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What Does All of This Mean?

A type of fusion genre itself, reggae is an amalgamation of genres that came before it, both on the island and from foreign nations. Through Rastafari culture, advances in sound technology and broadcasting, and migration, reggae has become a global force influencing and imbedding itself into other sources worldwide. The utilization of music that speaks to community, activism, and rebellion aids in creating identity amongst other groups of people who share feelings of displacement and social frustration. Although this shared consciousness presents itself as important in serving a democratic function, it is also due to simple enjoyment of sound and new ideas. Of course, there is always room for misinterpretation and manipulation of the reggae form as a commodity or aesthetic, the hope is that listeners will not perceive the music as a style but a glimpse into Jamaican history as well as the history of those who influenced it. The fusion of music, and subsequently culture, reveals the interdependence that people have with one another, establishing a sort of global community.

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Reggae Rock

Reggae Rock emerged during the late 70s in England and Australia with bands like The Police and Men at Work. Using traditional rock instruments coupled with samplers and horns, these groups were inspired by reggae music and used specific elements, along with popular punk and new wave sounds present at the time, to create a new fusion genre.

Rejected by record labels in England, The Police found their home in the states. Joining fellow punks on stage at CBGBs, the band received a roaring reaction and set out on tour. "The most exciting new voice in rock," front-man Sting became a poster image in American pop culture, reggae rhythms evident as ever within his band's music, eventually gaining recognition as one of the world's biggest acts (MTV).  Despite their break up in 1986, reggae rock did not die with them.

The sound was picked up by a new generation of reggae-rockers during the early 90s in the U.S. Bands like Sublime and 311 were the new face of the genre, playing on more obvious tones and themes of reggae and rasta culture. Hailing from Long Beach California, Sublime encouraged a whole subculture of teenagers and young adults to join them in their beach-loving party lifestyle through music. Lead singer Brad Nowell went to live with his father at a young age and took a summer sailing trip around the Virgin Islands where he was influence by Bob Marley and the Wailers (MTV). With the same anti-establishment mindset, Sublime's lyrics speak against a structured society as referenced in their song Roots of Creation, "I am living in a plastic nation." The members found a means of escape in the music they created, "me love the music make me feel so high."

Although they used certain tropes associated with reggae to establish their subculture within a separate and "free-living" sphere, certain subjects of their focus propelled false interpretation of reggae culture. "I smoke two joints before I smoke two joints and then I smoke two more," this song perhaps places too much of an emphasis on ganja, forcing it to be representative of Rastafari rather than a ritual of it. This attention to aesthetic of Rasta culture is further revealed in The Expendables' song "Bowl for Two," a title which essentially speaks for itself.

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2-Tone

2-Tone is a fusion genre combining elements of Jamaican reggae and ska with British punk-rock and new wave music. Originating in England in the 1970s, the history of 2-Tone dates back to Jamaican migration to the mother country following World War II. England's war-torn state prompted Jamaican natives desperate for wages to board the Empire Windrush, a British troop ship, so that they may aid in rebuilding the nation (Lecture 6). The convergence of the oppressed with their oppressors, of different races and classes, created tension, a tension that would not be broken as the Jamaican people began to settle in England rather than return home. During the 70s, a rise in unemployment rates, a drop in economy, and a continuous race war looming in the atmosphere, the society was driven into a state of emergency. Just as they had on their native soil, the people needed a medium for which to house their voices and "the popular music of the time was a million miles from the feeling on the street" (Noisey).

The name 2-Tone first appeared on 2-Tone Records established by Jerry Dammers of "The Specials" in 1979. Grounded in its famed checkerboard image, the label communicates the race relationship and dependence of the two involved cultures. Evocative of the musicians' style, the "Walt Jabsco logo man," who received his name from an old bowling shirt Dammers bought, is based off of an image of Peter Tosh of the Wailers dressed in a suit, tie, and pork-pie hat (Spice).

Sharing this discontent within the space they occupied, and fans of 2-tone, were the "skinheads," working-class English youth who were influenced by the music of Jamaican "rude boys." Combined with their own mod, punk-rock style, they formed a counter culture movement of their own. Taking a different approach to style, they dressed in Doc Marten boots, jeans, and ragged t-shirts, emulating a more masculine look. "Pounding out on dancefloors to Jamaican artists and black records," skinheads grew up in the same neighborhoods as their 'black mates' (Back 133). Unfortunately, complications came with identifying skinheads towards the latter half of the 70s as neo-Nazi skinheads became present within the scene playing violent punk music and causing a divide within the community counter-productive of what their predecessors had created.

