Response to Confusion to Add Confusion
Dan commented on my recent confused (as typically done) post about Reggae. Yes Reggae, outside of Bob Marley, has never charted well in the US (unless you count the relatively recent Dancehall crossover successes), but that really was not my point. I wasn't confused as to the why the general U.S. ear dug or got bewitched by reggae, but particularly why *I* am more into reggae (at least currently) than even u.s. soul or funk, let alone music from other caribbean islands. My limited theory was that the wierd cross breeding fusion with u.s. styles & the pragmatic nature of it's development as a Party music, a sincere Functional music, was more interesting to me than that of those other musics.
(Pragmatic in that Reggae served a purpose in the community that seems more honest, or at least more aware of itself w/o Art pretensions, than any post-60's middle class rock'n'roll can even pretend about. Commercial interests, entwined with cultural identity issues, mixed with POVERTY and EXPLOITATION leads to REVELATION and INVENTION. No, I'm not talking about sufferer Truth, but just the truth of how Culture is made as Pragmatic Truth. As it serves a purpose that doesn't pretend to more. Not that this doesn't happen with U.S. art rock, but I think if we thought about that too much we'd be decidedly disappointed about the function it serves. )
Yes, it had a bigger impact in the UK, but No, there really wasn't a crossbreeding from native UK styles into reggae. The biggest impact of the UK in reggae was as a commercial audience.
Getting into dancehall, it becomes even more confusing. Having developed contemporaneously with Hip-Hop, the cross-breeding, cross-thread nature between NYC & Kingston has been explored A LOT, but is still interesting how Party music in the Bronx v. Party music in JA informed each other, and developed into similar but extremely different end results. And to spin the functional thread, Dancehall was a Rejection of the trend to imperialistic appropration of the JA ghetto truth dialogue by the JA ghetto subjects themselves; as a community, as a market, as a culture, as a dancehall. Fuck you with your white dread rasta bullshit - this is Our music. (Though I tread a slippery slope, being a cosmo whitey reggae listener myself, but... at least I'm trying to be critical, right? right?)
(Pragmatic in that Reggae served a purpose in the community that seems more honest, or at least more aware of itself w/o Art pretensions, than any post-60's middle class rock'n'roll can even pretend about. Commercial interests, entwined with cultural identity issues, mixed with POVERTY and EXPLOITATION leads to REVELATION and INVENTION. No, I'm not talking about sufferer Truth, but just the truth of how Culture is made as Pragmatic Truth. As it serves a purpose that doesn't pretend to more. Not that this doesn't happen with U.S. art rock, but I think if we thought about that too much we'd be decidedly disappointed about the function it serves. )
Yes, it had a bigger impact in the UK, but No, there really wasn't a crossbreeding from native UK styles into reggae. The biggest impact of the UK in reggae was as a commercial audience.
Getting into dancehall, it becomes even more confusing. Having developed contemporaneously with Hip-Hop, the cross-breeding, cross-thread nature between NYC & Kingston has been explored A LOT, but is still interesting how Party music in the Bronx v. Party music in JA informed each other, and developed into similar but extremely different end results. And to spin the functional thread, Dancehall was a Rejection of the trend to imperialistic appropration of the JA ghetto truth dialogue by the JA ghetto subjects themselves; as a community, as a market, as a culture, as a dancehall. Fuck you with your white dread rasta bullshit - this is Our music. (Though I tread a slippery slope, being a cosmo whitey reggae listener myself, but... at least I'm trying to be critical, right? right?)
posted by furtanic at 10:43 AM
3 Comments:
ach so. I've got my take on that too. $$$$$. I (you) admittedly do more than just listen to music. face it, we collect. vinyl. you could get into soul relatively cheaply, as a surface phenomena, through CDs. if you wanted the rarer items on CDs, you'd have to buy expensive rerelease compilations, that really only leave you wanting more. but if you wanted the vinyl, you'd have to shell out serious cake. and it's offputting. at least to me.
you could get into reggae and have all the singles of all the stuff you want, relatively cheap. not original pressings, and usually shitty quality, but you can have artifacts. you could even get the originals probably way way way cheaper than say a 400 dollar rare soul plate. and you're not contending with 50 year old collectors with serious money making jobs who have the disposable income to either way outbid you on ebay or keep the prices so heavily inflated that no shop will sell an artifact cheap.
could also be you like the music more. that either answers your question quite simply, or just re-asks it.
why? because.
what I mean: it's a bad comparison. I understand the root of your question. but you really can't compare getting into any genre to getting into soul/funk, using what you (I, we) mean by "getting into." because soul/funk is the most expensive music to collect. probably more so than rare 60s psych. it's out of your league. and if you (subconsciously) know that there's no way you can get into a genre aside from superficially through cheapo comps and even expensive comps, or through downloading, well, then it sort of spoils the game before it's even begun.
You're right. I'm over thinking this, but I also haven't even gotten into the surface soul/funk (that has been reissued) let alone trying to get into crate digging. And some of the more soulful reggae is the stuff that I like the most (early John Holt, Heptones, Studio One.) In terms of acquisition the two genres are not comparable, but in terms of roots they are comparable. But given that I do most of my music listening by buying records, and cheap reggae reissues are abundant, you have a point.
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