Reggae: Kingston’s Gift to the World

Although it was built atop some musical styles that came before, reggae is mostly its own thing. It evolved as local music in the Trenchtown neighborhood in Kingston, Jamaica but after Bob Marley and the Wailers came along, it became a global phenomenon. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:52Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 2:02Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. She even said Yaman right before we started recording because this is Stuff You Should Know, reggae edition.

• 2:13Speaker 02

  That's right. And here's a little thing you probably didn't even notice, my friend, is we always clap on the count of three when we go to record so we can sync our sound. Here's a little behind the scenes for you, everybody.

• 2:27Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 2:28Speaker 02

  But I clapped on the four.

• 2:31Josh Clark?

  Did you?

• 2:33Speaker 02

  Just, you know, make it super reggae.

• 2:36Josh Clark?

  That was pretty great. Yeah, because, so what you were doing was skanging.

• 2:42Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 2:43Josh Clark?

  And skang is slang for gun in Kingston.

• 2:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:49Josh Clark?

  Kingston in Jamaica is the world capital of reggae. It's where it was born. It's one of those things where you're like, well, where jazz come from? Where blues come from? Well, it came from here, here. No, reggae 100% came from Kingston, Jamaica. And it was built from all this other stuff, all these other influences, but there is no question where it actually emerged, and that was Kingston.

• 3:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. I was playing golf yesterday with my friend Justin, who you know.

• 3:19Josh Clark?

  Justin from Trench Town?

• 3:20Speaker 02

  Justin from London, which will also play a part, but he asked what we were recording on today, and I told him reggae. And he was like, did you know that reggae is like fairly new? And I said, he was like, I always thought it was like in the 40s and 50s. He was like, but true reggae was like the late 60s.

• 3:41Josh Clark?

  You make Justin sound like a real milquetoast. I can tell everybody that is not what Justin sounds like.

• 3:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, but that was, you know, that's true. And we'll get to all that and the timeline and everything. But yeah, reggae is a, I mean, on the general timeline of music history, it's a pretty new form.

• 3:57Josh Clark?

  Yeah, almost just a little over 50-ish years old?

• 4:03Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, I mean, I'm 55. I was born in 71, so you do the math. You're the expert.

• 4:10Josh Clark?

  I'm not doing the math. Yeah, I think 1968 tends to be like the year that people pretty much put their finger on when reggae was born. But let's, let's talk about all this. Let's, let's get to the, get to the beginning, I guess. Okay?

• 4:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, which means we got to talk about Jamaica as a place, right?

• 4:29Josh Clark?

  Yeah, because one of the things about reggae, Livia helps us with this, so hat to, to, to Livia. The, one of the things about Jamaica and reggae is that they're like a melange of different people and cultures who are all kind of brought together, a significant number of them against their will, and all kind of formed this society where it was all mixed together. And one of the, the things that emerged was a real appreciation of music and folk music. That kind of developed and it was very unique because Jamaica is unique. I mean, every Caribbean island is unique, even though they have similar histories. They all just, they, they, they formed different melanges in different ways.

• 5:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, different melanges because you have indigenous people. And then in the case of, well, most of them, you had people from Africa brought over in the slave trade. So in this case, in Jamaica, that combined with like African work songs and the, you know, the European musical influence that was there at the time. They mixed together. And in the 40s and 50s, what the first thing we got as sort of a predecessor to reggae was called Mento.

• 5:43Josh Clark?

  Maybe that's what Justin was talking about.

• 5:46Speaker 02

  No, he's talking about Mentos, the, the fresh ment.

• 5:49Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 5:50Speaker 02

  Capital M E N T O, which is sort of like, if you heard it, it might sound a little bit like Calypso out of Trinidad. It's got banjo and like guitar. It's got something called a rumba box, which is like a percussive thing with plucked steel tines. So Mento was kind of the earliest predecessor. And then in the 50s, I guess the late 50s and early 60s, because that was the 40s and 50s, American R and B on the radio, which also came from African and European influences, obviously, that produced what became the more direct predecessor to reggae, which was ska.

• 6:28Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that's when things took a really dark turn.

• 6:33Speaker 02

  Oh, man, ska's, I, I like all this stuff. I guess we'll talk a little bit about like our affinity for it, but it's not the kind of thing I listen to like all the time. But I have my moments where I will put on, like, for an entire morning, I will listen to like old, like 50s and 60s ska and like super early reggae. I like the early, early stuff.

• 6:52Josh Clark?

  Okay, cool. I can't really fault you for that. I think I just have a bad taste in my mouth about ska from the 90s.

• 6:59Speaker 02

  The Mighty Mighty Boston's?

• 7:00Josh Clark?

  I'm not calling anybody in particular out. I am calling all of them out, basically.

• 7:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, but that, that early stuff is, I think you could probably appreciate a little more, like the Desmond Decker stuff.

• 7:10Josh Clark?

  Sure, sure. I'm sure I could too. One of the reasons that that suddenly came up in the 50s and 60s is because transistor radios started to become available. And before that, Jamaica had basically access to BBC style radio stations that weren't playing R and B. And so all of a sudden, they could pick up stations from Miami. We're like, ooh, I like this stuff. And that was another thing too, that, that reggae was built on, where like Jamaican people who were like, I like this, I'm going to pull this in. I like that, I'm going to pull this in. So much so that like the concept of sampling in the hip hop community is actually, a lot of that comes from this kind of mindset that was that, that reggae was born out of. It was like, I like this, so I'm going to use this.

• 7:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. Like this episode definitely has some crossover with the hip hop episode. And obviously, when we get to the rest of our stuff, the Haile Selassie episode. But, you know, the technology of the radio was certainly big. And also what was big was, and you know, you see this a lot in the development of culture, like different technologies coming along. And in this case, just literally electricity being spread throughout Jamaica is what led to something called toasting. And DJs, now that they had widespread electricity, could set up these mobile discos. They were called sound systems. And this was in and around Kingston. And the DJs developed this toasting, I was about to say tradition, because that makes it sound more like something you do at a wedding, but musical style where

• 8:39Speaker 02

  they would speak and sing over the recorded music. And that, that directly led to stuff like, you know, rap.

• 8:46Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Like, do you ever listen to like reggae shows on college radio or something like that?

• 8:52Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, that's why a lot of times I play on Sunday morning, because that's when Album 88's reggae show was.

• 8:58Josh Clark?

  Right. Okay. So like, and then sometimes the DJ would just turn the music down all of a sudden and say something?

• 9:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. Oh, yeah.

• 9:03Josh Clark?

  That's toasting, right? And it can be done well, and it can very frequently be done not well.

