Reggae: Kingston’s Gift to the World

10:13Chuck Bryant:Mm-hmm. And what came out of that was Rocksteady. One word. Probably one of the best names for any musical genre, if you ask me.

10:22Josh Clark:Yeah, I'm with you.

10:23Chuck Bryant:and Rocksteady is it's it has a lot of the same components and instruments and everything but like I said it's slowed down there's much more of a focus on vocals so like there's like you know lyrics to the song right the theme or something like that and if you're like I don't know if I've ever heard Rocksteady you definitely have because there are some hits that came out of this apparently it's just like a two-year period that Rocksteady was popular but the original tide is high Ain't No Sunshine as in Ain't No Sunshine When She's Gone that came out of the Rocksteady era if you've ever listened to the Upsetters like the early stuff really organ heavy everybody sings at once so the mic peaks and gets overloaded like that's Rocksteady

11:09Josh Clark:yeah for sure and Rocksteady is what kind of directly led to what we know as reggae and when they started that sort of heavy thumping bass and a little more percussive forward That's when reggae was kind of born. You know, I know Livia points out that there are some other kind of, I guess, just maybe unusual influences. And one was a school in Kingston, the Alpha Boys School. It was run by, it was a trade school, and it was a nun-run affair. And they had, I keep wanting to say it's like unusual, but maybe it wasn't. But they had a really great music education program. And there was a nun there named Sister Iggy, Sister Mary Ignatius Davies.

11:56Josh Clark:And she was just a big time music fan. She was especially big into jazz and ended up having a lot of like future reggae, like, you know, not the hugest stars, although Yellow Man did go through there. But some early like ska and reggae horn players, especially because of her jazz focus, came through her school.

12:15Chuck Bryant:Right. For sure. Yeah, I had no idea about that. Did you?

12:19Josh Clark:No. That's super cool, though.

12:21Chuck Bryant:There's also, obviously, the Rastafari influence is significant. And Rastafarianism was around before reggae. And reggae was actually around before reggae musicians became Rastafarians. And it was, if you go back and listen to our episode on Haile Selassie, It was his visit in, I think, 1966 that just opened the doors to Rastafarianism and reggae being, like, essentially hand in hand.

12:56Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. And I thought we had done one on Rastafarianism, but I think I put together an article. And at the time, you were like, we've been doing too much religious stuff. And I just tucked it away. It never came back. Really? And then when we covered, yeah, yeah, this is a while ago. And then we covered Haile Selassie. It basically covered that well enough, I think.

13:19Chuck Bryant:Oh, it did? Okay. Because we definitely got into it for sure, but that episode was about a lot more than just that.

13:25Josh Clark:Oh, yeah, yeah.

13:25Chuck Bryant:But at the time, before his visit to Jamaica, a state visit, this was an official visit, the Rastafarians, even in Jamaica, were seen as just kind of weirdos. They were on the fringe. They weren't taken seriously at all. They were just a strange religion. and then Holly Selassie came and essentially just by recognizing them I think he awarded medals to some Rastafarian preachers there he legitimized it in the eyes of Jamaica now all of a sudden a bunch of people including Rita Marley are like I Rastafari and that's the moment that it spread to reggae music

14:05Josh Clark:yeah and this was in the lead up to their eventual freedom from the colonizers and the white supremacist sort of system that they had been living under. They called Babylon, so that's why you hear Babylon a lot in the songs. And I mentioned Desmond Decker, and his probably most notable song is The Israelites, and that's what he was talking about there, right?

14:26Chuck Bryant:Yeah, that came out in 1968, and I've seen that some people point to that, or a lot of people, I guess, point to that as the bridge between rocksteady and reggae, that song. And it's that song you think it is, like, whoa, the Israelites, right? Oh, nice. And, oh, thanks. I've been practicing for weeks. This is a lower key, but you're under the weather, so. Yes. Thank you for giving me that pass. But yeah, the song, I don't think it says it necessarily explicitly, but the gist of it is this Rassafarian idea that the stolen Africans who have spread all over the world and their descendants are the true Israelites.

15:03Chuck Bryant:And they are trapped in Babylon, which is white supremacist run Western world. and that through self-determination and deliverance by Jah, they will be able to emancipate themselves, essentially mind, body, and spirit. And that's what Rastafarianism is about.

15:25Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. And there was a drummer, a Rastafari drummer name, they called him Count Ozzy, but Oswald Williams, he played on an early song in 1958. so this is like you know still predating reggae it was a ska recording by the folks brothers called o carolina and you know we're going to be mentioning a lot of songs but if you're in a place where you can like cue some of these up uh i encourage it because they're all great a lot of this early stuff and that's kind of what i like about it is it sounds like it was recorded in a tin can like the recordings aren't the best quality but it adds a lot of zhuzh to it i think Nice.

16:03Chuck Bryant:So, oh, one other thing about Rastafarianism too. So I said it predated reggae. I mean, it basically came out of the 20s and 30s when Marcus Garvey predicted that an emperor would be elected or seated. I don't know what you would call it when you install it. there was going to be an emperor that came out of Africa and people were like, oh, Haile Selassie, that's him. And so from that moment on, Rastafarianism was born and apparently dreads had been part of Rastafarianism as far back as the 1940s. Oh, wow. I had no idea.

16:44Josh Clark:What about white guy dreads?

16:47Chuck Bryant:Those came out of the 90s. I blame the 90s Sky Revival for that too. Probably so, huh? Yeah.

16:54Josh Clark:All right. that feels like a good time for a break right?

