Mobility and Identity in Europe by Andre Novoa

Author:Andre Novoa [Novoa, Andre]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, General, Sociology
ISBN: 9781315278919
Google: E7V2DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-11-06T03:43:47+00:00

The Ratazanas

The Ratazanas were a band that saw itself as part of the 60s Jamaican Revivalist music scene. This scene has been an eminently translocal one, along the lines of the Goth scene, the Riot Grrrl movement, or anarcho-punk, as described and analysed in Bennett and Peterson’s edited volume, referring to the “widely scattered local scenes drawn into regular communication around a distinctive form of music and lifestyle” (2004: 6). This was precisely the case for The Ratazanas. The band inserted itself into a translocal music niche that had its own channels of communication (certain websites, labels), its own typical venues in various towns and cities, and a certain style of dress and addressing. This scene has been based on a cult of Jamaican music from the 60s, such as ska, rocksteady and early reggae, demarcating itself from the usual reggae-dreadlock movement and associated scenes. Although making a revival of Jamaican genres, this scene’s reverence of Rastafarianism has been marginal. Instead, its heroes have been the likes of the Skatalites, Alton Ellis or Derrick Morgan, all of which are better described as vernacular versions/variations of American jazz and soul music.

In every case, what must be emphasised here is how this music scene has generally fallen under the umbrella of the rock/pop world, however difficult it might be to classify such designation. Indeed, trying to define the realm of rock and pop has been a gruesome task, on the accounts of the endless genres and lifestyles that it contains within. One of the authors who tried to, nevertheless, was Jason Toynbee, who in 2000 came up with characterisation that informs the remainder of this chapter:

Popular music differs from both folk and classical in that it developed historically in and through the mass media. Its symptomatic artefact, the record, represents at one and the same time a type of performance and a means of communication. Composition methods vary in pop, from prior inscription as in the case of classical music, to different kinds of integrated composition and the performance involving the use of reproductive technologies. The latter has virtually replaced the former in the last 35 years of the century. Socially, popular music has a mixed constituency which includes large sections of the middle class, as well as working class and diasporic communities. Class and ethnicity are articulated in complex ways in popular music. However, we can note two divergent tendencies. On the one hand styles within pop serve to identify and represent particular social groups in their resistance to exclusion and dominant cultural values – black people, gays, certain youth subcultures and, much more infrequently, women. On the other there is a strong hegemonic thrust towards a mainstream, a desire for popular music which would sing for all the people.

(2000: xix)

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