psychodelicide said:

Hellz yeah! I love reggae. I think it just might be my favorite genre of music.

Cinnie said:

Have you explored Lee Perry with Mad Professor?



might be kind of dated right now, but during the upswing of drum and bass this was pretty hot! Though, their dub collaborations are timeless.


[Edited 1/1/08 12:13pm]

babynoz said:

I like all those people you listed. I'll also add:

Sizzla Kalonji
Garnett Silk
Barrington Levy (What an incredible voice he has!)
I Wayne
Half Pint
Capleton
Gregory Isaacs
Morgan Heritage
Sanchez
Everton Blender
Richie Spice
Jah Mason
Wayne Wonder
Tenor Saw
Super Cat
Luciano
[Edited 1/1/08 12:17pm]

magnificentsynthesizer said:

I'm not quite ready for that... I only like really got into this stuff in the past year and am still getting my feet wet with the classics.

Cinnamon234 said:

Reggae just makes you feel good when you listen to it. Puts you in a happy mood.

My local cable company, in addition to the regular channels, have various music channels (not BET, MTV or VH-1). They have every type of music from blues to soul. I have the reggae channel on now. What's weird is that on these music channels, they don't show any videos. But they have the artist name, name of the song, the album title, and the year that the song came out on the screen while the song is playing. So I'm sitting here jamming to the music, and loving it!!

ub40

ub40... Please Don't Make Me Cry

Here I am...

I Got You Babe.. UB

UB40 is not reggae.

Dance said:

co-:debelief:

Cinnie said:

Oh, it's not?

wildgoldenhoney said:

I can't believe you just posted like five videos to UB40.

Cinnie said:

Was that bad?








It was 6...

Actually I like the Reggae from Brasil but don't know their names right now. I just might look them up, the CD's are around here somewhere.

(I hope it's categorized right, or I'll be in trouble with all you reggae fans )

wildgoldenhoney said:

It's okay. You hopefully didn't know any better

Dance said:

I do plead ignorance...

Other than Marley, I'm not a big fan. I have to be in the mood for it.

BTW, just because I've been looking for an excuse to post this, here's a video from the "Queen of Reggae":

Ah, 6th grade dances... good times, good times...

babynoz said:

No brotha....I am the one that owe's Jesus a dollar!!!

I know this because he is a friend of my mother and father.

He used to come by our house when we lived in Trinidad and he comes to visit us here in Brooklyn, when ever he is in town.

shorttrini said:

What's a calypso singer?

Reggae is the shit. Powerful music. Uplifting music. Cultural music. Spiritual music (the real Rasta stuff, not dancehall).

Pyschodelicide said, "Reggae just makes you feel good when you listen to it. Puts you in a happy mood."

You said it braddah. Totally the opposite of rock and soul the accent is on the upbeat, the 2 and the 4 rather than the 1 and the 3. It lifts your spirits by accentuating the flow of the music upwards.

And the drums, especially the Nyabhingi hand drums when employed, are a mirroring of the rhythym of the human heartbeat. It's irresistible stuff.

When you think about it, how is it that this very unique and distinctive form of music coming from the ghettos of a tiny little Carribean island has gone around the world and influenced so many lives and other forms of music?

It's got something special about it that everyone can relate to on a feeling level.

In fact, even the whole rap music thing was a direct lift from the Jamaican toasters of the early 70's, I Roy, U Roy, Big Youth, Tony Tuff, Prince Jazzbo, The Lone Ranger, Dr. Alimantado and many others.

In Jamaica in the early 70's the 45rpm single was king. There were easily 50 to 100 new singles released weekly. Test pressings would be made and distributed to the mobile sound systems like Prince Buster and King Tubby who would play the records on ghetto corners in Kingston. If the crowds responded favorably, more copies would be pressed and sold and that's how hit records were made.

In Jamaica, the studio owners owned the rights to the songs. The musicians who wrote and played the music were paid a pittance for what turned out to be classic "riddims" which are still popular today.

The studios were always looking for new vocal talent and it was not unusual for many different songs to be released with the same musical background but with different singers.

These 45s did not have a B side as we know it but the vocal sides were backed by what was called "version" or dub.

A straight dub version was the same music as on the A side vocal but it gave the engineers a chance to show their creativity by generally droppping out the lead vocals, twiddling the EQ knobs, adding reverb, stripping it down to drum and bass, adding sound effects; very spacey stuff.

Dub became as popular if not more popular than the A sides as a musical genre principly because of the cramped living conditions in the Kingston ghettos.

A lot of people think that "reggae all sounds the same" because of the everpresent 2 and 4 beat but there was actually a method to their madness.

Think about it. Crowded shantytown shacks with little record players all getting high on good weed and listening to the dub sides of the day's popular riddims made for a seamless listening experience as you walked down the streets. The spacey beat wove in and out of itself very homogenously.

If everyone were playing a different type of music in those cramped quarters it would have been chaos and conflict.

But I digress.

The DJs or toasters were the original rap artists. These guys would give freestyle social commentary at the sound system dances. After the vocal A side was played the toasters would take the mic and hit the stage "toasting the tracks."

There was of course a competition between them. Who was the coolest dude? Who's rhymes were the tuiffest and who's flow was the baddest?

Some were straight rappers while others did what was called the sing-jay stylee, part rapping, part singing. As they became popular they were invited into the studio to make their own albums

Check 'em out:

http://www.youtube.com/wa...PsRL4&NR=1

http://youtube.com/watch?...re=related

http://www.youtube.com/wa...re=related

http://www.youtube.com/wa...re=related

All time killer dub mixing- Dr. Alimantado Best Dressed Chicken in Town
http://www.youtube.com/wa...u97ctxg8hk


The first "reggae" song to ever be released worldwide was My Boy Lollipop by Millie Small in 1964.

http://www.youtube.com/wa...re=related

Actually the first original music from Jamaica was ska. My Boy Lollipop is a ska beat.

In the late 60's a terrible weeks long heat wave passed through Jamaica. The ska beat was too fast to dance to in the oppressive heat so the musicians slowed the time down to half and reggae (actually rocksteady, an intermediary genre between ska and reggae) was born.
[Edited 1/2/08 14:02pm]

Dance said:

AnckSuNamun said:

Then what tha heck is it?

I haven't listened to pure reggae or dancehall in a while. I listen to ska though.....a little bit of ska-core too. Listening to Operation Ivy now.....more on the punk side, but still slightly influenced by reggae.

wildgoldenhoney said:

Reggae-lite

AnckSuNamun said:

Not tha same?