16:58Chuck Bryant:Yeah I think so

16:59Josh Clark:Alright and we will come back with more on reggae right after this

17:17Josh Clark:The Declaration which is full of these beautifully rendered you know sentences and paragraphs about Enlightenment ideals does also have this darker history to it. Why is it important for the darker part of the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution? Why is it important that Americans know about it? Well, if we don't understand the full context in which our nation was founded, we won't understand the full context in which our nation now finds itself. I'm Rebecca Nagle. Goheen Dawadon, Jalakayetli Gayla, citizen of Cherokee Nation. Are you guys big Chiefs fans? Hell yeah. This is First America, the true story of how the United States came to be and how we got to this present moment.

18:08Josh Clark:Listen to First America on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

18:17Chuck Bryant:30 years ago, an island off Manhattan almost brought down New York City.

18:23Josh Clark:Who will you trust? Your friends and neighbors? Or will you trust the people five miles overseas?

18:28Chuck Bryant:This is a story about neighbors turning on each other. And what happens when a forgotten place decides it's had enough.

18:37Josh Clark:We reached for a feeling that exists in this city. But we're not stopping, are we?

18:47Chuck Bryant:I'm Ben Nadeff-Haffrey. And for my new series on revisionist history, I took a deep dive into Staten Island's attempt to secede from New York City in the 1990s. And what it all has to do with the politics of resentment that dominate America today. Listen to Revisionist History, The Staten Island Problem, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

19:16Josh Clark:Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back. I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting. Every episode is a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians. Over the past two seasons, I've had special guests like Dave Grohl, Leve, Mavis Staples, Remy Wolfe, Jeff Tweedy, really too many to name. And this season I've sat down with Joshua Homme, Sarah McLachlan, John Legend, and more. Check out my new episode with Phineas. So I went home and I asked Billie if she wanted to sing it.

19:52Josh Clark:She immediately made it her own thing. No fair.

20:03Josh Clark:You really know how to make me cry when you give me those oceans. So come hang out with us in the studio and listen to Playing Along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

20:34Chuck Bryant:So, Chuck, we're back. Yeah, let's hear it. I threw to you really, I was being serious. Here's another little behind the scenes thing. Chuck and I decide on the fly which one's going to bring us back from break. And this time I said I was going to go. And so we came back and I immediately tossed to you. But the reason why I did that, apparently it was not that great of a joke, is because I'm not super musical. Like, I know reggae. I would pick reggae out in, like, maybe two notes. I could be like, that's a reggae song. Yeah. But I can't mimic it. Like, and when I read about it, I don't have any idea what's going on.

21:16Chuck Bryant:It actually confuses my understanding of reggae, which is dumb.

21:20Josh Clark:Well, if you're going to count on me to mimic reggae with my mouth, although I kind of just did with that drum intro.

21:26Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

21:27Josh Clark:People are probably going to be disappointed. But we should talk a little bit about the instrumentation, because it's like you might find in a rock band, maybe minus some stuff and plus some stuff. Drums, sometimes steel drums, which I was trying to mimic. You got your bass. You got your electric guitar, a lot of percussion, you know, bongos and shakers and stuff like that. Bob Marley used some cool synth-y sounds and organ sounds.

21:55Chuck Bryant:Like It's My Life?

21:58Josh Clark:On what?

21:59Chuck Bryant:It's my life. Don't you forget. Isn't that the Wailers? I don't know that song.

22:06Josh Clark:Yes, you do.

22:08Chuck Bryant:It's Talk Talk.

22:10Josh Clark:Oh, okay.

22:11Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

22:11Josh Clark:I got you.

22:12Chuck Bryant:It's a very synth-y song.

22:13Josh Clark:Yeah, yeah. I didn't recognize the rendition. It's just because you're sick, though.

22:17Chuck Bryant:Yeah, it's because I'm under the weather.

22:21Josh Clark:Horn section, sometimes you might get in a reggae band. But, you know, I mentioned earlier that it's that rhythm of reggae that is kind of maybe the most distinguishing aspect of it. It's a four-beat rhythm with the emphasis on the two and the four. Right. Whereas traditional rock, it's not that. So that's why when you hear that chunking rhythm guitar, that dun-ching-a-dun-ching, that's on the two and four. And it's a real distinct sound. And as we'll see, once this kind of transferred over to London, And you had tons of groups like the police and the specials and madness kind of like latching on to that sort of two and the four, you know.

23:08Josh Clark:It's a very distinct thing.

23:09Chuck Bryant:For sure. In the 70s, it definitely caught Great Britain by the... Short and curly. Curly, yeah. And Ireland, too. We can't forget Ireland ever. We never do. No, of course not. Even if we don't mention Ireland, we still are including Ireland. That's right. But we should say it separately because they're not part of Great Britain. Did you know that?

23:32Josh Clark:We didn't want to rile anyone up.

23:35Chuck Bryant:So, thank you. That's what I was trying to get to, was you explaining the rhythm, because I can't. I have so little rhythm that I can't even explain it verbally.

23:43Josh Clark:Yeah.

23:45Chuck Bryant:But that's essentially what you just said. Like, that's one of the hallmarks, if not the hallmark of reggae. And then you also said that sometimes they have horns. I feel like that's one of the main things that distinguishes reggae from rocksteady or ska. Is that it really kind of moved away from horns, where horns were really, really important to rocksteady, and in particular ska.

24:07Josh Clark:Oh, yeah, for sure.