• 9:10Speaker 02

  It depends on how toasted they are.

• 9:13Josh Clark?

  Sure, exactly. Or what they have to say too. Like, you have to have something to say that should have to do with the song or something important. It shouldn't be like, you know, shop your back to school sales at Target or something. And then you turn the music back up real quick.

• 9:27Speaker 02

  Sometimes you hear these guys, and it's the best, because I think our, our old beloved WFMU in New Jersey, I think they had a reggae show too. And sometimes you can, you can hear these DJs are super, super stoned.

• 9:40Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure. I mean, they're probably Rastafarians.

• 9:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:46Josh Clark?

  So then that's like part of their religion, you know?

• 9:48Speaker 02

  Oh, sure.

• 9:49Josh Clark?

  It definitely makes sense. And even if they're not, if you're so into reggae that you host a reggae show, you probably are stoned like a pretty decent amount of the time.

• 9:58Speaker 02

  It's probably a part of your lifestyle.

• 10:00Josh Clark?

  Exactly. Yep. They're like, time to put on my game face.

• 10:04Speaker 02

  Right.

• 10:05Josh Clark?

  Smoke my weekly joint before my, my radio show.

• 10:08Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 10:09Josh Clark?

  So some, some people are like, okay, I like the ska stuff, but I get really worn out dancing to it. Maybe we could slow it down a little bit. And what came out of that was rock steady, one word, probably one of the best names for any music, musical genre, if you ask me.

• 10:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm with you.

• 10:28Josh Clark?

  And rock steady is, it's, it has a lot of the same components and instruments and everything. But like I said, it's slowed down. There's much more of a focus on vocals. So like there's like, you know, lyrics to the song.

• 10:41Speaker 02

  Right.

• 10:41Josh Clark?

  The theme or something like that. And if you're like, I don't know if I've ever heard rock steady, you definitely have. Cause there are some hits that came out of this. Apparently it was just like a two-year period that rock steady was popular. But the original Tide is High, Ain't No Sunshine, as in Ain't No Sunshine When She's Gone. That came out of the rock steady era. If you've ever listened to the, the Upsetters, like the early stuff, really organ heavy. Everybody sings at once, so the mic peaks and gets overloaded. Like that is, that's rock steady.

• 11:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. And rock steady is what kind of directly led to what we know as reggae. And when they started that sort of heavy thumping bass and a little more percussive, percussive forward, that's when reggae was kind of born. You know, I know Olivia points out that there were, there were some other kind of, I guess, just maybe unusual influences. And one was the school in Kingston, the Alpha Boys School. It was run by, it was a trade school and there were, it was a nun-run affair. And they had, I keep wanting to say it's like unusual, but maybe it wasn't. But they had a really great music education program.

• 11:56Speaker 02

  And there was a nun there named Sister Iggy, Sister Mary Ignatius Davies. And she was just a big time music fan. She was especially big into jazz. And ended up having a lot of like future reggae, like, you know, not the hugest stars, although Yellow Man did go through there, but some early like ska and reggae horn players, especially because of her jazz focus, came through her school.

• 12:19Josh Clark?

  Right, for sure. That, yeah, I had no idea about that. Did you?

• 12:24Speaker 02

  No, that's super cool though.

• 12:26Josh Clark?

  There's also obviously the Rastafarian influence is significant. And Rastafarianism was around before reggae. And reggae was actually around before reggae musicians became Rastafarians. And it was, if you go back and listen to our episode on Holly Selassie, it was his visit in, I think, 1966, that just opened the doors to, to Rastafarianism and reggae being like essentially hand in hand.

• 13:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. And I thought we had done one on Rastafarianism, but I think I put together an article and at the time you were like, we've been doing too much religious stuff. And I just tucked it away. It never came back. And then when we covered, yeah, yeah, this is a while ago. And then we covered Holly Selassie. It basically covered that well enough, I think.

• 13:23Josh Clark?

  Oh, it did? Okay. Cause we definitely got into it for sure, but that episode was about a lot more than just that.

• 13:29Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Yeah.

• 13:30Josh Clark?

  But at the time, before his visit to Jamaica, a state visit, this is an official visit. The Rastafarians, even in Jamaica, were seen as just kind of weirdos. They were on the fringe. They weren't taken seriously at all. They were just a strange religion. And then Holly Selassie came and essentially just by recognizing them, I think he awarded medals to some Rastafarian preachers there. He legitimized it in the eyes of Jamaica. Now all of a sudden, a bunch of people, including Rita Marley, are like, I Rastafar I.

• 14:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:04Josh Clark?

  And that's, it like, that's the moment that it spread to, to reggae music.

• 14:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. And this was in the lead up to their eventual freedom from the colonizers and their, you know, the white supremacist sort of system that they have been living under. They called Babylon. So that's why you hear Babylon a lot in the songs. And I mentioned Desmond Decker and that his, you know, probably most notable song is The Israelites. And that's what he was talking about there, right?

• 14:31Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that, that came out in 1968. And I've seen that some people point to that, or a lot of people, I guess, point to that as the bridge between rock steady and reggae, that song. And it's that song you think it is like, whoa, The Israelites, right?

• 14:44Speaker 02

  Oh, nice.

• 14:45Josh Clark?

  And, oh, thanks. I've been practicing for weeks.

• 14:48Speaker 02

  It's in a lower key, but you're under the weather, so.

• 14:51Josh Clark?

  Yes. Thank you for giving me that pass. But yeah, the, the song, I don't think it says it necessarily explicitly, but the gist of it is this Rastafarian idea that the, the stolen Africans who have spread all over the world and their descendants are the true Israelites. And they are trapped in Babylon, which is white supremacist run Western world.

• 15:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:15Josh Clark?

  And that through self-determination and deliverance by Jah, they will be able to emancipate themselves, essentially mind, body and spirit. And that's what Rastafarianism is about.

• 15:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. And there was a drummer, a Rastafari drummer named, they call them Count Ozzy, but Oswald Williams, he played on a early song in 1958. So this is like, you know, still predating reggae. It was a ska recording by the Folks Brothers called Oh Carolina. And, you know, we're going to be mentioning a lot of songs, but if you're in a place where you can like cue some of these up, I encourage it because they're all great. A lot of this early stuff. And that's kind of what I like about it is it sounds like it was recorded in a tin can. Like the recordings aren't the best quality, but it adds a lot of je ne sais quoi to it, I think.

• 16:07Josh Clark?

  Nice. So, oh, one other thing about Rastafarianism too.

• 16:14Josh Clark?

