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Reggae: Kingston’s Gift to the World · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
0:11
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck
0:13
Speaker 2: and Jerry's here too. She even said, yeah, I'm on
0:17
Speaker 2: right before we started recording, because this is stuff you
0:19
Speaker 2: should know.
0:20
Speaker 1: Reggae Edition, that's right. And here's the little thing you
0:25
Speaker 1: probably didn't even notice, my friend, is we always clap
0:28
Speaker 1: on the count of three when we go to record
0:33
Speaker 1: so we can sink our sound. Here's a little behind
0:35
Speaker 1: the scenes for you everybody. Sure, but I clapped on
0:38
Speaker 1: the four. Did you just you know, make it super reggae?
0:45
Speaker 2: That was pretty great? Yeah, because so what you were
0:48
Speaker 2: doing was skanging, that's right, and skang is slang for gunn.
0:56
Speaker 2: In Kingston, I'm Kingston in jam is the world capital
1:03
Speaker 2: of reggae. It's one of those things where you're like, well,
1:06
Speaker 2: where jazz come from, where blues come from? Well, it
1:08
Speaker 2: come from here here. No reggae one came from Kingston, Jamaica,
1:13
Speaker 2: and it was built from all this other stuff, all
1:16
Speaker 2: these other influences, but there is no question where it
1:19
Speaker 2: actually emerged, and that was Kingston.
1:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. I was playing golf yesterday with my
1:25
Speaker 1: friend Justin, you know, Justin from trench Town, Justin from London,
1:31
Speaker 1: which will also play a part. But he asked what
1:33
Speaker 1: we were recording on today and I told him reggae
1:36
Speaker 1: and he was like, did you know that reggae is
1:39
Speaker 1: like fairly new? And I said, he was like, I
1:44
Speaker 1: always thought it was like in the forties and fifties.
1:46
Speaker 1: He's like, but true, reggae was like the late sixties.
1:50
Speaker 2: You make Justin sound like a real milk toast. I
1:53
Speaker 2: can tell everybody that is not what Justin sounds like.
1:56
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, but that was you know, that's true. And
1:58
Speaker 1: we'll get to all that timeline and everything. But yeah,
2:01
Speaker 1: reggae is a is a I mean, on the general
2:03
Speaker 1: timeline of music history, it's a pretty new form.
2:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, almost just a little over fifty years old.
2:12
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, I mean I'm fifty five. I was born
2:15
Speaker 1: in seventy one. So you do the math in.
2:18
Speaker 2: An expert, I'm not doing the ma. Yeah. I think
2:21
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty eight tends to be like the year that
2:24
Speaker 2: people pretty much put their finger on when reggae was born.
2:28
Speaker 2: But let's let's talk about all this. Let's let's get
2:31
Speaker 2: to the get to the beginning.
2:33
Speaker 1: I guess okay, Yeah, which means we've got to talk
2:36
Speaker 1: about Jamaica as a place, right.
2:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, because one of the things about reggae, Olivia helps
2:41
Speaker 2: us with this, so it had to Livia. One of
2:45
Speaker 2: the things about Jamaica and reggae is that they're like
2:49
Speaker 2: a milange of different people and cultures who are all
2:53
Speaker 2: kind of brought together, a significant number of them against
2:56
Speaker 2: their will, and all kind of form the society where
3:00
Speaker 2: it was all mixed together. And one of the things
3:03
Speaker 2: that emerged was a real appreciation of music and folk
3:06
Speaker 2: music that kind of developed. And it was very unique
3:11
Speaker 2: because Jamaica is unique. I mean, every Caribbean island is unique.
3:15
Speaker 2: Even though they have pecular histories, they all just they
3:19
Speaker 2: they formed different milanges in different ways.
3:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, different milanges because you have indigenous people and then
3:26
Speaker 1: in the case of well most of them, you had
3:29
Speaker 1: people from Africa brought over in the slave trade. So
3:33
Speaker 1: in this case in Jamaica, that combined with like African
3:37
Speaker 1: work songs and the you know, the European musical influence
3:42
Speaker 1: that was there at the time they mixed together. And
3:45
Speaker 1: in the forties and fifties, the first thing we got
3:48
Speaker 1: as sort of a predecessor to reggae was called Mento.
3:52
Speaker 2: Maybe that's what Justin was talking about.
3:55
Speaker 1: No, he's talking about Mento's the fresh mint, the capital M,
4:00
Speaker 1: which is sort of like if you heard it, it
4:03
Speaker 1: might sound a little bit like Calypso out of Trinidad.
4:06
Speaker 1: It's got banjo and like guitar. It's got something called
4:10
Speaker 1: a rumba box, which is like a percussive thing with
4:14
Speaker 1: pluck steel times. So Minto was kind of the earliest predecessor.
4:19
Speaker 1: And then in the fifties, I guess the late fifties
4:21
Speaker 1: and early sixties, because that was the forties and fifties
4:25
Speaker 1: American R and B on the radio, which also came
4:28
Speaker 1: from African and European influences. Obviously that produced what became
4:34
Speaker 1: the more direct predecessor did reggae, which was SKA.
4:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's when things took a really dark turn.
4:42
Speaker 1: Oh man, Scott's I like all this stuff. I guess
4:45
Speaker 1: we'll talk a little bit about like our affinity for it,
4:47
Speaker 1: But it's not the kind of thing I listened to
4:49
Speaker 1: like all the time. But I have my moments where
4:52
Speaker 1: I will put on like for an entire morning, I
4:55
Speaker 1: will listen to like old like fifties and sixties ska
4:58
Speaker 1: and like super early reggae. I like the early early stuff.
5:01
Speaker 2: Okay, cool, I can't really falter for that. I think
5:03
Speaker 2: I just have a bad taste in my mouth about
5:05
Speaker 2: ska from the nineties.
5:07
Speaker 1: The Mining Mighty Bostones.
5:09
Speaker 2: I'm not calling anybody in particular out, I'm calling all
5:13
Speaker 2: of them out basically.
5:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, but that that early stuff is I think you
5:17
Speaker 1: could probably appreciate a little more, like the Desmond Decker stuff.
5:20
Speaker 2: Sure, sure, I'm sure I could too. One of the
5:23
Speaker 2: reasons that that suddenly came up in the fifties and
5:25
Speaker 2: sixties is because transistor radio start had become available. Before that,
5:29
Speaker 2: Jamaica had basically access to BBC style radio stations that
5:35
Speaker 2: weren't playing R and B, and so all of a
5:36
Speaker 2: sudden they could pick up stations from Miami and we're like, oh,
5:40
Speaker 2: I like this stuff. And that was another thing too,
5:42
Speaker 2: that that reggae was built on, where like Jamaican people
5:48
Speaker 2: who are like I like this, I'm gonna pull this in.
5:50
Speaker 2: I like that, I'm gonna pull this in so much
5:52
Speaker 2: so that like the concept of sampleton in the hip
5:55
Speaker 2: hop community is actually a lot of that comes from
5:59
Speaker 2: this kind of mindset that reggae was born out of.
6:02
Speaker 2: It was like I like this, so I'm going to use.
6:04
Speaker 1: This, Yeah for sure, Like this episode definitely has some
6:06
Speaker 1: crossover with the hip hop episode, and obviously when we
6:10
Speaker 1: get to the rest of our I stuff, the highly
6:11
Speaker 1: solassy episode. But you know, the technology of the radio
6:16
Speaker 1: was certainly big, and also what was big was and
6:19
Speaker 1: you know, you see this a lot in the development
6:21
Speaker 1: of culture, like different technologies coming along and in this case,
6:24
Speaker 1: just literally electricity being spread throughout Jamaica is what led
6:29
Speaker 1: to something called toasting and DJs, now that they had
6:33
Speaker 1: widespread electricity, could set up these mobile discos. They were
6:35
Speaker 1: called sound systems and this was in and around Kingston
6:39
Speaker 1: and the DJs developed this toasting I was about, say
6:43
Speaker 1: tradition because that makes it sound more like something you
6:45
Speaker 1: do at a wedding, but a musical style where they
6:48
Speaker 1: would speak and sing over the recorded music, and that
6:51
Speaker 1: that directly led to stuff like you know rap.
6:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, like do you ever listen to like reggae shows
6:59
Speaker 2: on college radio or something like that.
7:01
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, that's why a lot of times I play
7:03
Speaker 1: on Sunday morning because that's when album eighty eight's reggae show.
