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Reggae Routes
From Kumina to Mento, Ska to Rocksteady, Reggae to Dancehall, Roots to Ragga this is the authentic story of Jamaican popular music, told for the first time by Jamaicans. In Jamaica, Reggae is more than music it is the nation s main collective emotional outlet and its chief cultural contribution to the world. Reggae Routes examines the ways in which this uniquely popular music expresses the dreams, desires and realities of the Jamaican people, capturing the glad to be alive spirit which makes Jamaican music so popular worldwide. Jamaican music can be roughly divided into four eras, each with a distinctive beat ska, rocksteady, reggae and dancehall. Ska dates from about 1960 to mid-1966, rocksteady from 1966 to 1968, while from 1969 to 1983 reggae was the popular beat. The reggae era had two phases, early reggae up to 1974 and roots reggae up to 1983. Since 1983, dancehall has been the prevalent sound. The authors describe each stage in the development of the music, identifying the most popular songs and artists, highlighting the significant social, political and economic issues as they affected the musical scene. While they write from a Jamaican perspective, the intended audience is any person, local or foreign, interested in a intelligent discussion of reggae music and Jamaica. A unique feature of this book is the inclusion of historical radio charts from 1960 to 1966 and a provocative reggae all-time top 100 chart. Copiously illustrated with period photos, record jackets and a variety of music memorabilia, this is the best book ever written on reggae.
- GenresMusic
258 pages, Paperback
First published December 17, 1997
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 1, 2024
Het Jamaicaanse verhaal over de Jamaicaanse muziek is er altijd één van prachtige anekdotes en sterke aangelegenheden. De Jamaicaan presenteert elk kleine feit als de harde waarheid, vaak in eigen voordeel. Dat maakt dit boek te gek en matig tegelijkertijd. De schrijvers benaderen nergens het niveau van de 'rough guide', die geschreven is door blanke Engelsen, hoe lullig dat ook mag zijn. Toch blijft elke visie op de ‘foggy road’ die de reggae geschiedenis is een aanvulling. De schrijvers vliegen hier en daar uit de bocht, bijvoorbeeld als ze de 2Tone skinheads racistisch noemen. Daarnaast is hun liefde voor Toots & the Maytals te overduidelijk. Toots is misschien wel de beste zanger in de reggae geschiedenis, maar dat is Gregory, Bob, Ken, Alton, Freddie, Sugar en vele anderen ook. Hoewel Byron Lee tot nu toe vaak te kort is gedaan, wordt hem in dit boek te veel eer gegeven. Zo blijft het boek weinig in balans. Behalve als je het leest als een boek geschreven door twee enorme liefhebbers die reggae leven en ademen. Die niet zonder kunnen. Hun visie op vele nummers is goed te lezen als die persoonlijke ode. Bizar is dat als je over een voor jou bekend nummer leest, zonder het te horen, het zich een weg in je hoofd graaft. Hierdoor blijf je uren met het laatste nummer in je hoofd zitten waar je net over gelezen hebt. Bij de behandeling van de nummers mis ik echt Yabby You en Augustus Pablo.
De beschreven geschiedenis is daarnaast summier. Dus de 'rough guide' blijft de bijbel, dit een zeer goede aanvulling al was het maar om de hele dag reggae nummers te neuriën.
De beschreven geschiedenis is daarnaast summier. Dus de 'rough guide' blijft de bijbel, dit een zeer goede aanvulling al was het maar om de hele dag reggae nummers te neuriën.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 25, 2015
A brilliant book by Brian and Wayne, that takes you on a delightful journey of Jamaica's Reggae music, with a marvel of research and documentation. This book presents the reader with truly artistic ventures and excellence, over and over again.
My hats off to you both, with much respect and admiration.
This book remains one of my prized inspirations.
Author Kenny Lord.
My hats off to you both, with much respect and admiration.
This book remains one of my prized inspirations.
Author Kenny Lord.
June 9, 2012
This book certainly makes a lot of bold claims for itself. According to the back cover it's "the authentic story of Jamaican popular music" as well as being "the best book ever written on reggae". So my first disappointment after receiving "Reggae routes" (a gift from a well-meaning friend) was to discover how short it is. Although the authors seem to think that they've written a "reggae bible", in reality it barely qualifies as a primer, and not a very good one at that.