  So I said it predated reggae. I mean, it basically came out of the twenties and thirties when Marcus Garvey predicted that an emperor would be elected or

• 16:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:25Josh Clark?

  thrown seated. I don't know what you would call it when you install an, look, there was going to be an emperor that came out of Africa and people were like, oh, Holly Selassie, that's him. And so from that moment on, Rastafarianism was born. And apparently dreads had been part of Rastafarianism as far back as the 1940s.

• 16:46Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 16:47Josh Clark?

  I had no idea.

• 16:49Speaker 02

  What about white guy dreads?

• 16:51Josh Clark?

  Those came out of the nineties. I blame the nineties ska revival for that too.

• 16:56Speaker 02

  Probably so, huh?

• 16:57Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 16:59Speaker 02

  All right. That feels like a good time for a break, right?

• 17:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I think so.

• 17:04Speaker 02

  All right. And we will come back with more on reggae right after this.

• 17:23Josh Clark?

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• 19:31Speaker 03

  First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?

• 19:34Josh Clark?

  Hey, this is Josh and Chuck from Stuff You Should Know.

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• 20:01Josh Clark?

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  AT&T, connecting fans to what they love.

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• 20:49Josh Clark?

  So Chuck, we're back.

• 20:52Josh Clark?

  Yeah, let's hear it. Let's, I threw to you really, I was being serious. You guys, here's another little behind the scenes thing. Chuck and I decide on the fly which one's going to bring us back from break. And this time I said I was gonna go and so we came back and I immediately tossed to you. But the reason why I did that, apparently it was not that great of a joke. Is because I'm not super musical. Like, I know reggae, pick reggae out in a, like, maybe two, two notes, I could be like, that's a reggae song.

• 21:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:26Josh Clark?

  But I can't mimic it, like, and when I read about it, I don't have any idea what's going on. It actually confuses my understanding of reggae, which is dumb.

• 21:35Speaker 02

  Well, if you're gonna count on me to mimic reggae with my mouth, although I kind of just did with that drum intro.

• 21:41Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 21:42Speaker 02

  People are probably gonna be disappointed, but we should talk a little bit about the instrumentation because it's, it's like you would, might find in a, like a rock band, maybe minus some stuff and plus some stuff.

• 21:53Speaker 02

  Drums, sometimes steel drums, which I was trying to mimic.

• 21:58Speaker 02

  You got your bass?

• 22:00Speaker 02

  You got your electric guitar, a lot of percussion, you know, bongos and shakers and stuff like that. Bob Marley used some cool, like, synth, synthy sounds and organ sounds.

• 22:11Josh Clark?

  It's my life.

• 22:13Speaker 02

  On what?

• 22:15Josh Clark?

  It's my life, don't you forget. Isn't that the Wailers?

• 22:20Speaker 02

  Uh, I don't know that song.

• 22:21Josh Clark?

  Yes, you do. It's top top.

• 22:25Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 22:26Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 22:26Speaker 02

  I got you.

• 22:27Josh Clark?

  It's a very synthy song.

• 22:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. I just, I didn't recognize the rendition. It's just because you're sick, though.

• 22:32Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it's because I'm under the weather.

• 22:36Speaker 02

  Horn section, sometimes you might get in a reggae band. But, you know, I mentioned earlier that it's the, that rhythm of reggae that is kind of maybe the most distinguishing aspect of it. It's a four beat rhythm with the emphasis on the sec, the two and the four.

• 22:52Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 22:53Speaker 02

  Whereas traditional rock, it's, it's not that. So that's why when you hear that, you know, that, that chunking rhythm guitar, that dong chink, dong chink, that's on the two and four. And it's, you know, it's a real distinct sound. And, you know, as we'll see, you know, once they, this kind of transferred over to London, you had tons of groups like The Police and The Specials and Madness kind of like latching on to that, that sort of two and the four, you know, it's a very distinct thing.

• 23:24Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm, for sure. In the seventies, it definitely caught Great Britain by the

• 23:31Speaker 02

  Short and Curly?

• 23:31Josh Clark?

  Curly, yeah. And Ireland, too. We can't forget Ireland, ever. We never do.

• 23:36Speaker 02

  No, of course not.

• 23:37Josh Clark?

  Even if we don't mention Ireland, we still are including Ireland.

• 23:41Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 23:42Josh Clark?

  But we should say it separately because they're not part of Great Britain. Did you know that?

• 23:47Speaker 02

  We didn't want to rile anyone up.

• 23:50Josh Clark?

  So, um, thank you. That's what I was trying to get to, was you explaining the rhythm, because I, I can't. I have so little rhythm that I can't even explain it verbally.

• 23:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:00Josh Clark?

  But that's essentially what you just said, like, that's one of the hallmarks, if not the hallmark of reggae. And then you also said that sometimes they have horns. I feel like that's one of the main things that distinguishes reggae from rocksteady or ska. Is they really kind of moved away from horns, where horns were really, really important to rocksteady and in particular ska.

• 24:22Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, for sure.

• 24:23Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So, um, one of the other things about reggae, too, that's good to know, that's easily overlooked if all you've ever listened to is, say, Bob Marley, or maybe even Burning Spear or something like that. They tend to focus more on like spiritual aspects, self-determination. There's a lot of reggae out there that focuses on violence and crime because it definitely emerged in that context. You've, if you've heard Bob Marley, you've definitely heard of Trench Town. Trench Town is a low-income neighborhood in Kingston. I think part of it's like shanty even, it's that low income.

• 25:04Josh Clark?

  And you've lived in Kingston, there was a really good chance that one of your only options was to turn to crime to make a living. And so there's this romanticization of crime that was going on in the area at the same time that reggae was emerging in the same area. So they are kind of intertwined. There's also like a real, like, may, it's really male-dominated. Still today, it is generally a male-dominated music genre, so there's

• 25:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:32Josh Clark?

  just, it, like, inevitably a certain machismo that's still, that's in the background there. It might not be always talked about, it's more dancehall, but in reggae even, too, there's this idea that, you know, the man's in charge, it's just how it is.

• 25:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, and, you know, there's a lot of, sort of, like I mentioned, the influence on hip-hop and a lot of sort of lines that you can draw. I think definitely more women broke through in hip-hop than in reggae. But this, you know, this violent context of the gangster persona, a lot of it taken from American movies in both reggae and, and hip-hop. The rude boy culture was what it was called in reggae. But you can see a lot of similarities there.

• 26:20Speaker 02

  The, the actual word reggae probably didn't come around until 1968. It was a song by the great, great Toots and the Maytals. Frederick Toots Hibbert. There was a song called Do the Reggae, R-E-G-G-A-Y.

