Examines the history or reggae, including its origin and its worldwide influence.

A history of Jamaica's contribution to world culture--reggae--traces the history of the form from African rhythms to the slums of Kingston and the international recording industry.

Reggae has become a dominant musical style that is played everywhere from South America to the Pacific Rim. This volume is packed with rare photographs, profiles of the influential performers and producers from the golden age, and fascinating sidebars showing the wide-ranging influence of reggae.

Told in the voices of reggae's major participants, these authoritative accounts chart the history, characteristics, and broad appeal of the music that originated in Jamaica, but has spread like wildfire throughout the world over the years to rise up in Africa and South America as well as England and America.

Reggae is the heart of the island of Jamaica and has shaped its culture, religion, dress and language. From its beginnings in traditional African folk songs, to its metamorphosis into a vehicle for messages of Rastafarianism and social and political protest, reggae is truly a music of the people. Influencing the sounds of artists world-wide, it captures the universal desire for peace, change and a better world. This is a funky, accessible and comprehensive history of a people and their music geared directly towards adolescents. With many b/w photos. Ages 10-14.

The team of writer Chris Salewicz and photographer Adrian Boot have brought together 50,000 words of text and over 400 images from the ReggaeXplosion Archive to create a history that contains a potent cocktail of drama, turbulence, pride and protest. From the earliest emergence in the 1950s of the fiercely competitive sound systems, fighting sonic battles in downtown Kingston, the story of Jamaican music is traced through ska, the birth of reggae, dub, roots reggae and the impact of Bob Marley to the new, harder-edged developments that have emerged in the last twenty years, including dancehall, ragga and jungle. Unpublished transcripts of interviews with key figures like Lee 'Scratch' Perry and Prince Buster introduce the authentic voices of reggae history to the book - which blends researched facts, graphics and rare images to create not only a sense of the pulse of the music, but also the contrasts of poverty, humour, desperation and joie de vivre that typify both the island of Jamaica and its music.

“Reggae’s chief eyewitness, dropping testimony on reggae’s chief prophet with truth, blood, and fire.” —Marlon James, Man Booker Prize–winning author Renowned reggae historian Roger Steffens’s riveting oral history of Bob Marley’s life draws on four decades of intimate interviews with band members, family, lovers, and confidants—many speaking publicly for the first time. Hailed by the New York Times Book Review as a “crucial voice” in the documentation of Marley’s legacy, Steffens spent years traveling with the Wailers and taking iconic photographs. Through eyewitness accounts of vivid scenes—the future star auditioning for Coxson Dodd; the violent confrontation between the Wailers and producer Lee Perry; the attempted assassination (and conspiracy theories that followed); the artist’s tragic death from cancer—So Much Things to Say tells Marley’s story like never before. What emerges is a legendary figure “who feels a bit more human” (The New Yorker).

Who changed Bob Marley’s famous peace-and-love anthem into “Come to Jamaica and feel all right?” When did the Rastafarian fighting white colonial power become the smiling Rastaman spreading beach towels for American tourists? Drawing on research in social movement theory and protest music, Reggae, Rastafari, and the Rhetoric of Social Control traces the history and rise of reggae and the story of how an island nation commandeered the music to fashion an image and entice tourists. Visitors to Jamaica are often unaware that reggae was a revolutionary music rooted in the suffering of Jamaica’s poor. Rastafarians were once a target of police harassment and public condemnation. Now the music is a marketing tool, and the Rastafarians are no longer a “violent counterculture” but an important symbol of Jamaica’s new cultural heritage. This book attempts to explain how the Jamaican establishment’s strategies of social control influenced the evolutionary direction of both the music and the Rastafarian movement. From 1959 to 1971, Jamaica’s popular music became identified with the Rastafarians, a social movement that gave voice to the country’s poor black communities. In response to this challenge, the Jamaican government banned politically controversial reggae songs from the airwaves and jailed or deported Rastafarian leaders. Yet when reggae became internationally popular in the 1970s, divisions among Rastafarians grew wider, spawning a number of pseudo-Rastafarians who embraced only the external symbolism of this worldwide religion. Exploiting this opportunity, Jamaica’s new Prime Minister, Michael Manley, brought Rastafarian political imagery and themes into the mainstream. Eventually, reggae and Rastafari evolved into Jamaica’s chief cultural commodities and tourist attractions.

Reggae Soundsystem is a new deluxe 200 page hard-back 12"x12" book featuring hundreds of stunning full size record cover designs that span the history of reggae music. The book is compiled by the celebrated author and reggae expert Steve Barrow (Rough Guide to Reggae/ Blood and Fire Records) and Stuart Baker (Soul Jazz Records). Beginning in the 1950s, Jamaican music developed into one of the most important and influential music industries in the world. From its early Mento (Jamaican Calypso) beginnings through to the invention of Ska, Rocksteady, Roots, Dub and Dancehall, Jamaican music is also one of the richest and innovative veins in popular music. This stunning hardback deluxe book is a timely look at the endless visually creativity of reggae record cover designs, iconic, classic, rare and unique artwork spanning sixty years of Jamaican sounds. The book includes a fascinating introductory essay on the history of reggae by Steve Barrow and the book is edited by Stuart Baker (founder of Soul Jazz Records and editor of the book Dancehall, and cover art books on Bossa Nova, Freedom, Rhythm & Sound and Studio One Records).

Winner of the ARSC’s Award for Best Research (History) in Folk, Ethnic, or World Music (2008) When Jamaican recording engineers Osbourne “King Tubby” Ruddock, Errol Thompson, and Lee “Scratch” Perry began crafting “dub” music in the early 1970s, they were initiating a musical revolution that continues to have worldwide influence. Dub is a sub-genre of Jamaican reggae that flourished during reggae’s “golden age” of the late 1960s through the early 1980s. Dub involves remixing existing recordings—electronically improvising sound effects and altering vocal tracks—to create its unique sound. Just as hip-hop turned phonograph turntables into musical instruments, dub turned the mixing and sound processing technologies of the recording studio into instruments of composition and real-time improvisation. In addition to chronicling dub’s development and offering the first thorough analysis of the music itself, author Michael Veal examines dub’s social significance in Jamaican culture. He further explores the “dub revolution” that has crossed musical and cultural boundaries for over thirty years, influencing a wide variety of musical genres around the globe. Ebook Edition Note: Seven of the 25 illustrations have been redacted.