The book is divided into 3 sections, so it makes sense to consider each one in turn.
Section 1 briefly outlines the history of Jamaican music and on the whole is a pretty good introduction to the subject, but it's nothing like the definitive account I was expecting. The only really bad chapter is "Reggae international", which mainly consists of well-worn cliches about Bob Marley and actually says very little about the impact reggae has made beyond the shores of Jamaica, particularly in the UK since the 1960s, or about the huge influence of Jamaican music on today's rave and dj culture, or its specific contributions to the development of hip hop as well as more recent phenomena like drum 'n' bass.
In Section 2 the authors list and discuss memorable recordings from the 1960s, 70s, 80s and 90s in roughly chronological order, and although most of their choices are worthy of inclusion, it's a far from comprehensive selection, mainly because they focus entirely on singles. It's true that reggae is without doubt a singles-driven genre, but failure to include some of the great albums from the last four decades means that many of Jamaica's finest recordings aren't even mentioned in "Reggae routes". What's worse is that some really significant singles are also missing, for example Wayne Smith's seminal King Jammy produced "Under mi sleng teng" (which kicked off the digital era in the mid-1980s) isn't included in the authors' 80s selection.
It also rapidly becomes clear that they don't have anything original to say about the music, and their comments about individual records are often brief, insipid or clearly borrowed from other sources. This part of the book is also littered with mistakes, and mainly demonstrates the complete opposite of what Chang & Chen would like you to believe, ie the mere fact that you're from Jamaica does not make you an expert on reggae music (I was born in England, but that doesn't make me an expert on cricket)....
They are clearly unfamiliar with some of the records they review. For example their brief description of U-Roy's "Natty rebel" correctly states that it's based on a recording of the Bob Marley song "Soul rebel", but they don't seem to realise that the recording in question is a cover version by the Gladiators (from their excellent "Trenchtown mix-up" album) and not by Bob Marley himself. Quite a few of the singles have also been assigned to the wrong year, which might be understandable for some of the more obscure tracks, but it's hard to believe that they don't know when massive hits like Marley's "Three little birds" came out....
Section 3 mainly consists of lists: Jamaican radio charts for each year from 1960 to 1997, a "most popular artists" chart (based on the radio charts), the authors' top 100 reggae chart (featuring their favourite tracks from 1960 - 1980) and top 30 dancehall chart (featuring tracks from 1983 - 1996). It's a pity that the latter two charts consist solely of the two lists of records with no explanatory comments, because it would be interesting to know why the authors decided that these 130 tracks are better than the huge number of others which weren't included. Failing this, it would have been helpful to cross-reference each item in the chart with the page on which it is discussed in Section 2 of the book (although quite a few of them don't actually appear in Section 2). It's also a shame that the authors didn't compile an album chart, which readers would probably find more useful, and I'm mystified as to why they don't seem to think that anything worthwhile happened in 1981 and 1982! The book finishes with a list of sources and references and a very short essay about Rastafarianism, which for some reason is tagged on rather untidily at the end.
Throughout the book the very variable quality of the photos and artwork is another let-down. Many of the images are either not well integrated with the text or poorly reproduced. For example, check out the pic of Lady Saw on p213 - although I'm quite prepared to believe it's really her, the photo is so blurred that it could just as easily be Nancy Reagan or even an alien from another planet! In addition, the choice of images to accompany individual sections of text is sometimes rather strange. For example, the authors illustrate their review of Black Uhuru's "Solidarity" with a picture of the front cover of the group's "Sinsemilla" album, which came out four years earlier and doesn't contain the track in question (it's actually from an album called "Anthem"). And there are other examples which are just as bad....
Overall, "Reggae routes" is the worst book on the subject that I've read, and as there are several infinitely superior reggae guides on the market, I'd strongly recommend that you avoid it.
The book is divided into 3 sections, so it makes sense to consider each one in turn.
Section 1 briefly outlines the history of Jamaican music and on the whole is a pretty good introduction to the subject, but it's nothing like the definitive account I was expecting. The only really bad chapter is "Reggae international", which mainly consists of well-worn cliches about Bob Marley and actually says very little about the impact reggae has made beyond the shores of Jamaica, particularly in the UK since the 1960s, or about the huge influence of Jamaican music on today's rave and dj culture, or its specific contributions to the development of hip hop as well as more recent phenomena like drum 'n' bass.
