The Nineties by John Robb

Author:John Robb [Robb, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 1999-09-02T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

RAGGA

Yet another style that burst from the never-ending reggae breeding ground, Ragga was the form’s answer to the digitalization of studio technology. Its influence can be felt on the fringes of the pop scene and it has created its canyon of classic trax . . .

Flip on a pirate station and you can hear some amazing music going down. Fractured beats, heavy bottom end and garrulous cracked vocals, this sounds like true nineties music. Rooting back to Wayne Smith’s 1985 ‘Under me Sleng Teng’, a track that was put together after someone in Prince Jammy’s Kingston Jamaica studio found a preset rhythm pattern on a Casio keyboard and, linking it to a keyboard bassline, came up with the first fully digital reggae backing track. With Smith’s added vocal, a whole new form of music had come about.

Reggae, one of the most influential forms of music in the world, has seen some spectacular innovations absorbed by the mainstream musics, from dub plates, remixers, 12-inch singles even to rappers. It’s been there first – an incredible rush of ideas from one small island in the West Indies. With the new electronics that were pouring into studios head on, it was inevitable that reggae would eventually fuse with the possibilities of digital. The key reggae/dub studios were hives of experimentation: even if these guys hit on a successful formulae and knocked out as many versions of it as they could get away with, they would always be looking for some way to change the form, go somewhere else.

When that Casio rhythm pattern kicked in back in ’85, you can just see them working out the possibilities, a whole new genre of music created from one afternoon’s messing about.

Not bad work for a day!

Ragga has entered the musical mainstream, touching on all sorts of variable areas of pop. The Prodigy are a band that have obviously been influenced by the manic break beats. The Essex outfit just speeded up the loops, giving their music an even more demented freak beat edge. Rapper Busta Rhymes has copped some of Ragga’s flavours in his manic vocal delivery. With its sparse rhythms and aggressive vocalizing, Ragga picked up dancehall, the early organic version. Yelloman, Barrington Levi, General Echo, Junior Reid, Josey Wales were the prime practitioners of the form, full-on vocalizing often with leery lyrics over stripped-down simple rhythms, quite often recorded at Prince Jammy’s studio. It was a raw development on the reggae front.

All Ragga was the same kinda guff cranked with a digital edge instead of using established dub plates. The new electronic form just cranked things that little harder.

The new form made big localized stars of Shabba Ranks, General Levi, Cutty Ranks, Beenie Man and Bounty Killer, as well as fuelling the distinctive sounds of records by Buju Banton and Sizla.

Banton himself has quite often been the centre of controversy, with his pointlessly homophobic lyrics creating a media storm. His coarse vocals and tuff street commentary have made him a reggae superstar and

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.