7:06
Speaker 2: Was right okay, so like and then sometimes the DJ
7:09
Speaker 2: would just turn the music down all of a sudden
7:11
Speaker 2: and say something, yeah, oh yeah, that's toasting right, And
7:14
Speaker 2: it can be done well, and it can very frequently
7:18
Speaker 2: be done not well.
7:19
Speaker 1: It depends on how toasted they are.
7:22
Speaker 2: Sure exactly, or what they have to say too, Like
7:25
Speaker 2: you have to have something to say that should have
7:27
Speaker 2: to do with the song or something important. It shouldn't
7:29
Speaker 2: be like, you know, shop your back to school sales
7:32
Speaker 2: at Target or something, and then you turn the music
7:34
Speaker 2: back up real quick.
7:36
Speaker 1: Sometimes you hear these guys and it's the best because
7:39
Speaker 1: I think our old beloved WFMU in New Jersey, I
7:43
Speaker 1: think they had a reggae show too. Sometimes you can
7:46
Speaker 1: you can hear these DJs are super super stoned.
7:50
Speaker 2: Yeah for sure. I mean they're probably Rawstafarians, and so
7:55
Speaker 2: then that's like part of their religion, you know, So
7:58
Speaker 2: it definitely makes sense even if they're not. If you're
8:01
Speaker 2: so into reggae that you host a reggae show, you
8:04
Speaker 2: probably are so in like a pretty decent amount of
8:06
Speaker 2: the time.
8:07
Speaker 1: It's probably a part of your lifestyle.
8:10
Speaker 2: Yep, they're like time to put on my game face. Right,
8:13
Speaker 2: I smoke my weekly joint before my my radio show.
8:17
Speaker 1: That's right.
8:18
Speaker 2: So some some people are like, Okay, I like the
8:21
Speaker 2: scot stuff, but I get really worn out dancing to it.
8:24
Speaker 2: Maybe we could slow it down a little bit. And
8:27
Speaker 2: what came out of that was rock steady. One word
8:31
Speaker 2: probably one of the best names for any music musical
8:35
Speaker 2: genre if you ask me, yeah, I'm with you, and
8:37
Speaker 2: rock steady is it's It has a lot of the
8:40
Speaker 2: same components and instruments and everything, but like I said,
8:43
Speaker 2: it slowed down. There's much more of a focus on vocals,
8:47
Speaker 2: so like there's like a you know, lyrics to the
8:50
Speaker 2: song and the theme or something like that. And if
8:53
Speaker 2: you're like, I don't know if I've ever heard rock Steady,
8:56
Speaker 2: you definitely have because there are some hits that came
8:59
Speaker 2: out of the Apparently it's just like a two year
9:01
Speaker 2: period that rock City was popular. But the original tide
9:04
Speaker 2: is high, Ain't No Sunshine as in Ain't No Sunshine
9:08
Speaker 2: when She's Gone, that came out of the rock Steady era.
9:11
Speaker 2: If you've ever listened to the Upsetters, like the early
9:14
Speaker 2: stuff really organ heavy, everybody sings at once, so the
9:18
Speaker 2: mic peaks and gets overloaded like that is that's rock steady.
9:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And rock steady is what kind of
9:26
Speaker 1: directly led to what we know as reggae. And when
9:28
Speaker 1: they started that sort of heavy thumping bass and a
9:31
Speaker 1: little more percussion percussive forward, that's when reggae was kind
9:37
Speaker 1: of born, you know. I know. Olvia points out that
9:41
Speaker 1: there's some other kind of I guess just maybe unusual influences.
9:46
Speaker 1: And one was a school in Kingston, the Alpha Boys School.
9:49
Speaker 1: It was run by It was a trade school and
9:52
Speaker 1: it was a nun run affair and they had I
9:58
Speaker 1: keep wanting to say it's like unusual, but maybe it wasn't.
10:01
Speaker 1: But they had a really great music education program. And
10:05
Speaker 1: there was a nun there named Sister Iggy, Sister Mary
10:08
Speaker 1: Ignatius Davies, and she was just a big time music fan.
10:12
Speaker 1: She was especially big into jazz and ended up having
10:16
Speaker 1: a lot of like future reggae like you know, not
10:20
Speaker 1: the Hugest Stars, although yellow Man did go through there,
10:22
Speaker 1: but some early like ska and reggae horn players, especially
10:26
Speaker 1: because of her jazz focus came through her school.
10:28
Speaker 2: Right for sure. That yeah, I had no idea about that.
10:32
Speaker 1: Did you No, That's super cool.
10:34
Speaker 2: Though there's also obviously the Rastafari influence is significant, and
10:42
Speaker 2: Rastafarianism was around before reggae, and reggae was actually around
10:50
Speaker 2: before reggae musicians became Rastafarians, and it was if you
10:55
Speaker 2: go back and listen to our episode in Holly Selassie,
10:58
Speaker 2: it was his visit and I think nineteen sixty six
11:02
Speaker 2: that just opened the doors to Rastafarianism and reggae being
11:07
Speaker 2: like essentially hand in hand.
11:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, And I thought we had done one
11:14
Speaker 1: on Rastafarianism, but I think I put together an article
11:18
Speaker 1: and at the time you were like, we've been doing
11:21
Speaker 1: too much religious stuff, and I just tucked it away.
11:23
Speaker 1: That never came back. And then when we covered yeah, yeah,
11:26
Speaker 1: this is a while ago, and then we covered Highly Selassie,
11:29
Speaker 1: it basically covered that well enough.
11:32
Speaker 2: I think, oh it did okay, because we definitely got
11:34
Speaker 2: into it for sure, But that episode was about well
11:37
Speaker 2: a lot more than just that.
11:38
Speaker 1: Oh yeah yeah.
11:39
Speaker 2: But at the time, before his visit to Jamaica a
11:42
Speaker 2: state visit, this is an official visit, the Rastafarians, even
11:48
Speaker 2: in Jamaica were seen as just kind of weirdos. They
11:51
Speaker 2: were on the fringe. They weren't taken seriously at all.
11:53
Speaker 2: They were just a strange religion. And then Holly Selassie
11:58
Speaker 2: came and essentially just by recognizing them, I think he
12:01
Speaker 2: awarded medals to some Rastafarian preachers there. He legitimized it
12:06
Speaker 2: in the eyes of Jamaica. Now all of a sudden,
12:08
Speaker 2: a bunch of people, including Rieda Marley, are like, I Rastafari. Yeah,
12:13
Speaker 2: and that's it's like, that's the moment that it spread
12:17
Speaker 2: to reggae music.
12:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this was in the lead up to their
12:22
Speaker 1: eventual freedom from the colonizers and there, you know, the
12:25
Speaker 1: white supremacist sort of system that they have been living
12:28
Speaker 1: under they call Babylon. So that's why I hear Babylon
12:31
Speaker 1: a lot in the songs. And I mentioned Desmond Decker
12:34
Speaker 1: and his you know, probably most notable song is the Israelites,
12:37
Speaker 1: and that's what he was talking about there, right.
12:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, that came out in nineteen sixty eight, and I've
12:42
Speaker 2: seen that some people point to that, or a lot
12:44
Speaker 2: of people, I guess, point to that is the bridge
12:46
Speaker 2: between rock steady and reggae. That song, and it's that
12:50
Speaker 2: song you think it is like whoa the israel Lites, right,
12:53
Speaker 2: oh nice and other things I have been practicing for weeks.
12:57
Speaker 1: This is a little lower key, but you're under the weather, so.
13:00
Speaker 2: Yes, thank you for giving me that pass. But yeah,
13:03
Speaker 2: the song, I don't think it saysn't necessarily explicitly, but
13:06
Speaker 2: the gist of it is this Rasafarian idea that the
13:11
Speaker 2: stolen Africans who have spread all over the world and
13:14
Speaker 2: their descendants are the true Israelites and they are trapped
13:19
Speaker 2: in Babylon, which is white supremacist run Western world. Yeah,
13:24
Speaker 2: and that through self determination and deliverance by Jah, they
13:30
Speaker 2: will be able to emancipate themselves essentially mind, body, and spirit.
13:36
Speaker 2: And that's what Rastafarianism is about.
13:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And there was a drummer, a Rastafari
13:42
Speaker 1: drummer name they called him Count Ozzie, but Oswald Williams.
13:48
Speaker 1: He played on an early song in nineteen fifty eight,
13:50
Speaker 1: so this is like, you know, still pre dating reggae.
