Reggae Britannia

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    Reggae Britannia

    This looks extremely promising from the folks on Beeb 4 for Friday.
    Documentary looking at reggae's influence on British music and society since the 1960s.

    #2
    John - That looks really excellent. I will certainly be watching it and look forward to hearing peoples comments on this thread. (On a very different note, this caught my eye. Tuesday on Radio 4 - "The Music That Melted") - Lat.

    Under a full moon and the Northern Lights, Richard Coles hears the Ice Music of Norway.

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      #3
      'My ears are alight' as someone once sang...

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        #4
        John et al,

        Thanks for pointing to this. I rarely bother with tv listings !
        It was a very enoyable programme in deed and might persuade me to try ( again )
        to sort out the reggae crate in the loft

        What's the next reggae item on R3 likely to be, I wonder ? ( always remember looking round at the radio when Verity Sharp played Dillinger's 'Cocaine In My Brain' ! )


        Wasn't too struck on The Barbican do - I think the live audience got more out of it.

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          #5
          Really enjoyed this with Mrs W dancing in the lounge!

          Need to dig out our Island albums, and Marleys, see if grand-daughter enjoys!
          - - -

          John W

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            #6
            John W,

            Have you posted any images of the dancing, on-line ?


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              #7
              Not only did I enjoy the programme, I came to see how little I knew about reggae in Britain - some terrific stuff in there - that whole thing about the Sound System playing only Jamaican and them making the bigger holes in the record - and that strange flat somewhere in suburbia, and the punk/reggae thing, and the death of reggae - and my wife was just lovin' the hats (not Boy George's one, mind you!)

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                #8
                Yes, I enjoyed it. All of these Britannia music programmes and series have been excellent. I knew a bit more about this one than I have known of several of the other genres. There was actually a fair bit of reggae in the singles charts when I was a nipper. Remember vividly The Israelites when aged five and could sing You Can Get It If You Really Want It shortly afterwards. All those fantastic singles like Young Gifted and Black, Double Barrel, Wonderful World, Beautiful People. They feel like they are in my musical blood. Marley, of course. If anything, I identified with the ska/reggae side of punk than the rock and roll/glam side. I now love dub and early ska and I always liked a bit of lovers rock. Janet Kay's "Silly Games". What a single but timing-wise it was really closer to rocksteady. There were quite a lot of people of significance for me on the programme. Letts, Bovell, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Simenon etc. I have huge amounts of time for them all. Music was immensely important in the struggle for justice and in bridge building and we were all so fortunate to have such a wealth of cultural richness.

                I was interested to see it ending with Soul II Soul in 1989 - a great soundtrack to that year in many ways, certainly in London, seemingly coming from every other flat window and car radio. There is something about that year - not quite the day the music died - but it became different from that point. I feel that it was the turning point for British and American black music. The start of the decline was the early/mid-1980s and by 1990 it had largely lost its soul. In fact, I'd say that it was no longer evolving then, at least in the same way, although those involved in hip-hop and dance may wish to differ. There was some really dreadful reggae material in the charts in the nineties while soul just disappeared. It seems to me that world music has filled this vacuum to some extent while doing a tremendous amount more. Among other things, this reflects the ways in which the world has opened up to travellers. There are not so many who have never been abroad or at most just visited the tourist parts of Spain or the countries of their families' origins. On the plus side, there are some hints across the industry that this may be the decade when musicality comes back although progression is probably more likely to involve dabbling rather than anything as radical as we had for thirty years.

                I have some slightly uneasy feelings around parts of the dialogue in this programme and others like it. Slightly controversial and I never know if I should say it for fear of being seen to be politically incorrect. However, on balance, I always feel that truths away from the usual mantras are enlightening, if emanating from good places. One is that I tend to get rather irritable about the shorthand political messages on race in the seventies. It is not the case that the welcome from working class and lower middle class whites was wholly frosty. There were many of us who positively welcomed difference, for want of a better word, and actually from the late-sixties there was no colour bar on television for musicians. As for radio ignoring black music, soul and reggae were huge on radio in the early seventies because they were so frequently in the Top 30. What I don't think we got was the direct experience of a system that was often discriminatory notwithstanding the 1976 Race Relations Act, although we sympathised as youngsters and in some ways also identified with the lack of power.

                The second I think - and this is possibly almost unsayable in some places - is that there was actually an interest in what were then foreign cultures because they were less known, misunderstood, and rarer. Such things added to the charm. It might sound terribly patronising, it might sound like dilettanteism, it might even sound offensive, but it was true and personally I've never been prepared to accept a rewriting of history to suit current norms. It was of its time. It wasn't such a bad thing. It led to a decent sense of politics in many. Some right-on middle class types - far from all - would sneer at the remoteness this conveys but that would be to get it all wrong. I had a Jamaican teacher who was of all my teachers the biggest influence on my life and I spent much of my time with family in inner London where there was already a real cultural mix. Close to this perspective is a book that has been both applauded and condemned and just happens to be written by the grandson of one of my late grandmother's friends. I've never met him but it does reveal how the white working class has often been unfairly pilloried by Guardian-esque and New Labour revisionists -

                Last edited by Guest; 13-02-11, 01:21.

