From Ska , Rock Steady to Reggae: The Evolution.

Reggae is one of the genres of music that has received world wide acclamation for a variety of reasons. One journalist once described Bob Marley as ...a stoned Jamaican artist who worships a dead Ethiopian Dictator…this perhaps gives an insight into the good and bad vibes that people world wide have ascribed to this type of music. But how was reggae born, how did it evolve? In this blog I’ll try to give a glimpse into the beginnings of reggae and how it was influenced by American Rhythm and Blues and how it gave birth to Hip Hop. When analyzing Jamaica music many people think of only reggae, but there are many styles of music which come from Jamaica and all are still played today.

In the 1950's Sound Systems sprung up everywhere in Jamaica. Sound systems were night clubs where people would spin records and dance, most of the music back then was American R& B, the earliest of which had rhythm and blue influence, which comprised of a shuffle beat to the drum, heavy piano and sort of left hand base lines on the piano. Tom"The Great" Sebastian was the first significant operator followed by the contentious Duke Reid "The Trojan" famous for his gunslinging tactics for dealing with opposing sound systems. Clement Seymour Dodd and his "Sir Coxsone Downbeat" sound system used DJ Prince Buster who by 1958 had his own system. These three innovators started to record sound purely for their own dances. Other influencial operators were the likes of Fats Domino. In these sounds the piano triplets would play on a continuous staccato rhythm…one, two, three, one, two ,three, one, two ,three … with time Jamaican players sort of started putting in their own variation , where they would only accent the third of each triplet, so in this blue beat as they called it, they started having this “ska” rhythm, that is unique to Jamaican music. The word used to describe this early sound is onomatopoeia. It’s been said that its called “ska” because the piano and guitars seem to be making that sound…ska, ska, ska, ska….with each accent. In this ska music the drums are also hit differently, the snare drum is not played open, it’s played with the back of the stick on the rim, which is also referred to as a side stick or a rim shot. The Skatalites were mostly an instrumental band and one of the pioneers of ska, their style involved each player soloing over the chord changes. The band is still around and still performing and a few of the original members still with them 45 years after it was formed.

The evolution of Ska can be traced to the huge number of youths who were filling up the ghettos from the country side looking for work that did not exist. They felt excluded and did not share in the optimism of early ska, thus they grew up with the identity of "rude Boys" Being Rude was a means of being somebody when society was telling you were nobody. Its from this point that Ska developed two fork. one branch went on to combine the ska rythm with punk rock music energy of the 70's, the combination was called 2Tone, it incorporated both blacks and whites in the Music and the fan base with unity as the message. In the later years the 2Tone developed into punk rock. The second fork slowed down the ska tempo.

There soon came a slower more love song based style they called “Rock Steady”. During those years they say it got really hot in Jamaica (the summer of 66) and that the upbeat tempo of the ska became to fast to dance to all night, in the short era of about 66 to 68 what they did is they just slowed the tempo down, every thing was more easy, rock steady could be sort of mirrored with the early soul era, the music of the Impressions and the temptations with vocal driven, harmonies and love songs. The guitar would double up what the base was doing. The muted sounds were created by resting ones hand on the bridge of the guitar, producing the “skank” an upbeat rhythm. In the 69 period the rhythm evolved towards early reggae. The guitar upbeats that were done on the rock steady beat became more sharp and divided, they would do an up stoke followed by a down stroke followed by an up stroke, making a kind of an up down up, up down up, up down up type of rhythm. The organ also became a more prominent rhythmic instrument. This music continued to evolve and change and by the mid seventies, 1975 or so Roots reggae developed, which was more political in nature.

By 1968, Rocksteady was giving way to Reggae, but pinpointing the first Roots Reggae record is no easier than pinpointing the first Ska or Rocksteady record. Unlike its predeces­sors, Reggae owed little to Fats Domino, the Impressions, or any American music. It was the heartbeat of an island just seventeen degrees from the equator, and it was the sound of country come to town. "Ivan Martin," played by Jimmy Cliff in the film The Harder They Come, was. the quintessential country boy adrift in Kingston 's mean streets. "Until Reggae," said producer lee Perry, who was himself from the country, "it was all Kingston , Kingston , Kingston . Then the country people come to town and they bring the earth, the trees, the mountains. That's when Reggae music come back to the earth."

During this early years Jamaica was going through turmoil and changing of prime ministers and as time went on the atmosphere became more violent and the social issues at hand became more and more frequently addressed in the music as opposed to the early 60’s where ska was more of a party rhythm and in the late to early 70’s where Rock steady was more associated with love songs. As the 70’s moved on, the evolution in music corresponded with the Black Panther movement and a lot of other social things going on. Reggae music played out against a disinte­grating social backdrop. Jamaica had become independent from Great Britain in 1962, but, as the promise of Independence faded, Reggae became politicized and angry. By the time this set closes in 1975, the music was past making compromises with the tourist trade and long past hoping to get on American radio. A lot of modern reggae has turned on that tradition where it’s more focused on social-political issues, spiritual issues and poverty issues, Reggae became the people’s news and it would explain a lot of the social situations. As roots Reggae became more politicized more minor keys were heard and slower tempos. Bob Marley was the leader of that movement, others like Dennis Brown and Freddie Mc Gregor were also coming up at that time. Reggae was also influenced by rock and roll at around this time and more effects of the “waa waa” pedals were put in the guitar work and the bubble rhythm on the organ where every 16^th note except for the number down beat gets played. In roots reggae there came also the idea of versions.

There was the main version where the people are singing and there may be the instrumental version where a horn line is playing the melody and a version where some one may be talking over it. In American music that person is called an MC, back in Jamaica they call that person a DJ or a Disc Jockey. The word disc Jockey actually means ridding the disc. It’s not really the person who is spinning the disc that’s ridding it, but it’s the voice that was sitting on top of the rhythm that sounds like the disc jockey. So this DJ who would talk or toast on Jamaican records in the late seventies, guys like Daddy Uroy, Iroy and Denis Alcapone were very influential in the development of American Hip Hop, which involved more toasting or rapping as it is known nowadays. This was innovative and it was the first time any body had made multiple mixes of the same songs. Another type of version was the Dub Version, which took a pre-recorded reggae rhythm of some kind and grafted it on another song. Some of the artists in this style like the Dub Scientist and Lee Perry would use the mixing console of the time, drop some of the other instruments in and out, and they would crank up the bass levels and drums. They would also put these effects on the drums, like the spring reverbs which was an echo sound created by the use of actual springs inside the reverb unit. Another common dub effect was the tape echo or the tape delay. The early tape units would physically record the actual sound that was coming into them on a tape and rip them back through the tape head so they’d be heard again giving the sound a really interesting decay. There were also over dubbed sounds and afro sounds effects. Legend has it that lee Perry actually brought cows into the studios so one would hear cow sounds and bells, sounds of birds chirping, thunder…often they would take recording equipment and use those sounds such as console beeping sounds and fast forwarding and rewinding sounds from the actual tape.

Those sounds went on to develop into early hip hop and electronica. In dub a lot of what was happening was because of the low quality equipment and so the sound the Jamaicans were getting was uniquely Jamaican partly due the poverty that existed there and the ironic part is that the modern digital technology can’t quite emulate what was heard back then and people are spending hundreds of dollars on those old effects. An analogue tape delay would cost about 500 $ today.

Reggae is truly one of the unique genres of music that has developed out of unique situations, and despite being loved and hated at the same time, what is clear is that it will be around for a long while and will continue to elicit the same feelings it did back in the early days of its formation.

Posted by Protest.