Comprised of horns, guitar, bass, drums, and organ, the music of both subgenres served the working-class image, where character was defined by "how many holes you [had] in your boots" (Noisey). Songs like The Specials' "Ghost Town" addressed the state of decay of the cities they were raised in and the role that government and youth culture played in it.

2-Tone is unique in that it established cohesion and respect between colony and colonizer, something that would have never happened while Jamaica was still under Britain's control. For this reason, appropriation of one another's culture was beneficial in ending hostilities and cultivating a new generation in which the two can productively coexist. In the case of 2-Tone, the practice of strategic anti-essentialism is enacted, combining two distinct genres, ska and punk, which had proved to showcase the rebel voices of their perpetrators in order to gain a better sense of identity within their shared space. As a member of 2-Tone band "The Beat" recalls, "In order to be anything in the late 70s and early 80s, you had to actually be saying something" (Noisey).

This movement did not end in Britain in the 80s but travelled to the U.S. to influence "Ska Punk" music in the following decades. Here, these bands like No Doubt and Reel Big Fish introduced the genre to mainstream culture whether the listeners realized it or not.

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Reggaeton

As reggae became more popular and gained recognition as Jamaica's national genre, foreign nations started to utilize it to create a sense of identity within their own respective cultures. Though Jamaican culture has been famously appropriated, specific nations took it a step further and conjured up a way to make it a presence in their music while maintaining the voice of their own cultural genres. This is reggae fusion.

Born from Puerto Rico during the late 1990s Reggaeton is a fusion genre of reggae, Latin American and Caribbean styles, and hip-hop and is named in reference to its beat and long-playing mixes, a "maraton" (marathon) (Flores 4). Despite using "riddims" reflective of traditional reggae music, reggaeton takes on more dancehall qualities with its use of synthesizers, samplers, and personal computers to produce "dembow riddims." Introduced to the dancehall and reggaeton scene in 1991 by Jamaican DJ and vocalist Shabba Ranks, dembow appears in "upwards of 80% of all reaggaeton productions" (Marshall 131).

Through analyzing the lyrics found in reggaeton, one can begin to understand the true reach of reggae and the culture from which it had emerged. Though sometimes referred to as "reaggae en espanol," the term "reggaeton" is largely preferred as presenting reggae in a new cultural context is not achieved through a simple translation of lyrics from Jamaican patois to Spanish, but through transculturation. This process has occurred to bring the native culture, Jamaican, together with foreign cultures, Latin American, Caribbean, and American, and created a platform for which they can become a single unit (Lecture 5).

Reggae music likely appealed to Latin consumers because it was exposing of the lives of its people and their culture lent itself to a rebel attitude. Similar to that of reggae, reggaeton is revealing of themes that showcase the underground life of Latin culture, its lyrics taking on an explicit tone, speaking to poverty, violence, sex, love, and drugs. Though Puerto Rico was exposed to roots reggae as early as the 1970s, it was the upper and middle class that made up the audience. Labelled "blanquitos," this crowd "tended to be white and [their] musical preference [was] for rock," attracted to the music not because of its rich culture but because of the aesthetic of Rastafari that is embedded in the roots reggae sound (Flores 7). In the early 90s, when reggae returned to Puerto Rico, it arrived in the form of dancehall, its fans the lower-class population. Enticed by its infectious beat and energy, the youth understood it as more than just a clothing choice or image, and adopted it into their culture, combining it with the rap and underground music that they were already listening to in ambition of establishing their own identity within their environment.

However helpful in defining Latin culture, the genre has received much backlash due to the way it ignores its origins in reggae and hip hop in favor of producing something marketable. Originally referred to as "musica negra" or "melaza" (molasses), reggaeton began to make its claim as a Latin genre, "whitening" itself to suit a wider, more commercial audience (Marshall 132). Race, and the women who embody it, "become reference points" devised to encourage people from all ethnicities and cultures to partake in reggaeton, which as ideal as it sounds, elicits the threat of appropriation (Pereira 81). In fact, the image it presents often ends up overshadowing any message indicative of its makeup of struggling minority cultures. Rather it presents wealth, over-sexed women, and a male-dominant society.

Revered as the "King of Reggaton," Daddy Yankee introduced the genre to a global audience, reaching more cultures than those who contribute to its musical style with his hit "Gasolina" in 2005. The song is evocative of a sub-culture that strives for excess and emphasizes a party lifestyle, its chorus ringing out that "she like gasoline," in other words, she likes to go fast or she likes to party along with other provocative innuendos. Not only revealing of this behavior in its lyrics, the song also suggests it in the moves of its dancers, a style "known as 'perreo' (doggy style)" (Flores 1).