24:08Chuck Bryant:Yeah. So one of the other things about reggae, too, that's good to know, that's easily overlooked if all you've ever listened to is, say, Bob Marley or maybe even Burning Spear or something like that. Yeah. more on like spiritual aspects, self-determination. There's a lot of reggae out there that focuses on violence and crime because it definitely emerged in that context. If you've heard Bob Marley, you've definitely heard of Trenchtown. Trenchtown is a low-income neighborhood in Kingston. I think part of it's like shanty even. It's that low income. And you've lived in Kingston. there was a really good chance that one of your only options was to turn to crime to make a living.

24:57Chuck Bryant:And so there was this romanticization of crime that was going on in the area at the same time that reggae was emerging in the same area. So they are kind of intertwined. There's also like a real, it's really male-dominated. Still today, it is generally a male-dominated music genre. So there's just like inevitably a certain machismo that's still that's in the background there. It might not be always talked about. It's more dance hall. But in reggae, even too, there's this idea that, you know, the man's in charge. It's just how it is.

25:33Josh Clark:Yeah, and, you know, there's a lot of sort of, like I mentioned, the influence on hip-hop and a lot of sort of lines that you can draw. I think definitely more women broke through in hip-hop than in reggae. But this, you know, this violent context of the gangster persona, a lot of it taken from American movies in both reggae and hip-hop. The rude boy culture was what it was called in reggae. but you can see a lot of similarities there. The actual word reggae probably didn't come around until 1968. It was a song by the great, great Toots and the Maytals, Frederick Toots Hibbert. There was a song called Do the Reggae, R-E-G-G-A-Y.

26:19Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

26:20Josh Clark:And when asked about that word, he didn't say like, hey, I invented the word, But he said that he was replacing the word stregay, S-T-R-E-G-G-A-E, which was like a raggedy looking woman. But he said that had a negative connotation. It was like a derogatory term. So I didn't want to use that. So I changed it over. And then there's another story where it was R-E-G-G-A-Y, which was a dance trend taken from the terms for ragged clothing. and that turned into RGE-RGE, reggae, reggae, which was about like fighting or protesting. So there's not like a definitive like, hey, this is where the word came from, but probably maybe a mashup of those three things.

27:09Chuck Bryant:Well, there's another entrant too, an artist named Little Roy, who the same year that Toots and the Maytals song came out in 1968, he released a song or maybe even an album called Reggae Soul. and he spelled it the way that we spell it today too. So it's just completely muddled, but it seemed to have come around in 1968, the year reggae broke.

27:32Josh Clark:Yeah, and a lot of that was thanks to, like I said, Frederick Toots Hibbert. If you want to dial up some early Toots and the Maytals, it's pretty good listening. They started out in 1962, obviously Ska at the time, but their first big hit was in 1968 with the song 54, 56, That's My Number. Great tune. And they had a bunch of, you know, they didn't take over America like Bob Marley later would because this is the late 60s, so America was consumed with all, you know, like the hippie culture and everything that was going on musically there. So it would take Bob Marley in the 70s to break through in the States.

28:12Chuck Bryant:Yeah, but at the same time, too, the suburbanites in America in the mid-60s we're into Caribbean stuff, like Exotica and things like that, which is why we have heard songs like The Tide is High. So it did kind of make its way over here, but no one has ever taken the world by storm, at least as far as reggae goes, like Bob Marr. He just became an international icon in a very short time even, too, as we'll see.

28:43Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. So he's coming off everybody. Wouldn't that be funny if we did a whole episode wouldn't mention Bob Harley. That'd be great. That'd be an April Fool's episode.

28:51Chuck Bryant:Yeah, for sure.

28:53Josh Clark:But we, you know, producers, just like all genres, like producers and engineers had a lot to do with, not all music actually, some more than others, but definitely with reggae. There was a guy named King Tubby, born Osborne Ruddock. And he was one of the guys, you know, kind of a studio wizard that was like building his own hardware to create effects. And he was the guy that first started stripping out vocals to create dub plate, and that's what the DJs would toast over.

29:22Chuck Bryant:Yeah, which, as we'll see, sounds a lot like hip-hop and rapping, right? Yeah, and dub music. Right, and so dub music, I don't know if King Tubby was the guy who was credited with actually coming up with it. There are others. Lee Scratch Perry is another originator of dub. Hopeton Lewis, who came to be known as Scientist. for my money, the best dub musician of all. But the thing that these guys had in common was they were using recording equipment, often cast-off recording equipment that they built their own rigs out of that they were using essentially as early synthesizers. And it was a lot like how Kraftwerk and Devo, who came later, did.

30:07Chuck Bryant:It was like, I want to make the sound, but there's nothing out there that makes that sound, so I'm going to build my own thing. And that's what dub music essentially was based on. It was taking reggae and then making it into essentially electronic music with all sorts of effects.

30:23Josh Clark:Yeah. Man, I would love it. I used to be scared of doing these music episodes because 45 to 50 minutes to encapsulate a genre is really, really hard. But since we've done it a few times, I'm not as scared of it. And I would love to check New Wave off the list at some point.

30:43Chuck Bryant:Oh, that's a good idea. I almost said the S word. We don't even need to come up with an article for that. We can just go back and forth on it. How about that?

30:52Josh Clark:That sounds great. I think you say ish instead of the S word is what people do.

30:56Chuck Bryant:Yeah. If you're like on the radio or something. For sure. Ish. Because I think it's the sound that it makes when you scratch the record backwards at that moment. Is that it? Mm-hmm. Oh, okay. I'm almost positive. All right.

31:10Josh Clark:So we're getting to Bob Marley, but if we're talking about Lee Scratch Perry, he's one of the guys in the early 60s who was working with the Wailers very early on. And Lee Scratch Perry went on to have an incredible long career eventually in hip hop and rock and everything else. But I guess we should talk about the Wailers a little bit. And if we're going to talk about the Wailers, we've got to back up a little bit and talk about Joe Higgs.

