Gavin B.

The "Golden Age of Reggae" is a term I've used to cover the era from roughly 1973 until 1986 which was the era when roots reggae, dub and dancehall were in their prime. It's also the era when reggae music went international and reggae musicians like Bob Marley, Jimmy Cliff, Burning Spear. Peter Tosh, U-Roy, Gregory Isaacs, Steel Pulse and Culture brought reggae music to the attention of people all over the world.

Reggae music didn't really exist before 1970 when the Wailer's drummer Carlton Barret developed the slower one-drop drumming riddim that distinguished reggae music from faster ska riddim. During the next 2 or 3 years other Jamiacan drummers, most notably, Horsemouth Wallace and Sly Dunbar adopted the one-drop riddim and by then end of 1972, this distinctive one-drop riddim music with a Rastafarian consciouness became known as "reggae" all over Jamaica.

Chris Blackwell and Island Records changed everything. Blackwell, a British national Jamaican citizen founded Island Records. Island Records was the most successful indie rock label of the 60s. Blackwell signed such rock stars as the Spencer Davis Group, Traffic, Fairport Convention, King Crimson, and Emerson Lake and Palmer to Island Records.

As a sideline, Blackwell had been recording ska music in Jamaica since 1959 and Blackwell became the most prominent figure in the rise of reggae. Blackwell founded Trojan Records to distribute ska music in the UK where it developed a small but devoted following among West Indian expatriates and a youthful audience of skinheads and mods. Because of his involvement in early ska music scene, Blackwell became the most prominent promoter of reggae music outside of Jamaica almost by default. His only competitor was Richard Branson, another British national who was scouting Jamaica for reggae talent for his newly founded Virgin Records.

In 1973 Blackwell's Island Films released the theatrical film The Harder They Come, and in the same year Island Records released Bob Marley and the Wailers' first globally distributed major label album, Catch A Fire. Both the film and the album marked ground zero in the rise of reggae music to international prominence. Few people outside of Jamaica knew what reggae music was before The Harder They Come and Catch A Fire were released.

Reggae music received even wider international attention when Eric Clapton recorded a version of Marley's song I Shot the Sheriff on his 461 Ocean Blvd. album a year later in 1974. Clapton was still the most influential rock guitarist of that era and he served as a gateway to introduce the music of Bob Marley to millions of rock music fans all over the world.

Roots reggae music was at it's peak between 1977 and 1982 when Bob Marley and the Wailers, Burning Spear and Peter Tosh were doing extensive American and European tours and the newly arrived punk music scene began to incorporate the one-drop and dub effects of the reggae idom into their highly stylized rock music. The Clash produced the Black Market extended play single with dub oriented producer Mikey Dread at the controls, Public Image experimented with dub on their Metal Box album and the Specials founded 2-Tone Records and began recording like minded ska and reggae oriented groups like the English Beat, Madness and the Selector.

I was a big fan of punk and the 2-Tone bands but I most of the early 80s ingoring "new wave" music and listening to dub music and the early dancehall deejays, like U-Roy, I-Roy, Big Youth and Mikey Dread. My biggest reggae hero was, and still is the mighty U-Roy who created the dancehall style during the ska era, became the first reggae (and still the best) reggae dancehall deejay and is currently aninfluential force on the electronica scene with his Love Trio In Dub group.

It's all too easy to say that the decline of reggae began with Marley's death in 1981, however Bob's presence was a central force in maintiaing the socially conscious integrity of roots reggae.

Ironically it was the success of reggae that contributed to it's decline. The Jamaican deejay music and dub music became a big influence on the rising American hip hop and rap music scene, in the late Seventies. As a result, reggae producers began experimenting with different tempos and began adding synthesizer tap loops to dancehall music. Roots reggae was mutating into a form of tropical hip hop. As hip hop went international, the one-drop riddims of real roots reggae got lost in the mix.

The "Golden Age" ended around 1986 with the rise of the 165 beats per minute of the sleng teng riddim and the increasing prominence of the dancehall deejays who toasted in the boastful and misogynistic slackness deejay style instead of the roots conciousness style of the early deejays like U-Roy, I-Roy and Big Youth. Slackness is a Jamican term for rude boy behavior.

There really hasn't been a significant international roots reggae star to emerge from Jamaica since the early 80s. The elder statesmen U-Roy is now 67 years old, Burning Spear is 62 years old and the last young turks of the early 80s dub music movement like U-Brown & the Mad Professor are now in their early 50s.

There has been a small revival of both dub and roots reggae the past year but many of the artists are outside Jamaica and artists from the UK, France, Africa and Australia have become a prominent force is this revival . One example is the Austrailan group, the Moonraisers who combine reggae music with their own native Aborigine music.

The video below is an incredible live performance of the Moonraisers doing their song Slave Station.