In Section 2 the authors list and discuss memorable recordings from the 1960s, 70s, 80s and 90s in roughly chronological order, and although most of their choices are worthy of inclusion, it's a far from comprehensive selection, mainly because they focus entirely on singles. It's true that reggae is without doubt a singles-driven genre, but failure to include some of the great albums from the last four decades means that many of Jamaica's finest recordings aren't even mentioned in "Reggae routes". What's worse is that some really significant singles are also missing, for example Wayne Smith's seminal King Jammy produced "Under mi sleng teng" (which kicked off the digital era in the mid-1980s) isn't included in the authors' 80s selection.
It also rapidly becomes clear that they don't have anything original to say about the music, and their comments about individual records are often brief, insipid or clearly borrowed from other sources. This part of the book is also littered with mistakes, and mainly demonstrates the complete opposite of what Chang & Chen would like you to believe, ie the mere fact that you're from Jamaica does not make you an expert on reggae music (I was born in England, but that doesn't make me an expert on cricket)....
They are clearly unfamiliar with some of the records they review. For example their brief description of U-Roy's "Natty rebel" correctly states that it's based on a recording of the Bob Marley song "Soul rebel", but they don't seem to realise that the recording in question is a cover version by the Gladiators (from their excellent "Trenchtown mix-up" album) and not by Bob Marley himself. Quite a few of the singles have also been assigned to the wrong year, which might be understandable for some of the more obscure tracks, but it's hard to believe that they don't know when massive hits like Marley's "Three little birds" came out....
Section 3 mainly consists of lists: Jamaican radio charts for each year from 1960 to 1997, a "most popular artists" chart (based on the radio charts), the authors' top 100 reggae chart (featuring their favourite tracks from 1960 - 1980) and top 30 dancehall chart (featuring tracks from 1983 - 1996). It's a pity that the latter two charts consist solely of the two lists of records with no explanatory comments, because it would be interesting to know why the authors decided that these 130 tracks are better than the huge number of others which weren't included. Failing this, it would have been helpful to cross-reference each item in the chart with the page on which it is discussed in Section 2 of the book (although quite a few of them don't actually appear in Section 2). It's also a shame that the authors didn't compile an album chart, which readers would probably find more useful, and I'm mystified as to why they don't seem to think that anything worthwhile happened in 1981 and 1982! The book finishes with a list of sources and references and a very short essay about Rastafarianism, which for some reason is tagged on rather untidily at the end.
Throughout the book the very variable quality of the photos and artwork is another let-down. Many of the images are either not well integrated with the text or poorly reproduced. For example, check out the pic of Lady Saw on p213 - although I'm quite prepared to believe it's really her, the photo is so blurred that it could just as easily be Nancy Reagan or even an alien from another planet! In addition, the choice of images to accompany individual sections of text is sometimes rather strange. For example, the authors illustrate their review of Black Uhuru's "Solidarity" with a picture of the front cover of the group's "Sinsemilla" album, which came out four years earlier and doesn't contain the track in question (it's actually from an album called "Anthem"). And there are other examples which are just as bad....
Overall, "Reggae routes" is the worst book on the subject that I've read, and as there are several infinitely superior reggae guides on the market, I'd strongly recommend that you avoid it.
June 3, 2013
Chang and Chen put classic Jamaican music forms reggae, ska and rocksteady are placed into a perspective starting with Jamaican folk musics like kumina and mento fused with New Orleans R&B and jazz. The scope of this book also reaches to dub, dancehall and international reggae. The first eighty pages are dedicated to the historical and social context of one genre forming and usurping another. The text is easily read and full of quotes and anecdotes about the unique conditions that caused the formation of so much music that reached out from the little island to reach the entire globe. For another sixty pages individual songs are listed chronologically (1960-1995) with descriptive and informative notes. This section is also full of plenty of sidebars on such relevant topics as individual performers, Rastafarianism, the libidinous "slackness," important studio engineers, etc. Appendices include radio charts 1960-1996, notes, bibliography and a history of Rastafarianism. Reggae Routes is an enjoyable read, thoroughly researched and essential for an understanding of the big picture on music originating on this subtropical island.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews