UWI looks back at Reggae, charts its course for the future

Mel Cooke, Gleaner Writer

In exploring 'Going Forward to Our Rootz: Reclaiming the Healing Power of Reggae Music', members of the large panel at Thursday's symposium held on the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona Campus, tapped, not only into the roots, but also into the outgrowth and maladies of Jamaican popular music.

Held on International Reggae Day 2010, the symposium pulled a near full house into the Neville Hall Lecture Theatre, which gave Ken Boothe a standing ovation after he had looked back briefly at his early days in recording and paid respects to some of the singers who have passed on, such as Slim Smith, Delroy Wilson and Bob Marley. Summing up the effect of International Reggae Day on the singers and players of instruments, Boothe said "this is Christmas for me. This is our Christmas".

The symposium was hosted by the Department of Literatures in English and the Department of Sociology, Psychology and Social Work at the UWI.

Professor Carolyn Cooper opened as "a dissenting voice at this forum, celebrating going back to our roots". She explained that our roots are more complex than we understand. Quoting from Beres Hammond's Rockaway, Cooper said "it is very sweet", but pointed to its fallacies, including "this myth of the golden years of reggae". In those days the weapon was the "intimate ratchet" and broken bottle - these days, it is "the impersonal gun".

Cooper pointed out the music of the 'golden days' is very much alive in dancehall. "Maybe when we go back to the roots we will find a lot of those roots still alive in the present," she said to end her presentation.

Patricia Dos Reis from Brazil spoke to a prominent branch of reggae in South America. Referring to songs from Bob Marley and the Wailers albums of the 1970s, she said "what all these songs (including One Love and No Woman No Cry) are saying is 'don't cry, keep going, be strong'." And she connected that theme to one Brazilian reggae band's work, explaining that in Brazil, musicians are continuing what Jamaica was doing in the 1970s. She closed with the advice that Jamaicans should revisit some vintage songs.

Dr Clinton Hutton said he would be taking a different approach to the topic and he did by identifying themes in Jamaican popular music. Noting that renewal takes place in societies from time to time, Dr Hutton said one of the main planks of that process is when society revisits what it regards as its as its best moments.

Hutton said that within three years of Jamaica's independence, the rude-boy theme emerged in Jamaican music - with most of the songs being against the rude boy. He went into the history of Derrick Morgan's Tougher Than Tough, written under duress to appease one particular rude boy who was killed a few days after the song made a midnight dub plate debut at a dance.

Hutton pointed out that the singers were responding to the single most important trend to emerge in politics - that trend being the basis of what we have today.

There were songs of optimism (Freedom Sound, Forward March) before the rude boy era, then came the bulldozing of Back o Wall, Dungle and Shanty Town and "for the first time we had refugees in this country, thousands of people". There were the gangs - Spanglers, Phoenix, Skull - and the musicians were close to these people. "The songs reflected what was going on with the political situation at the time," Hutton said, the 1970s bringing up songs like Leroy Smart's Ballistic Affair and Half Pint's Political Friction coming in the 1980s. And there are also songs about faith in self, among them Peter Tosh's I Am That I Am.

"If we look at context we begin to make sense of the idea of renewal," Hutton said. And, he said, "the rude boys became the alter egos of Jamaican politicians".

"Dancehall or reggae is not an issue. The issue is what is the theme," Hutton emphasised. He closed by singing the opening lines of Satamassagana, the audience joining in.

Java Immanuel-I, who recently released a book on Reggae Sunsplash, posited that reggae was not dying but that good music was being stifled. Among the stifling factors are payola and the 'hustle' mentality. Immanuel-I suggested studying and documenting music as cures. DJ Afifa (Michelle Harris), put forward reggae as a lens, or framework, for understanding life. Playing examples for the audience, she said it was critical that the DJ creatively incorporate other genres of music, thus expanding understanding as well as musical possibilities.

Herbie Miller defined the musicians as griots, telling stories about history, the disappointments of our tradition, the victory of our tradition. "Nothing is left unsaid," Miller said. However, there is a particular type of story he would like to see told, as Miller broached issues of humanity, love and being our brother's keeper. "These are the kinds of stories and situations that we want to see our musicians going into again," he said.

And the final speaker, Dr Michael Barnett, spoke to his early experiences of the Wailers in the 1960s and 1970s. Coming to the present, he said "I am not really feeling the dancehall of today". He expressed a need for deeper, more spiritual music, which allows one to tap into more than just the physical.

Performances by I Nubia, Takura, Zebbie Lion, Iya Zinga and Sherita followed, before the question and answer segment.