• 26:34Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 26:35Speaker 02

  And when asked about that word, he didn't say like, hey, I invented the word, but he said that he was replacing the word strigay, S-T-R-E-G-G-A-E, which was like a raggedy-looking woman. But he said that had a negative connotation, it was like a derogatory term, so I didn't want to use that, so I changed it over. And then there's another story where it was R-E-G-G-A-Y, which was a dance trend, taken from the terms for ragged clothing. And that turned into R-G-E dash R-G-E, reggae reggae, which was about like fighting or protesting.

• 27:16Speaker 02

  So, I don't, there's not like a definitive, like, hey, this is where the word came from, but probably maybe a mashup of those three things.

• 27:24Josh Clark?

  Well, there's another entrant, too, an artist named Little Roy, who the same year that Toots and the Maytals song came out in 1968, he released a song, or maybe even an album called Reggae Soul, and he spelled it the way that we spell it today, too.

• 27:40Speaker 02

  Right.

• 27:41Josh Clark?

  It's just completely muddled, but it seemed to have come around in 1968, the year reggae broke.

• 27:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, and that, a lot of that was thanks to, like I said, Frederick Toots Hibbert. If you want to dial up some early Toots and the Maytals, it's, it's pretty, pretty good listening. They started out in 1962, obviously ska at the time. But their first big hit was in 1968 with the song 5456, That's My Number. Great tune, and they had a, a bunch of, you know, not, they didn't take over America like Bob Marley later would, because this is the late sixties, so America was consumed with all, you know, like the hippie culture and everything that was going on musically there. So it would take Bob Marley in the seventies to break through in the States.

• 28:27Josh Clark?

  Yeah, but at the same time, too, the, the suburbanites in America in the mid-sixties were into Caribbean stuff, like Exotica and things like that, which is why we have heard songs like The Tide is High. So they did kind of make its way over here, but like, no, no one has ever taken the world by storm, at least as far as reggae goes, like Bob Marley. He just went, he just became an international icon, like, in a very short time even, too, as we'll see.

• 28:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. So, he's coming up, everybody. Wouldn't that be funny if we did a whole episode and didn't mention Bob Marley? That'd be an April Fools' episode.

• 29:06Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 29:08Speaker 02

  But we, you know, producers, just like all genres, like producers and engineers, had a lot to do with, not all music, actually. Some more than others, but definitely with reggae, there was a guy named King Tubby, born Osborne Ruddock. And he was one of the guys, you know, kind of a studio wizard that was like building his own hardware to create effects. And he was the guy that first started stripping out vocals to create dubplate, and that's what the DJs would toast over.

• 29:38Josh Clark?

  Yeah, which, as we'll see, sounds a lot like hip-hop and rapping, right?

• 29:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, and dub music.

• 29:44Josh Clark?

  Right, and so dub music, I don't know if King Tubby was the guy who was credited with actually coming up with it. There are others, Lee Scratch Perry is another originator of dub. Hopton Lewis, who came to be known as Scientist. In my, for my money, the best dub musician of all. But the, the thing that these guys had in common was they were using like recording equipment, often cast-off recording equipment, that they built their own rigs out of, that they were using essentially as early synthesizers. And it was a lot like how Kraftwerk and Devo, who came later, did, where it was like, I want to make the sound, but there's nothing out there that makes that sound, so I'm gonna build my own thing.

• 30:29Josh Clark?

  And that's what dub music essentially was based on. It was taking reggae and then making it into essentially electronic music with all sorts of effects.

• 30:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. Man, I would love, I used to be scared of doing these music episodes because 45 to 50 minutes to encapsulate a, a genre is really, really hard. But since we've done it a few times, I'm not as scared of it, and I would love to check New Wave off the, off the list at some point.

• 30:58Josh Clark?

  That's a good idea. We don't, I almost said the S-word. We don't even need to

• 31:03Josh Clark?

  come up with an article for that. We can just go back and forth on it. How about that?

• 31:07Speaker 02

  That sounds great. I think you say ish instead of the S-word, is what people do.

• 31:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that's like

• 31:12Speaker 02

  If you're like on the radio or something?

• 31:13Josh Clark?

  For sure. Ish, because I think it's the sound that it makes when you scratch the record backwards at that moment.

• 31:21Speaker 02

  Is that it?

• 31:22Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 31:23Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 31:23Josh Clark?

  I'm almost positive.

• 31:25Speaker 02

  All right. So, uh, we're getting to Bob Marley, but if we're talking about Lee Scratch Perry, he's one of the guys in the early sixties who was working with the Wailers very early on. And he, you know, Lee Scratch Perry went on to have an incredible long career, eventually in hip-hop and rock and like everything else.

• 31:44Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 31:45Speaker 02

  But I guess we should talk about the Wailers a little bit. And if we're gonna talk about the Wailers, we gotta back up a little bit and talk about Joe Higgs.

• 31:54Josh Clark?

  Did you know who Joe Higgs was?

• 31:56Speaker 02

  I did not, but now I'm like, I love seeing the tin, like the early tendrils being like, tenderling.

• 32:04Josh Clark?

  Sure. There, there might've been a Whalers at one point, but they, we probably wouldn't know of them because Joe Higgs taught them most of what they know about music.

• 32:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think, I think I heard of him probably in the Bob Marley documentary now that I think about it.

• 32:19Josh Clark?

  That makes sense because you, you kind of couldn't talk about Bob Marley without talking about Joe Higgs first. He taught not just Bob Marley, how to sing and how to write songs and everything you need to know about, you know, making music.

• 32:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:33Josh Clark?

  He also taught Peter Tosh and Bunny Whaler at the same time. So he essentially taught the Whalers how to, how to play music. So yeah, they might've been around because I know that Bunny Whaler and Bob Marley were essentially raised together from childhood as almost stepbrothers of sorts. And they met Peter Tosh as teenagers in Trench Town. So they probably would have formed a musical act, but they would have just sucked.

• 33:03Speaker 02

  Well, Joe Higgs was definitely the, the glue early on and the, and the mentor to them. He had a big hit as, as a singer in 1960 with Higgs and Wilson. It was called Manny O. And it was, again, if you listen to some of this stuff, you definitely hear like the American R and B sound coming through, like some of this stuff sounds like James Brown at first, and then like that reggae beat kicks in. But it was one of the first, Manny O was one of the first records ever pressed and released in Jamaica and sold 50,000 copies in, what was this, 1960? So that's, that's a lot of records for back then. And he is, yeah, he's, he's the guy that like, all these like teenagers basically were crowding around

• 33:47Speaker 02

  just like sponges to everything he knew.

