# Reggae: Kingston’s Gift to the World

An episode of [Stuff You Should Know](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/278981407), 6 Aug 2026, 55 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pscrb.fm/rss/p/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/a91018a4-ea4f-4130-bf55-ae270180c327/5102775f-7daf-4d76-b3d2-b49d0183662f/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=44710ecc-10bb-48d1-93c7-ae270180c33e

Although it was built atop some musical styles that came before, reggae is mostly its own thing. It evolved as local music in the Trenchtown neighborhood in Kingston, Jamaica but after Bob Marley and the Wailers came along, it became a global phenomenon. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:01] Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
[0:11] Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck
[0:13] Speaker 2: and Jerry's here too. She even said, yeah, I'm on
[0:17] Speaker 2: right before we started recording, because this is stuff you
[0:19] Speaker 2: should know.
[0:20] Speaker 1: Reggae Edition, that's right. And here's the little thing you
[0:25] Speaker 1: probably didn't even notice, my friend, is we always clap
[0:28] Speaker 1: on the count of three when we go to record
[0:33] Speaker 1: so we can sink our sound. Here's a little behind
[0:35] Speaker 1: the scenes for you everybody. Sure, but I clapped on
[0:38] Speaker 1: the four. Did you just you know, make it super reggae?
[0:45] Speaker 2: That was pretty great? Yeah, because so what you were
[0:48] Speaker 2: doing was skanging, that's right, and skang is slang for gunn.
[0:56] Speaker 2: In Kingston, I'm Kingston in jam is the world capital
[1:03] Speaker 2: of reggae. It's one of those things where you're like, well,
[1:06] Speaker 2: where jazz come from, where blues come from? Well, it
[1:08] Speaker 2: come from here here. No reggae one came from Kingston, Jamaica,
[1:13] Speaker 2: and it was built from all this other stuff, all
[1:16] Speaker 2: these other influences, but there is no question where it
[1:19] Speaker 2: actually emerged, and that was Kingston.
[1:22] Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. I was playing golf yesterday with my
[1:25] Speaker 1: friend Justin, you know, Justin from trench Town, Justin from London,
[1:31] Speaker 1: which will also play a part. But he asked what
[1:33] Speaker 1: we were recording on today and I told him reggae
[1:36] Speaker 1: and he was like, did you know that reggae is
[1:39] Speaker 1: like fairly new? And I said, he was like, I
[1:44] Speaker 1: always thought it was like in the forties and fifties.
[1:46] Speaker 1: He's like, but true, reggae was like the late sixties.
[1:50] Speaker 2: You make Justin sound like a real milk toast. I
[1:53] Speaker 2: can tell everybody that is not what Justin sounds like.
[1:56] Speaker 1: Uh yeah, but that was you know, that's true. And
[1:58] Speaker 1: we'll get to all that timeline and everything. But yeah,
[2:01] Speaker 1: reggae is a is a I mean, on the general
[2:03] Speaker 1: timeline of music history, it's a pretty new form.
[2:06] Speaker 2: Yeah, almost just a little over fifty years old.
[2:12] Speaker 1: Uh yeah, I mean I'm fifty five. I was born
[2:15] Speaker 1: in seventy one. So you do the math in.
[2:18] Speaker 2: An expert, I'm not doing the ma. Yeah. I think
[2:21] Speaker 2: nineteen sixty eight tends to be like the year that
[2:24] Speaker 2: people pretty much put their finger on when reggae was born.
[2:28] Speaker 2: But let's let's talk about all this. Let's let's get
[2:31] Speaker 2: to the get to the beginning.
[2:33] Speaker 1: I guess okay, Yeah, which means we've got to talk
[2:36] Speaker 1: about Jamaica as a place, right.
[2:38] Speaker 2: Yeah, because one of the things about reggae, Olivia helps
[2:41] Speaker 2: us with this, so it had to Livia. One of
[2:45] Speaker 2: the things about Jamaica and reggae is that they're like
[2:49] Speaker 2: a milange of different people and cultures who are all
[2:53] Speaker 2: kind of brought together, a significant number of them against
[2:56] Speaker 2: their will, and all kind of form the society where
[3:00] Speaker 2: it was all mixed together. And one of the things
[3:03] Speaker 2: that emerged was a real appreciation of music and folk
[3:06] Speaker 2: music that kind of developed. And it was very unique
[3:11] Speaker 2: because Jamaica is unique. I mean, every Caribbean island is unique.
[3:15] Speaker 2: Even though they have pecular histories, they all just they
[3:19] Speaker 2: they formed different milanges in different ways.
[3:22] Speaker 1: Yeah, different milanges because you have indigenous people and then
[3:26] Speaker 1: in the case of well most of them, you had
[3:29] Speaker 1: people from Africa brought over in the slave trade. So
[3:33] Speaker 1: in this case in Jamaica, that combined with like African
[3:37] Speaker 1: work songs and the you know, the European musical influence
[3:42] Speaker 1: that was there at the time they mixed together. And
[3:45] Speaker 1: in the forties and fifties, the first thing we got
[3:48] Speaker 1: as sort of a predecessor to reggae was called Mento.
[3:52] Speaker 2: Maybe that's what Justin was talking about.
[3:55] Speaker 1: No, he's talking about Mento's the fresh mint, the capital M,
[4:00] Speaker 1: which is sort of like if you heard it, it
[4:03] Speaker 1: might sound a little bit like Calypso out of Trinidad.
[4:06] Speaker 1: It's got banjo and like guitar. It's got something called
[4:10] Speaker 1: a rumba box, which is like a percussive thing with
[4:14] Speaker 1: pluck steel times. So Minto was kind of the earliest predecessor.
[4:19] Speaker 1: And then in the fifties, I guess the late fifties
[4:21] Speaker 1: and early sixties, because that was the forties and fifties
[4:25] Speaker 1: American R and B on the radio, which also came
[4:28] Speaker 1: from African and European influences. Obviously that produced what became
[4:34] Speaker 1: the more direct predecessor did reggae, which was SKA.
[4:38] Speaker 2: Yeah, that's when things took a really dark turn.
[4:42] Speaker 1: Oh man, Scott's I like all this stuff. I guess
[4:45] Speaker 1: we'll talk a little bit about like our affinity for it,
[4:47] Speaker 1: But it's not the kind of thing I listened to
[4:49] Speaker 1: like all the time. But I have my moments where
[4:52] Speaker 1: I will put on like for an entire morning, I
[4:55] Speaker 1: will listen to like old like fifties and sixties ska
[4:58] Speaker 1: and like super early reggae. I like the early early stuff.
[5:01] Speaker 2: Okay, cool, I can't really falter for that. I think
[5:03] Speaker 2: I just have a bad taste in my mouth about
[5:05] Speaker 2: ska from the nineties.
[5:07] Speaker 1: The Mining Mighty Bostones.
[5:09] Speaker 2: I'm not calling anybody in particular out, I'm calling all
[5:13] Speaker 2: of them out basically.
[5:15] Speaker 1: Yeah, but that that early stuff is I think you
[5:17] Speaker 1: could probably appreciate a little more, like the Desmond Decker stuff.
[5:20] Speaker 2: Sure, sure, I'm sure I could too. One of the
[5:23] Speaker 2: reasons that that suddenly came up in the fifties and
[5:25] Speaker 2: sixties is because transistor radio start had become available. Before that,
[5:29] Speaker 2: Jamaica had basically access to BBC style radio stations that
[5:35] Speaker 2: weren't playing R and B, and so all of a
[5:36] Speaker 2: sudden they could pick up stations from Miami and we're like, oh,
[5:40] Speaker 2: I like this stuff. And that was another thing too,
[5:42] Speaker 2: that that reggae was built on, where like Jamaican people
[5:48] Speaker 2: who are like I like this, I'm gonna pull this in.
[5:50] Speaker 2: I like that, I'm gonna pull this in so much
[5:52] Speaker 2: so that like the concept of sampleton in the hip
[5:55] Speaker 2: hop community is actually a lot of that comes from
[5:59] Speaker 2: this kind of mindset that reggae was born out of.
[6:02] Speaker 2: It was like I like this, so I'm going to use.
[6:04] Speaker 1: This, Yeah for sure, Like this episode definitely has some
[6:06] Speaker 1: crossover with the hip hop episode, and obviously when we
[6:10] Speaker 1: get to the rest of our I stuff, the highly
[6:11] Speaker 1: solassy episode. But you know, the technology of the radio
[6:16] Speaker 1: was certainly big, and also what was big was and
[6:19] Speaker 1: you know, you see this a lot in the development
[6:21] Speaker 1: of culture, like different technologies coming along and in this case,
[6:24] Speaker 1: just literally electricity being spread throughout Jamaica is what led
[6:29] Speaker 1: to something called toasting and DJs, now that they had
[6:33] Speaker 1: widespread electricity, could set up these mobile discos. They were
[6:35] Speaker 1: called sound systems and this was in and around Kingston
[6:39] Speaker 1: and the DJs developed this toasting I was about, say
[6:43] Speaker 1: tradition because that makes it sound more like something you
[6:45] Speaker 1: do at a wedding, but a musical style where they
[6:48] Speaker 1: would speak and sing over the recorded music, and that
[6:51] Speaker 1: that directly led to stuff like you know rap.
