Monday, June 6, 2011
6:49 AM | Posted by
Anonymous |
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Mento is still around right now.
Before Globe War II, calypso from Trinidad and Tobago had created its way into Jamaica's new music and, though rather various, the two ended up typically puzzled. Jamaica's private calypso artists performed alongside its mento artists during the island, for locals and travellers alike. A calypso craze swept the U.S. and U.K. in the late 1950s as Harry Belafonte arrived onto the scene. Quite a few of his songs had been actually mento but they ended up far more usually explained as calypso.
Immediately after the war, transistor radios and jukeboxes had become commonly accessible and Jamaicans have been ready to listen to new music from the southern U.S., particularly jazz and rhythm and blues from some of the greats like Fats Domino and Jelly Roll Morton, and data flooded into the island.
And then, in the early 1960s, came American R&B. With a faster and far much more danceable tempo, the genre caught on swiftly in Jamaica. Coinciding with the festive mood in the air when Jamaica won its independence from the U.K. in 1962, ska had a form of 12-bar rhythm and blues framework the guitar accented the 2nd and fourth beats in the bar, essentially flipping the R&B shuffle beat, and gave rise to this new sound.
Due to the fact Jamaica didn't ratify the Berne Convention for the Safety of Literary and Artistic Performs until 1994, Jamaican musicians typically created instrumental ska versions of songs by preferred American and British artists copyright infringement was not an concern! The Skatalites re-manufactured Motown hits, surf new music and even the Beatles in their private type. The Wailers' first single Simmer Down was a ska smash in Jamaica in late 1963/early 1964 but they also covered And I Really like Her by the Beatles and Like a Rolling Stone by Bob Dylan.
While the sound system principle had taken root in Jamaica in the mid 1950s, ska led to its explosion in popularity and it grew to become a significant, uniquely Jamaican, sector that continues to thrive currently. Enterprising DJs with U.S. sources for the most current information would load up pickup trucks with a generator, turntables, and huge speakers, and drive all around the island blaring out the most up-to-date hits. Basically these sound methods were like loud cell discos! DJs charged admission and marketed foods and alcohol, enabling them to revenue in Jamaican's unstable financial system. 1000's would often collect and sound systems grew to become huge small business. Amidst fierce levels of competition, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd and Duke Reid surfaced as two of the star DJs of the day. Reliant on a continual supply of new music, these two superstars started to create their own documents, finally being Studio A person (Dodd) and Treasure Isle (Reid).
Other critical ska producers ended up Prince Buster, whose Blue Beat label documents inspired a lot of Jamaican ska (and later on reggae) artists, and Edward Seaga, who owned and operated the West Indies Information Limited (WIRL) in the 1960s but went on to turn out to be Prime Minister of Jamaica and leader of the Jamaican Labour Get together in the 1980s.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
4:52 AM | Posted by
Anonymous |
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Reggae is a music genre first developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s. While sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to most types of Jamaican music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that originated following on the development of ska and rocksteady. Reggae is based on a rhythmic style characterized by accents on the off-beat, known as the skank. Reggae is normally slower than both ska and rocksteady. Reggae usually accents the second and fourth beat in each bar, with the rhythm guitar also either emphasising the third beat or holding the chord on the second beat until the fourth is played. It is mainly this "third beat", its speed and the use of complex bass lines that differentiated reggae from rocksteady, although later styles incorporated these innovations separately. Reggae developed from rocksteady music in the 1960s. The shift from rocksteady to reggae was illustrated by the organ shuffle, which was pioneered by Bunny Lee and was featured in the transitional singles "Say What You're Saying" (1967) by Clancy Eccles, and "People Funny Boy" (1968) by Lee "Scratch" Perry. The Pioneers' 1967 track "Long Shot Bus' Me Bet" has been identified as the earliest recorded example of the new rhythm sound that became known as reggae. Early 1968 was when the first genuine reggae records were released: "Nanny Goat" by Larry Marshall and "No More Heartaches" by The Beltones. American artist Johnny Nash's 1968 hit "Hold Me Tight" has been credited with first putting reggae in the American listener charts. Around that time, reggae influences were starting to surface in rock music. An example of a rock song featuring reggae rhythm is 1968's "Ob-La-Di , Ob-La-Da." by The Beatles. Notable Jamaican producers who were influential in the development of ska into rocksteady and reggae include: Coxsone Dodd, Lee "Scratch" Perry, Leslie Kong, Duke Reid, Joe Gibbs and King Tubby. Chris Blackwell, who founded Island Records in Jamaica in 1960, relocated to England in 1962, where he continued to promote Jamaican music. He formed a partnership with Trojan Records, founded by Lee Gopthal in 1968. Trojan released recordings by reggae artists in the UK until 1974, when Saga bought the label. The 1972 film The Harder They Come, starring Jimmy Cliff, generated considerable interest and popularity for reggae in the United States, and Eric Clapton's 1974 cover of the Bob Marley song "I Shot the Sheriff" helped bring reggae into the mainstream. By the mid 1970s, reggae was getting radio play in the UK on John Peel's radio show, and Peel continued to play reggae on his show throughout his career. What is called the "Golden Age of Reggae" corresponds roughly to the heyday of roots reggae.
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