• 33:51Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that was something really cool about him. Like he was, he was living in Trench Town, or at least Kingston at the time too. And he would teach other younger musicians, like he, he took time to do that rather than just focusing on his career and getting bigger and bigger. He like took his, his talents and helped other people develop their own talents, right? So hats off to Joe Higgs for sure, just from putting the, the Whalers together. But you mentioned how the, how like a lot of this stuff, this early reggae and, and rock city, it's how you can really hear the R and B coming through. And that's true with those, the early Whalers songs too. If you go listen to simmer down, which came out in 1963.

• 34:32Speaker 02

  Great song.

• 34:33Josh Clark?

  I think they had four albums before they came out with their actual full reggae album in 1972. I can't remember which one it's called, but it's, it's, you're just like, you can hear Bob Marley's voice, but it's total R and B.

• 34:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, and they, they dressed the part too. Like when you look at the old, like the early Whalers, they were wearing like the cool, like shark skin suits and stuff. And they were like styled out like the, like the OJs or something.

• 34:59Josh Clark?

  Right, exactly. Yeah. So it's a little jarring when all you know about Bob Marley is as a, like a reggae icon, you know?

• 35:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:08Josh Clark?

  But yeah, they all met together in Trench Town where they all lived. And one thing I didn't realize is that Bob Marley's father was a, a white man. Did you know that?

• 35:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, his dad was, his name was Norville Sinclair Marley. And he was Jamaican, he was a white Jamaican of English descent. And he was a army, like a British army veteran, but was a plantation overseer basically. And was in his sixties when he married Bob Marley's mother when she was 18. And so, you know, you hear that and you think like, oh boy.

• 35:43Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 35:44Speaker 02

  Is, did the worst thing happen? And apparently that wasn't the case. I mean, there was a huge age difference and I'm not saying there was a, a balance of power by any means. But everything I've read and seen is it was a consensual relationship and that he provided financial support for a while to the family, but he was not like around much after Bob was born. He wasn't like a real father figure.

• 36:09Josh Clark?

  Okay, gotcha. Yeah. Cause I hear white rural overseer and I'm like, oh no.

• 36:14Speaker 02

  Well, yeah.

• 36:16Josh Clark?

  But one of the other things that was a huge influence in Bob's life was his grandfather, his mom's father, who was a farmer and herbal healer. And so a lot of the kind of mystic qualities, or at least interests of Bob Marley, that just kind of, he exudes in a way, you know? He got, he definitely got from being his grandfather's grandson.

• 36:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. But as a result of that sort of displaced childhood, Marley didn't get to Trench Town until he was a teenager. Spent a lot of time and out in the country in Kingston, hanging out with his granddad, like you said. And like you mentioned earlier, he and Bunny Whaler, it's the cutest thing. They like were friends from the time they were like two and three years old. And when Bob's dad died, his mom moved in with Bunny Whaler's dad. And they, yeah, they were raised like, like brothers.

• 37:12Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 37:13Speaker 02

  Super sweet.

• 37:14Josh Clark?

  It is super sweet. And they met Peter Tosh in a gambling hall, I think when they were all like early, early teens, right?

• 37:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:20Josh Clark?

  I don't know when Bob Marley met his wife Rita, but I do know they were married by the time Holly Salassi came to visit Jamaica in 1966. And it was her influence. She went and saw Holly Salassi. I think we said in the Holly Salassi episode that Bob Marley didn't go, but Rita Marley did. And she came back like, guys, this is amazing. And she was the influence who connected Rastafarianism with reggae, at least as far as the Whalers go. And they were hugely influential in spreading that connection.

• 37:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. And like you mentioned, it's Catch a Fire in 72 is considered kind of their first like full blown reggae album. And I think you're right. I think it was like their fifth record as a group. I like that stuff too. Like I definitely had a Bob Marley phase in college, like literally every person on planet earth.

• 38:15Josh Clark?

  For sure.

• 38:16Speaker 02

  But now like, I really, really like that, those, those early albums more than anything like that I, you know, my legend cassette that I wore out, of course, in college, like everyone else had.

• 38:29Josh Clark?

  Well, wait a minute, was that, I feel like they came out with this, a box set or something like that around that time. And that's what got everybody into Bob Marley again at that age.

• 38:40Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 38:41Josh Clark?

  Was it legend? I thought for sure there was.

• 38:43Speaker 02

  Well, Legend was the, the sort of greatest hits, for lack of a better word.

• 38:47Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 38:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, Legend was the one that like everybody had, because those were all like all the big, big songs.

• 38:53Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 38:54Speaker 02

  But it's, it's, I really liked that early stuff. And if you go listen, like, I think Talking Blues is a compilation too. That's the one where the songs are interspersed with Bob like talking in the studio and stuff. And, you know, it's, it's great. It's such, such a thick accent, like you can hardly understand them.

• 39:11Josh Clark?

  Right, yeah.

• 39:13Speaker 02

  It's kind of great.

• 39:13Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And even, I was reading a quote from Shaba Ranks about how like.

• 39:18Speaker 02

  Oh man, Shaba Ranks.

• 39:19Josh Clark?

  Like old dance hall guys need to lay off of the younger dance hall guys because they're doing their own thing. And the only reason I know that he said that was from the context of the article, like explaining that he said that, because they had a block quote from him. And I'm like, I have no idea what Shaba Ranks just said. And I wasn't even listening, I was reading it. I just could not make heads or tails out of it.

• 39:42Speaker 02

  It's one of my favorite, the Jamaican accent is one of my favorite accents on planet earth. I love it so much.

• 39:47Josh Clark?

  It's definitely up there with Scottish for me too.

• 39:51Speaker 02

  Did you see the, you ever seen the stuff on the internet where people be like, if you want to say this in this accent, say these words in American English?

• 40:02Josh Clark?

  You taught me to say Michael Caine, you say my cocaine.

• 40:07Speaker 02

  Moi cocaine.

• 40:08Josh Clark?

  No, my cocaine.

• 40:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's what I just said.

• 40:13Speaker 02

  I saw one recently that was very funny, which was if you want to say Spice Girls in Scottish, you say, kind of have to quickly say Space Ghettos in English.

• 40:26Josh Clark?

  Let's hear it.

• 40:28Speaker 02

  So like, ask me what I did over the weekend.

• 40:31Josh Clark?

  What'd you do over the weekend Chuck?

• 40:33Speaker 02

  Eh, I went to a concert and then ask me who I saw.

• 40:37Josh Clark?

  Who'd you see Chuck?

• 40:38Speaker 02

  Eh, the Space Ghettos.

• 40:41Josh Clark?

  Oh yeah, that was, that was pretty dead on.

• 40:43Speaker 02

  Pretty good, huh?

• 40:44Josh Clark?

  What did you have to drink there?

• 40:47Josh Clark?

  Was it Urn Brew? What'd you say?

• 40:50Speaker 02

  I'm a non-drinker.

• 40:52Josh Clark?

  You didn't drink any Urn Brew?

• 40:54Speaker 02

  What is that?

• 40:55Josh Clark?

  Remember, that's like their drink. It's like some, almost an orangey weird.

• 40:59Speaker 02

  I don't remember that.

• 41:00Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah. It's like Iron Brew, but they spell it like Urn Brew.

• 41:03Speaker 02

  Oh, I do remember it. I didn't, yeah.

• 41:06Josh Clark?

  It's, uh, it's something specific. I liked it, but it was like, you could easily drink too many at once.

• 41:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, I could see that.

• 41:16Josh Clark?

  So.

• 41:17Speaker 02

  Roots reggae, I think is where we were headed.

• 41:19Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So, yeah. Um, what, what you have when you put together reggae, reggae music and Rastafarian, um, perspectives and outlook and, and worldview, that's the word I was looking for. You have what's known as Roots reggae and what most people think of as reggae, what they're thinking of as Roots reggae. Bob Marley and the Wailers, Roots reggae from, uh, Catch a Fire on.

• 41:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. Uh, and you know, Catch a Fire was 72 and like we said, that was their first big reggae album, but they actually, the Wailers broke up two years later in 74.

• 41:52Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 41:52Speaker 02

  And most of the like, the college got into Bob Marley stuff and the legend stuff is all post, uh, official, like the Wailers as the Wailers.

• 42:00Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:01Speaker 02

  Uh, and you know, all of them went on to do their own solo stuff, obviously. Uh, I think Bob Marley had six albums after that until, uh, we'll get to his death in 1981.

• 42:12Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:12Speaker 02

  Uh, but everyone did. Peter Tosh, who was, he was the real deal, man. Uh, he had some great albums. Legalize It in 1976 is a great one.

• 42:21Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 42:22Speaker 02

  Uh, Equal Rights a year later. And then, um, later on in the eighties, he had a, um, a very sort of, uh, political album called Nuclear War that was really good.

• 42:31Josh Clark?

  Yeah. I had this Peter Tosh live show that I cannot find. It drives me crazy. It just, it's like every other show from that tour exists except for that one. And I can't remember what city it was. Um, and it was.

• 42:43Speaker 02

  Like he had a tape or something?

• 42:44Josh Clark?

  So, yeah, it was like a burn CD. It was so good, man. You could just listen to that on repeat, right?

• 42:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:51Josh Clark?

  Um, but yes, his, his lyrics were, and just the whole vibe was way more militant compared to Bob Marley. And so I've seen it described as like, when you put Marley and Tosh together, and also Tosh, by the way, was the, like, far and away the most musically gifted of the Wailers. He could play all sorts of different stuff. Uh, he was also a good songwriter too. But when you put Bob Marley's lyrics together and Peter Tosh's lyrics together into one show or one album or whatever, you had like a really rich, complex.

• 43:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:23Josh Clark?

  Album, like when, with really cool themes in it, right? Um, and I saw it, there's a reggae archivist, which is, I'm not sure what you would go study in, in school to become that. A guy named Roger Stephens and he's, he likened Marley to Martin Luther King Jr. And Tosh to Malcolm X. And like, they kind of had those, they approached things from those viewpoints. So Marley made the Wailers universally palatable. And Peter Tosh inserted like that, that kind of militant, um, political bent that is also like a big part of reggae too.

• 44:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I think a lot of the credibility for, you know, at least so far as Jamaicans were concerned.

• 44:05Josh Clark?

  Yeah. I saw also that like apparently around the world, he's respected at least as much, if not more than he is in Jamaica, because he was like known to walk the walk. And like he, he was beaten nearly to death by the police several times. Uh, Legalize It was, um, banned in Jamaica. So he took out a newspaper ad and printed the lyrics in it. Um, like he was a, he was a cool dude for sure.

• 44:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. All right. So I think we should take another break.

• 44:31Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 44:32Speaker 02

  Uh, and we will come back and talk a little bit about a guy named Jimmy Cliff right after this.

• 44:52Josh Clark?

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• 45:54Josh Clark?

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• 46:18Speaker 02

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• 46:41Josh Clark?

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• 47:02Speaker 02

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• 47:05Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 47:06Speaker 02

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• 47:16Josh Clark?

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• 47:35Josh Clark?

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• 48:15Speaker 02

  All right, we're back. Take it away, Josh.

• 48:19Josh Clark?

  Chuck, have you ever heard a song by Jimmy Cliff?

• 48:25Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, I like Jimmy Cliff. Uh, Hurricane Hattie was his first big hit in 1962. He was just a kid. He's like 18 years old. And he moved to London and he got a lot more reggae after he moved to London. And he was a big, um, sort of proselytizer for, for reggae. Kind of took it around the world in a lot of ways.

• 48:45Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 48:45Speaker 02

  And, um, one way he did so was in a movie, which I have not seen. I don't, it was one that's always been on my list. Uh, But the Harder They Come in 1972 is a definitely a cult classic and is, uh, was, was a big, big, like, not a huge, like, American hit. But on the movie scene, like to film lovers it was.

• 49:04Josh Clark?

  Yeah. It's also widely considered one of the best soundtracks too.

• 49:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:09Josh Clark?

  Uh, because it's about reggae and the reggae music industry and Kingston and the way things are in Kingston. And, um, it's a, he's, it's like, uh, Jimmy Cliff plays kind of a bandit, uh, to an extent.

• 49:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:22Josh Clark?

  Um, yeah, I haven't seen it either, but it, it's, I just know it's like you said, a cult classic. And that, uh, as much as, you know, I think simultaneous to Bob Marley touring the world, um, and the Wailers. Uh, like that movie coming out and being seen outside of Jamaica, like really helped spread the concept of reggae and what it was all about.

• 49:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, when you've got Siskel and Ebert reviewing The Harder They Come on their TV show, like it's spreading fairly mainstream, you know?

• 49:52Josh Clark?

  Two thumbs up if I'm not mistaken.

• 49:55Speaker 02

  Well, I don't know. I know Ebert gave it a thumbs up, but I don't know about Siskel. We'll have to go back and look.

• 50:00Josh Clark?

  I know I've told you this before, but do you know that Gene Siskel's stated favorite movie was Saturday Night Fever?

• 50:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:07Josh Clark?

  And he owned the white suit that Travolta wore in Saturday Night Fever?

• 50:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was in our disco episode.