[6:55] Speaker 2: Yeah, like do you ever listen to like reggae shows
[6:59] Speaker 2: on college radio or something like that.
[7:01] Speaker 1: Well, yeah, that's why a lot of times I play
[7:03] Speaker 1: on Sunday morning because that's when album eighty eight's reggae show.
[7:06] Speaker 2: Was right okay, so like and then sometimes the DJ
[7:09] Speaker 2: would just turn the music down all of a sudden
[7:11] Speaker 2: and say something, yeah, oh yeah, that's toasting right, And
[7:14] Speaker 2: it can be done well, and it can very frequently
[7:18] Speaker 2: be done not well.
[7:19] Speaker 1: It depends on how toasted they are.
[7:22] Speaker 2: Sure exactly, or what they have to say too, Like
[7:25] Speaker 2: you have to have something to say that should have
[7:27] Speaker 2: to do with the song or something important. It shouldn't
[7:29] Speaker 2: be like, you know, shop your back to school sales
[7:32] Speaker 2: at Target or something, and then you turn the music
[7:34] Speaker 2: back up real quick.
[7:36] Speaker 1: Sometimes you hear these guys and it's the best because
[7:39] Speaker 1: I think our old beloved WFMU in New Jersey, I
[7:43] Speaker 1: think they had a reggae show too. Sometimes you can
[7:46] Speaker 1: you can hear these DJs are super super stoned.
[7:50] Speaker 2: Yeah for sure. I mean they're probably Rawstafarians, and so
[7:55] Speaker 2: then that's like part of their religion, you know, So
[7:58] Speaker 2: it definitely makes sense even if they're not. If you're
[8:01] Speaker 2: so into reggae that you host a reggae show, you
[8:04] Speaker 2: probably are so in like a pretty decent amount of
[8:06] Speaker 2: the time.
[8:07] Speaker 1: It's probably a part of your lifestyle.
[8:10] Speaker 2: Yep, they're like time to put on my game face. Right,
[8:13] Speaker 2: I smoke my weekly joint before my my radio show.
[8:17] Speaker 1: That's right.
[8:18] Speaker 2: So some some people are like, Okay, I like the
[8:21] Speaker 2: scot stuff, but I get really worn out dancing to it.
[8:24] Speaker 2: Maybe we could slow it down a little bit. And
[8:27] Speaker 2: what came out of that was rock steady. One word
[8:31] Speaker 2: probably one of the best names for any music musical
[8:35] Speaker 2: genre if you ask me, yeah, I'm with you, and
[8:37] Speaker 2: rock steady is it's It has a lot of the
[8:40] Speaker 2: same components and instruments and everything, but like I said,
[8:43] Speaker 2: it slowed down. There's much more of a focus on vocals,
[8:47] Speaker 2: so like there's like a you know, lyrics to the
[8:50] Speaker 2: song and the theme or something like that. And if
[8:53] Speaker 2: you're like, I don't know if I've ever heard rock Steady,
[8:56] Speaker 2: you definitely have because there are some hits that came
[8:59] Speaker 2: out of the Apparently it's just like a two year
[9:01] Speaker 2: period that rock City was popular. But the original tide
[9:04] Speaker 2: is high, Ain't No Sunshine as in Ain't No Sunshine
[9:08] Speaker 2: when She's Gone, that came out of the rock Steady era.
[9:11] Speaker 2: If you've ever listened to the Upsetters, like the early
[9:14] Speaker 2: stuff really organ heavy, everybody sings at once, so the
[9:18] Speaker 2: mic peaks and gets overloaded like that is that's rock steady.
[9:23] Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And rock steady is what kind of
[9:26] Speaker 1: directly led to what we know as reggae. And when
[9:28] Speaker 1: they started that sort of heavy thumping bass and a
[9:31] Speaker 1: little more percussion percussive forward, that's when reggae was kind
[9:37] Speaker 1: of born, you know. I know. Olvia points out that
[9:41] Speaker 1: there's some other kind of I guess just maybe unusual influences.
[9:46] Speaker 1: And one was a school in Kingston, the Alpha Boys School.
[9:49] Speaker 1: It was run by It was a trade school and
[9:52] Speaker 1: it was a nun run affair and they had I
[9:58] Speaker 1: keep wanting to say it's like unusual, but maybe it wasn't.
[10:01] Speaker 1: But they had a really great music education program. And
[10:05] Speaker 1: there was a nun there named Sister Iggy, Sister Mary
[10:08] Speaker 1: Ignatius Davies, and she was just a big time music fan.
[10:12] Speaker 1: She was especially big into jazz and ended up having
[10:16] Speaker 1: a lot of like future reggae like you know, not
[10:20] Speaker 1: the Hugest Stars, although yellow Man did go through there,
[10:22] Speaker 1: but some early like ska and reggae horn players, especially
[10:26] Speaker 1: because of her jazz focus came through her school.
[10:28] Speaker 2: Right for sure. That yeah, I had no idea about that.
[10:32] Speaker 1: Did you No, That's super cool.
[10:34] Speaker 2: Though there's also obviously the Rastafari influence is significant, and
[10:42] Speaker 2: Rastafarianism was around before reggae, and reggae was actually around
[10:50] Speaker 2: before reggae musicians became Rastafarians, and it was if you
[10:55] Speaker 2: go back and listen to our episode in Holly Selassie,
[10:58] Speaker 2: it was his visit and I think nineteen sixty six
[11:02] Speaker 2: that just opened the doors to Rastafarianism and reggae being
[11:07] Speaker 2: like essentially hand in hand.
[11:10] Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, And I thought we had done one
[11:14] Speaker 1: on Rastafarianism, but I think I put together an article
[11:18] Speaker 1: and at the time you were like, we've been doing
[11:21] Speaker 1: too much religious stuff, and I just tucked it away.
[11:23] Speaker 1: That never came back. And then when we covered yeah, yeah,
[11:26] Speaker 1: this is a while ago, and then we covered Highly Selassie,
[11:29] Speaker 1: it basically covered that well enough.
[11:32] Speaker 2: I think, oh it did okay, because we definitely got
[11:34] Speaker 2: into it for sure, But that episode was about well
[11:37] Speaker 2: a lot more than just that.
[11:38] Speaker 1: Oh yeah yeah.
[11:39] Speaker 2: But at the time, before his visit to Jamaica a
[11:42] Speaker 2: state visit, this is an official visit, the Rastafarians, even
[11:48] Speaker 2: in Jamaica were seen as just kind of weirdos. They
[11:51] Speaker 2: were on the fringe. They weren't taken seriously at all.
[11:53] Speaker 2: They were just a strange religion. And then Holly Selassie
[11:58] Speaker 2: came and essentially just by recognizing them, I think he
[12:01] Speaker 2: awarded medals to some Rastafarian preachers there. He legitimized it
[12:06] Speaker 2: in the eyes of Jamaica. Now all of a sudden,
[12:08] Speaker 2: a bunch of people, including Rieda Marley, are like, I Rastafari. Yeah,
[12:13] Speaker 2: and that's it's like, that's the moment that it spread
[12:17] Speaker 2: to reggae music.
[12:19] Speaker 1: Yeah, and this was in the lead up to their
[12:22] Speaker 1: eventual freedom from the colonizers and there, you know, the
[12:25] Speaker 1: white supremacist sort of system that they have been living
[12:28] Speaker 1: under they call Babylon. So that's why I hear Babylon
[12:31] Speaker 1: a lot in the songs. And I mentioned Desmond Decker
[12:34] Speaker 1: and his you know, probably most notable song is the Israelites,
[12:37] Speaker 1: and that's what he was talking about there, right.
[12:40] Speaker 2: Yeah, that came out in nineteen sixty eight, and I've
[12:42] Speaker 2: seen that some people point to that, or a lot
[12:44] Speaker 2: of people, I guess, point to that is the bridge
[12:46] Speaker 2: between rock steady and reggae. That song, and it's that
[12:50] Speaker 2: song you think it is like whoa the israel Lites, right,
[12:53] Speaker 2: oh nice and other things I have been practicing for weeks.
[12:57] Speaker 1: This is a little lower key, but you're under the weather, so.
[13:00] Speaker 2: Yes, thank you for giving me that pass. But yeah,
[13:03] Speaker 2: the song, I don't think it saysn't necessarily explicitly, but
[13:06] Speaker 2: the gist of it is this Rasafarian idea that the
[13:11] Speaker 2: stolen Africans who have spread all over the world and
[13:14] Speaker 2: their descendants are the true Israelites and they are trapped
[13:19] Speaker 2: in Babylon, which is white supremacist run Western world. Yeah,
[13:24] Speaker 2: and that through self determination and deliverance by Jah, they
[13:30] Speaker 2: will be able to emancipate themselves essentially mind, body, and spirit.