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                  #9
                  Anyone here remember LKJ's "From Mento to Lovers' Rock" series on Radio 1, back in the early '80s? Can't quite recall whether it went into the area of Reggae Britannia. I did have the whole series saved on cassette, but not one of them remains now.

                  Damn it! Just discovered 6 Music rebroadcast it last summer. Anybody here record it?

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                    #10
                    Lateralthinking1,

                    I'm glad you felt it appropriate to make the points you did, despite fearing some comments of patronising or politically incorrectness.

                    My family is mixed race and so I can speak from 'the experience' of the last four decades in the UK, and agree with much if not all you have said. Yes there was what might be called racist attitudes from many white folk in the 1970s/80s but also a lot of what you say as 'interest' from other white folk in black culture and music in particular. Watching Reggae Brittania brought back many fond memories of the old reggae music which is rarely heard now (and in our family only at parties!) and also memories of the inner-city riots; I worked in Ladywood Birmingham at the time and knew Lozells and Handsworth well (and bought Steel Pulse's brilliant album!). And we lived in Coventry throughout the Ska-TwoTone years, great fun years for youngsters then.

                    Yes reggae was much in the charts back then, because it had wide appeal, not just black listeners, and 'lover's rock' dominated late night music on many commercial radio stations for over a decade, and indeed still features on many commercial stations' evenings now. In Birmingham nowadays, the Rastafarian culture is now very low key in comparison to the 1970s/80s; a new generation has become more 'British'.

                    Mrs W has 'Silly Games' as the tone for her mobile text message, cute you might think but it does go on for three minutes if not attended to!
                    - - -

                    John W

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                      #11
                      John W - Thank you for your comments. It was interesting to hear about your experience in the Midlands and I felt reassured by your comments. There was, of course, an age divide in white communities. As a trend, the older found change more difficult to cope with but people work in funny ways. I think there were a lot who had anxieties on a political level but when it came to person-to-person dialogue many naturally engaged. Certainly in my family that wasn't two-faced. It was people meeting people.

                      I do think that the employment and housing issues were more of a problem. These emerged when I studied race relations as a student and a lot of it was about attitudes in business which were hardly dealt with adequately by governments. In fact, it was governments really who determined that there were certain jobs some might do as others wouldn't. In the East Lane market, everyone did everything and didn't see things in those ways.

                      We looked at the riots where I studied in the early eighties, stop and search, and so on. I knew Brixton fairly well but by the time I returned to London it was 1985 and so much had changed. I spent many, many, nights just afterwards enjoying gigs at the Academy. I actually miss the days when British people weren't all so similar - some might say Americanized - but obviously not the inequality of rights and it is right that there is increasingly cohesion.

                      It was almost certainly music, travel and sport that made the difference and, of course, cuisine which the majority embraced. I doubt that change would have been so easy without some of the records on the programme. Steel Pulse - Handsworth Revolution, yes, and later Misty in Roots. These are the weightier works, great, but along the way we had many WI artists here in the pop charts - John Holt, Dandy Livingstone, Pluto Shervington, Ken Boothe - the list is lengthy and I'm sure they all did their bit.

                      Anyway, I guess it must have been a good programme to get so many thoughts going. Could say so much more as I find it fascinating but I'll leave it here for now. Please give my regards to Mrs W. If you have to have a ringtone, she's got a good'un. Lat.
                      Last edited by Guest; 13-02-11, 01:54.

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                        #12
                        I enjoyed this programme enormously.

                        * the music was very regional in England.For example, Mrs GT missed out, as there was no community in her fishing port.

                        * At this time me and my pal Tony used to subscribe to the Jamaican Weekly Gleaner so we could see what was going on with the music over there...we also got an amazing insight into the politics and economy there - but, to be honest, that was incidental.
                        It's still going, online too
                        Jamaican Gleaner


                        * There should have been more on shebeens - I went to a few, quite a life-shaping experience. It was ok though I didn't inhale. :cool2: Oh no, I've just remembered, I did inhale.

                        * I'm really not sure about the claim re the influence of Jimi Hendrix on dub. I think it was more to do with the bass-heavy influence and the generally spaced-out nature of the musos (see previous point). Could we have a series on Dub Britannia do you think?

                        * Handsworth carnival is still going, still has a lot of speakers as big as houses and bone-shaking bass and well worth a visit (the food's great as well)...at least it was a few years ago when we last went. The spirit still lives on.

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                          #13
                          Thank you all - that added loads for me. There is more tonight on beeb four, including what I thought was a really fascinating Storyville film, Rise up Reggae Star, which we talked a bit about back in the days of the old MB.

                          Next Friday there is also this from the boys on 4 - and about time too.
                          Film telling the story of one of the most influential Jamaican artists, Toots Hibbert.

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                            #14
                            And don't forget Rocksteady, still available on LA if you missed this treat last night.

                            Remember rude boys and girls, take it easy, take it calm in a very r3 sort of style obviously

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                              #15
                              The Toots and the Maytals doc on Beeb4 tonight might have been a bit of a love fest, but I had a smile on my face throughout - one of the great voices - there's a bit where he's driving along singing a bit of Ray Charles - 'I got a Woman way across town' - Class!

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