13:53
Speaker 1: It was a sky recording by the Folks Brothers called
13:56
Speaker 1: Oak Carolina. And you know what, we're gonna be mentioning
13:59
Speaker 1: a lot of songs. But if you're in a place
14:00
Speaker 1: where you can like queue some of these up. I
14:03
Speaker 1: encourage it because they're all great, a lot of this
14:05
Speaker 1: early stuff, And that's kind of what I like about
14:08
Speaker 1: it is it sounds like it was recorded in a
14:10
Speaker 1: tan can. Like the recordings aren't the best quality, but
14:13
Speaker 1: it adds a lot of juge to it.
14:15
Speaker 2: I think nice. So oh, one other thing about Rastafarianism too,
14:23
Speaker 2: So I said it predated reggae. I mean it basically
14:26
Speaker 2: came out of the twenties and thirties when Marcus Garvey
14:30
Speaker 2: predicted that an emperor would be elected or yeah, seated,
14:36
Speaker 2: I don't know what you would call it when you
14:38
Speaker 2: install a Look there's going to be an emperor that
14:41
Speaker 2: came out of Africa, and people are like, oh, Holly, Selassie,
14:44
Speaker 2: that's him. And so from that moment on, Rastafarianism was born.
14:49
Speaker 2: And apparently dreads had been part of Rastafarianism as far
14:53
Speaker 2: back as the nineteen forties. Oh wow, I had no idea.
14:58
Speaker 1: What about white guy dreads?
15:00
Speaker 2: Those came out of the nineties. I blamed the nineties
15:03
Speaker 2: SKA revival for that too, probably.
15:06
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, all right, that feels like a good
15:10
Speaker 1: time for.
15:10
Speaker 2: A break, right, Yeah, I think so.
15:13
Speaker 1: All right, uh, and we will come back with more
15:16
Speaker 1: on reggae right after this.
15:47
Speaker 2: So Chuck, we're back. Yeah, let's hear it. Let's this
15:52
Speaker 2: I threw to you. Really, I was being serious, you guys.
15:55
Speaker 2: Here's another little behind the scenes thing. Chuck and I
15:59
Speaker 2: decide on the fly, which one's going to bring us
16:01
Speaker 2: back from break, And this time I said I was
16:04
Speaker 2: going to go, and so we came back and I
16:06
Speaker 2: immediately tossed to you. The reason why I did that,
16:11
Speaker 2: apparently it was not that great of a joke, is
16:14
Speaker 2: because I'm not super musical, like I know reggae. I
16:18
Speaker 2: would pick reggae out in a like maybe two notes.
16:22
Speaker 2: I could be like, that's a reggae song. Yeah, but
16:24
Speaker 2: I can't mimic it, like and when I read about it,
16:27
Speaker 2: I don't have any idea what's going on. It actually
16:30
Speaker 2: confuses my understanding of reggae, which is dumb.
16:33
Speaker 1: Well, if you're going to count me to mimic reggae
16:35
Speaker 1: with my mouth, although I kind of just did with
16:38
Speaker 1: that drum intro. Yeah, people are probably gonna be disappointed.
16:42
Speaker 1: But we should talk a little bit about the instrumentation
16:44
Speaker 1: because it's it's like you might find in a like
16:47
Speaker 1: a rock band, maybe minus some stuff and plus some stuff.
16:51
Speaker 1: Drums sometimes steal drums, which I was trying to mimic.
16:56
Speaker 2: Oh, it's your base.
16:58
Speaker 1: You got your electric guitar, a lot of percussion, you know,
17:01
Speaker 1: bongos and shakers and stuff like that. Bob Marley used
17:05
Speaker 1: some cool like synth cynthy sounds and organ sounds.
17:09
Speaker 2: You have it's my life on what it's my life?
17:14
Speaker 2: Don't you fucket? Isn't that the Whalers?
17:18
Speaker 1: I don't know that song?
17:20
Speaker 2: Yes, you do?
17:21
Speaker 1: Well, maybe I just don't maybe okay.
17:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a very cynthy song.
17:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I just I didn't recognize the rendition. It's
17:29
Speaker 1: just because you're sick though.
17:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's because I'm under the weather.
17:34
Speaker 1: Horn section. Sometimes you might get in a reggae band.
17:37
Speaker 1: But you know, I mentioned earlier that it's the that
17:40
Speaker 1: rhythm of reggae that is kind of maybe the most
17:43
Speaker 1: distinguishing aspect of it. It's a four beat rhythm with
17:48
Speaker 1: the emphasis on the second, the two, and the four.
17:51
Speaker 1: Where's traditional rockets, it's not that. So that's why when
17:55
Speaker 1: you hear that, you know that that chunking rhythm guitar
17:58
Speaker 1: that don't chink It don't chink. That's on the two
18:01
Speaker 1: and four, and it's you know, it's a real distinct sound.
18:06
Speaker 1: And you know, as we'll see, you know, once they
18:08
Speaker 1: this kind of transferred over to London, you had tons
18:12
Speaker 1: of groups like the police and the Specials and Madness
18:15
Speaker 1: kind of like latching onto that that sort of two
18:20
Speaker 1: and the four. You know, it's a very distinct thing
18:23
Speaker 1: for sure.
18:23
Speaker 2: In the seventies it definitely caught Great Britain by the curly. Yeah,
18:31
Speaker 2: and Ireland too. We can't forget Ireland ever, we never
18:34
Speaker 2: do no, of course, not even if we don't mention Ireland,
18:37
Speaker 2: we still are including Ireland, that's right, but we should
18:41
Speaker 2: say it separately because they're not great Great Britain.
18:45
Speaker 1: We didn't want to rally anyone up.
18:48
Speaker 2: So thank you. That's what I was trying to get to,
18:51
Speaker 2: was you explaining the rhythm, because I can't. I have
18:53
Speaker 2: so little rhythm that I can't even explain it verbally. Yeah,
18:58
Speaker 2: but that's essentially what you just said, Like that's one
19:01
Speaker 2: of the hallmarks, if not the hallmark of reggae. And
19:03
Speaker 2: then you also said that sometimes they have horns. I
19:06
Speaker 2: feel like that's one of the main things that distinguishes
19:09
Speaker 2: reggae from rock steady or SKA is they've really kind
19:13
Speaker 2: of moved away from horns where horns were really really
19:17
Speaker 2: important to rock Steady and in particular SKA.
19:20
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah for sure.
19:21
Speaker 2: Yeah. So one of the other things about reggae too,
19:25
Speaker 2: that's good to know that's easily overlooked. If all you've
19:28
Speaker 2: ever listened to is say Bob Marley or maybe even
19:32
Speaker 2: Burning Spear or something like that. Yeah, they tend to
19:35
Speaker 2: focus more on like spiritual aspect self determination. There's a
19:41
Speaker 2: lot of reggae out there that focuses on violence and crime,
19:44
Speaker 2: and because it definitely emerged in that context. If you've
19:50
Speaker 2: heard Bob Marley, you've definitely heard of Trenchtown. Trench Town
19:53
Speaker 2: is a low income neighborhood in Kingston. I think part
19:59
Speaker 2: of it's chanty. Even it's that low income and you've
20:02
Speaker 2: lived in Kingston, there was a really good chance that
20:06
Speaker 2: one of your only options was to turn to crime
20:09
Speaker 2: to make a living, and so there was this romanticization
20:12
Speaker 2: of crime that was going on in the area at
20:16
Speaker 2: the same time that reggae was emerging in the same area.
20:19
Speaker 2: So they are kind of intertwined. There's also like a
20:23
Speaker 2: real like may it's really male dominated. Still today it
20:27
Speaker 2: is generally a male dominated music genre. So there's just
20:31
Speaker 2: like inevitably a certain machismo that's still that's in the
20:35
Speaker 2: background there. It might not be always talked about. It's
20:39
Speaker 2: more dance hall, but in reggae even too, there's this
20:42
Speaker 2: idea that you know, the man's in charge. It's just
20:44
Speaker 2: how it is.
20:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you know, there's a lot of sort of
20:49
Speaker 1: like I mentioned, the influence on hip hop and a
20:51
Speaker 1: lot of sort of lines that you can draw. I
20:54
Speaker 1: think definitely more women broke through in hip hop than
20:57
Speaker 1: in reggae. But this, you know, this violent context of
21:03
Speaker 1: the gangster persona, a lot of it taken from American movies.