[13:36] Speaker 2: And that's what Rastafarianism is about.
[13:39] Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And there was a drummer, a Rastafari
[13:42] Speaker 1: drummer name they called him Count Ozzie, but Oswald Williams.
[13:48] Speaker 1: He played on an early song in nineteen fifty eight,
[13:50] Speaker 1: so this is like, you know, still pre dating reggae.
[13:53] Speaker 1: It was a sky recording by the Folks Brothers called
[13:56] Speaker 1: Oak Carolina. And you know what, we're gonna be mentioning
[13:59] Speaker 1: a lot of songs. But if you're in a place
[14:00] Speaker 1: where you can like queue some of these up. I
[14:03] Speaker 1: encourage it because they're all great, a lot of this
[14:05] Speaker 1: early stuff, And that's kind of what I like about
[14:08] Speaker 1: it is it sounds like it was recorded in a
[14:10] Speaker 1: tan can. Like the recordings aren't the best quality, but
[14:13] Speaker 1: it adds a lot of juge to it.
[14:15] Speaker 2: I think nice. So oh, one other thing about Rastafarianism too,
[14:23] Speaker 2: So I said it predated reggae. I mean it basically
[14:26] Speaker 2: came out of the twenties and thirties when Marcus Garvey
[14:30] Speaker 2: predicted that an emperor would be elected or yeah, seated,
[14:36] Speaker 2: I don't know what you would call it when you
[14:38] Speaker 2: install a Look there's going to be an emperor that
[14:41] Speaker 2: came out of Africa, and people are like, oh, Holly, Selassie,
[14:44] Speaker 2: that's him. And so from that moment on, Rastafarianism was born.
[14:49] Speaker 2: And apparently dreads had been part of Rastafarianism as far
[14:53] Speaker 2: back as the nineteen forties. Oh wow, I had no idea.
[14:58] Speaker 1: What about white guy dreads?
[15:00] Speaker 2: Those came out of the nineties. I blamed the nineties
[15:03] Speaker 2: SKA revival for that too, probably.
[15:06] Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, all right, that feels like a good
[15:10] Speaker 1: time for.
[15:10] Speaker 2: A break, right, Yeah, I think so.
[15:13] Speaker 1: All right, uh, and we will come back with more
[15:16] Speaker 1: on reggae right after this.
[15:47] Speaker 2: So Chuck, we're back. Yeah, let's hear it. Let's this
[15:52] Speaker 2: I threw to you. Really, I was being serious, you guys.
[15:55] Speaker 2: Here's another little behind the scenes thing. Chuck and I
[15:59] Speaker 2: decide on the fly, which one's going to bring us
[16:01] Speaker 2: back from break, And this time I said I was
[16:04] Speaker 2: going to go, and so we came back and I
[16:06] Speaker 2: immediately tossed to you. The reason why I did that,
[16:11] Speaker 2: apparently it was not that great of a joke, is
[16:14] Speaker 2: because I'm not super musical, like I know reggae. I
[16:18] Speaker 2: would pick reggae out in a like maybe two notes.
[16:22] Speaker 2: I could be like, that's a reggae song. Yeah, but
[16:24] Speaker 2: I can't mimic it, like and when I read about it,
[16:27] Speaker 2: I don't have any idea what's going on. It actually
[16:30] Speaker 2: confuses my understanding of reggae, which is dumb.
[16:33] Speaker 1: Well, if you're going to count me to mimic reggae
[16:35] Speaker 1: with my mouth, although I kind of just did with
[16:38] Speaker 1: that drum intro. Yeah, people are probably gonna be disappointed.
[16:42] Speaker 1: But we should talk a little bit about the instrumentation
[16:44] Speaker 1: because it's it's like you might find in a like
[16:47] Speaker 1: a rock band, maybe minus some stuff and plus some stuff.
[16:51] Speaker 1: Drums sometimes steal drums, which I was trying to mimic.
[16:56] Speaker 2: Oh, it's your base.
[16:58] Speaker 1: You got your electric guitar, a lot of percussion, you know,
[17:01] Speaker 1: bongos and shakers and stuff like that. Bob Marley used
[17:05] Speaker 1: some cool like synth cynthy sounds and organ sounds.
[17:09] Speaker 2: You have it's my life on what it's my life?
[17:14] Speaker 2: Don't you fucket? Isn't that the Whalers?
[17:18] Speaker 1: I don't know that song?
[17:20] Speaker 2: Yes, you do?
[17:21] Speaker 1: Well, maybe I just don't maybe okay.
[17:24] Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a very cynthy song.
[17:26] Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I just I didn't recognize the rendition. It's
[17:29] Speaker 1: just because you're sick though.
[17:30] Speaker 2: Yeah, it's because I'm under the weather.
[17:34] Speaker 1: Horn section. Sometimes you might get in a reggae band.
[17:37] Speaker 1: But you know, I mentioned earlier that it's the that
[17:40] Speaker 1: rhythm of reggae that is kind of maybe the most
[17:43] Speaker 1: distinguishing aspect of it. It's a four beat rhythm with
[17:48] Speaker 1: the emphasis on the second, the two, and the four.
[17:51] Speaker 1: Where's traditional rockets, it's not that. So that's why when
[17:55] Speaker 1: you hear that, you know that that chunking rhythm guitar
[17:58] Speaker 1: that don't chink It don't chink. That's on the two
[18:01] Speaker 1: and four, and it's you know, it's a real distinct sound.
[18:06] Speaker 1: And you know, as we'll see, you know, once they
[18:08] Speaker 1: this kind of transferred over to London, you had tons
[18:12] Speaker 1: of groups like the police and the Specials and Madness
[18:15] Speaker 1: kind of like latching onto that that sort of two
[18:20] Speaker 1: and the four. You know, it's a very distinct thing
[18:23] Speaker 1: for sure.
[18:23] Speaker 2: In the seventies it definitely caught Great Britain by the curly. Yeah,
[18:31] Speaker 2: and Ireland too. We can't forget Ireland ever, we never
[18:34] Speaker 2: do no, of course, not even if we don't mention Ireland,
[18:37] Speaker 2: we still are including Ireland, that's right, but we should
[18:41] Speaker 2: say it separately because they're not great Great Britain.
[18:45] Speaker 1: We didn't want to rally anyone up.
[18:48] Speaker 2: So thank you. That's what I was trying to get to,
[18:51] Speaker 2: was you explaining the rhythm, because I can't. I have
[18:53] Speaker 2: so little rhythm that I can't even explain it verbally. Yeah,
[18:58] Speaker 2: but that's essentially what you just said, Like that's one
[19:01] Speaker 2: of the hallmarks, if not the hallmark of reggae. And
[19:03] Speaker 2: then you also said that sometimes they have horns. I
[19:06] Speaker 2: feel like that's one of the main things that distinguishes
[19:09] Speaker 2: reggae from rock steady or SKA is they've really kind
[19:13] Speaker 2: of moved away from horns where horns were really really
[19:17] Speaker 2: important to rock Steady and in particular SKA.
[19:20] Speaker 1: Oh, yeah for sure.
[19:21] Speaker 2: Yeah. So one of the other things about reggae too,
[19:25] Speaker 2: that's good to know that's easily overlooked. If all you've
[19:28] Speaker 2: ever listened to is say Bob Marley or maybe even
[19:32] Speaker 2: Burning Spear or something like that. Yeah, they tend to
[19:35] Speaker 2: focus more on like spiritual aspect self determination. There's a
[19:41] Speaker 2: lot of reggae out there that focuses on violence and crime,
[19:44] Speaker 2: and because it definitely emerged in that context. If you've
[19:50] Speaker 2: heard Bob Marley, you've definitely heard of Trenchtown. Trench Town
[19:53] Speaker 2: is a low income neighborhood in Kingston. I think part
[19:59] Speaker 2: of it's chanty. Even it's that low income and you've
[20:02] Speaker 2: lived in Kingston, there was a really good chance that
[20:06] Speaker 2: one of your only options was to turn to crime
[20:09] Speaker 2: to make a living, and so there was this romanticization
[20:12] Speaker 2: of crime that was going on in the area at
[20:16] Speaker 2: the same time that reggae was emerging in the same area.
[20:19] Speaker 2: So they are kind of intertwined. There's also like a
[20:23] Speaker 2: real like may it's really male dominated. Still today it
[20:27] Speaker 2: is generally a male dominated music genre. So there's just
[20:31] Speaker 2: like inevitably a certain machismo that's still that's in the
[20:35] Speaker 2: background there. It might not be always talked about. It's
[20:39] Speaker 2: more dance hall, but in reggae even too, there's this
[20:42] Speaker 2: idea that you know, the man's in charge. It's just
[20:44] Speaker 2: how it is.
[20:46] Speaker 1: Yeah, And you know, there's a lot of sort of
[20:49] Speaker 1: like I mentioned, the influence on hip hop and a
[20:51] Speaker 1: lot of sort of lines that you can draw. I
[20:54] Speaker 1: think definitely more women broke through in hip hop than
[20:57] Speaker 1: in reggae. But this, you know, this violent context of
[21:03] Speaker 1: the gangster persona, a lot of it taken from American movies.
