Ask a lot of people to name reggae acts, and they’ll stop at one. . .Marley of course.
Some people might even kow who Peter Tosh is, or be able to name some band that played their college town a lot, or be able to toss UB-40 into the discussion.
But, really, even people who don’t follow country music or rap or pop or rock or blues or jazz could rattle off 5-10 people in any of those genres.
I also know there are other musical genres that people are woefully ignorant of, but that’s just plain old ignorance. Anyone with any passing knowledge of pop music knows Bob Marley, and can easily identify a song as beloning to the genre “reggae”.
And it’s not like he had just one crossover hit. He’s got a slew of songs that are used in commercials, movies, tv shows, etc. But, outside of “Red Red Wine”, I really can’t think of another reggae song that had much crossover appeal. And that’s not even one of UB 40’s songs.
I’m not asking for reggae fans to chime in with the 50 bands they know off the top of their heads. I know they’re out there, but you really can’t deny that there’s no other genre with one guy who has such a lion share of the public connection with that genre.
This isn’t my opinion, but I think that the average music listener thinks all reggae sounds the same, so if you buy a Bob Marley’s greatest hits CD, you’ve pretty much covered the genre.
A lot of average music listeners think all rap sounds the same, but they can still name Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Ice Cube, LL, Dre, Beasties, several more, and can sing along to a few rap tuns.
I’d say that there are a few more acts with some big name recognition and contributions to the genre:
most importantly Toots & the Maytals, but you can’t discount Burning Spear, Black Uhuru and the like.
One thing I’ve noticed in all my time as a touring musician, is that there ever only seems to be one or two well-known regional reggae acts per geographic area. But there’s always one or two…
Without Marley and the Wailers, reggae wouldn’t be a genre. Just like without Nirvana, there would have been a Seattle scene, but no grunge.
Without Marley, reggae is just a variant of ska/ dancehall/ rocksteady. Slower tempo, less frisky bass, religious themes. It’s a style within Jamaican music. Marley and the Wailers’ excellence made reggae.
Well, if you don’t scratch too far beneath the surface (like the average music listener), it really does pretty much sound the same. Same beat, same look, same lyrical themes, etc. I suppose marketing has something to do with it. White suburban teenagers aren’t buying into the myth, so it’s not going anywhere.
The only country acts I could name off the top of my head are Hank Williams, Willie Nelson & The Dixie Chicks. I could name a dozen reggae bands quite easily. But I see your general point.
Damn, I must dig out the LKJ… walks off humming “Englan’ is a …”
I disagree. Marley was a musical genuis, but if it wasn’t him, Toots and the Maytals would have been the breakthrough act. Their song “Do the Reggay” named the genre in 1968 (or around that time).
Addressing the larger question, I don’t think the genre never got any radio penetration in America until Clapton’s awful cover of “I Shot the Sherriff”. Even then it was treated as a novelty–more like Tiny Tim than the Beatles. In England, on the other hand, ska was played on radio much earlier, and Desmond Dekker’s “The Israelites” was the first full-on reggae record to get wide exposure. That was about five years before Marley’s Island records debut Catch a Fire. It’s also interesting to note that the reggae influence on punk came exclusively from England until Bad Brains came along.
I’ve noticed the same thing. In my area I can go out on any given weekend and pick from 10 different blues bands. The same is true for rock bands, indie bands, country bands, etc. Heck, I happen to like cajun/zydeco music and there are 4 different bands that perform regularly in that genre. But reggae? Pittsburgh has one reggae band and they have been around forever, doing covers. :mad:
I think reggae as the passive fan knows it died with Marley. Punk rock had its original scene, died, and was resurrected as something still called punk but constantly evolving. Reggae, on the other hand, seems to have had its original scene, died, and was resurrected as a younger generation trying to redo what was already done in the 60s and 70s.
There are tons of Marley cover bands and Marley wannabes out there, and last I knew Toots still toured his hits, but no one (that I know of) is doing what reggae should have evolved into by now. They’re doing reggae-rap (Matis Yahu), reggae-rock (311), reggae-punk (Sublime), reggae-ska (every ska band), reggae-dance (Daddy Yankee, Sean Paul), or . . . Marley covers.
This is false, and actually helps make the OP’s (somewhat overstated) point. Marley wasn’t even the “breakthrough” reggae phenomenon in the States. That would be the soundtrack to The Harder They Come. Lots of people were listening to Jimmy Cliff years before Marley went solo; and while the Wailers were considered important, they were far from monolithic.
Thank you. I always forget about Jimmy Cliff, maybe because I don’t like him. But you’re totally right. Did “The Harder They Come” or anything else off that soundtrack (“Pressure Drop”, the greatest reggae song of all time IMHO, was on that soundtrack) ever get played on the radio in America back in the day?
Reggae isn’t played much, if at all, on any of the radio stations I listen to. Occasionally I’ll hit an hour or two on NPR but I never hear who the artists are and no one stands out enough for me to research it on my own. Reggae doesn’t get media coverage as well. It’s pretty easy for someone like me, who doesn’t pay attention to the genre, to have almost no clue which bands are the most popular.
How many Christian rock bands can you name? Legendary sitar players? ANY throat singers? The list can go on.
Well Xian rock is just a sub-genre of rock. There’s nothing new.
As for things like “throat singing” and “sitar playing”, the difference with Reggae is that there has been major integration of Marley’s music into American pop culture, but the list pretty much stops with him.
Reggae is it’s own thing but Marley’s presence – at least on the American surface – IS monolithic. It’s as if in Rock, The Beatles, The Stones, Led Zep, and The Who were all a single band.
That is. . .you don’t need to delve into the genre to get beyond one big name. You don’t need to be a student just of that area.
Just from a cursory exposure to American pop culture, who can’t name 5 big R&B acts? 5 big country acts? 5 big names from jazz?
And, even if you want to get into niches of American pop music, nothing is so dominated by a single act like reggae. Shit, it’s easier to name 5 beach blond dancing pop divas than 5 reggae acts at all. It’s easier to name several “crooners” or “death metal bands”.
That doesn’t negate my point at all. And Daddy Yankee and Sean Paul are not “dancehall”. Daddy Yankee, as mentioned, is reggaeton (which is closely related to and directly descended from reggae no matter what KarlGrenze is trying to imply) and Sean Paul is . . . something else.
1.) I claimed that the Wailers were not monolithic. Furthermore, they released their first record in 1973, a year after THTC was released. Marley became famous after “No Woman, No Cry” became a hit in the UK in 1975.
2.) If you’re talking about the music itself, then the claim that Marley is monolithic in reggae is just plain wrong. If you’re talking about what most people perceive to be the case, then your point is miusically trivial, and depends on the ignorance of most people. Marley was not the be-all-end-all of reggae, great though he was.
Can those of us who’ve seen Genghis Blues still answer that last question?
The band didn’t make it big in the States until pretty late in the day, with Rastaman Vibration. My personal guess, because I don’t know the sales figures, is that their status as ‘The Reggae Band’ in this country was cemented not during the band’s career, but by the popularity of the Legend compilation album.
I’ll add that a lot of reggae fans always thought Marley was somewhat overrated, and it’s easy to find, among reggae fans, those who think Toots and the Maytals, or even Peter Tosh, were better. And I’m far from alone, among reggae fans, in thinking that Marley never made an album this good.
