriter - an impossible act to follow for other Jamaican artists. |
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