21:08
Speaker 1: In both reggae and hip hop. The rude boy culture
21:12
Speaker 1: was what it was called in reggae, but you can
21:15
Speaker 1: see a lot of similarities there. The actual word reggae
21:20
Speaker 1: probably didn't come around until nineteen sixty eight. It was
21:23
Speaker 1: a song by the Great Great Toots and the Maytals
21:27
Speaker 1: Frederick Tootz Hibbert. There was a song called do the
21:30
Speaker 1: Reggae r E G G A Y. And when asked
21:34
Speaker 1: about that, word. He didn't say like, hey, I invented
21:38
Speaker 1: the word, but he said that he was replacing the
21:42
Speaker 1: word StrEG a s t r e g g a E,
21:47
Speaker 1: which was like a raggedy looking woman. But he said
21:50
Speaker 1: that had a negative connotation. It was like a derogatory term,
21:53
Speaker 1: so I didn't want to use that, so I changed
21:55
Speaker 1: it over. And then there's another story where it was
21:59
Speaker 1: r e y, which was a dance trend taken from
22:05
Speaker 1: the terms for ragged clothing, and that turned into RGE
22:09
Speaker 1: dash RGE reggae reggae, which was about like fighting or protesting.
22:14
Speaker 1: So there's not like a definitive like hey, this is
22:18
Speaker 1: where the word came from, but probably maybe a mashup
22:21
Speaker 1: of those three things.
22:22
Speaker 2: Well, there's another entront too, an artist named Little Roy
22:26
Speaker 2: who the same year that Toots in the May Tolls
22:29
Speaker 2: song came out, at nineteen sixty eight, he released a
22:33
Speaker 2: song or maybe even an album called Reggae Soul, and
22:36
Speaker 2: he spelled it the way that we spell it today too,
22:38
Speaker 2: so it's just completely muddled. But it seemed to have
22:42
Speaker 2: come around in nineteen sixty eight, the year reggae broke.
22:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's a lot of that was thanks to
22:49
Speaker 1: like I said, Frederick Toots Hibbert. If you want to
22:52
Speaker 1: dial up some early Toots in the May Tolls, it's
22:55
Speaker 1: pretty pretty good listening. They started out in nineteen sixty two,
22:58
Speaker 1: obviously Scott at the time, but their first big hit
23:01
Speaker 1: was in nineteen sixty eight with the song fifty four
23:04
Speaker 1: fifty six That's my number, great tune, and they had
23:09
Speaker 1: a bunch of you know, not they didn't take over
23:11
Speaker 1: America like Bob Marley later would because this is the
23:15
Speaker 1: late sixties, so America was consumed with all, you know,
23:18
Speaker 1: like the hippie culture and everything that was going on
23:20
Speaker 1: musically there. So it would take Bob Marley in the
23:23
Speaker 1: seventies to break through in the States.
23:25
Speaker 2: Yeah. But at the same time too, the suburban nights
23:30
Speaker 2: in America and the mid sixties were into Caribbean stuff
23:34
Speaker 2: like exotica and things like that, which is why we
23:37
Speaker 2: have heard songs like the Tide Is High. So they
23:40
Speaker 2: did kind of make its way over here. But like
23:43
Speaker 2: no one has ever taken the world by storm, at
23:47
Speaker 2: least as far as reggae goes. Like Bob Marley, he
23:49
Speaker 2: just went. He just became an international icon, like in
23:54
Speaker 2: a very short time even too, as we'll see.
23:57
Speaker 1: Yeah for sure, so he's coming up everybody. That be
24:00
Speaker 1: funny if we did a whole episode and did mission
24:02
Speaker 1: just like, it'd be an April Fool's episode, Yeah for sure.
24:06
Speaker 1: But we you know, producers, just like all genres, like
24:09
Speaker 1: producers and engineers, had a lot to do with its.
24:12
Speaker 1: Not all music, actually some more than others, but definitely
24:16
Speaker 1: with reggae. Those a guy named King Tubby born Osborne Ruddick,
24:21
Speaker 1: and he was one of the guys, you know, kind
24:23
Speaker 1: of a studio wizard that was like building his own
24:26
Speaker 1: hardware to create effects, and he was the guy that
24:30
Speaker 1: first started stripping out vocals to create dub plate and
24:33
Speaker 1: that's what the DJs would toast over, yeah.
24:36
Speaker 2: Which, as we'll see, sounds a lot like hip hop
24:39
Speaker 2: and rapping right yeah, and dub music right and so
24:43
Speaker 2: dub music. If I don't know if King Tubby was
24:47
Speaker 2: the guy who was credited with actually coming up with it,
24:50
Speaker 2: there are others, least Scratch Perry as another originator, or
24:54
Speaker 2: dub Hopeton Lewis, who came to be known as scientists
24:58
Speaker 2: in my for my money, the best dub musician of all.
25:02
Speaker 2: But the thing that these guys had in common was
25:04
Speaker 2: they were using like recording equipment, often cast off recording
25:08
Speaker 2: equipment that they built their own rigs out of that
25:12
Speaker 2: they were using essentially as early synthesizers, and it was
25:17
Speaker 2: a lot like how Kraftwork and Divo who came later did.
25:20
Speaker 2: It was like, I want to make the sound, but
25:23
Speaker 2: there's nothing out there that makes that sound, so I'm
25:25
Speaker 2: gonna build my own thing. And that's what dub music
25:29
Speaker 2: essentially was based on. It was taking reggae and then
25:32
Speaker 2: making it into essentially electronic music with all sorts of effects.
25:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, man, I would love. I used to be scared
25:39
Speaker 1: of doing these music episodes because forty five to fifty
25:43
Speaker 1: minutes to encapsulate a genre is really really hard. But
25:48
Speaker 1: since we've done it a few times, I'm not as
25:50
Speaker 1: scared of it, and I would love to check new
25:54
Speaker 1: wave off the list.
25:56
Speaker 2: That's a good idea, we don't I almost said that's word.
25:58
Speaker 2: We don't even need to. We'll come up with an
26:02
Speaker 2: article for that. We can just go back and forth
26:04
Speaker 2: on it. How about that?
26:05
Speaker 1: That sounds great? I think you say ish instead of
26:07
Speaker 1: the S word is what people do? Yeah, that's like
26:11
Speaker 1: on the radio or something for sure.
26:13
Speaker 2: Because I think it's the sound that it makes when
26:15
Speaker 2: you scratch the record backwards at that moment. Is that it?
26:21
Speaker 2: Oh okay, I'm almost positive.
26:23
Speaker 1: All right, So we're getting to Bob Marley. But if
26:27
Speaker 1: we're talking about Lee Scratch Perry, he's one of the
26:29
Speaker 1: guys in the early sixties who was working with the
26:33
Speaker 1: Whalers very early on, and he, you know, Lee Scratch
26:37
Speaker 1: Perry went on to have an incredible long career eventually
26:40
Speaker 1: in hip hop and rock and like everything else. Yeah,
26:44
Speaker 1: but I guess we should talk about the Whalers a
26:46
Speaker 1: little bit. And if we're going to talk about the Whalers,
26:48
Speaker 1: we got to back up a little bit and talk
26:50
Speaker 1: about Joe Higgs.
26:53
Speaker 2: Did you know who Joe Higgs was?
26:55
Speaker 1: I did not, But now I'm like, I love seeing
26:57
Speaker 1: the ten like the early tendrils being tendrilling.
27:02
Speaker 2: Sure there might have been a Whaler's at one point,
27:06
Speaker 2: but they we probably wouldn't know of them because Joe
27:09
Speaker 2: Higgs taught them most of what they know about music.
27:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I think I heard of him probably
27:15
Speaker 1: in the Bob Marley documentary.
27:17
Speaker 2: Now, I think that makes sense because you kind of
27:19
Speaker 2: couldn't talk about Bob Marley without talking about Joe Higgs. First,
27:22
Speaker 2: he taught not just Bob Marley how to sing and
27:25
Speaker 2: how to write songs and everything you need to know about,
27:29
Speaker 2: you know, making music. Yeah, he also taught Peter Tosh
27:33
Speaker 2: and Bunny Wayler at the same time, so he essentially
27:38
Speaker 2: taught the Whalers how to how to play music. So yeah,
27:42
Speaker 2: they might have been around because I know that Bunny
27:45
Speaker 2: Whayler and Bob Marley were essentially raised together from childhood
27:49
Speaker 2: as almost step brothers of sorts, and they met Peter
27:52
Speaker 2: Tosh as teenagers in Trench Town. So they probably would
27:57
Speaker 2: have formed a musical act, but they would have just
27:59
Speaker 2: sucked well.
