BARBELITH underground
 

Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.


Underground > Radio & Music >

Late Night Blues

  
 
illmatic
10:26 / 24.05.04
Late Night Blues

This is a particularly fine article on reggae from veteran UK reggae journo, Penny Reel. It address the age old media myth of the popularisation of reggae – currently re-going one of it’s seemingly never-ending repetitions, with the newfound popularity of dancehall - in here in terms of cultural appropriation. The discussion reminds me nothing so much as claims made by backpackers/oldschoolers in Hip Hop, discussed on this board at length (not so much recently) for the authenticity of a chosen take on Hip Hop, over and above the tastes of the youthful fans of the music.

I also particularly enjoyed this articles puncturing of some of the stereotypes that accrue around reggae:

The popular image of the music as portrayed by the media was always a romantic one, involving natty hairstyles, ganja smoking and protest lyrics, whereas clubgoers for the most part aspired to lifestyles less flamboyant or radical than this, and preferred a more sentimental type of music designed for the serious business of dancing cheek to jowl

Of course, nature loving rastas (as long as they stay in Jamaica) are much less threatening to a nice white audience. Lynton Kwezi Johnson, and various other student faves, had no kind of following on the reggae scene.

It gives you a potted history of reggae and sound system culture in the UK - I loved this image for instance:

At house parties it was not unusual to see aged matriarchs holding court in the kitchen or small children scampering beneath their skirts, while such as nurses and bus drivers would arrive at the door straight from their shift and still dressed in uniform.

Great article - give it a read. I'd interested to hear anyone's reaction or comments.
 
 
SteppersFan
13:13 / 25.05.04
It's alright. Well, it would be, it's by Penny Reel.

But what's the point?

So white audiences and black audiences have different tastes, which is largely determined by different levels of knowledge by media outlets, which itself is driven by different levels of knowledge and very different cultural experiences -- well, what would you expect?

Of course there aren't many white people at a Luciano show. For one thing, it's hard for white people to know there's one going on. That's not blaming the reggae scene for not marketing Luciano well enough to white people -- it's simply a statement of fact. More to the point, there's an issue of market evolution and message dispersion: put crudely, black people are early adopters of reggae, and white people are late adopters of reggae. If you have black and white audiences consuming an artist at the same time, what do you get? Answer: Shaggy. Of course our analysis should go deeper than mere empiricism -- but what analysis is being made here? Is any?

Perhaps Penny should point out just how the white music industry has ripped off black reggae musicians -- I've no doubt it happened. There's certainly a defensive undertone to the piece which would imply that this is common. Of course, how much greater is the exploitation of black reggae musicians by black entrepreneurs in Jamaica. The economics of the copyright-owning producer ensure that.

Say what you like about Mick Hucknall, but his label Blood and Fire has gone to great lengths to ensure that PEOPLE GOT PAID. It's probably not an exaggeration to say that Blood and Fire have been something of a life-saver for some people. And again, Soul Jazz -- about whom Reel could conceivably be making snide comments ("Music lovers [can]add ... to a compact disc collection [of] boogie woogie piano ... classic blues ... gospel ... Sixties soul and Seventies funk") -- cannot be criticised for ripping off JA artists. Again, they make sure people get paid.

And this is merely an updating of an old story. "Bass Culture" details repeatedly how many reggae artists of the 70s could only survive on the income made from selling records "a foreign" -- frequently through Trojan re-issues.

Throughout the piece, Reel reiterates that white audiences are never up to date with the latest reggae innovations, and don't participate in the rituals and venues of black reggae audiences. This is true. Unlike dance music, reggae has continued to maintain its distribution channels and performance venues. Yet one wonders how, given the tone (I wouldn't say analysis -- there isn't any) of the article, he would feel if lots of white people did turn up. As at, say, Shaka gigs. Or Iration Steppas shows. Or, these days, Elephant Man shows. Or, certainly, Sean Paul shows (who is still popular with black reaggae fans, no doubt).

In the final sentence -- and not before -- Reel suddenly introduces the concept of cultural colonisation, as if that is the logical corrollary of all that went before. It isn't. Describing differences in cultural consumption does not equate to demonstrating cultural colonisation. Cultural colonisation would arise when the dominant culture's consumption of reggae would result in the demolition of the communities and conditions that gave rise to that cultural artefact in the first place. A good example of this is dance music. The mass-consumption of the culture resulted in the erasure of raves and underground clubs and, rather than feeding the production and distribution networks that supported the original culture, from 1995 onwards they competed them out of existence. Dance culture has been obviously in decline ever since. In contrast, few of the waves of popularisation of reggae have resulted in that, with the possible exception of the roots / hippy wave (and I would probably argue with that anyway).

Why not really get to grips with the issues -- principally that of "White people don't consume reggae until a decade or more after it's made -- so the threat goes away, and the original artists don't get paid for their work when they need it." There's at least something in this. But he doesn't develop his argument.

I have enormous respect for Penny Reel. But I have to ask, again -- is there really a point to this story? What is he attacking? For it looks to me like there's too much carping from the sidelines, and not enough meat. Mind you, it is from 1997...
 
  
Add Your Reply