31:38Chuck Bryant:Mm-hmm.

31:39Josh Clark:Did you know who Joe Higgs was? I did not, but now I'm like, I love seeing the early tendrils being like tendrilling.

31:49Chuck Bryant:Sure. There might have been a Wailers at one point, but we probably wouldn't know of them because Joe Higgs taught them most of what they know about music.

32:00Josh Clark:Yeah, I think I heard of him probably in the Bob Marley documentary now that I think about it.

32:04Chuck Bryant:That makes sense because you kind of couldn't talk about Bob Marley without talking about Joe Higgs first. He taught not just Bob Marley how to sing and how to write songs and everything you need to know about, you know, making music. Yeah. He also taught Peter Tosh and Bunny Whaler at the same time. So he essentially taught the Whalers how to play music. So, yeah, they might have been around because I know that Bunny Whaler and Bob Marley were essentially raised together from childhood as almost stepbrothers of sorts. And they met Peter Tosh as teenagers in Trenchtown. So they probably would have formed a musical act, but they would have just sucked.

32:48Josh Clark:Well, Joe Higgs was definitely the glue early on and the mentor to them. he had a big hit as a singer in 1960 with Higgs & Wilson it was called Manny O and it was, again if you listen to some of this stuff you definitely hear like the American R &B sound coming through like some of this stuff sounds like James Brown at first and then like that reggae beat kicks in but it was one of the first Manny O was one of the first records ever pressed and released in Jamaica and sold 50 ,000 copies and what was this, 1960? So that's a lot of records for back then. And he is, yeah, he's the guy that like all these like teenagers basically were crowding around just like sponges to everything he knew.

33:35Chuck Bryant:Yeah, that was something really cool about him. Like he was living in Trenchtown or at least Kingston at the time too. And he would teach other younger musicians. Like he took time to do that rather than just focusing on his career and getting bigger and bigger. he like took his talents and helped other people develop their own talents, right? So hats off to Joe Higgs for sure, just from putting the Wailers together. But you mentioned how like a lot of this stuff, this early reggae and rock steady, it's how you can really hear the R &B coming through. And that's true with the early Wailers songs too.

34:13Chuck Bryant:If you go listen to Simmer Down, which came out in 1963. Great song. I think they had four albums before they came out with their actual full reggae album in 1972. I can't remember which one it's called. But you're just like, you can hear Bob Marley's voice, but it's total R &B. It's strange.

34:34Josh Clark:Yeah, and they dress the part too. Like when you look at the old, like the early whalers, they were wearing like the cool like shark skin suits and stuff. And they were like styled out like the OJs or something.

34:44Chuck Bryant:Right, exactly. Yeah, so it's a little jarring when all you know about Bob Marley is as like a reggae icon, you know? But yeah, they all met together in Trenchtown where they all lived. And one thing I didn't realize is that Bob Marley's father was a white man. Did you know that?

35:03Josh Clark:Yeah, his dad was, his name was Norval Sinclair Marley. And he was Jamaican. He was a white Jamaican of English descent. And he was an army, like a British army veteran. but was a plantation overseer, basically, and was in his 60s when he married Bob Marley's mother when she was 18. And so, you know, you hear that and you think like, oh, boy, did the worst thing happen? And apparently that wasn't the case. I mean, there was a huge age difference. I'm not saying there was a balance of power by any means. but everything I've read and seen is it was a consensual relationship and that he provided financial support for a while to the family but he was not like around much after Bob was born.

35:52Josh Clark:He wasn't like a real father figure.

35:54Chuck Bryant:Okay, gotcha. Yeah, because I hear white rural overseer and I'm like, oh no.

35:59Josh Clark:Well, yeah.

36:00Chuck Bryant:But one of the other things that was a huge influence in Bob's life was his grandfather, his mom's father. who was a farmer and a herbal healer. And so a lot of the kind of mystic qualities, or at least interests of Bob Marley, that just kind of, he exudes in a way, you know, he got, he definitely got from being his grandfather's grandson.

36:24Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. But as a result of that sort of displaced childhood, Marley didn't get to Trenchtown until he was a teenager. Spent a lot of time out in the country in Kingston hanging out with his granddad, like you said. And like you mentioned earlier, he and Bunny Whaler, it's the cutest thing. They, like, were friends from the time they were, like, two and three years old. And when Bob's dad died, his mom moved in with Bunny Whaler's dad. And they, yeah, they were raised like brothers. Super sweet.

36:59Chuck Bryant:It is super sweet. And they met Peter Tosh in a gambling hall, I think, when they were all, like, early teens, right?

37:05Josh Clark:Yeah. I don't know when Bob Marley met his wife Rita, but I do know they were married by the time Haile Selassie came to visit Jamaica in 1966.

37:15Chuck Bryant:And it was her influence. She went and saw Haile Selassie. I think we said in the Haile Selassie episode that Bob Marley didn't go, but Rita Marley did. And she came back like, guys, this is amazing. and she was the influence who connected Rastafarianism with reggae, at least as far as the Wailers go. And they were hugely influential in spreading that connection.

37:40Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. And like you mentioned, Catch a Fire in 72 is considered kind of their first full-blown reggae album. And I think you're right. I think it was like their fifth record as a group. I like that stuff too. I definitely had a Bob Marley phase in college Like literally every person on planet Earth. For sure. But now, like, I really, really like those early albums more than anything like that I, you know, my Legend cassette that I wore out, of course, in college, like everyone else had.

