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Has anyone else picked up Soul Jazz's new release "An England Story" yet:
http://www.souljazzrecords.co.uk/releases/?id=11133
From their press release:
"The development of Black music in the United Kingdom owes much to the influence of Jamaican and US music on each succesive generation of Carribean immigrants to the UK - from Windrush to the present day. UK based MC’s take these influences, mix them up with local references and styles thus creating an identity of Black British culture. This is constantly evolving not just musically but also in terms of each subsequent generation’s relationship to British society. As Tricky put it in Massive Attack's Blue Lines, of "English upbringing, background Caribbean”
An England Story shows the links and musical path from the arrival of UK Dancehall and Soundsystems in the early 1980s, through successive musical movements such as Jungle, UK Hip-Hop, up to today’s Garage, Grime and Dubstep.
The global pre-eminence of American hip hop means that music like grime and UK hip hop is often seen as a form of rap, whereas it owes as much to reggae music and culture as it does to any American influence. Black music in Britain has fashioned its own identity in contrast to that of America, Africa, or elsewhere, by drawing on the unique relationship that the UK has with the Caribbean. As Rodney P (of celebrated 80s UK Hip-Hop group London Posse) says:
"This is a UK thing, it's hip hop and it's reggae and we do reggae - and those Americans don't know about that".
Since the evolution of the 'fast chat' dancehall style of the early 80s, the influence of reggae music and culture has been crucial to the development of urban music in Britain: from the heavy sampling of Jamaican vocals/instrumentals employed by jungle, hardcore and garage, to grime's London take on the soundclash, the riddim version and patois-inflected rhymes. The importance of the Jamaican soundsystem concept and its dubplates, specials, clashes and heavy, heavy bass is a constant throughout these different stylistic mutations"
It's so good. Especially the 80s fast chat stuff, which I'm just really starting to discover at the moment.
I'd really encourage the poster above who was asking about Lee Perry to explore beyond the Upsetter as soon as possible. Perry seems to function as an entry point for a lot of people into JA music, in a way that I actually find a bit reminiscent of the "Bob Marley – Legend" phenomena. In the same way that Legend is generally the only reggae record that people who aren't otherwise into reggae will own; you will often find that, it someone who generally listens to "alternative" indie or rock music happens to have a couple of reggae records in their collection, you can almost guarantee that they will be Lee Perry CDs, or possibly a dub compilation, and not much else.
Don't stop there! Scratch and (certainly early) Marley are great, but not going any further into exploring Jamaican music is really just like assuming that the Beatles and the Rolling Stones are the only bands from England that are worth listening to. |
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