28:02
Speaker 1: Joe Higgs was definitely the glue early on and the
28:04
Speaker 1: mentor to them. He had a big hit as a
28:07
Speaker 1: singer in nineteen sixty with Higgs and Wilson. It was
28:14
Speaker 1: called Manny Oh, and it was again if you listen
28:18
Speaker 1: to some of the stuff, you definitely hear like the
28:19
Speaker 1: American R and B sound coming through, Like some of
28:22
Speaker 1: this stuff sounds like James Brown at first, and then
28:25
Speaker 1: like that reggae beat kicks in. But it was one
28:28
Speaker 1: of the first Manyo was one of the first records
28:30
Speaker 1: ever pressed and released in Jamaica and sold fifty thousand
28:33
Speaker 1: copies and what was this nineteen sixty So that's a
28:37
Speaker 1: lot of records for back then. And he is, Yeah,
28:41
Speaker 1: he's the guy that like all these like teenagers basically
28:44
Speaker 1: were crowding around just like sponges to everything he knew.
28:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was something really cool about him. Like he
28:51
Speaker 2: was living in Trenchtown or at least Kingston at the
28:54
Speaker 2: time too, and he would teach other younger musicians, Like
28:58
Speaker 2: he took time to do that rather than just folk
29:00
Speaker 2: sing on his career and getting bigger and bigger, he
29:02
Speaker 2: like took his his talents and helped other people develop
29:05
Speaker 2: their own talents. Right, So hats off to Joe Higgs
29:08
Speaker 2: for sure, just from putting the The Whalers together. But
29:13
Speaker 2: you mentioned how the how like a lot of this stuff,
29:16
Speaker 2: this early reggae in rock SETI it's how you can
29:19
Speaker 2: really hear the R and B coming through, And that's
29:22
Speaker 2: true with those the early Whaler songs too. If you
29:27
Speaker 2: go listen to simmer Down, which came out in nineteen
29:29
Speaker 2: sixty three, great, I think they had four albums before
29:34
Speaker 2: they came out with their actual full reggae album in
29:38
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy two. I can't remember which one it's called,
29:40
Speaker 2: but it's it's you're just like you can hear Bob
29:43
Speaker 2: Marley's voice, but it's total R and B. It's it's strange.
29:48
Speaker 1: They dressed the part too, like when you look at
29:49
Speaker 1: the old like the early whalers that were wearing like
29:52
Speaker 1: the cool like sharkskin suits and stuff, and they were
29:55
Speaker 1: like styled out like the like the OJ's or something,
29:58
Speaker 1: right exactly.
29:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, so little jarring when all you know about Bob
30:02
Speaker 2: Marley is as a like a reggae icon, you know. Yeah,
30:06
Speaker 2: but yeah, they all met together in Trench Town where
30:09
Speaker 2: they all lived. And one thing I didn't realize is
30:12
Speaker 2: that Bob Marley's father was a white man. Did you
30:15
Speaker 2: know that?
30:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, his dad was His name was Norville Sinclair Marley,
30:21
Speaker 1: and he was Jamaican. He was a white Jamaican of
30:24
Speaker 1: English descent, and he was an army like a British
30:27
Speaker 1: Army veteran, but was a plantation overseer basically, and was
30:32
Speaker 1: in his sixties when he married Bob Marley's mother when
30:37
Speaker 1: she was eighteen. And so you know, you hear that
30:40
Speaker 1: and you think like a boy, right is, did the
30:43
Speaker 1: worst thing happen? And apparently that wasn't the case. I mean,
30:46
Speaker 1: there was a huge age difference, and I'm not saying
30:48
Speaker 1: that was a balance of power by any means, but
30:51
Speaker 1: everything I've read and seeing it was a consensual relationship,
30:56
Speaker 1: and that he provided financial support for a while to
31:01
Speaker 1: the family. But he was not like around much after
31:04
Speaker 1: Bob was born. He wasn't like a real father figure.
31:07
Speaker 2: Okay, gotcha, yeah, because I hear white, rural overseer and
31:11
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh.
31:12
Speaker 1: No, well yeah.
31:14
Speaker 2: But one of the other things that was a huge
31:16
Speaker 2: influence in Bob's life was his grandfather, his mom's father,
31:20
Speaker 2: who was a farmer and herbal healer, and so a
31:24
Speaker 2: lot of the kind of mystic qualities or at least
31:28
Speaker 2: interests of Bob Marley that just kind of he exudes
31:32
Speaker 2: in a way. You know, he definitely got from being
31:36
Speaker 2: his grandfather's grandson.
31:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. But as a result of that sort
31:42
Speaker 1: of displaced childhood, Marley didn't get to trench Town until
31:44
Speaker 1: he was a teenager, spent a lot of time out
31:48
Speaker 1: in the country in Kingston, hanging out with his granddad,
31:51
Speaker 1: like you said, and like you mentioned earlier, he and
31:55
Speaker 1: Bunny Whaler. It's the cutest thing. They were friends from
31:58
Speaker 1: the time they were like two and three years old.
32:01
Speaker 1: And when Bob's dad died, his mom moved in with
32:05
Speaker 1: Bunny Whaler's dad and they Yeah, they were raised like brothers. Yeah,
32:11
Speaker 1: super sweet.
32:12
Speaker 2: It is super sweet. And they met Peter Tosh in
32:14
Speaker 2: a gambling hall, I think when they were all like
32:16
Speaker 2: early early teens, right.
32:18
Speaker 1: Yeah.
32:18
Speaker 2: I don't know when Bob Marley met his wife, Rita,
32:23
Speaker 2: but I do know they were married by the time
32:25
Speaker 2: Holly Selassie came to visit Jamaica in nineteen sixty six,
32:29
Speaker 2: and it was her influence. She went and saw Holly Selassie.
32:32
Speaker 2: I think we said in the Holly Selassie episode that
32:36
Speaker 2: Bob Marley didn't go, but Rita Marley did and she
32:39
Speaker 2: came back like, guys, this is amazing. And she was
32:44
Speaker 2: the influence who connected Rastafarianism with reggae, at least as
32:48
Speaker 2: far as the Whalers go. And they were hugely influential
32:51
Speaker 2: in spreading that connection.
32:53
Speaker 1: Yeah for sure. And like you mentioned, It's Ketch a
32:57
Speaker 1: Fire in seventy two is considered kind of their first
32:59
Speaker 1: like full blown reggae album, and I think you're right.
33:02
Speaker 1: I think it was like their fifth record as a group.
33:05
Speaker 2: Mmm.
33:07
Speaker 1: I like that stuff too. Like I definitely had a
33:09
Speaker 1: Bob Marley FaZe in college, like literally every person on
33:12
Speaker 1: planet Earth for sure. But now, like I really really
33:16
Speaker 1: like that, those those early albums more than anything like that.
33:22
Speaker 1: I you know, my Legend cassette that I wore out
33:25
Speaker 1: of course in college like everyone else had.
33:27
Speaker 2: Well, wait a minute, was that. I feel like they
33:30
Speaker 2: came out with this a box set or something like
33:33
Speaker 2: that around that time, and that's what got everybody into
33:36
Speaker 2: Bob Marley again at that age.
33:39
Speaker 1: I don't know.
33:40
Speaker 2: Was it Legend? I thought for sure there was.
33:42
Speaker 1: Well Legend was the the sort of greatest hits for
33:45
Speaker 1: lack of a better word, Yeah, for sure. Yeah, Legend
33:47
Speaker 1: was the one that like everybody had because those were
33:49
Speaker 1: all like all the big, big songs, right. But it's
33:52
Speaker 1: it's I really like that early stuff. And if you
33:54
Speaker 1: go lesson, like I think Talking Blues is a compilation too,
33:57
Speaker 1: that's the one where the songs are interspersed with Bob
34:01
Speaker 1: like talking in the studio and stuff, and you know,
34:04
Speaker 1: it's great. It's such such a thick accent, like you
34:08
Speaker 1: can hardly understand him, right, Yeah, it's kind of great.
34:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, And even I was reading a quote from Shaba
34:14
Speaker 2: Ranks about how, like oh Man Saba Ranks like old
34:18
Speaker 2: dance hall guys need to lay off of the younger
34:21
Speaker 2: dance hall guys because they're doing their own thing. And
34:24
Speaker 2: the only reason I know that he said that was
34:26
Speaker 2: from the context of the article, like explaining that he
34:29
Speaker 2: said that because they had a block quote from him.
34:32
Speaker 2: And I'm like, I have no idea what Chabaanks just said.
34:35
Speaker 2: And I wasn't even listening. I was reading it. I
34:38
Speaker 2: could not make heads or tails out of it.