38:14Chuck Bryant:Well, wait a minute. Was that, I feel like they came out with a box set or something like that around that time. And that's what got everybody into Bob Marley again at that age.

38:25Josh Clark:I don't know. Was it Legend?

38:27Chuck Bryant:I thought for sure there was a box set.

38:28Josh Clark:Well, Legend was the sort of greatest hits, for lack of a better word. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, Legend was the one that everybody had because those were all the big, big songs. Right. But I really like that early stuff. And if you go listen, I think Talking Blues is a compilation too. That's the one where the songs are interspersed with Bob talking in the studio and stuff. And it's great. It's such a thick accent. You can hardly understand them.

38:56Chuck Bryant:Right.

38:57Josh Clark:Yeah. It's kind of great.

38:58Chuck Bryant:Yeah. And even I was reading a quote from Shabba Ranks about how like. Oh, man, Shabba Ranks. Like old dance hall guys need to lay off of the younger dance hall guys because they're doing their own thing. And the only reason I know that he said that was from the context of the article, like explaining that he said that because they had a block quote from him. And I'm like, I have no idea what Shabba Ranks just said. And I wasn't even listening. I was reading it. I could not make heads or tails out of it. It's one of my favorite.

39:28Josh Clark:The Jamaican accent is one of my favorite accents on planet Earth. I love it so much.

39:32Chuck Bryant:It's definitely up there with Scottish for me, too.

39:36Josh Clark:Did you see the, you ever seen this stuff on the Internet where people be like, if you want to say this in this accent, say these words in American English?

39:47Chuck Bryant:You taught me to say Michael Caine. You say my cocaine.

39:52Josh Clark:My cocaine.

39:53Chuck Bryant:No, my cocaine. Yeah, that's what I just said.

39:58Josh Clark:I saw one recently that was very funny, which was if you want to say Spice Girls in Scottish, you kind of have to quickly say Space Ghettos in English.

40:11Chuck Bryant:Let's hear it. So ask me what I did over the weekend. What did you do over the weekend, Chuck? I went to a concert and then asked me who I saw. Who'd you see, Chuck? The Space Girls. Oh, yeah, that was pretty dead on. Pretty good, huh? What did you have to drink there? Was it Urnbrew? I'm a non-drinker. What'd you say? I'm a non-drinker. You didn't drink any Urnbrew?

40:39Josh Clark:What is that?

40:40Chuck Bryant:Remember, that's like their drink. It's like some, almost an orangey, weird. Oh, I don't remember that. Oh, yeah, it's like Ironbrew, but they spell it like Urnbrew. Oh, I do remember it. Yeah. I didn't, yeah. It's something specific. I liked it, but it was like you could easily drink too many at once.

40:59Josh Clark:Yeah, I could see that.

41:01Chuck Bryant:So, oh yeah, we're talking about the mark. Roots Reggae, I think, is where we were headed. Yeah. So, yeah. What you have when you put together reggae, reggae music and Rastafarian perspectives and outlook and worldview, that's the word I was looking for, you have what's known as Roots Reggae. And what most people think of as reggae, what they're thinking of as roots reggae. Bob Marley and the Wailers, roots reggae from Catch a Fire on.

41:28Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. And, you know, Catch a Fire was 72. And like we said, that was their first big reggae album. But they actually, the Wailers broke up two years later in 74. Yeah. And most of the like the college got into Bob Marley stuff and the legend stuff is all post official like the Wailers as the Wailers. and you know all of them went on to do their own solo stuff obviously i think bob marley had six albums after that until uh we'll get to his death in 1981 uh but everyone did peter tosh who was he was the real deal man uh he had some great albums legalize it in 1976 is a great one yeah uh equal rights a year later and then um later on in the 80s he had a um a very sort of uh

42:13Chuck Bryant:political album called nuclear war that was really good yeah i had this peter tosh live show that i cannot find it drives me crazy it just it's like every other show from that tour exists except for that one and i can't remember what city it was um and it was a tape or something so yeah it was like a burned cd it was so good man you could just listen to that on repeat right yeah um but yes His lyrics were, and just the whole vibe was way more militant compared to Bob Marley. Yeah. So I've seen it described as like when you put Marley and Tosh together, and also Tosh, by the way, was the, like far and away the most musically gifted of the Wailers.

42:54Chuck Bryant:He could play all sorts of different stuff. He was also a good songwriter too. But when you put Bob Marley's lyrics together and Peter Tosh's lyrics together into one show or one album or whatever,

43:04Josh Clark:You had like a really rich, complex album with really cool themes in it, right?

43:12Chuck Bryant:And I saw it, there's a reggae archivist, which is, I'm not sure what you would go study in school to become that. A guy named Roger Steffens, and he likened Marley to Martin Luther King Jr. and Tosh to Malcolm X. And like they kind of had those, they approached things from those viewpoints. So Marley made the Wailers universally palatable and Peter Tosh inserted like that that kind of militant political bent that is also like a big part of reggae, too. Yeah.

43:45Josh Clark:And I think a lot of the credibility for, you know, at least as far as Jamaicans were concerned.

43:50Chuck Bryant:Yeah, I saw also that, like, apparently around the world, he's respected at least as much, if not more, than he is in Jamaica because he was, like, known to walk the walk. Yeah. Like, he was beaten nearly to death by the police several times. Legalize it was banned in Jamaica, so he took out a newspaper ad and printed the lyrics in it. Like, he was a cool dude for sure.

44:13Josh Clark:Yeah. All right, so I think we should take another break. Okay. And we will come back and talk a little bit about a guy named Jimmy Cliff right after this.