• 50:14Josh Clark?

  Okay, but it's just such a great fact.

• 50:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, and you know what? Since that episode, I've had, as a, I copy pasted from the original New York Times article that inspired Saturday Night Fever. Uh, it's been sitting on my desktop on my computer for like 10 years, unread.

• 50:31Josh Clark?

  Oh, it's good. It's just, especially if you go into it knowing it's just one big lie, it's actually even better.

• 50:39Speaker 02

  Oh, was it? I don't, I don't remember that part.

• 50:41Josh Clark?

  Oh, I'm sorry. Wish I could take that back. I thought you did.

• 50:45Speaker 02

  No, that's all right.

• 50:46Josh Clark?

  I'm sorry.

• 50:47Speaker 02

  I'll still read it.

• 50:48Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 50:48Speaker 02

  I'll read it 10 years from now. I'll forget by then.

• 50:51Josh Clark?

  Cool. But you'll never forget that Gene Siskel fact I like to bust out every few years.

• 50:56Speaker 02

  That's right. Uh, so we should talk a little bit more about, um, I guess we talked a little bit about the violence, um, that was going on when reggae was born in Kingston. But over the years, reggae has just sort of been intertwined with a lot of political violence and violent clashes, uh, especially within the country politically. And, you know, they were always in the middle of it. And Bob Marley was usually in the middle of it, trying to bring people together. Uh, in 1976, they were in the middle of a clash between the People's National Party, which was the ruling party at the time.

• 51:32Speaker 02

  And, um, their opponents and Bob Marley went to, uh, play an anti-violence concert and some of the people dragged him on that for like, say, no, like you're, you're siding with the PNP and Prime Minister Michael Manley, just by even playing this event. So I think he'd never, I think there was a lot of frustration there, judging from the, from the documentary about like trying to do the right thing, uh, by bringing people together, but some people on the opposition being like, you can't even like talk to the other side.

• 52:01Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And the, the, the PNP, the ruling party, they were left wing. It was a socialist experiment, I essentially saw. And one reason a lot of people point to is why there was so much unrest and violent clashes and all that, was because the CIA was running around trying to destabilize the country because it was moving to the left rather than the right. That concert you mentioned that, that Bob Marley was frustrated about, um, it seeming like he was kind of like a, um, a handmaiden or whatever to the unpopular prime minister. Um, two days before, he was shot. He was shot, Rita was shot, two other people were shot in his home. And after being shot in the chest and the shoulder, he still went on and played that show.

• 52:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was incredible. Um, two years after that, in 1978,

• 52:53Speaker 02

  uh, he had the very famous One Love concert because there was still that divided political climate. And once again, Bob Marley's there in the middle trying to make peace. And he brought the, the two guys together. He brought, uh, Prime Minister Manley together with, Edward, I think, Seega of the Jamaican Labour Party. And that was a huge, huge deal.

• 53:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah, there's a very famous picture of them holding hands because Bob Marley's making them.

• 53:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 53:18Josh Clark?

  So, um, Marley actually died of, uh, a cancerous growth that started on his toe that he didn't get looked at because he thought it was an old soccer injury. And he actually collapsed in Central Park, uh, after a pretty great show in Madison Square Garden.

• 53:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, he opened up for the Commodores and apparently blew the Commodores off the stage. And the real sad thing about his death is that, uh, from everything I saw was that that was, he probably could have been very successfully treated for cancer had he, had he, uh, gotten it looked at earlier on.

• 53:55Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I saw the survival rate for black men from that particular type of cancer is like 70%. So, yeah, that sucks. But he thought it was a soccer injury, I think.

• 54:04Speaker 02

  I'm trying to, I mean, is that what you said?

• 54:06Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 54:07Speaker 02

  I don't remember. For some reason, I thought it had something to do with religion, but maybe I'm just not remembering right about that part.

• 54:16Josh Clark?

  Maybe he did so well in the game, he considered it a religious experience.

• 54:20Speaker 02

  There might have been a little bit of both.

• 54:22Josh Clark?

  So Bob Marley was shot, but he didn't die from that. He died from natural causes. Peter Tosh and two years after Peter Tosh, King Tubby, were both murdered by gunmen. That's how their lives ended. That's, I mean, like there's, nowadays, there's a lot of reggae artists who've, you know, come along over the years. This is not like, there was still rather limited reggae artists, a limited number. So two major reggae stars being murdered is actually pretty significant.

• 54:55Speaker 02

  Oh, for sure. Uh, Peter Tosh's murder was brutal. Like he had these three guys that busted in, basically held them hostage in his house and tortured them, trying to get money from them. And as people, like friends would come by the house, just to, through the course of the day, they would be taken in and held hostage. Uh, and eventually like just, there was just a big, like kind of crazy shootout and he was shot in the head. It was brutal.

• 55:18Josh Clark?

  Yeah, the worst thing about that, aside from the fact that he was murdered, um, his murderer was a guy named Dennis Lobin, Lepo was what people called him. And he knew that Peter Tosh had money because he had gotten out of prison and Peter Tosh gave him a place to stay, fed him, took care of him to help him get back on his feet. And that's how Lepo Lobin repaid him by murdering him because he was trying to rob him for more money.

• 55:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, pretty brutal.

• 55:44Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And then King Tubby was murdered in what they think was a botched robbery in 1989.

• 55:50Speaker 02

  Well, that's essentially what this was with Tosh too, because the whole time they were just trying to get money that he said he didn't have at the house.

• 55:56Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I guess so.

• 55:57Speaker 02

  All right. So we mentioned London earlier. Um, London is probably like the second city of reggae after Kingston.

• 56:05Josh Clark?

  It's the Chicago of reggae.

• 56:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:10Speaker 02

  So because of what's called the Windrush generation, which is when Caribbean immigrants, um, post-World War II from British colonies and former colonies, they started, you know, moving elsewhere and a lot of them arrived in the UK. And that came over, you know, their, their music and their, their culture and their food and everything came over. And that happened in London and there were all of a sudden a bunch of, um, well, not, it sort of depends. Like sometimes white London acts, sometimes, uh, Londoners that were black, depending on the band. But like I mentioned, the Police and the Specials and Madness, obviously they were in UB40 and, uh, you know, those, those ended up being like really big bands. But they also influenced like the punk scene with The Clash and The Sex Pistols even.

• 56:55Josh Clark?

  Yeah, Johnny Rotten was heavily influenced. He went on to found Public Image Limited. And thanks to him, Johnny Rotten liking reggae and Ja Wobble, the bassist, really liking dub reggae.

• 57:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:07Josh Clark?

  PIL had a, a certain reggae

• 57:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure.