34:40
Speaker 1: It's one of my favorite. The Jamaican accent is one
34:42
Speaker 1: of my favorite accents on Planet Earth. I love it
34:44
Speaker 1: so much.
34:45
Speaker 2: It's definitely up there was Scottish for me too.
34:50
Speaker 1: You see the uh you ever seen the stuff on
34:53
Speaker 1: the Internet where people will be like, if you want
34:55
Speaker 1: to say this and this accent, say these words in
34:59
Speaker 1: American English.
35:01
Speaker 2: You taught me to say, Michael Caine, you say my cocaine.
35:05
Speaker 1: My cocaine, No, my cocaine. Yeah, that's what I just said.
35:11
Speaker 1: I saw one recently that was very funny, which was
35:13
Speaker 1: if you want to say, uh, spice girls in Scottish
35:19
Speaker 1: you say kind of have to quickly say space ghettos
35:24
Speaker 1: in English.
35:25
Speaker 2: Let's hear it.
35:26
Speaker 1: So, like, uh, ask me what I did over the weekend?
35:29
Speaker 2: What did you do over the weekend? Chuck?
35:32
Speaker 1: I went to a concier and then asked me who
35:34
Speaker 1: I saw?
35:35
Speaker 2: Who'd you see?
35:35
Speaker 1: Chuck and the space ghettos?
35:39
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that was pretty dead on, pretty good.
35:42
Speaker 1: Huh.
35:42
Speaker 2: What did you have to drink? There was drinker? What'd
35:47
Speaker 2: you say?
35:48
Speaker 1: I'm a non drinker?
35:50
Speaker 2: You didn't drink any urn brew?
35:52
Speaker 1: What is that?
35:53
Speaker 2: Remember? That's like their drink. It's like some almost an
35:56
Speaker 2: orange weird.
35:58
Speaker 1: Oh I don't remember that.
35:59
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's like iron brew, but they spell it
36:01
Speaker 2: like earned.
36:02
Speaker 1: Oh I do remember it. Yeah I didn't not.
36:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's something specific. I liked it. But it
36:08
Speaker 2: was like you could easily drink too many at once. Yeah.
36:12
Speaker 1: I could see that. So I think that's where we
36:17
Speaker 1: were headed.
36:17
Speaker 2: Yeah. So yeah, what what you have when you put
36:21
Speaker 2: together reggae reggae music and Rastafarian perspectives and outlook in worldview?
36:29
Speaker 2: That's the word I was looking for. You have what's
36:31
Speaker 2: known as roots reggae and what most people think of
36:34
Speaker 2: as reggae, what they're thinking of as roots reggae. Bob
36:36
Speaker 2: Marley and the Whalers roots reggae from Catch a Fire.
36:40
Speaker 1: On Yeah for sure, and you know Catch a Fire
36:43
Speaker 1: with seventy two and like we said, that was their
36:46
Speaker 1: first big reggae album, but they actually the Whalers broke
36:48
Speaker 1: up two years later in seventy four. Yeah, and most
36:51
Speaker 1: of the like the college got into Bob Marley stuff
36:54
Speaker 1: and in the legend stuff is all post official, like
36:57
Speaker 1: the Whalers as the Whalers, and you know, all of
37:01
Speaker 1: them went on to do their own solo stuff. Obviously.
37:04
Speaker 1: I think Bob Marley had six albums after that until
37:08
Speaker 1: we'll get to his death in nineteen eighty one, but
37:12
Speaker 1: everyone did. Peter Tosh, who was He was the real
37:15
Speaker 1: deal man. He had some great albums. Legalize It in
37:18
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six is a great one. Yeah, Equal Rights
37:21
Speaker 1: a year later, and then later on in the eighties
37:24
Speaker 1: he had a very sort of political album called Nuclear
37:28
Speaker 1: warth It was really good.
37:29
Speaker 2: Yeah. I had this Peter Tosh live show that I
37:32
Speaker 2: cannot find. Drives me crazy. It's like every other show
37:36
Speaker 2: from that tour exists except for that one, and I
37:39
Speaker 2: can't remember what city it was, and he had a
37:42
Speaker 2: tape or something, so yeah, it was like a burned CD.
37:45
Speaker 2: It was so good man, you could just listen to
37:48
Speaker 2: that on repeat, right, Yeah, But yes, his his lyrics
37:52
Speaker 2: were and just the whole vibe was way more militant
37:55
Speaker 2: compared to Bob Marley. Yeah, so I've seen it described
37:59
Speaker 2: as like when you put Marlee and Tosh together. And
38:02
Speaker 2: also Tosh, by the way, was the like far and
38:04
Speaker 2: away the most musically gifted of the Whalers. He could
38:07
Speaker 2: play all sorts of different stuff. He was also a
38:10
Speaker 2: good songwriter too. But when you put Marley's lyrics together
38:14
Speaker 2: and Peter Tosh's lyrics together into one show or one
38:17
Speaker 2: album or whatever, you had like a really rich, complex
38:21
Speaker 2: album like when with really cool themes in it, right,
38:26
Speaker 2: and I saw it. There's a reggae archivist, which is
38:29
Speaker 2: I'm not sure what you would go study in school
38:32
Speaker 2: to become that. A guy named Roger Stephens, and he's
38:35
Speaker 2: he likened Marley to Martin Luther King Junior and Tosh
38:40
Speaker 2: to Malcolm X, and like they kind of had those
38:43
Speaker 2: they approached things from those viewpoints. So Marley made the
38:46
Speaker 2: whalers universally palatable, and Peter Tosh inserted like that that
38:52
Speaker 2: kind of militant political bent that is also like a
38:56
Speaker 2: big part of reggae. Two.
38:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think a lot of the ability for
39:00
Speaker 1: you know, at least so far as Jamaican's were concerned.
39:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, I saw also that, like apparently around the world
39:06
Speaker 2: he's respected at least as much, if not more than
39:08
Speaker 2: he is in Jamaica because he's like known to walk
39:11
Speaker 2: the walk and yeah, like he was beaten nearly to
39:14
Speaker 2: death by the police several times. Legalize it was banned
39:18
Speaker 2: in Jamaica, so he took out a newspaper ad and
39:22
Speaker 2: tended the lyrics in it like he was a He
39:25
Speaker 2: was a cool dude for sure.
39:26
Speaker 1: Yeah. All right, so I think we should take another
39:29
Speaker 1: break and we will come back and talk a little
39:32
Speaker 1: bit about a guy named Jimmy Cliff right after this.
40:05
Speaker 1: All right, we're back, take it away, Josh.
40:08
Speaker 2: Chuck, have you ever heard a song by Jimmy Cliff?
40:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like Jimmy Cliff. Hurricane Hattie was his first
40:19
Speaker 1: big hit in nineteen sixty two. He was just a kid.
40:21
Speaker 1: He's like eighteen years old, and he moved to London
40:25
Speaker 1: and he got a lot more reggae after he moved
40:28
Speaker 1: to London, and he was a big sort of proselytizer
40:32
Speaker 1: for reggae, kind of took it around the world in
40:34
Speaker 1: a lot of ways.
40:34
Speaker 2: Yeah.
40:35
Speaker 1: And one way he did so was in a movie
40:38
Speaker 1: which I have not seen. I don't know. It was
40:40
Speaker 1: one that's always been on my list. But The Harder
40:43
Speaker 1: They Come in nineteen seventy two is definitely a cult classic,
40:46
Speaker 1: and is was a big, big, not a huge like
40:50
Speaker 1: American hit, but on the movie scene, like the film Lovers,
40:53
Speaker 1: it was.
40:54
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's also widely considered one of the best soundtracks too, Yeah,
40:59
Speaker 2: because it's a out reggae and the reggae music industry
41:02
Speaker 2: and Kingston and the way things are and Kingston and
41:06
Speaker 2: it's a he's like Jimmy Cliff plays kind of a
41:09
Speaker 2: bandit to an extent. Yeah, I haven't seen it either,
41:13
Speaker 2: but it's I just know it's, like you said, a
41:16
Speaker 2: cult classic, and that as much as you know, I
41:20
Speaker 2: think simultaneous to Bob Marley touring the world and the
41:25
Speaker 2: Whalers like that movie coming out and being seen outside
41:30
Speaker 2: of Jamaica, like really helped spread the concept of reggae
41:33
Speaker 2: and what it was all about.
41:34
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, when you've got Ciskel and Ebert reviewing
41:37
Speaker 1: the Harder they come on their TV show later, it's
41:40
Speaker 1: spreading fairly mainstream, you know.