44:35Josh Clark:The Declaration, which is full of these beautifully rendered sentences and paragraphs about enlightenment ideals, does also have this darker history to it. Why is it important for the darker part of the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution? Why is it important that Americans know about it? Well, if we don't understand the full context in which our nation was founded, we won't understand the full context in which our nation now finds itself. I'm Rebecca Nagle, Goheen Dawadon, Jalakayetli Keila, citizen of Cherokee Nation. Are you guys big Chiefs fans? Hell yeah. This is First America, the true story of how the United States came to be and how we got to this present moment.

45:26Josh Clark:Listen to First America on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

45:35Chuck Bryant:30 years ago, an island off Manhattan almost brought down New York City.

45:41Josh Clark:Who will you trust? Your friends and neighbors? or you trust the people five miles overseas.

45:46Chuck Bryant:This is a story about neighbors turning on each other and what happens when a forgotten place decides it's had enough.

45:56Josh Clark:We reached for a feeling that exists in this city, but we're not stopping, are we?

46:05Chuck Bryant:I'm Ben Nadeff-Haffrey, and for my new series on revisionist history, I took a deep dive into Staten Island's attempt to secede from New York City in the 1990s, and what it all has to do with the politics of resentment that dominate America today. Listen to Revisionist History, The Staten Island Problem, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

46:34Chuck Bryant:I'm Mungus Shatigular, and I'm back with a new season of the podcast Skyline Drive. This time I'm diving into a rabbit hole of peptides, organoids, blood boys, blue zones, and brain replacement to try to understand what this longevity obsession is all about and what it really means to live forever for all of us.

46:54Josh Clark:I learned about some rad science. I can make a brain for you and then we can test what draw is the best for your brain as opposed to his brain.

47:06Chuck Bryant:Here's some hard truths.

47:07Josh Clark:I would expect Indians to age faster, but I did not expect it to be almost a four to five year acceleration.

47:16Chuck Bryant:And get myself into a world of trouble. I'd say probably start bone smashing. That doesn't work. Make it look more defined. They say it works. I don't know. Listen to Skyline Drive, How to Live Forever on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

47:52Josh Clark:All right, we're back.

47:53Chuck Bryant:Take it away, Josh. Chuck, have you ever heard a song by Jimmy Cliff?

48:01Josh Clark:Yeah, I like Jimmy Cliff. Hurricane Hattie was his first big hit in 1962. He was just a kid. He's like 18 years old. And he moved to London, and he got a lot more reggae after he moved to London. And he was a big sort of proselytizer for reggae. Kind of took it around the world in a lot of ways. And one way he did so was in a movie, which I have not seen. It was one that's always been on my list. But the harder they come in 1972, is definitely a cult classic and was a big, not a huge American hit, but on the movie scene, like to film lovers it was.

48:41Chuck Bryant:Yeah, it's also widely considered one of the best soundtracks too.

48:45Josh Clark:Yeah.

48:45Chuck Bryant:Because it's about reggae and the reggae music industry and Kingston and the way things are in Kingston. And it's like Jimmy Cliff plays kind of a bandit to an extent. Yeah. Yeah, I haven't seen it either, but it's, I just know it's, like you said, a cult classic. And that, as much as, you know, I think simultaneous to Bob Marley touring the world and the Wailers, like that movie coming out and being seen outside of Jamaica, like really helped spread the concept of reggae and what it was all about.

49:21Josh Clark:Yeah. I mean, when you've got Siskel and Ebert reviewing The Harder They Come on their TV show, like it's spreading fairly mainstream, you know?

49:28Chuck Bryant:Two thumbs up, if I'm not mistaken.

49:31Josh Clark:Well, I don't know. I know Ebert gave it a thumbs up, but I don't know about Siskel. We'll have to go back and look.

49:36Chuck Bryant:I know I've told you this before, but do you know that Gene Siskel's stated favorite movie was Saturday Night Fever?

49:43Josh Clark:Yeah.

49:44Chuck Bryant:And he owned the white suit that Travolta wore in Saturday Night Fever? Yeah.

49:48Josh Clark:That was in our disco episode.

49:50Chuck Bryant:Okay. But it's just such a great fact. Yeah.

49:53Josh Clark:And you know what? Since that episode, I've had, I copy-pasted from the original New York Times article that inspired Saturday Night Fever. It's been sitting on my desktop on my computer for like 10 years. Unread.

50:08Chuck Bryant:Oh, it's good. Especially if you go into it knowing it's just one big lie, it's actually even better. Oh, was it?

50:16Josh Clark:I don't remember that part.

50:18Chuck Bryant:Oh, I'm sorry. I wish I could take that back. I thought you did.

50:22Josh Clark:No, that's all right.

50:23Chuck Bryant:I'm sorry.

50:23Josh Clark:I mean, I'll still read it.

50:24Chuck Bryant:Okay. It's worth reading.

50:26Josh Clark:I'll read it 10 years from now, and I'll forget by then.

50:27Chuck Bryant:Okay, cool. But you'll never forget that Gene Siskel fact I like to bust out every few years.

50:32Josh Clark:That's right. So we should talk a little bit more about, I guess we talked a little bit about the violence that was going on when reggae was born in Kingston. But over the years, reggae has just sort of been intertwined with a lot of political violence and violent clashes. especially within the country politically. And, you know, they were always in the middle of it. And Bob Marley was usually in the middle of it trying to bring people together. In 1976, they were in the middle of a clash between the People's National Party, which was the ruling party at the time, and their opponents. And Bob Marley went to play an anti-violence concert, and some of the people dragged him on that for, like, say, no, oh, like you're siding with the PNP and Prime Minister Michael Manley just by even playing this event.