[21:08] Speaker 1: In both reggae and hip hop. The rude boy culture
[21:12] Speaker 1: was what it was called in reggae, but you can
[21:15] Speaker 1: see a lot of similarities there. The actual word reggae
[21:20] Speaker 1: probably didn't come around until nineteen sixty eight. It was
[21:23] Speaker 1: a song by the Great Great Toots and the Maytals
[21:27] Speaker 1: Frederick Tootz Hibbert. There was a song called do the
[21:30] Speaker 1: Reggae r E G G A Y. And when asked
[21:34] Speaker 1: about that, word. He didn't say like, hey, I invented
[21:38] Speaker 1: the word, but he said that he was replacing the
[21:42] Speaker 1: word StrEG a s t r e g g a E,
[21:47] Speaker 1: which was like a raggedy looking woman. But he said
[21:50] Speaker 1: that had a negative connotation. It was like a derogatory term,
[21:53] Speaker 1: so I didn't want to use that, so I changed
[21:55] Speaker 1: it over. And then there's another story where it was
[21:59] Speaker 1: r e y, which was a dance trend taken from
[22:05] Speaker 1: the terms for ragged clothing, and that turned into RGE
[22:09] Speaker 1: dash RGE reggae reggae, which was about like fighting or protesting.
[22:14] Speaker 1: So there's not like a definitive like hey, this is
[22:18] Speaker 1: where the word came from, but probably maybe a mashup
[22:21] Speaker 1: of those three things.
[22:22] Speaker 2: Well, there's another entront too, an artist named Little Roy
[22:26] Speaker 2: who the same year that Toots in the May Tolls
[22:29] Speaker 2: song came out, at nineteen sixty eight, he released a
[22:33] Speaker 2: song or maybe even an album called Reggae Soul, and
[22:36] Speaker 2: he spelled it the way that we spell it today too,
[22:38] Speaker 2: so it's just completely muddled. But it seemed to have
[22:42] Speaker 2: come around in nineteen sixty eight, the year reggae broke.
[22:46] Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's a lot of that was thanks to
[22:49] Speaker 1: like I said, Frederick Toots Hibbert. If you want to
[22:52] Speaker 1: dial up some early Toots in the May Tolls, it's
[22:55] Speaker 1: pretty pretty good listening. They started out in nineteen sixty two,
[22:58] Speaker 1: obviously Scott at the time, but their first big hit
[23:01] Speaker 1: was in nineteen sixty eight with the song fifty four
[23:04] Speaker 1: fifty six That's my number, great tune, and they had
[23:09] Speaker 1: a bunch of you know, not they didn't take over
[23:11] Speaker 1: America like Bob Marley later would because this is the
[23:15] Speaker 1: late sixties, so America was consumed with all, you know,
[23:18] Speaker 1: like the hippie culture and everything that was going on
[23:20] Speaker 1: musically there. So it would take Bob Marley in the
[23:23] Speaker 1: seventies to break through in the States.
[23:25] Speaker 2: Yeah. But at the same time too, the suburban nights
[23:30] Speaker 2: in America and the mid sixties were into Caribbean stuff
[23:34] Speaker 2: like exotica and things like that, which is why we
[23:37] Speaker 2: have heard songs like the Tide Is High. So they
[23:40] Speaker 2: did kind of make its way over here. But like
[23:43] Speaker 2: no one has ever taken the world by storm, at
[23:47] Speaker 2: least as far as reggae goes. Like Bob Marley, he
[23:49] Speaker 2: just went. He just became an international icon, like in
[23:54] Speaker 2: a very short time even too, as we'll see.
[23:57] Speaker 1: Yeah for sure, so he's coming up everybody. That be
[24:00] Speaker 1: funny if we did a whole episode and did mission
[24:02] Speaker 1: just like, it'd be an April Fool's episode, Yeah for sure.
[24:06] Speaker 1: But we you know, producers, just like all genres, like
[24:09] Speaker 1: producers and engineers, had a lot to do with its.
[24:12] Speaker 1: Not all music, actually some more than others, but definitely
[24:16] Speaker 1: with reggae. Those a guy named King Tubby born Osborne Ruddick,
[24:21] Speaker 1: and he was one of the guys, you know, kind
[24:23] Speaker 1: of a studio wizard that was like building his own
[24:26] Speaker 1: hardware to create effects, and he was the guy that
[24:30] Speaker 1: first started stripping out vocals to create dub plate and
[24:33] Speaker 1: that's what the DJs would toast over, yeah.
[24:36] Speaker 2: Which, as we'll see, sounds a lot like hip hop
[24:39] Speaker 2: and rapping right yeah, and dub music right and so
[24:43] Speaker 2: dub music. If I don't know if King Tubby was
[24:47] Speaker 2: the guy who was credited with actually coming up with it,
[24:50] Speaker 2: there are others, least Scratch Perry as another originator, or
[24:54] Speaker 2: dub Hopeton Lewis, who came to be known as scientists
[24:58] Speaker 2: in my for my money, the best dub musician of all.
[25:02] Speaker 2: But the thing that these guys had in common was
[25:04] Speaker 2: they were using like recording equipment, often cast off recording
[25:08] Speaker 2: equipment that they built their own rigs out of that
[25:12] Speaker 2: they were using essentially as early synthesizers, and it was
[25:17] Speaker 2: a lot like how Kraftwork and Divo who came later did.
[25:20] Speaker 2: It was like, I want to make the sound, but
[25:23] Speaker 2: there's nothing out there that makes that sound, so I'm
[25:25] Speaker 2: gonna build my own thing. And that's what dub music
[25:29] Speaker 2: essentially was based on. It was taking reggae and then
[25:32] Speaker 2: making it into essentially electronic music with all sorts of effects.
[25:36] Speaker 1: Yeah, man, I would love. I used to be scared
[25:39] Speaker 1: of doing these music episodes because forty five to fifty
[25:43] Speaker 1: minutes to encapsulate a genre is really really hard. But
[25:48] Speaker 1: since we've done it a few times, I'm not as
[25:50] Speaker 1: scared of it, and I would love to check new
[25:54] Speaker 1: wave off the list.
[25:56] Speaker 2: That's a good idea, we don't I almost said that's word.
[25:58] Speaker 2: We don't even need to. We'll come up with an
[26:02] Speaker 2: article for that. We can just go back and forth
[26:04] Speaker 2: on it. How about that?
[26:05] Speaker 1: That sounds great? I think you say ish instead of
[26:07] Speaker 1: the S word is what people do? Yeah, that's like
[26:11] Speaker 1: on the radio or something for sure.
[26:13] Speaker 2: Because I think it's the sound that it makes when
[26:15] Speaker 2: you scratch the record backwards at that moment. Is that it?
[26:21] Speaker 2: Oh okay, I'm almost positive.
[26:23] Speaker 1: All right, So we're getting to Bob Marley. But if
[26:27] Speaker 1: we're talking about Lee Scratch Perry, he's one of the
[26:29] Speaker 1: guys in the early sixties who was working with the
[26:33] Speaker 1: Whalers very early on, and he, you know, Lee Scratch
[26:37] Speaker 1: Perry went on to have an incredible long career eventually
[26:40] Speaker 1: in hip hop and rock and like everything else. Yeah,
[26:44] Speaker 1: but I guess we should talk about the Whalers a
[26:46] Speaker 1: little bit. And if we're going to talk about the Whalers,
[26:48] Speaker 1: we got to back up a little bit and talk
[26:50] Speaker 1: about Joe Higgs.
[26:53] Speaker 2: Did you know who Joe Higgs was?
[26:55] Speaker 1: I did not, But now I'm like, I love seeing
[26:57] Speaker 1: the ten like the early tendrils being tendrilling.
[27:02] Speaker 2: Sure there might have been a Whaler's at one point,
[27:06] Speaker 2: but they we probably wouldn't know of them because Joe
[27:09] Speaker 2: Higgs taught them most of what they know about music.
[27:13] Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I think I heard of him probably
[27:15] Speaker 1: in the Bob Marley documentary.
[27:17] Speaker 2: Now, I think that makes sense because you kind of
[27:19] Speaker 2: couldn't talk about Bob Marley without talking about Joe Higgs. First,
[27:22] Speaker 2: he taught not just Bob Marley how to sing and
[27:25] Speaker 2: how to write songs and everything you need to know about,
[27:29] Speaker 2: you know, making music. Yeah, he also taught Peter Tosh
[27:33] Speaker 2: and Bunny Wayler at the same time, so he essentially
[27:38] Speaker 2: taught the Whalers how to how to play music. So yeah,
[27:42] Speaker 2: they might have been around because I know that Bunny
[27:45] Speaker 2: Whayler and Bob Marley were essentially raised together from childhood
[27:49] Speaker 2: as almost step brothers of sorts, and they met Peter
[27:52] Speaker 2: Tosh as teenagers in Trench Town. So they probably would
[27:57] Speaker 2: have formed a musical act, but they would have just
[27:59] Speaker 2: sucked well.