41:42
Speaker 2: Two thumbs up if I'm not mistaken.
41:45
Speaker 1: Well, I don't know. I know Ebert gave it a
41:47
Speaker 1: thumbs up, but I don't know about Ciskel. We'll have
41:49
Speaker 1: to go back and Look.
41:50
Speaker 2: I know I've told you this before, but do you
41:51
Speaker 2: know that Gene Siskel's stated favorite movie was Saturday Night Fever. Yeah,
41:57
Speaker 2: and he owned the white suit that Travolta warrens Night Fever.
42:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was in our disco episode.
42:03
Speaker 2: Okay, but it's just such a great fact.
42:06
Speaker 1: Yeah. And you know what, since that episode, I've had
42:09
Speaker 1: as a copy pasted from the original New York Times
42:13
Speaker 1: article that inspired Saturday Night Fever. It's been sitting on
42:17
Speaker 1: my desktop on my computer like ten years unread.
42:21
Speaker 2: Oh it's good. It's just especially if you go into
42:25
Speaker 2: it knowing it's just one big lie, it's actually even better.
42:29
Speaker 1: Oh was it? I don't I don't remember that, but
42:31
Speaker 1: oh I'm.
42:31
Speaker 2: Sorry, which I could take that back, I thought you did.
42:35
Speaker 1: No, that's sor right. I'm sorry, I'll still read it. Okay,
42:39
Speaker 1: ten years from now, I'll forget.
42:40
Speaker 2: Okay, cool, but you'll never forget that Gene Siskel fact.
42:43
Speaker 2: I like to bust out every few years.
42:45
Speaker 1: That's right. So we should talk a little bit more
42:48
Speaker 1: about I guess we talked a little bit about the
42:52
Speaker 1: violence that was going on when reggae was born in Kingston,
42:58
Speaker 1: but over the years has just sort of been intertwined
43:02
Speaker 1: with a lot of political violence and violent clashes, especially
43:06
Speaker 1: within the country politically, and you know, they were always
43:10
Speaker 1: in the middle of it, and Bob Marley was usually
43:11
Speaker 1: in the middle of it trying to bring people together.
43:14
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy six, they were in the middle of
43:16
Speaker 1: a clash between the People's National Party, which was the
43:20
Speaker 1: ruling party at the time, and their opponents, and Bob
43:24
Speaker 1: Marley went to play an anti violence concert and some
43:28
Speaker 1: of the people dragged them on that for like, say no,
43:32
Speaker 1: like you're siding with the P and P and Prime
43:34
Speaker 1: Minister Michael Manley just by even playing this event. So
43:38
Speaker 1: I think he'd never I think there was a lot
43:40
Speaker 1: of frustration there, judging from the documentary about like trying
43:44
Speaker 1: to do the right thing by bringing people together, but
43:47
Speaker 1: some people on the opposition being like, you can't even
43:49
Speaker 1: like talk to the other side.
43:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the P and P, the ruling party, they
43:54
Speaker 2: were left wing. It was a socialist experiment, I essentially saw.
43:58
Speaker 2: And one reason a lot of people point to why
44:01
Speaker 2: there was so much unrest and violent clashes and all
44:04
Speaker 2: that was because the CIA was running around trying to
44:07
Speaker 2: destabilize the country because it was moving to the left
44:09
Speaker 2: rather than the right. That concert, you mentioned that that
44:14
Speaker 2: Bob Marley was frustrated about it, seeming like he was
44:18
Speaker 2: kind of like a handmaiden or whatever to the unpopular
44:22
Speaker 2: prime minister. Two days before he was shot, he was shot,
44:27
Speaker 2: Rita was shot, two other people were shot in his home,
44:30
Speaker 2: and after being shot in the chest and the shoulder,
44:33
Speaker 2: he still went on and played that show.
44:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was incredible. Two years after that, in nineteen
44:40
Speaker 1: seventy eight, he had the very famous One Love Concert
44:45
Speaker 1: because there was still that divided political climate and once
44:48
Speaker 1: again Bob Marley's there in the middle trying to make peace,
44:50
Speaker 1: and he brought the two guys together. He brought Prime
44:53
Speaker 1: Minister Manly together with Edward I think Siga of the
44:58
Speaker 1: Jamaican Labor Party, and that was a huge, huge deal.
45:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a very famous picture of them holding hands
45:04
Speaker 2: because Bob Marley's making them.
45:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
45:08
Speaker 2: So Marley actually died of a cancerous growth that started
45:14
Speaker 2: on his toe that he didn't get looked at because
45:16
Speaker 2: he thought it was an old soccer injury and he
45:18
Speaker 2: actually collapsed in Central Park after a pretty great show
45:23
Speaker 2: in Madison Square Garden.
45:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, he opened up for the Commodores and apparently blew
45:28
Speaker 1: the Commodores off the stage. And the real sad thing
45:31
Speaker 1: about his death is that from everything I saw was
45:34
Speaker 1: that that was he probably could have been very successfully
45:38
Speaker 1: treated for cancer he had he gotten it looked at
45:42
Speaker 1: earlier on.
45:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, I saw the survival rate for black men from
45:46
Speaker 2: that particular type of cancers like seventy percent. So yeah,
45:50
Speaker 2: that sucks. But he thought it was a soccer injury.
45:52
Speaker 1: I think I'm trying to I mean, is that what
45:55
Speaker 1: you said.
45:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't remember.
45:58
Speaker 1: For some reason, I thought it had something to do
46:00
Speaker 1: with religion, but maybe I'm just not remembering right about
46:04
Speaker 1: that part.
46:05
Speaker 2: Maybe he did so well in the game he considered
46:07
Speaker 2: it a religious experience.
46:09
Speaker 1: There might have been a little bit of both.
46:12
Speaker 2: So Bob Marley was shot, but he didn't die from that.
46:16
Speaker 2: He died from natural causes. Peter Tosh and two years
46:20
Speaker 2: after Peter Tosh King Tubby were both murdered by gunman.
46:23
Speaker 2: That's how their lives ended. That's I mean, like there's nowadays,
46:28
Speaker 2: there's a lot of reggae artists who you know, come
46:31
Speaker 2: along over the years. This is not like there was
46:35
Speaker 2: still rather limited reggae artists, so limited number. So two yeah,
46:40
Speaker 2: major reggae stars being murdered is actually pretty significant.
46:44
Speaker 1: Oh for sure. Peter Tosh's murder was brutal, Like he
46:47
Speaker 1: had these three guys that busted in basically held him
46:50
Speaker 1: hostage in his house and tortured him trying to get
46:53
Speaker 1: money from him. And as people like friends would come
46:56
Speaker 1: by the house just through the course of the day,
46:59
Speaker 1: they would be taken in and held hostage and eventually
47:03
Speaker 1: like just that was just a big, like kind of
47:05
Speaker 1: crazy shootout and he was shot in the head. It
47:07
Speaker 1: was brutal.
47:08
Speaker 2: Yeah. The worst thing about that, aside from the fact
47:11
Speaker 2: that he was murdered. His murderer was a guy named
47:14
Speaker 2: Dennis Loban, Leppo was what people called him, and he
47:18
Speaker 2: knew that Peter Tosh had money because he had gotten
47:20
Speaker 2: out of prison and Peter Tosh gave him a place
47:22
Speaker 2: to stay, fed him, took care of him to help
47:25
Speaker 2: him get back on his feet. And that's how Leppo
47:28
Speaker 2: Loban repaid him by murdering him because he was trying
47:30
Speaker 2: to rob him for more money.
47:32
Speaker 1: Yeah. Pretty brutal.
47:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, And then King Tubby was murdered in what they
47:36
Speaker 2: think was a botched robbery in nineteen eighty nine.
47:39
Speaker 1: Well that's essentially what this was with Tosh too, because
47:42
Speaker 1: the whole time they were just trying to get money
47:43
Speaker 1: that he said he didn't have at the house.
47:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, I got so all right.
47:47
Speaker 1: So we mentioned London earlier. London is probably like the
47:52
Speaker 1: second city of reggae after Kingston.
47:55
Speaker 2: It's the Chicago of reggae.
47:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, because of what's called the win Rush generation, which
48:03
Speaker 1: is when Caribbean immigrants post World War Two from British
48:08
Speaker 1: colonies and former colonies they started, you know, moving elsewhere
48:11
Speaker 1: and a lot of them arrived in the UK and
48:14
Speaker 1: that came over you know, their their music and their
48:17
Speaker 1: their culture and their food and everything came over. And
48:20
Speaker 1: that happened in London and there were all of a
48:22
Speaker 1: sudden a bunch of well not it sort of depends
48:26
Speaker 1: like sometimes white London acts, sometimes Londoners that were black,
48:31
Speaker 1: depending on the band. But like I mentioned the Police
48:34
Speaker 1: and the Specials in Madness, obviously they were in ub
48:36
Speaker 1: forty and you know those those ended up being like
48:40
Speaker 1: really big bands. But they also influenced like the punk
48:42
Speaker 1: scene with the Clash and the sex Pistols.
48:44
Speaker 2: Even Yeah, Johnny Rotten was heavily influenced. He went on
48:47
Speaker 2: to found Public Image Limited and thanks to him Johnny
48:51
Speaker 2: Rotten liking reggae and joh Wobble the bassist really liking
48:55
Speaker 2: dub regae. Yeah, pil had a certain reggae, yeah, dub
49:00
Speaker 2: reggae thing to it going on. So hats off to
49:04
Speaker 2: reggae for giving us Public Image Limited.
49:07
Speaker 1: And you know it wasn't just London, Like you know,
49:10
Speaker 1: we can't get into all this like super in a
49:12
Speaker 1: super detailed way, but it it. You know, reggae went
49:15
Speaker 1: across Africa. There were like native born South African artists
49:20
Speaker 1: that like became reggae stars. I know, the Ivory Coast
49:23
Speaker 1: really got into the Rastafari culture for a while.
49:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, no for sure, and some some of them the
49:31
Speaker 2: taking up that kind of political causes and calls for revolution.
49:35
Speaker 2: Some have actually happened to become political leaders in their country,
49:39
Speaker 2: like Bobbie Weene of Uganda or Shatawale in Ghana. Like
49:45
Speaker 2: these are reggae artists who actually have talked the talk
49:49
Speaker 2: and they're now political, whether they like it or not.
49:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, New Zealand, we're looking at you, because who knew.
49:57
Speaker 1: I didn't know. In nineteen seventy nine, Bob Marley played
50:01
Speaker 1: in Auckland and it kind of he kind of caught
50:04
Speaker 1: a fire there and Maori musicians sort of adopted reggae
50:07
Speaker 1: for a while, and you know, they brought their own
50:09
Speaker 1: thing like it you know, always happens when you sort
50:11
Speaker 1: of adopted music. They brought their own vocal harmonies and stuff.
50:14
Speaker 1: But they also, like everywhere reggae went that it caught fire.
50:19
Speaker 1: I think people except in college dorms in the eighties
50:22
Speaker 1: and nineties in the United States, there was a big
50:25
Speaker 1: like identification with the politics, sort of the bottom up
50:29
Speaker 1: politics of it all.
50:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that was kind of lost on the dorm crowd,
50:34
Speaker 2: was it.
50:34
Speaker 1: I mean, I think we all like to think we
50:36
Speaker 1: were down with the movement, but we just wanted the
50:39
Speaker 1: bumper stickers.
50:41
Speaker 2: But I'm sure it definitely helped shape our world views.
50:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think it opened us up to other things.
50:47
Speaker 1: For sure.
50:48
Speaker 2: There are two other things that you can draw a
50:50
Speaker 2: direct line to from reggae to current music. One is
50:54
Speaker 2: hip hop, like you said, and that line seems to
50:56
Speaker 2: go through DJ cool Hurt. It was definitely prominently featured
51:01
Speaker 2: in our hip hop episode because he was actually born
51:04
Speaker 2: in Kingston, I think, and ended up in the Bronx,
51:08
Speaker 2: and it just so happened that within a few years
51:10
Speaker 2: of DJ Coole Hirk moving to the Bronx, hip hop
51:13
Speaker 2: came up in New York out of nowhere, so they
51:16
Speaker 2: think that it was him.
51:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean he didn't come to the Bronxi he
51:19
Speaker 1: was twelve, so he had a lot of years in
51:21
Speaker 1: Jamaica to bring that influence. And yeah, like I said
51:26
Speaker 1: that toasting, Jamaican toasting tradition came right along with them.
51:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, and remember you talked about how Dub would strip
51:32
Speaker 2: the vocals out of music so you had instrumental music.
51:36
Speaker 2: He would do that with two turntables and a microphone
51:39
Speaker 2: as Beck said.
51:40
Speaker 1: That's right. Other places Panama, like Central and South America
51:44
Speaker 1: had a big thing they called reggae. On Espanol and
51:49
Speaker 1: Puerto Rico, they had like an underground Spanish language like
51:54
Speaker 1: reggae rap called reggatson that came along, and like you
51:58
Speaker 1: can draw a direct line from that to somebody like
52:00
Speaker 1: Bad Bunny.
52:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's even like that. They call Bad
52:06
Speaker 2: Bunnies music reggae tin.
52:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so.
52:09
Speaker 2: Yeah.
52:10
Speaker 1: That super Bowl performance was so fun.
52:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, he really did set the world on fire.
52:16
Speaker 1: Oh that was great. It was a lot of fun.
52:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, like he prefigured Earling Holland. He was like the
52:22
Speaker 2: Earling Holland of super Bowl halftime shows. So, Chuck, favorite
52:30
Speaker 2: reggae band of all time?
52:33
Speaker 1: I mean early Whalers for sure.
52:35
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm going with Burning Spear. Oh yeah, Chuck. Did
52:40
Speaker 2: you like the nineties SKA Revival? Uh?
52:43
Speaker 1: Nah, I wasn't into that me either, My bag, I got.
52:48
Speaker 2: Us to listener mail. Now I managed to unlock it
52:51
Speaker 2: for us.
52:52
Speaker 1: Oh okay, are we there?
52:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, because back in two thousand and eight, one of
52:56
Speaker 2: us predicted that we would bag on the the nineties
53:01
Speaker 2: mid nineties Sky revived or in one of our episodes,
53:03
Speaker 2: and that would trigger listener real.
53:08
Speaker 1: All right, we got a short one here because this
53:10
Speaker 1: episode is a little longer. It's just a quick correction
53:13
Speaker 1: from Dave in California. He said, hey, guys, in the
53:15
Speaker 1: eleanor Roosevelt episode. Instead of in flagrante delicto, which is
53:23
Speaker 1: the common term Josh coined, coined the term in flagrante,
53:27
Speaker 1: in flagrante delicado, sure, which could perhaps mean gently a fire,
53:34
Speaker 1: which Dave says is actually not entirely inappropriate.
53:38
Speaker 2: Perhaps, Right, that's what I It's kind of what I thought.
53:41
Speaker 2: I didn't realize it. It was delecto. What does delecto mean? Like,
53:46
Speaker 2: I don't know on fire? Yeah, what does delecto mean?
53:51
Speaker 1: Chuck, I don't know delcto. Well, I think it means
53:53
Speaker 1: caught in the act, which is what that means as
53:56
Speaker 1: a phrase.
53:57
Speaker 2: Oh okay, no, I see that. It's yeah, caught red handed. Yeah,
54:05
Speaker 2: all right, but I'm fine, but I like mine better.
54:07
Speaker 1: Well, I think a stuff you should know, a T
54:09
Speaker 1: shirt should clearly be in flagrante delicado.
54:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, the gentle fire. Yeah, it's off touch, laid down
54:16
Speaker 2: by the gentle fire with me? Baby, you got anything else.
54:21
Speaker 1: I got nothing else. I hope we did reggae justice.
54:24
Speaker 2: Oh well, I think we did. I hope so too.
54:27
Speaker 1: Yeah.
54:27
Speaker 2: I feel like every time I reassure you, I'm setting
54:31
Speaker 2: us up for people to be like you guys suck.
54:33
Speaker 2: You did a terrible job. So I'm just gonna say,
54:36
Speaker 2: I hope so too. How about that?
54:37
Speaker 1: Yeah? Actually, what usually happens is we get like, hey, guys,
54:40
Speaker 1: did a pretty good job. But also there's this, this
54:42
Speaker 1: and this, which is exactly what we want.
54:44
Speaker 2: Yes, but usually it's from experts and we love that too.
54:47
Speaker 1: That's true.
54:48
Speaker 2: All right. Well, if you want to get in touch
54:50
Speaker 2: with us, like Dave you said, yeah, Dave, Well, you
54:54
Speaker 2: can email us just like Dave did. Send it off
54:56
Speaker 2: to Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff you Should
55:02
Speaker 2: Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
55:05
Speaker 1: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
55:08
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.