51:24So I think he'd never, I think there was a lot of frustration there

51:28Josh Clark:judging from the documentary about like trying to do the right thing by bringing people together, but some people on the opposition being like, you can't even like talk to the other side.

51:37Chuck Bryant:Yeah, and the PNP, the ruling party, they were left wing. It was a socialist experiment I essentially saw. And one reason a lot of people point to is why there was so much unrest and violent clashes and all that was because the CIA was running around trying to destabilize the country because it was moving to the left rather than the right. That concert you mentioned that Bob Marley was frustrated about, it seeming like he was kind of like a handmaiden or whatever to the unpopular prime minister. Two days before, he was shot. He was shot. Rita was shot. two other people were shot in his home. And after being shot in the chest and the shoulder, he still went on and played that show.

52:23Josh Clark:Yeah, it was incredible. Two years after that, in 1978, he had the very famous One Love concert because there was still that divided political climate. And once again, Bob Marley's there in the middle trying to make peace. And he brought the two guys together. He brought Prime Minister Manley together with Edward, I think, Siga of the Jamaican Labor Party. And that was a huge, huge deal.

52:48Chuck Bryant:Yeah, there's a very famous picture of them holding hands because Bob Marley's making them. Yeah, exactly. So Marley actually died of a cancerous growth that started on his toe that he didn't get looked at because he thought it was an old soccer injury. And he actually collapsed in Central Park after a pretty great show in Madison Square Garden.

53:12Josh Clark:Yeah, he opened up for the Commodores and apparently blew the Commodores off the stage. And the real sad thing about his death is that from everything I saw was that that was, he probably could have been very successfully treated for cancer had he gotten it looked at earlier on.

53:31Chuck Bryant:Yeah, I saw the survival rate for black men from that particular type of cancer is like 70%. So yeah, that sucks. But he thought it was a soccer injury, I think.

53:40Josh Clark:I'm trying to, I mean, is that what you said? Yeah. I don't remember. For some reason, I thought it had something to do with religion, but maybe I'm just not remembering right about that part.

53:52Chuck Bryant:Maybe he did so well in the game, he considered it a religious experience. Or it might have been a little bit of both. So Bob Marley was shot, but he didn't die from that. He died from natural causes. Peter Tosh and two years after Peter Tosh, King Tubby, were both murdered by gunmen. That's how their lives ended. I mean, nowadays, there's a lot of reggae artists who've come along over the years. This is not like, there was still rather limited reggae artists, a limited number. So two major reggae stars being murdered is actually pretty significant.

54:31Josh Clark:Oh, for sure. Peter Tosh's murder was brutal. Like he had these three guys that busted in, basically held him hostage in his house and tortured him, trying to get money from him. And as people like friends would come by the house just through the course of the day, they would be taken in and held hostage. And eventually, like, there was just a big, like, kind of crazy shootout and he was shot in the head. It was brutal.

54:55Chuck Bryant:Yeah, the worst thing about that, aside from the fact that he was murdered, his murderer was a guy named Dennis Lobin. And Lepo was what people called him. And he knew that Peter Tosh had money because he had gotten out of prison. And Peter Tosh gave him a place to stay, fed him, took care of him to help him get back on his feet. And that's how Lepo Lobin repaid him, by murdering him because he was trying to rob him for more money.

55:19Josh Clark:Yeah, pretty brutal.

55:21Chuck Bryant:Yeah. And then King Tubby was murdered in what they think was a botched robbery in 1989.

55:26Josh Clark:Well, that's essentially what this was with Tosh, too. Because the whole time they were just trying to get money that he said he didn't have at the house.

55:32Chuck Bryant:Yeah, I guess so.

55:34Josh Clark:All right, so we mentioned London earlier. London is probably like the second city of reggae after Kingston.

55:42Chuck Bryant:It's the Chicago of reggae. Yeah.

55:46Josh Clark:So because of what's called the Windrush Generation, which is when Caribbean immigrants post-World War II from British colonies and former colonies, they started moving elsewhere, and a lot of them arrived in the U.K. and that came over, you know, their music and their culture and their food and everything came over and that happened in London and there were all of a sudden a bunch of, well, not, it sort of depends, like sometimes white London acts, sometimes Londoners that were black, depending on the band, but like I mentioned, the police and the specials and Madness, obviously, they were in UB40 and, you know, those ended up being like really big bands, but they also influenced like the punk scene with the Clash and the Sex Pistols even.

56:32Chuck Bryant:Yeah, Johnny Rotten was heavily influenced. He went on to found Public Image Limited, and thanks to him, Johnny Rotten, liking reggae, and Ja Wobble, the bassist, really liking dub reggae, PIL had a certain reggae, dub reggae thing going on. So hats off to reggae for giving us Public Image Limited.

56:54Josh Clark:And, you know, it wasn't just London. And like, you know, we can't get into all this like super in a super detailed way, but it, you know, reggae went across Africa. There were like native born South African artists that like became reggae stars. I know the Ivory Coast really got into the Rastafari culture for a while.

57:14Chuck Bryant:Yeah, no, for sure. And some of them, the taking up that kind of political causes and calls for revolution. some have actually happened to become political leaders in their country like Bobby Wiene of Uganda or Shadowale in Ghana like these are reggae artists who actually have talked the talk and they're now political whether they like it or not

57:39Josh Clark:New Zealand we're looking at you because who knew I didn't know in 1979 Bob Marley played in Auckland and it kind of he kind of caught a fire there and maori musicians sort of adopted reggae for a while and yeah you know they brought their own thing like it you know always happens when you sort of adopt a music they brought their own vocal harmonies and stuff but they they also like everywhere reggae went that that it caught fire i think people except in college dorms in the 80s and 90s in the united states there was a big like um identification with the the politics sort of the bottom-up politics of it all.