[28:02] Speaker 1: Joe Higgs was definitely the glue early on and the
[28:04] Speaker 1: mentor to them. He had a big hit as a
[28:07] Speaker 1: singer in nineteen sixty with Higgs and Wilson. It was
[28:14] Speaker 1: called Manny Oh, and it was again if you listen
[28:18] Speaker 1: to some of the stuff, you definitely hear like the
[28:19] Speaker 1: American R and B sound coming through, Like some of
[28:22] Speaker 1: this stuff sounds like James Brown at first, and then
[28:25] Speaker 1: like that reggae beat kicks in. But it was one
[28:28] Speaker 1: of the first Manyo was one of the first records
[28:30] Speaker 1: ever pressed and released in Jamaica and sold fifty thousand
[28:33] Speaker 1: copies and what was this nineteen sixty So that's a
[28:37] Speaker 1: lot of records for back then. And he is, Yeah,
[28:41] Speaker 1: he's the guy that like all these like teenagers basically
[28:44] Speaker 1: were crowding around just like sponges to everything he knew.
[28:49] Speaker 2: Yeah, that was something really cool about him. Like he
[28:51] Speaker 2: was living in Trenchtown or at least Kingston at the
[28:54] Speaker 2: time too, and he would teach other younger musicians, Like
[28:58] Speaker 2: he took time to do that rather than just folk
[29:00] Speaker 2: sing on his career and getting bigger and bigger, he
[29:02] Speaker 2: like took his his talents and helped other people develop
[29:05] Speaker 2: their own talents. Right, So hats off to Joe Higgs
[29:08] Speaker 2: for sure, just from putting the The Whalers together. But
[29:13] Speaker 2: you mentioned how the how like a lot of this stuff,
[29:16] Speaker 2: this early reggae in rock SETI it's how you can
[29:19] Speaker 2: really hear the R and B coming through, And that's
[29:22] Speaker 2: true with those the early Whaler songs too. If you
[29:27] Speaker 2: go listen to simmer Down, which came out in nineteen
[29:29] Speaker 2: sixty three, great, I think they had four albums before
[29:34] Speaker 2: they came out with their actual full reggae album in
[29:38] Speaker 2: nineteen seventy two. I can't remember which one it's called,
[29:40] Speaker 2: but it's it's you're just like you can hear Bob
[29:43] Speaker 2: Marley's voice, but it's total R and B. It's it's strange.
[29:48] Speaker 1: They dressed the part too, like when you look at
[29:49] Speaker 1: the old like the early whalers that were wearing like
[29:52] Speaker 1: the cool like sharkskin suits and stuff, and they were
[29:55] Speaker 1: like styled out like the like the OJ's or something,
[29:58] Speaker 1: right exactly.
[29:59] Speaker 2: Yeah, so little jarring when all you know about Bob
[30:02] Speaker 2: Marley is as a like a reggae icon, you know. Yeah,
[30:06] Speaker 2: but yeah, they all met together in Trench Town where
[30:09] Speaker 2: they all lived. And one thing I didn't realize is
[30:12] Speaker 2: that Bob Marley's father was a white man. Did you
[30:15] Speaker 2: know that?
[30:16] Speaker 1: Yeah, his dad was His name was Norville Sinclair Marley,
[30:21] Speaker 1: and he was Jamaican. He was a white Jamaican of
[30:24] Speaker 1: English descent, and he was an army like a British
[30:27] Speaker 1: Army veteran, but was a plantation overseer basically, and was
[30:32] Speaker 1: in his sixties when he married Bob Marley's mother when
[30:37] Speaker 1: she was eighteen. And so you know, you hear that
[30:40] Speaker 1: and you think like a boy, right is, did the
[30:43] Speaker 1: worst thing happen? And apparently that wasn't the case. I mean,
[30:46] Speaker 1: there was a huge age difference, and I'm not saying
[30:48] Speaker 1: that was a balance of power by any means, but
[30:51] Speaker 1: everything I've read and seeing it was a consensual relationship,
[30:56] Speaker 1: and that he provided financial support for a while to
[31:01] Speaker 1: the family. But he was not like around much after
[31:04] Speaker 1: Bob was born. He wasn't like a real father figure.
[31:07] Speaker 2: Okay, gotcha, yeah, because I hear white, rural overseer and
[31:11] Speaker 2: I'm like, oh.
[31:12] Speaker 1: No, well yeah.
[31:14] Speaker 2: But one of the other things that was a huge
[31:16] Speaker 2: influence in Bob's life was his grandfather, his mom's father,
[31:20] Speaker 2: who was a farmer and herbal healer, and so a
[31:24] Speaker 2: lot of the kind of mystic qualities or at least
[31:28] Speaker 2: interests of Bob Marley that just kind of he exudes
[31:32] Speaker 2: in a way. You know, he definitely got from being
[31:36] Speaker 2: his grandfather's grandson.
[31:38] Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. But as a result of that sort
[31:42] Speaker 1: of displaced childhood, Marley didn't get to trench Town until
[31:44] Speaker 1: he was a teenager, spent a lot of time out
[31:48] Speaker 1: in the country in Kingston, hanging out with his granddad,
[31:51] Speaker 1: like you said, and like you mentioned earlier, he and
[31:55] Speaker 1: Bunny Whaler. It's the cutest thing. They were friends from
[31:58] Speaker 1: the time they were like two and three years old.
[32:01] Speaker 1: And when Bob's dad died, his mom moved in with
[32:05] Speaker 1: Bunny Whaler's dad and they Yeah, they were raised like brothers. Yeah,
[32:11] Speaker 1: super sweet.
[32:12] Speaker 2: It is super sweet. And they met Peter Tosh in
[32:14] Speaker 2: a gambling hall, I think when they were all like
[32:16] Speaker 2: early early teens, right.
[32:18] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[32:18] Speaker 2: I don't know when Bob Marley met his wife, Rita,
[32:23] Speaker 2: but I do know they were married by the time
[32:25] Speaker 2: Holly Selassie came to visit Jamaica in nineteen sixty six,
[32:29] Speaker 2: and it was her influence. She went and saw Holly Selassie.
[32:32] Speaker 2: I think we said in the Holly Selassie episode that
[32:36] Speaker 2: Bob Marley didn't go, but Rita Marley did and she
[32:39] Speaker 2: came back like, guys, this is amazing. And she was
[32:44] Speaker 2: the influence who connected Rastafarianism with reggae, at least as
[32:48] Speaker 2: far as the Whalers go. And they were hugely influential
[32:51] Speaker 2: in spreading that connection.
[32:53] Speaker 1: Yeah for sure. And like you mentioned, It's Ketch a
[32:57] Speaker 1: Fire in seventy two is considered kind of their first
[32:59] Speaker 1: like full blown reggae album, and I think you're right.
[33:02] Speaker 1: I think it was like their fifth record as a group.
[33:05] Speaker 2: Mmm.
[33:07] Speaker 1: I like that stuff too. Like I definitely had a
[33:09] Speaker 1: Bob Marley FaZe in college, like literally every person on
[33:12] Speaker 1: planet Earth for sure. But now, like I really really
[33:16] Speaker 1: like that, those those early albums more than anything like that.
[33:22] Speaker 1: I you know, my Legend cassette that I wore out
[33:25] Speaker 1: of course in college like everyone else had.
[33:27] Speaker 2: Well, wait a minute, was that. I feel like they
[33:30] Speaker 2: came out with this a box set or something like
[33:33] Speaker 2: that around that time, and that's what got everybody into
[33:36] Speaker 2: Bob Marley again at that age.
[33:39] Speaker 1: I don't know.
[33:40] Speaker 2: Was it Legend? I thought for sure there was.
[33:42] Speaker 1: Well Legend was the the sort of greatest hits for
[33:45] Speaker 1: lack of a better word, Yeah, for sure. Yeah, Legend
[33:47] Speaker 1: was the one that like everybody had because those were
[33:49] Speaker 1: all like all the big, big songs, right. But it's
[33:52] Speaker 1: it's I really like that early stuff. And if you
[33:54] Speaker 1: go lesson, like I think Talking Blues is a compilation too,
[33:57] Speaker 1: that's the one where the songs are interspersed with Bob
[34:01] Speaker 1: like talking in the studio and stuff, and you know,
[34:04] Speaker 1: it's great. It's such such a thick accent, like you
[34:08] Speaker 1: can hardly understand him, right, Yeah, it's kind of great.
[34:12] Speaker 2: Yeah, And even I was reading a quote from Shaba
[34:14] Speaker 2: Ranks about how, like oh Man Saba Ranks like old
[34:18] Speaker 2: dance hall guys need to lay off of the younger
[34:21] Speaker 2: dance hall guys because they're doing their own thing. And
[34:24] Speaker 2: the only reason I know that he said that was
[34:26] Speaker 2: from the context of the article, like explaining that he
[34:29] Speaker 2: said that because they had a block quote from him.
[34:32] Speaker 2: And I'm like, I have no idea what Chabaanks just said.
