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

Whole Earth Review, Summer, 1988 by Gregory Stephens

Ziggy is like a reflection of his father Bob, a young echo. As time goes on it is almost scary how this reflection seems to grow more and more like the original, in spirit if not always in style. One hears echoes of many things, the American counterculture among them. Ziggy is the counterculture that never went away; he is cut from the roots of the counterculture; the seed of the counterculture that had to journey to a foreign land to find soil deep enough to nourish it, and people with attention spans long enough to water it. Of course, Ziggy and his siblings in the Melody Makers are all near 20, so they can appeal to a new generation of Babylon's children who think reggae is "jammin' mon" but who aren't haunted by memories of Bob Marley, When they think of reggae, they may think of a Budweiser commercial with Spuds McKenzie, or, if they are trendy, of UB40.

Ziggy has in fact been groomed for the role of Bob Marley's successor from an early age. As Marley's eldest son, he was widely seen as heir to the heritage, and he was given moorings for the journey by a mixture of strict but worldly Rastas and Jesuits. The images that have come out of this man-child's imagination remind me of the paintings of the children of Guatemala and El Salvador. They are all images of a world at war. Fortunately Ziggy seems to have inherited his father's ear for melodic hooks. Thus far he is sinking them into strident calls to action and "bald slogans." They are catchy, but limited by the abstracted idealism of a youth who has an unusually broad, but also somewhat insular, view of the world. It will be interesting to hear what Ziggy comes up with when he comes home from the battlefield to write about love and other shades of grey.

REGGAE RASTA HAS AN IMPORTANT message that Marley sent us on our way singing. It says that the liberation and unification of the black race is crucial to the salvation and survival of the One Race, the human race. It was a concept that most of the Anglo/ Western world did not want to hear, so many latter-day reggae stars are learning to imply it. Reggae, a language of implications, often implied its own divinity, either through words or through sound itself. For instance, a true reggae fan will tell you that a good reggae bass line is the voice of Jah his own self.

Reggae Rasta postured as a sort of modern electronic church of the

unconscious mind, a rhythmic religion destined, in some hybrid form, to get everyone on the One.

Those who want reggae to keep implying our divinity in Bob Marley's language are no better than right-wing American evangelists who want us to pretend we are living in the time of Christ. Both are missing the point. We keep movin' on down the road, and if we are to keep it on the One, each generation must invent a new language to make sense of its existence. We hear the words of the master but we listen to his children. We dance with them if we are to enter the future in useful fashion.

The elders don't like it, but this is a generation that talks about sex as if sex is Jah. Maybe they're onto something, if that's the only thing on which the human race can come together. One thing is certain: this obsession with sex didn't just pop out of thin air. If young people have to make a choice between spirituality and sexuality, guess which one most of them will choose?