58:17Chuck Bryant:Right. Yeah. Yeah, that was kind of lost on the dorm crowd,

58:21Josh Clark:wasn't it? I mean, I think we all like to think we were down with the movement, but we just wanted the bumper stickers.

58:28Chuck Bryant:But I'm sure it definitely helped shape our world views as well.

58:32Josh Clark:Yeah, I think it opened us up to other things for sure.

58:35Chuck Bryant:There are two other things that you can draw a direct line to from reggae to current music. One is hip-hop, like you said, and that line seems to go through DJ Kool Hurt, who is definitely prominently featured in our hip-hop episode because he was actually born in Kingston, I think, and ended up in the Bronx. And it just so happened that within a few years of DJ Kool Herc moving to the Bronx, hip-hop came up in New York out of nowhere. So they think that it was him.

59:04Josh Clark:Yeah, I mean, he didn't come to the Bronx until he was 12. So he had a lot of years in Jamaica to bring that influence. And yeah, like I said, that toasting, Jamaican toasting tradition came right along with them.

59:16Chuck Bryant:Yeah, and remember you talked about how Dub would strip the vocals out of music so you had instrumental music. He would do that with two turntables and a microphone, as Beck said.

59:27Josh Clark:That's right. Other places, Panama, like Central and South America, had a big thing they called Reggae en Español. And Puerto Rico, they had like an underground Spanish language like reggae rap called reggaeton. that came along and like you can draw a direct line from that to somebody like bad bunny. Yeah.

59:50Chuck Bryant:I, I think it's even like the, they call bad bunnies music reggaeton.

59:54Josh Clark:Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

59:57Chuck Bryant:boy,

59:57Josh Clark:that Superbowl performance was so fun. Yeah.

1:00:00Chuck Bryant:He really did set the world on fire.

1:00:03Josh Clark:I thought it was great. It was a lot of fun. Yeah.

1:00:05Chuck Bryant:Like he, he prefigured Erling Haaland. He was like the Erling Haaland of Superbowl halftime shows. so uh chuck favorite reggae band of all time uh i mean early whalers for sure okay i'm going with burning spear oh yeah um chuck did you like the 90s sky revival uh nah i wasn't into that me either was my bag i got us to um listener mail now i managed to unlock it for us oh okay

1:00:39Josh Clark:Are we there?

1:00:40Chuck Bryant:Yeah, because back in 2008, one of us predicted that we would bag on the 90s, mid-90s Ska Reviver in one of our episodes, and that would trigger Listener Mail.

1:00:55Josh Clark:All right. We got a short one here because this episode is a little longer. It's just a quick correction from Dave in California. He said, hey, guys, in the Eleanor Roosevelt episode, instead of in flagrante delicto, which is the common term, Josh coined coined the term in flagrante delicato. Sure. Which could perhaps mean gently a fire, which Dave says is actually not entirely inappropriate, perhaps.

1:01:25Chuck Bryant:Right. That's what I kind of what I thought. I didn't realize it was delicto. What does delecto mean? Like, er, er, er. I don't know. On fire. Yeah, what does delecto mean, Chuck? You don't know?

1:01:39Josh Clark:Delicto. Well, I think it means caught in the act, which is what that means as a phrase.

1:01:44Chuck Bryant:Oh, okay. No, I see that it's, yeah, caught red-handed. Yeah. All right.

1:01:52Josh Clark:That's fine, but I like mine better. Well, I think a Stuff You Should Know t-shirt should clearly be in flagrante delicado.

1:01:59Chuck Bryant:Yeah, the gentle fire. Yeah, the soft touch. Lay down by the gentle fire with me, baby. You got anything else? I got nothing else. I hope we did reggae justice. Oh, well, I think we did. I hope so, too. Yeah. I feel like every time I reassure you, I'm setting us up for people to be like, you guys suck. You did a terrible job. So I'm just going to say, I hope so, too. How about that?

1:02:24Josh Clark:Yeah. Actually, what usually happens is we get like, hey, you guys did a pretty good job. But also there's this, this, and this, which is exactly what we want.

1:02:31Chuck Bryant:Yes, but usually it's from experts, and we love that too. That's true. All right. Well, if you want to get in touch with us like Dave, you said? Yeah, Dave. Well, you can email us just like Dave did. Send it off to stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com.

1:02:49Josh Clark:Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

1:03:04Chuck Bryant:Big color, bigger savings.

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1:03:35Chuck Bryant:30 years ago, an island off Manhattan almost brought down New York City.

1:03:39Josh Clark:Who will you trust? Your friends and neighbors? Or will you trust the people five miles overseas?

1:03:44Chuck Bryant:This is a story about neighbors turning on each other. And what happens when a forgotten place decides it's had enough.

1:03:52Josh Clark:But we're not stopping, are we? No!

1:03:56Chuck Bryant:Listen to Revisionist History, The Staten Island Problem, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Mange Shatigular, and I'm back with a new season of my podcast, Skyline Drive. This time I talk to scientists, biopunks, curmudgeons, blues owners, super seniors, and Goa's top cryotherapy lab to try to understand this obsession with living forever and what it means for all of us. And I get into a bit of trouble along the way. I'd say probably start bone smashing. That doesn't work. Make it look more defined. They say it works. I don't know. Listen to Skyline Drive, How to Live Forever on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:04:36Chuck Bryant:This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.