[34:35] Speaker 2: And I wasn't even listening. I was reading it. I
[34:38] Speaker 2: could not make heads or tails out of it.
[34:40] Speaker 1: It's one of my favorite. The Jamaican accent is one
[34:42] Speaker 1: of my favorite accents on Planet Earth. I love it
[34:44] Speaker 1: so much.
[34:45] Speaker 2: It's definitely up there was Scottish for me too.
[34:50] Speaker 1: You see the uh you ever seen the stuff on
[34:53] Speaker 1: the Internet where people will be like, if you want
[34:55] Speaker 1: to say this and this accent, say these words in
[34:59] Speaker 1: American English.
[35:01] Speaker 2: You taught me to say, Michael Caine, you say my cocaine.
[35:05] Speaker 1: My cocaine, No, my cocaine. Yeah, that's what I just said.
[35:11] Speaker 1: I saw one recently that was very funny, which was
[35:13] Speaker 1: if you want to say, uh, spice girls in Scottish
[35:19] Speaker 1: you say kind of have to quickly say space ghettos
[35:24] Speaker 1: in English.
[35:25] Speaker 2: Let's hear it.
[35:26] Speaker 1: So, like, uh, ask me what I did over the weekend?
[35:29] Speaker 2: What did you do over the weekend? Chuck?
[35:32] Speaker 1: I went to a concier and then asked me who
[35:34] Speaker 1: I saw?
[35:35] Speaker 2: Who'd you see?
[35:35] Speaker 1: Chuck and the space ghettos?
[35:39] Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that was pretty dead on, pretty good.
[35:42] Speaker 1: Huh.
[35:42] Speaker 2: What did you have to drink? There was drinker? What'd
[35:47] Speaker 2: you say?
[35:48] Speaker 1: I'm a non drinker?
[35:50] Speaker 2: You didn't drink any urn brew?
[35:52] Speaker 1: What is that?
[35:53] Speaker 2: Remember? That's like their drink. It's like some almost an
[35:56] Speaker 2: orange weird.
[35:58] Speaker 1: Oh I don't remember that.
[35:59] Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's like iron brew, but they spell it
[36:01] Speaker 2: like earned.
[36:02] Speaker 1: Oh I do remember it. Yeah I didn't not.
[36:04] Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's something specific. I liked it. But it
[36:08] Speaker 2: was like you could easily drink too many at once. Yeah.
[36:12] Speaker 1: I could see that. So I think that's where we
[36:17] Speaker 1: were headed.
[36:17] Speaker 2: Yeah. So yeah, what what you have when you put
[36:21] Speaker 2: together reggae reggae music and Rastafarian perspectives and outlook in worldview?
[36:29] Speaker 2: That's the word I was looking for. You have what's
[36:31] Speaker 2: known as roots reggae and what most people think of
[36:34] Speaker 2: as reggae, what they're thinking of as roots reggae. Bob
[36:36] Speaker 2: Marley and the Whalers roots reggae from Catch a Fire.
[36:40] Speaker 1: On Yeah for sure, and you know Catch a Fire
[36:43] Speaker 1: with seventy two and like we said, that was their
[36:46] Speaker 1: first big reggae album, but they actually the Whalers broke
[36:48] Speaker 1: up two years later in seventy four. Yeah, and most
[36:51] Speaker 1: of the like the college got into Bob Marley stuff
[36:54] Speaker 1: and in the legend stuff is all post official, like
[36:57] Speaker 1: the Whalers as the Whalers, and you know, all of
[37:01] Speaker 1: them went on to do their own solo stuff. Obviously.
[37:04] Speaker 1: I think Bob Marley had six albums after that until
[37:08] Speaker 1: we'll get to his death in nineteen eighty one, but
[37:12] Speaker 1: everyone did. Peter Tosh, who was He was the real
[37:15] Speaker 1: deal man. He had some great albums. Legalize It in
[37:18] Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six is a great one. Yeah, Equal Rights
[37:21] Speaker 1: a year later, and then later on in the eighties
[37:24] Speaker 1: he had a very sort of political album called Nuclear
[37:28] Speaker 1: warth It was really good.
[37:29] Speaker 2: Yeah. I had this Peter Tosh live show that I
[37:32] Speaker 2: cannot find. Drives me crazy. It's like every other show
[37:36] Speaker 2: from that tour exists except for that one, and I
[37:39] Speaker 2: can't remember what city it was, and he had a
[37:42] Speaker 2: tape or something, so yeah, it was like a burned CD.
[37:45] Speaker 2: It was so good man, you could just listen to
[37:48] Speaker 2: that on repeat, right, Yeah, But yes, his his lyrics
[37:52] Speaker 2: were and just the whole vibe was way more militant
[37:55] Speaker 2: compared to Bob Marley. Yeah, so I've seen it described
[37:59] Speaker 2: as like when you put Marlee and Tosh together. And
[38:02] Speaker 2: also Tosh, by the way, was the like far and
[38:04] Speaker 2: away the most musically gifted of the Whalers. He could
[38:07] Speaker 2: play all sorts of different stuff. He was also a
[38:10] Speaker 2: good songwriter too. But when you put Marley's lyrics together
[38:14] Speaker 2: and Peter Tosh's lyrics together into one show or one
[38:17] Speaker 2: album or whatever, you had like a really rich, complex
[38:21] Speaker 2: album like when with really cool themes in it, right,
[38:26] Speaker 2: and I saw it. There's a reggae archivist, which is
[38:29] Speaker 2: I'm not sure what you would go study in school
[38:32] Speaker 2: to become that. A guy named Roger Stephens, and he's
[38:35] Speaker 2: he likened Marley to Martin Luther King Junior and Tosh
[38:40] Speaker 2: to Malcolm X, and like they kind of had those
[38:43] Speaker 2: they approached things from those viewpoints. So Marley made the
[38:46] Speaker 2: whalers universally palatable, and Peter Tosh inserted like that that
[38:52] Speaker 2: kind of militant political bent that is also like a
[38:56] Speaker 2: big part of reggae. Two.
[38:58] Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think a lot of the ability for
[39:00] Speaker 1: you know, at least so far as Jamaican's were concerned.
[39:03] Speaker 2: Yeah, I saw also that, like apparently around the world
[39:06] Speaker 2: he's respected at least as much, if not more than
[39:08] Speaker 2: he is in Jamaica because he's like known to walk
[39:11] Speaker 2: the walk and yeah, like he was beaten nearly to
[39:14] Speaker 2: death by the police several times. Legalize it was banned
[39:18] Speaker 2: in Jamaica, so he took out a newspaper ad and
[39:22] Speaker 2: tended the lyrics in it like he was a He
[39:25] Speaker 2: was a cool dude for sure.
[39:26] Speaker 1: Yeah. All right, so I think we should take another
[39:29] Speaker 1: break and we will come back and talk a little
[39:32] Speaker 1: bit about a guy named Jimmy Cliff right after this.
[40:05] Speaker 1: All right, we're back, take it away, Josh.
[40:08] Speaker 2: Chuck, have you ever heard a song by Jimmy Cliff?
[40:15] Speaker 1: Yeah, I like Jimmy Cliff. Hurricane Hattie was his first
[40:19] Speaker 1: big hit in nineteen sixty two. He was just a kid.
[40:21] Speaker 1: He's like eighteen years old, and he moved to London
[40:25] Speaker 1: and he got a lot more reggae after he moved
[40:28] Speaker 1: to London, and he was a big sort of proselytizer
[40:32] Speaker 1: for reggae, kind of took it around the world in
[40:34] Speaker 1: a lot of ways.
[40:34] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[40:35] Speaker 1: And one way he did so was in a movie
[40:38] Speaker 1: which I have not seen. I don't know. It was
[40:40] Speaker 1: one that's always been on my list. But The Harder
[40:43] Speaker 1: They Come in nineteen seventy two is definitely a cult classic,
[40:46] Speaker 1: and is was a big, big, not a huge like
[40:50] Speaker 1: American hit, but on the movie scene, like the film Lovers,
[40:53] Speaker 1: it was.
[40:54] Speaker 2: Yeah. It's also widely considered one of the best soundtracks too, Yeah,
[40:59] Speaker 2: because it's a out reggae and the reggae music industry
[41:02] Speaker 2: and Kingston and the way things are and Kingston and
[41:06] Speaker 2: it's a he's like Jimmy Cliff plays kind of a
[41:09] Speaker 2: bandit to an extent. Yeah, I haven't seen it either,
[41:13] Speaker 2: but it's I just know it's, like you said, a
[41:16] Speaker 2: cult classic, and that as much as you know, I
[41:20] Speaker 2: think simultaneous to Bob Marley touring the world and the
[41:25] Speaker 2: Whalers like that movie coming out and being seen outside
[41:30] Speaker 2: of Jamaica, like really helped spread the concept of reggae
[41:33] Speaker 2: and what it was all about.
[41:34] Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, when you've got Ciskel and Ebert reviewing
[41:37] Speaker 1: the Harder they come on their TV show later, it's
[41:40] Speaker 1: spreading fairly mainstream, you know.
