When looking back the late late 70ies and early 80ies were
the times with Reggae at
its highest commercial success, Bob
Marley at his biggest popularity - and the
beginning of
Reggae's unstoppable demise and sell-out. But that doesn't
mean that
only bad music was released, at least not at the
beginning of this process.
CHANNEL ONE
The all dominating studio of that era was without any doubt
the CHANNEL ONE
STUDIO
run by Joe Joe Hookim. Hookim and his
three brothers started out with controlling
one-armed bandits
and jukeboxes but when gaming machines were outruled by the
government in 1970 they branched off and set up their own
recording studio in the
heart of the Kingston ghetto on
Maxfield Avenue. After some releases on different
labels they
scored a big success in 1976 with the MIGHTY DIAMONDS' "Right
Time".
Important for this success was without any doubt the
militant
'ROCKERS' rhythm style
of Sly & Robbie, drum and
bass players with
the Revolutionaries, the Channel One in-
house band.
But Sly & Robbie soon left the Jamaican scene to produce
their own stuff big time for
the ISLAND major label or to
appear as backing band for stars of this time like Grace
Jones or even Joe Cocker (!).
So another band appeared on
the scene that stands like
no other for the characteristic
ChANNEL ONE sound: the ROOTS RADICS. Their
minimalistic,
bone dry and extremely tight style - produced by a former
employee of
King Tubby's named SCIENTIST - was something
completely different after the fast
double-drumming of Sly
Dunbar and established CHANNEL ONE as THE hit machine in
Jamaica and also overseas. The feel of their sound is quite
relaxed but
although the
tempo is quite slow the tracks are
full of tension and
heavyness,
also due to the
SCIENTIST's
sophisticated
production.
With enough space
between the beats
for
ecstatic effect usage and great hypnotic qualities the
Roots Radics contributed
highly to
the numerous (and highly
recommended!)
Dub-LPs by SCIENTIST. This
unmistakeble sound
dominated the charts then and is tightly linked with most of
the hit productions of that time, which were nothing else but
the bestselling
phenomenon called 'Dancehall'.
RECORDS:
Check out the records of TRISTON PALMA, 'Joker Smoker' being
one of his biggest hits
and best tracks, pure CHANNEL ONE!
There are also many compilations around.
A vast improvement was also made by CHANNEL ONE with the
introduction of the 12"
45rpm record, a format that is in
use until today, with much superior dynamic and
much more
bass and treble.
To write something on Dancehall as a musical style is a bit
tricky to me because -
unlike other unique styles like dub
or roots reggae - it is not clearly identified by
musical
novelties (in the opposite!) but by content and name only,
and this moreover
in a negative
context.
First of all Dancehall is a result of two things: social
changes and technical
improvement. While the technical side
led to a change in sound with things like a 16-
track mixing
desk (see the CHANNEL ONE
part for more) the social changes
brought the
different content and in the end - in an indirect
way - an even more different sound.
After the riots and the almost civil war like state in
Jamaica in
the late 70ies, a
new government decided to
collaborate big
with the USA and at the same time the
political situation in
South
America changed, which together
led to a massive flood
of hard drugs like cocaine and heroin
into Jamaica. The
'Holy
Weed' and also
Rastafari ideology
lost
its importance and influence. Many young people
discarded the
religion of
their parents as oudated, seeking
pure
entertainment without
any deeper
sense. Materialistic
values
replaced the former religious ones
and showing off
with cars,
clothing or sexual boasting became the
fashion of
the time.
For
Jah came
money and for the Homeland
Africa the
biggest
dick,
a
process that proved to be a
fatal
point of no
return
for
Reggae and the reason for the sad and
sorry state
of it
today.
The term 'dancehall' just names the place where all the
showing off is present in
essence: the dancehall. But this is
nothing new at all, since Jamaican music always
worked via
the dancehall, so the name of a whole musical era should hint
at some
novelties in musical respect. But these are also very
few:
somebody in the dancehall
sang over riddim tracks and
interacted a lot with the audience, announcing records,
rewinding them, replaying them and
that's basically about it.
The sung melodies were
quite simple and
crowd-pleasingly
catchy so dancehall style singing and performing is
nothing
else but a
singing DJ, a Singjay so to speak. Not much new in
musical respect
too. To me Dancehall is just showing off to
a sound established by Channel One, a
sound that quite soon
lost all motivation for experiment - although new means of
production offered endless new possibilities - and became
extremely
superficial
due
to the mass marketing demands.
The main novelty was the change in content: the roots lyrics
were replaced by macho
lyrics about the number of bitches
done last night,
the money in the pocket or the
toughness
while sitting in
a fat car, the same boring and
senseless
stuff that is
ever
present in today's
HipHop music.
The main
aim of Dancehall
was to sell rather
than to give a
message
(Greensleeves was
one of the biggest labels of
that
time
worldwide!) which is
achieved by pleasing as much
people
as
possible and following
the same patterns all main
stream
music follows. In this
process Dancehall finally
lost all
the deepness and power
Reggae had
until then and I hate
(most) Dancehall for
these
very reasons, being
the
uninteresting and mindless shit that
it is. And for
these
very reasons Dancehall is more a
phenomenon of
mass marketing
than musical
innovation that
proves until
today (together
with Raggamuffin) that it killed
Reggae
and
everything that
made Jamaican music great.
RECORDS:
Junjo Lawes was the hottest producer in the early 80ies and
many artists
like
Barrington Levy, Eek A Mouse or Clint
Eastwood
became
stars with his productions
while veterans
like Alton Ellis
or John Holt had combacks. Among the earlier
of these
releases are
some few good musical exceptions: John
Holt's
'Police In
Helicopter'-LP, Eek A Mouse's 'Wa Do Dem'
(with
his alltime classic 'Ganja
Smuggling') or Sugar
Minott's
'Slice Of The Cake' have all the true Channel One
sound, laid
back and heavy at the same time.
Of course there are many more exceptions for interesting
Dancehall
but with later
years these become almost non-present which is the reason for my point of view: due
to
the superficialness of Dancehall and later Raggamuffin today
almost no Reggae that
possesses the same power as before is
released - although with the Digital Revolution
endless new
means for the creation of interesting Reggae music
were
available at a
good moment. And that is
- sadly! - Dancehalls
most profound
achievement.