Fashion dread Rasta - Jamaican music since Bob Marley's death; includes glossary of reggae terms

Whole Earth Review, Summer, 1988 by Gregory Stephens

J It is amazing that a religious sect on a small Caribbean island could produce a style of Pop music that has had toes tapping around the world.

A lot has happened to Jamaican music since Bob Morley's death in 1981. Greg Stephens lives in Austin, Texas, where he is a journalist and songwriter, Part of his fascination with reggae music stems from time spent in Southern Bible Belt churches in his youth. -Richard Nilsen

THE HISTORY OF POPULAR MUSIC BEGINS with slavery.

With the African diaspora, the rhythm of the earth was ripped apart and left to right itself where it could. Black rhythm filtered across the earth, infecting the West with a fever which is gradually taking over the host. The whole world is sneezing, and more and more of us are liking it. Who feels it knows it.

As Michael Ventura described it in "Hear That Long Snake Moan" (WER #54 and #55), the Africans built their temples in their bodies with their rhythms. Like a Morse code of !he unconscious, African-derived music ,has a not-entirely-understood unifying force, a power I call the One.

"Keep it on the One," musicians will say. A form of Unity Nowhere have the magical properties of African music been more fully developed than in Jamaican reggae, as epitomized by the music of Bob Marley.

Although we still tend to think of reggae as cult music, it has had an influence entirely disproportionate to the number of people who actually practice the Reggae Rasta beliefs (see glossary). Jamaica, after all, is an island of only two million people. But the list of popular entertainers upon whom reggae has made a major artistic impact is staggering: the Clash, Eric Clapton, Boy George, Grace Jones, Level 42, the Police, the Rolling Stones, Sade, Tina Turner, the Talking Heads, Stevie Wonder, just to name a few. It would be almost unthinkable for many younger British acts like Terrence Trent D'Arby, Stan Campbell or Hollywood Beyond to put out an album without reggae references.

Granted, it is the style of reggae more than its content that has been absorbed into the language of international culture. Reggae as a fashion or a badge of hipness has continued to grow in influence while Jamaican reggae music per se has devoured itself, become a mirage, a ritual intended to evoke former glory.

With the passage of time it has become clear how much of that former glory was tied up in the spirit of Bob Marley. Millions of people of all races and religions see Marley as a prophet, a messenger of the One. With Marley's tragic early death by brain cancer in 1981, the movement lost its voice. Many lesser prophets appeared, but the spirit of unity that made the Marley-era reggae's golden age quickly dissipated as the realities of the Reagan era (and that of his Jamaican counterpart, Prime Minister Edward Seaga) set in. Reggae Rasta was more like a Caribbean Ghost Dance than an organized system of thought, anyway. Without Marley's leadership, the music grew repetitious, the message cliched. Marley's children have grown up with a different set of values.

Jamaica's current popular music, Dance Hall, has roughly the same relation to Marley-era reggae that American rap music has to '60s soul. Like their fathers, this generation of performers often looked north for inspiration. gut instead of encountering the harmonies of New Orleans R&B, they heard the arrogant, angular beat box that is hip hop. And instead of spiritual inspiration, many of the Dance Hall followers looked no further than between their own legs.

In August 1987 I went to Jamaica to witness the 10th annual Reggae Sunsplash Festival, which occurred auspiciously during the 25th anniversary of Jamaican independence, as well as the 100th birthdate of Marcus Garvey.

In many ways, Sunsplash 10 was a battleground for control of the minds of the youth between the Dance Hall Posse - which had the money and the momentum - and the Reggae Rasta Posse, which had Marley and moral authority. In sheer numbers, the X-rated Dance Hall Posse was clearly winning the battle. But in the war, Reggae Rasta had seeded the unconscious of the youth. They saw images of their fathers returning, editorialized and institutionalized by the mythmakers of Babylon. That twist was endlessly rebroadcast and returned with comment until it acquired the resonance of legend.

It helps to keep two things in mind while considering Jamaican music. First, the island's population is divided into Rastafarians and nonRastas. It's hard to estimate how many there are either way, because so many fall in the cracks between belief and unbelief. But the mainstream non-Rastas clearly control most of Jamaica's economic superstructure. They have a historically antagonistic relationship to the Rastas, who keep prophesying their downfall as part of the Babylon system. At best the mainstream Jamaicans tolerate the Rastas; at worst, those who fear the Rastas' influence have waged a consistent campaign of terror against them.