[41:42] Speaker 2: Two thumbs up if I'm not mistaken.
[41:45] Speaker 1: Well, I don't know. I know Ebert gave it a
[41:47] Speaker 1: thumbs up, but I don't know about Ciskel. We'll have
[41:49] Speaker 1: to go back and Look.
[41:50] Speaker 2: I know I've told you this before, but do you
[41:51] Speaker 2: know that Gene Siskel's stated favorite movie was Saturday Night Fever. Yeah,
[41:57] Speaker 2: and he owned the white suit that Travolta warrens Night Fever.
[42:01] Speaker 1: Yeah, that was in our disco episode.
[42:03] Speaker 2: Okay, but it's just such a great fact.
[42:06] Speaker 1: Yeah. And you know what, since that episode, I've had
[42:09] Speaker 1: as a copy pasted from the original New York Times
[42:13] Speaker 1: article that inspired Saturday Night Fever. It's been sitting on
[42:17] Speaker 1: my desktop on my computer like ten years unread.
[42:21] Speaker 2: Oh it's good. It's just especially if you go into
[42:25] Speaker 2: it knowing it's just one big lie, it's actually even better.
[42:29] Speaker 1: Oh was it? I don't I don't remember that, but
[42:31] Speaker 1: oh I'm.
[42:31] Speaker 2: Sorry, which I could take that back, I thought you did.
[42:35] Speaker 1: No, that's sor right. I'm sorry, I'll still read it. Okay,
[42:39] Speaker 1: ten years from now, I'll forget.
[42:40] Speaker 2: Okay, cool, but you'll never forget that Gene Siskel fact.
[42:43] Speaker 2: I like to bust out every few years.
[42:45] Speaker 1: That's right. So we should talk a little bit more
[42:48] Speaker 1: about I guess we talked a little bit about the
[42:52] Speaker 1: violence that was going on when reggae was born in Kingston,
[42:58] Speaker 1: but over the years has just sort of been intertwined
[43:02] Speaker 1: with a lot of political violence and violent clashes, especially
[43:06] Speaker 1: within the country politically, and you know, they were always
[43:10] Speaker 1: in the middle of it, and Bob Marley was usually
[43:11] Speaker 1: in the middle of it trying to bring people together.
[43:14] Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy six, they were in the middle of
[43:16] Speaker 1: a clash between the People's National Party, which was the
[43:20] Speaker 1: ruling party at the time, and their opponents, and Bob
[43:24] Speaker 1: Marley went to play an anti violence concert and some
[43:28] Speaker 1: of the people dragged them on that for like, say no,
[43:32] Speaker 1: like you're siding with the P and P and Prime
[43:34] Speaker 1: Minister Michael Manley just by even playing this event. So
[43:38] Speaker 1: I think he'd never I think there was a lot
[43:40] Speaker 1: of frustration there, judging from the documentary about like trying
[43:44] Speaker 1: to do the right thing by bringing people together, but
[43:47] Speaker 1: some people on the opposition being like, you can't even
[43:49] Speaker 1: like talk to the other side.
[43:51] Speaker 2: Yeah, and the P and P, the ruling party, they
[43:54] Speaker 2: were left wing. It was a socialist experiment, I essentially saw.
[43:58] Speaker 2: And one reason a lot of people point to why
[44:01] Speaker 2: there was so much unrest and violent clashes and all
[44:04] Speaker 2: that was because the CIA was running around trying to
[44:07] Speaker 2: destabilize the country because it was moving to the left
[44:09] Speaker 2: rather than the right. That concert, you mentioned that that
[44:14] Speaker 2: Bob Marley was frustrated about it, seeming like he was
[44:18] Speaker 2: kind of like a handmaiden or whatever to the unpopular
[44:22] Speaker 2: prime minister. Two days before he was shot, he was shot,
[44:27] Speaker 2: Rita was shot, two other people were shot in his home,
[44:30] Speaker 2: and after being shot in the chest and the shoulder,
[44:33] Speaker 2: he still went on and played that show.
[44:36] Speaker 1: Yeah, it was incredible. Two years after that, in nineteen
[44:40] Speaker 1: seventy eight, he had the very famous One Love Concert
[44:45] Speaker 1: because there was still that divided political climate and once
[44:48] Speaker 1: again Bob Marley's there in the middle trying to make peace,
[44:50] Speaker 1: and he brought the two guys together. He brought Prime
[44:53] Speaker 1: Minister Manly together with Edward I think Siga of the
[44:58] Speaker 1: Jamaican Labor Party, and that was a huge, huge deal.
[45:01] Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a very famous picture of them holding hands
[45:04] Speaker 2: because Bob Marley's making them.
[45:06] Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
[45:08] Speaker 2: So Marley actually died of a cancerous growth that started
[45:14] Speaker 2: on his toe that he didn't get looked at because
[45:16] Speaker 2: he thought it was an old soccer injury and he
[45:18] Speaker 2: actually collapsed in Central Park after a pretty great show
[45:23] Speaker 2: in Madison Square Garden.
[45:25] Speaker 1: Yeah, he opened up for the Commodores and apparently blew
[45:28] Speaker 1: the Commodores off the stage. And the real sad thing
[45:31] Speaker 1: about his death is that from everything I saw was
[45:34] Speaker 1: that that was he probably could have been very successfully
[45:38] Speaker 1: treated for cancer he had he gotten it looked at
[45:42] Speaker 1: earlier on.
[45:44] Speaker 2: Yeah, I saw the survival rate for black men from
[45:46] Speaker 2: that particular type of cancers like seventy percent. So yeah,
[45:50] Speaker 2: that sucks. But he thought it was a soccer injury.
[45:52] Speaker 1: I think I'm trying to I mean, is that what
[45:55] Speaker 1: you said.
[45:56] Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't remember.
[45:58] Speaker 1: For some reason, I thought it had something to do
[46:00] Speaker 1: with religion, but maybe I'm just not remembering right about
[46:04] Speaker 1: that part.
[46:05] Speaker 2: Maybe he did so well in the game he considered
[46:07] Speaker 2: it a religious experience.
[46:09] Speaker 1: There might have been a little bit of both.
[46:12] Speaker 2: So Bob Marley was shot, but he didn't die from that.
[46:16] Speaker 2: He died from natural causes. Peter Tosh and two years
[46:20] Speaker 2: after Peter Tosh King Tubby were both murdered by gunman.
[46:23] Speaker 2: That's how their lives ended. That's I mean, like there's nowadays,
[46:28] Speaker 2: there's a lot of reggae artists who you know, come
[46:31] Speaker 2: along over the years. This is not like there was
[46:35] Speaker 2: still rather limited reggae artists, so limited number. So two yeah,
[46:40] Speaker 2: major reggae stars being murdered is actually pretty significant.
[46:44] Speaker 1: Oh for sure. Peter Tosh's murder was brutal, Like he
[46:47] Speaker 1: had these three guys that busted in basically held him
[46:50] Speaker 1: hostage in his house and tortured him trying to get
[46:53] Speaker 1: money from him. And as people like friends would come
[46:56] Speaker 1: by the house just through the course of the day,
[46:59] Speaker 1: they would be taken in and held hostage and eventually
[47:03] Speaker 1: like just that was just a big, like kind of
[47:05] Speaker 1: crazy shootout and he was shot in the head. It
[47:07] Speaker 1: was brutal.
[47:08] Speaker 2: Yeah. The worst thing about that, aside from the fact
[47:11] Speaker 2: that he was murdered. His murderer was a guy named
[47:14] Speaker 2: Dennis Loban, Leppo was what people called him, and he
[47:18] Speaker 2: knew that Peter Tosh had money because he had gotten
[47:20] Speaker 2: out of prison and Peter Tosh gave him a place
[47:22] Speaker 2: to stay, fed him, took care of him to help
[47:25] Speaker 2: him get back on his feet. And that's how Leppo
[47:28] Speaker 2: Loban repaid him by murdering him because he was trying
[47:30] Speaker 2: to rob him for more money.
[47:32] Speaker 1: Yeah. Pretty brutal.
[47:34] Speaker 2: Yeah, And then King Tubby was murdered in what they
[47:36] Speaker 2: think was a botched robbery in nineteen eighty nine.
[47:39] Speaker 1: Well that's essentially what this was with Tosh too, because
[47:42] Speaker 1: the whole time they were just trying to get money
[47:43] Speaker 1: that he said he didn't have at the house.
[47:45] Speaker 2: Yeah, I got so all right.
[47:47] Speaker 1: So we mentioned London earlier. London is probably like the
[47:52] Speaker 1: second city of reggae after Kingston.
[47:55] Speaker 2: It's the Chicago of reggae.
