EPISODE 625 REGGAE MUSIC AT DUSK AT BENARES, FRIDAY AUGUST 12, 2022 (THANKS TO THE RIDDIM RIDERS REGGAE BAND)

EPISODE 625     REGGAE MUSIC AT DUSK AT BENARES, FRIDAY AUGUST 12, 2022

                          (WITH special thanks to the Riddim Riders Reggae Band)
alan skeoch
Friday august 12, 2022



I really did not understand reggae music until this night.  The softness of this summer
evening was accented by the softness of the trio of reggae musicians.  What little  I did
know about Reggae was that its most well known leader was Bob Marley who grew
up in the violence prone Jamaica of the 1960’s.  I assumed the music would reflect its
origins.  Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!  The music and lyrics lamented the racism, corruption,
power seeking life in 1960’s Jamaica. Reggae urged people to Rise Up and rid their
society of the negative and to seek the positive. To choose love over hate.  I know
that is hard to do.  Bob Marley also found it difficult to do.

On Friday, August 11, 2022, about 100 people sat on lawn chairs at Benares and
were mesmerized by the soothing reggae music that evening.  Much to my surprise
one of my favourite Bill Withers songs was part of the evening performance…”Ain’t 
no sunshine when she’s gone.”  

Amazing how soothing a drum can sound when it is played softly.
Specially let me credit the Riddim Riders Reggae Band…Franklin Joseph on drums,
Carl De Souza on bass, Jonathan Rattos on keys, Mike Rajczak on percussion (one
of  whom was absent).


REGGAE MUSIC AND REGGAE MUSICIANS OWE MUCH TO BOB MARLEY

Who Is Bob Marley?

In 1963, Bob Marley and his friends formed the Wailing Wailers. The Wailers’ big break came in 1972 when they landed a contract with Island Records. Marley went on to sell more than 20 million records throughout his career, making him the first international superstar to emerge from the so-called Third World.

Early Life

Born on February 6, 1945, in St. Ann Parish, Jamaica, Marley helped introduce reggae music to the world and remains one of the genre’s most beloved artists to this day. The son of a Black teenage mother and much older, later absent white father, he spent his early years in St. Ann Parish, in the rural village known as Nine Miles.

One of his childhood friends in St. Ann was Neville “Bunny” O’Riley Livingston. Attending the same school, the two shared a love of music. Bunny inspired Marley to learn to play the guitar. Later Livingston’s father and Marley’s mother became involved, and they all lived together for a time in Kingston, according to Christopher John Farley’s Before the Legend: The Rise of Bob Marley.

JAMAICAN GANG VIOLENCE IN 1960’S

REGGAE MUSIC is based on the concept of love … Love thy neighbour.  But it flourished in an atmosphere of gang violence
in Jamaica in the 1960’s where two rival gangs were prepared to kill in order to seize power.  Bob Marley tried to
quell the violence and his initial reward for being a peacemaker was to be shot at a Jamaican concert.  He sustained
a minor wound but insisted on continuing his concert.  All risks taken in an effort to bring the gang leaders together
He was partially successful.  Marley called the gang leaders to the stage and forced them to shake hands.  Which they
did.   Hope for peace followed.   But violence was never eradicated much to the disappointment of Bob Marley who
was given a United Nations award for his efforts to bring about peace in Jamaica and his efforts resonated through
the Third World where  climate of violence tore societies apart.

Bob Marley died young.  He was only 34 years old.  His influence however endures.


LYRICS TO ‘GET UP, STAND UP’

Get Up Stand Up
Song by Bob Marley and the Wailers

OverviewLyricsVideosListenOther recordingsArtists


SO , WHAT IS REGGAE MUSIC?
(DEFINITION FROM INTERNET)

“Reggae” comes from the term “rege-rege” which means “rags” or “ragged clothes”, and this gives you your first clue into the story behind reggae music. When it started out in Jamaica around the late 1960s, reggae music was considered a rag-tag, hodge-podge of other musical styles, namely Jamaican Mento and contemporary Jamaican Ska music, along with American jazz and rhythm & blues, something like what was coming out of New Orleans at the time. Most listeners didn’t even distinguish reggae from Jamaican dancehall music or the slowed down version of ska music known as Rocksteady, until possibly when the band Toots and the Maytals came along.  There songs served as a sort of public notice that a new style of music had been born and was staking its claim on the musical frontier.

Besides its sound, reggae music is frequently associated with the common themes in its lyrics. The earliest reggae lyrics spoke mostly of love, specifically romantic love between a man and a woman. But as the music and the musicians making it made their way into the 1970s, reggae started taking on a heavy Rastafarian influence. Now the love being sung about was not just romantic love, but cosmic, spiritual love, the love of one’s fellow man, and of God, or “Jah”. And when reggae singers weren’t singing about love, they were singing about rebellion and revolution against the forces impeding that love, like the extreme violence, poverty, racism, and government oppression they were witnessing or experiencing on a regular basis.

When reggae music reached more popular international acclaim was after singer Jimmy Cliff released a movie called “The Harder They Come” with a powerful socio-political storyline and an equally strong reggae soundtrack. This sudden global attention and interest in the music paved the way for possibly reggae’s biggest superstar, Bob Marley, to become a worldwide legend, and the name most associated with the genre. Today reggae music has spurred the innovation of a whole new range of musical styles, like modern Jamaican Dub, and been infused into many other popular genres, like hip-hop and rap. Yet still you can find bands in every corner of the world playing that authentic, roots reggae like it was when it started out in Jamaica over 50 years ago.




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