AnckSuNamun said:

Not tha same?

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.

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 and intermediary genre between ska and reggae) was born.

You're welcome. I love reggae music, history and culture.

Here's one more video showing how a singer and a toaster can work together. This is the Cuss Cuss Riddim.

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

Horace Andy is one of the classic reggae singers with a very distinctive voice. You may know him from the work he's done with Massive Attack.

The Lone Ranger is one of the originators from back in the day most famous for two classics, LSD (self explanatory) and Branabas Collins, a song a bout vampires from the popular TV show, Dark Shadows.

What's a calypso singer?

Thanks to Psychodelicide for starting this thread. I've been enjoying youtube reggae vids all evening.

Third World is probably the most musically sophisticated of Jamaican groups that have been around since the mid 70's.

Here are a couple good ones:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=QXrKfWa1ebc

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