[47:56] Speaker 1: Yeah, because of what's called the win Rush generation, which
[48:03] Speaker 1: is when Caribbean immigrants post World War Two from British
[48:08] Speaker 1: colonies and former colonies they started, you know, moving elsewhere
[48:11] Speaker 1: and a lot of them arrived in the UK and
[48:14] Speaker 1: that came over you know, their their music and their
[48:17] Speaker 1: their culture and their food and everything came over. And
[48:20] Speaker 1: that happened in London and there were all of a
[48:22] Speaker 1: sudden a bunch of well not it sort of depends
[48:26] Speaker 1: like sometimes white London acts, sometimes Londoners that were black,
[48:31] Speaker 1: depending on the band. But like I mentioned the Police
[48:34] Speaker 1: and the Specials in Madness, obviously they were in ub
[48:36] Speaker 1: forty and you know those those ended up being like
[48:40] Speaker 1: really big bands. But they also influenced like the punk
[48:42] Speaker 1: scene with the Clash and the sex Pistols.
[48:44] Speaker 2: Even Yeah, Johnny Rotten was heavily influenced. He went on
[48:47] Speaker 2: to found Public Image Limited and thanks to him Johnny
[48:51] Speaker 2: Rotten liking reggae and joh Wobble the bassist really liking
[48:55] Speaker 2: dub regae. Yeah, pil had a certain reggae, yeah, dub
[49:00] Speaker 2: reggae thing to it going on. So hats off to
[49:04] Speaker 2: reggae for giving us Public Image Limited.
[49:07] Speaker 1: And you know it wasn't just London, Like you know,
[49:10] Speaker 1: we can't get into all this like super in a
[49:12] Speaker 1: super detailed way, but it it. You know, reggae went
[49:15] Speaker 1: across Africa. There were like native born South African artists
[49:20] Speaker 1: that like became reggae stars. I know, the Ivory Coast
[49:23] Speaker 1: really got into the Rastafari culture for a while.
[49:28] Speaker 2: Yeah, no for sure, and some some of them the
[49:31] Speaker 2: taking up that kind of political causes and calls for revolution.
[49:35] Speaker 2: Some have actually happened to become political leaders in their country,
[49:39] Speaker 2: like Bobbie Weene of Uganda or Shatawale in Ghana. Like
[49:45] Speaker 2: these are reggae artists who actually have talked the talk
[49:49] Speaker 2: and they're now political, whether they like it or not.
[49:52] Speaker 1: Yeah, New Zealand, we're looking at you, because who knew.
[49:57] Speaker 1: I didn't know. In nineteen seventy nine, Bob Marley played
[50:01] Speaker 1: in Auckland and it kind of he kind of caught
[50:04] Speaker 1: a fire there and Maori musicians sort of adopted reggae
[50:07] Speaker 1: for a while, and you know, they brought their own
[50:09] Speaker 1: thing like it you know, always happens when you sort
[50:11] Speaker 1: of adopted music. They brought their own vocal harmonies and stuff.
[50:14] Speaker 1: But they also, like everywhere reggae went that it caught fire.
[50:19] Speaker 1: I think people except in college dorms in the eighties
[50:22] Speaker 1: and nineties in the United States, there was a big
[50:25] Speaker 1: like identification with the politics, sort of the bottom up
[50:29] Speaker 1: politics of it all.
[50:31] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that was kind of lost on the dorm crowd,
[50:34] Speaker 2: was it.
[50:34] Speaker 1: I mean, I think we all like to think we
[50:36] Speaker 1: were down with the movement, but we just wanted the
[50:39] Speaker 1: bumper stickers.
[50:41] Speaker 2: But I'm sure it definitely helped shape our world views.
[50:45] Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think it opened us up to other things.
[50:47] Speaker 1: For sure.
[50:48] Speaker 2: There are two other things that you can draw a
[50:50] Speaker 2: direct line to from reggae to current music. One is
[50:54] Speaker 2: hip hop, like you said, and that line seems to
[50:56] Speaker 2: go through DJ cool Hurt. It was definitely prominently featured
[51:01] Speaker 2: in our hip hop episode because he was actually born
[51:04] Speaker 2: in Kingston, I think, and ended up in the Bronx,
[51:08] Speaker 2: and it just so happened that within a few years
[51:10] Speaker 2: of DJ Coole Hirk moving to the Bronx, hip hop
[51:13] Speaker 2: came up in New York out of nowhere, so they
[51:16] Speaker 2: think that it was him.
[51:17] Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean he didn't come to the Bronxi he
[51:19] Speaker 1: was twelve, so he had a lot of years in
[51:21] Speaker 1: Jamaica to bring that influence. And yeah, like I said
[51:26] Speaker 1: that toasting, Jamaican toasting tradition came right along with them.
[51:29] Speaker 2: Yeah, and remember you talked about how Dub would strip
[51:32] Speaker 2: the vocals out of music so you had instrumental music.
[51:36] Speaker 2: He would do that with two turntables and a microphone
[51:39] Speaker 2: as Beck said.
[51:40] Speaker 1: That's right. Other places Panama, like Central and South America
[51:44] Speaker 1: had a big thing they called reggae. On Espanol and
[51:49] Speaker 1: Puerto Rico, they had like an underground Spanish language like
[51:54] Speaker 1: reggae rap called reggatson that came along, and like you
[51:58] Speaker 1: can draw a direct line from that to somebody like
[52:00] Speaker 1: Bad Bunny.
[52:02] Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's even like that. They call Bad
[52:06] Speaker 2: Bunnies music reggae tin.
[52:07] Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so.
[52:09] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[52:10] Speaker 1: That super Bowl performance was so fun.
[52:13] Speaker 2: Yeah, he really did set the world on fire.
[52:16] Speaker 1: Oh that was great. It was a lot of fun.
[52:18] Speaker 2: Yeah, like he prefigured Earling Holland. He was like the
[52:22] Speaker 2: Earling Holland of super Bowl halftime shows. So, Chuck, favorite
[52:30] Speaker 2: reggae band of all time?
[52:33] Speaker 1: I mean early Whalers for sure.
[52:35] Speaker 2: Okay, I'm going with Burning Spear. Oh yeah, Chuck. Did
[52:40] Speaker 2: you like the nineties SKA Revival? Uh?
[52:43] Speaker 1: Nah, I wasn't into that me either, My bag, I got.
[52:48] Speaker 2: Us to listener mail. Now I managed to unlock it
[52:51] Speaker 2: for us.
[52:52] Speaker 1: Oh okay, are we there?
[52:54] Speaker 2: Yeah, because back in two thousand and eight, one of
[52:56] Speaker 2: us predicted that we would bag on the the nineties
[53:01] Speaker 2: mid nineties Sky revived or in one of our episodes,
[53:03] Speaker 2: and that would trigger listener real.
[53:08] Speaker 1: All right, we got a short one here because this
[53:10] Speaker 1: episode is a little longer. It's just a quick correction
[53:13] Speaker 1: from Dave in California. He said, hey, guys, in the
[53:15] Speaker 1: eleanor Roosevelt episode. Instead of in flagrante delicto, which is
[53:23] Speaker 1: the common term Josh coined, coined the term in flagrante,
[53:27] Speaker 1: in flagrante delicado, sure, which could perhaps mean gently a fire,
[53:34] Speaker 1: which Dave says is actually not entirely inappropriate.
[53:38] Speaker 2: Perhaps, Right, that's what I It's kind of what I thought.
[53:41] Speaker 2: I didn't realize it. It was delecto. What does delecto mean? Like,
[53:46] Speaker 2: I don't know on fire? Yeah, what does delecto mean?
[53:51] Speaker 1: Chuck, I don't know delcto. Well, I think it means
[53:53] Speaker 1: caught in the act, which is what that means as
[53:56] Speaker 1: a phrase.
[53:57] Speaker 2: Oh okay, no, I see that. It's yeah, caught red handed. Yeah,
[54:05] Speaker 2: all right, but I'm fine, but I like mine better.
[54:07] Speaker 1: Well, I think a stuff you should know, a T
[54:09] Speaker 1: shirt should clearly be in flagrante delicado.
[54:12] Speaker 2: Yeah, the gentle fire. Yeah, it's off touch, laid down
[54:16] Speaker 2: by the gentle fire with me? Baby, you got anything else.
[54:21] Speaker 1: I got nothing else. I hope we did reggae justice.
[54:24] Speaker 2: Oh well, I think we did. I hope so too.
[54:27] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[54:27] Speaker 2: I feel like every time I reassure you, I'm setting
[54:31] Speaker 2: us up for people to be like you guys suck.
[54:33] Speaker 2: You did a terrible job. So I'm just gonna say,
[54:36] Speaker 2: I hope so too. How about that?
[54:37] Speaker 1: Yeah? Actually, what usually happens is we get like, hey, guys,
[54:40] Speaker 1: did a pretty good job. But also there's this, this
[54:42] Speaker 1: and this, which is exactly what we want.
[54:44] Speaker 2: Yes, but usually it's from experts and we love that too.
[54:47] Speaker 1: That's true.
[54:48] Speaker 2: All right. Well, if you want to get in touch
[54:50] Speaker 2: with us, like Dave you said, yeah, Dave, Well, you
[54:54] Speaker 2: can email us just like Dave did. Send it off
[54:56] Speaker 2: to Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff you Should
[55:02] Speaker 2: Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
[55:05] Speaker 1: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
[55:08] Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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