• 57:10Josh Clark?

  Dub reggae thing to it going on. So hats off to, to reggae for giving us Public Image Limited.

• 57:17Speaker 02

  Uh, and you know, it wasn't just London, like, uh, you know, we can't get into all this like super, in a super detailed way, but it, it, you know, reggae went across Africa. Um, there were like native born South African artists that like became reggae stars. I know the Ivory Coast really got into the, um, Rastafarian culture for a while.

• 57:38Josh Clark?

  Yeah, no, for sure. And some, some of them, uh, the taking up that kind of political causes and calls for revolution. Um, some have actually happened to become political leaders in their country, like Bobby Weeney of Uganda or Shadawale, um, in Ghana. Um, like these are reggae artists who actually have talked the talk and they're now political, whether they like it or not.

• 58:03Speaker 02

  Yeah. Uh, New Zealand, we're looking at you because who knew? I didn't know. Uh, in 1979, uh, Bob Marley played in Auckland and it kind of, he kind of caught a fire there and Maori musicians sort of adopted reggae for a while. And you know, they brought their own thing, like, you know, always happens when you sort of adopt a music, they brought their own vocal harmonies and stuff. But they, they also like everywhere reggae went that, that it caught fire, I think people, except in college dorms in the eighties and nineties in the United States. There was a big like, um, identification with the, the politics, sort of the bottom up politics of it all.

• 58:41Josh Clark?

  Right. Yeah. Yeah, that was kind of lost on the dorm crowd, wasn't it?

• 58:45Speaker 02

  I mean, I think we all like to think we were down with the movement, but we just wanted the bumper stickers.

• 58:52Josh Clark?

  But I'm sure it definitely helped shape our, our worldviews as well.

• 58:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it opened us up to other things for sure.

• 58:59Josh Clark?

  There are two other things that you can draw a direct line to from reggae to current music. One is hip hop, like you said. And that line seems to go through DJ Cool Herc.

• 59:08Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 59:08Josh Clark?

  Who was definitely prominently featured in our hip hop episode because he was actually born in Kingston, I think, and ended up in the Bronx. And it just so happened that within a few years of DJ Cool Herc moving to the Bronx, hip hop came up in New York out of nowhere. So they think that it was him.

• 59:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, he didn't come to the Bronx until he was 12. So he had a lot of years in Jamaica to like bring that influence. And yeah, like I said, that toasting, Jamaican toasting tradition came right along with him.

• 59:40Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And remember you talked about how dub would strip the vocals out of music. So you had instrumental music. He would do that with two turntables and a microphone, as Beck said.

• 59:50Speaker 02

  That's right. Uh, other places, uh, Panama, like Central and South America had a big, uh, thing. They, they called, uh, Reggae on Espanol. And, uh, Puerto Rico, they had, um, like an underground Spanish language, uh, like reggae rap called Regaton, uh, that came along. And like, you can draw a direct line from that to somebody like Bad Bunny.

• 1:00:12Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I, I think it's even like that they call Bad Bunny's music Regaton.

• 1:00:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think so.

• 1:00:19Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Um,

• 1:00:20Speaker 02

  Boy, that Super Bowl performance was so fun.

• 1:00:23Josh Clark?

  Yeah. He really did set the world on fire.

• 1:00:26Speaker 02

  I thought it was great. It was a lot of fun.

• 1:00:28Josh Clark?

  Yeah, like he, he prefigured Erling Haaland. He was like the Erling Haaland of Super Bowl halftime shows.

• 1:00:39Josh Clark?

  So, uh, Chuck, favorite reggae band of all time?

• 1:00:42Speaker 02

  Uh, I mean, early Whalers for sure.

• 1:00:46Josh Clark?

  Okay, I'm going with Burning Spear.

• 1:00:47Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:00:49Josh Clark?

  Um, Chuck, did you like the nineties Sky Revival?

• 1:00:53Speaker 02

  Uh, nah, I wasn't into that.

• 1:00:55Josh Clark?

  Me either.

• 1:00:56Speaker 02

  Was, was it my bag?

• 1:00:58Josh Clark?

  I got us to, um, listener mail now. I managed to unlock it for us.

• 1:01:02Speaker 02

  Oh, okay. Are we there?

• 1:01:04Josh Clark?

  Yeah, because, uh, back in 2008, one of us predicted that we would bag on the nineties, mid nineties Sky Revival in one of our episodes and that would trigger listener mail.

• 1:01:18Speaker 02

  All right, we got a short one here because this episode is a little longer. It's just a quick correction from Dave in California. He said, hey, guys, in the Eleanor Roosevelt episode, instead of in flagrante delicto, which is the common term, Josh coined the term in flagrante delicato, which could perhaps mean gently afire, which Dave says is actually not entirely inappropriate, perhaps.

• 1:01:49Josh Clark?

  Right, that's what I, it's kind of what I thought. I didn't realize it was delecto. What does delecto mean? Like, err, err, err?

• 1:01:56Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 1:01:58Josh Clark?

  On fire. Yeah, what does delecto mean, Chuck? You don't know?

• 1:02:02Speaker 02

  Delicto, well, I think it means caught in the act, which is what that means as a phrase.

• 1:02:08Josh Clark?

  Oh, okay. No, I see that it's, yeah, caught red handed.

• 1:02:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:15Josh Clark?

  All right. Well, that's fine, but I like mine better.

• 1:02:18Speaker 02

  Well, I think a Stuff You Should Know t-shirt should clearly be in flagrante delicato.

• 1:02:22Josh Clark?

  Yeah, the gentle fire.

• 1:02:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, the soft touch.

• 1:02:26Josh Clark?

  Lay down by the gentle fire with me, baby. You got anything else?

• 1:02:31Speaker 02

  I got nothing else. I hope we did reggae justice.

• 1:02:35Josh Clark?

  Oh, well, I think we did. I hope so, too.

• 1:02:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:38Josh Clark?

  I feel like every time I reassure you, I'm setting us up for people to be like, you guys suck. You did a terrible job. So I'm just going to say, I hope so, too. How about that?

• 1:02:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, actually, what usually happens is we get like, hey, you guys did a pretty good job, but also there's this, this, and this, which is exactly what we want.

• 1:02:54Josh Clark?

  Yes, but usually it's from experts, and we love that, too.

• 1:02:57Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 1:02:59Josh Clark?

  All right, well, if you want to get in touch with us, like Dave, you said?

• 1:03:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, Dave.

• 1:03:04Josh Clark?

  Well, you can email us, just like Dave did. Send it off to [email protected].

• 1:03:12Speaker 00

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, MyHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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