Still, catchy and consumable, it seems this music never fails to create some kind of viral media upheaval. "Despacito," by Luis Fonsi and featuring Daddy Yankee, released in 2017, became the most viewed YouTube video in history, raking in 5.12 billion views. Featured on the 60th Grammys, the song is representative of a genre that has managed to establish itself with such prominence that it gets a prime spot on the biggest night in music broadcasted by a nation that does not speak the same first-language.  

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Reggae and Rasta

The latter half of the 1960s brought rocksteady and with it more serious subjects addressing the reality of Jamaican history and the state of its people. These songs as well as parodies of American songs to fit the cultural context "made available in the musical language of Jamaica key terms of loss and pain, hope and longing of a diasporic consciousness" (Lecture 1). As these subjects became more widely communicated, the Jamaican people began to develop a voice independent from foreign sources, one that represented their culture and rebellion in the form of a social and political movement and set to a new genre of music. That is Rastafari and its reggae counterpart.

Forced into slavery by European colonizers and removed from Africa, the Jamaican people have been displaced from their home for centuries. Arrival on the island had meant serving the elites as members of the lowest tier of a social hierarchy established through British imperial rule, a rule that reigned up until 1962. Despite independence, Jamaican citizens were still at a loss for identity as they had been stripped of their home and exiled to "Babylon." In desperate times, when "79 percent of the population [was] classified as lower class," they needed a way to take power into their own hands (Waters 47).

This power came adorned in dreadlocks and the colors of the Ethiopian flag and carried with him the weight of someone who had lived through poverty and violence from an early age. Bob Marley represented the struggling natives as he spoke out against their strife and proposed alternative utopian lifestyles of peace, love, and community. He lived by the words of Jah, their God, and led this movement to the soundtrack of reggae, a term adopted from Toots and the Maytals' song "Do the Reggay," making it the global genre that it has become.

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Reggae: A Genre Rooted in the History of Other Cultures

Before the island sounds of Reggae fused with musical genres from other cultures to take on rock, punk, Latino, hip-hop, etc. pseudonyms, they were established on Jamaican soil, built from influencers in music, community, and politics. No, Reggae was not always a globally attractive genre, it was once an underground style adapted from previous popular Jamaican music and used as a device to serve the nation internally.

The advent of the sound system during the 1940s and 50s enabled the masses to consume music from over-seas and without the restrictions of conservative state-run Jamaican radio (Lecture 1). This invention made music accessible to all bodies, not just the elite. Early industry was built upon the sounds of mento, a product of Caribbean and Latin rhythms introduced to the island after inhabitants returned from Central American countries to labor as slaves (jis.gov). Along with these polyrhythms, Trinidadian Calypso had quite an influence on the genre.

As American popular music became more present in Jamaica by way of radio stations, the music on the island began to reflect the spirit of R&B and big band music found in Miami and New Orleans at the time. In some ways, the distinctive styles of ska were the result of "failure to get those rhythms quite right" (Lecture 1). This style of music still operated under the construction of Jamaica as a tourist destination. The tunes accompanied by dances that seemed to fit into the postcard-image imposed by the nation's colonial leaders. Upbeat and infectious, ska may have created community in those who participated but also invited outsiders into this exotic paradise world that was not revealing of the true conditions of its impoverished populace.

This video is crafted in such a way that it acts as a tutorial of how to dance to ska, as if it is something anyone can do and anyone is welcomed to participate in. As the song celebrates, "everybody can do the ska, it's the new dance you can't resist." Void is the story of revolution and expression of the Jamaican people, replaced by a plea for the world's attention to join something that is surface-level of true Jamaican society, meant to "spice-up mainstream white culture" (Shaw 35).

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Reggae Fusion: A Diverse World United Under the Exchange of Music

Homegrown in Jamaica, reggae music has become a global genre reaching foreign cultures through its sound, message, and marketing. Evolving from earlier genres such as mento, ska, and rocksteady, reggae gained its initial popularity amongst Jamaican natives as a result of its presence in the island's social and political sphere. The ability of this genre to produce power within the hands of the people who had created and listened to it contributes to why so many other nations have adopted and adapted it into their cultures. This translation and synthesis of reggae into different forms to serve specific foreign cultures and their popular music genres is called reggae fusion. Sub-genres affiliated with reggae fusion are such of Reggaeton, 2-Tone, and Reggae Rock, and can be analyzed to determine how the cultures who use them have established their own voices and identities.