Reggae: Kingston’s Gift to the World

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human So, what, like, by Asia-Ratherne or so, at least 70% have a phone I'm Dr. Joy, and this is Therapy for Black Girls. We spend our surviving middle school run getting into what's happening inside your kids' brain, the group chat, and their friendships and what you can do about it. Your child is not doing this on purpose That's the kind of perspective we've been pulling from the psychologists and psychiatrists who study this for a living. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering the ride on his motorcycle. I choose option B. I'm Julie Pinero, and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word Solita, trading the pity for possibility. Listen to Solita on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Self-care September is your reminder to slow down, check in with yourself, get off your phone, and maybe ask why am I like this? I'm Gemma Spek, host of the Psychology of your 20s podcast, and this month we're helping you make sense of the person that you are becoming from setting boundaries and navigating friendships, to understanding anxiety, confidence, relationships, and attachment. Sometimes our biggest decisions without us even realizing it aren't driven by what we truly want, but by what will prevent us from feeling lonely or being alone. Listen to the psychology of your 20s on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey and welcome to the podcast, I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. She even said, "Yamon," right before we started recording, because this is Stuff You Should Know reggae edition. That's right, and here's the 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. Sure. But I clapped on the four. Did you? Just, you know, make it super reggae. That was pretty great, yeah, because, so what you were doing was skinging. That's right. And skiing is slang for gun in Kingston. Yeah. Kingston in Jamaica is the world capital of reggae. It's where it's born. It's one of those things where you're like, "Well, where'd jazz come from? Where'd 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. Yeah, for sure. I was playing golf yesterday with my friend Justin. Who, who, you know? Justin from trench town? Justin from London, which will also play a part, but he asked what we were recording on today, and it 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." You make Justin sound like a real milk toast. I can tell everybody that is not what Justin sounds like. 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. Yeah, almost just a little over 50 years old. Yeah, I mean, I'm 55. I was born in 71, so you do the math. You're the expert. 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 talk about all this. Let's get to the beginning, I guess, okay? Yeah, which means we've got to talk about Jamaica as a place, right? Yeah, because one of the things about reggae, Olivia helps us with this, so it had to, to Olivia. 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 I'll kind of form the society where it was all mixed together. And one of 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 formed different melanges in different ways. 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 Minto. Maybe that's what Justin was talking about. No, he's talking about Minto's, the freshman. Right. 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 Minto 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&B on the radio, which also came from African and European influences, obviously. And that produced what became the more direct predecessor to reggae, which was Scott. Yeah. That's the things took a really dark turn. Oh man, Scott. 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 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, Scott and like super early reggae. Really early stuff. Okay. Cool. I can't really fault you for that. I think I just have a bad taste of my mouth about Scott from the 90s. The mining mighty boss tones. I'm not calling anybody in particular out. And I'm calling all of them out, basically. Yeah. But that early stuff is I think you could probably appreciate a little more, like the Desmond Decker stuff. Sure. Sure. I'm sure I could too. One of the reasons that that suddenly came up in the 50s and 60s was because transistor radios were to become available. And before that, Jamaica had basically access to BBC style radio stations that weren't playing R&B. And so all of a sudden they could pick up stations from Miami. And we're like, "Oh, I like this stuff." And that was another thing too that reggae was built on. We're like Jamaican people who are 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 reggae was born out of. It was like, "I like this. I'm going to use this." 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 highly salassy episode. But the technology of the radio is certainly big. And also what was big was, 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. But a musical style where they would speak and sing over the recorded music. And that directly led to stuff like rap. Yeah. Do you ever listen to reggae shows in college radio or something like that? Well, yeah, that's why a lot of times I play on Sunday morning because that's when album 88's reggae show was. Right. Okay. And then sometimes the DJ would just turn the music down all of a sudden and say something. Yeah. That's toasting, right? And it can be done well. And it can very frequently be done not well. It depends on how toasted they are. 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. Right. And then you turn the music back up real quick. Sometimes you hear these guys and it's the best because I think our old beloved WFMU and New Jersey, I think they had a reggae show too. And sometimes you can hear these DJs are super, super stoned. Yeah. For sure. I mean, they're probably Ross Safarian's. Yeah. So then that's like part of their religion, you know. Sure. So 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. It's probably part of your lifestyle. - Yeah, they're like time to put on my game face and smoke my weekly joint before my radio show. - That's right. - So some people were like, okay, I like the Scott 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 Rocksteady, one word. Probably one of the best names for any musical genre, if you ask me. - Yeah, I'm with you. - And Rocksteady has a lot of the same components and instruments and everything, but like I said, it slowed down. There's much more of a focus on vocals. So like there's like a lyrics to the song or the theme or something like that. And if you're like, I don't know if I've ever heard Rocksteady, you definitely have. 'Cause there are some hits that came out of this, apparently it was just like a two year period that Rocksteady was popular. But the original tide is high, no sunshine, as in no sunshine when she's gone. That came out of the Rocksteady era. If you've ever listened to the upsiders, like the early stuff, really organ heavy. Everybody sings it once so the mic peaks and gets overloaded. Like that is that's Rocksteady. - Yeah, for sure. And Rocksteady 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 forward, that's when reggae was kind of born. I know Olivia points out that there are some other kind of, I guess just maybe unusual influences. And one was the school in Kingston, the Alpha Boy School. It was run by, it was a trade school and there was a none 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. And there was a none 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 huge stars, although the element did go through there. But some early like Scott and reggae horn players, especially because of her jazz focus came through her school. - Right, for sure. Yeah, I had no idea about that, did you? - No, that's super cool though. - There's also obviously the Rastafari in 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 in Holly Salasi, it was his visit. And I think 1966 that just opened the doors to Rastafarianism and reggae being like essentially hand in hand. - 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 took it away that never came back. And then when we covered, yeah, yeah, this is a while ago. And then we covered Holly Salasi. It basically covered that well enough, I think. - Oh, it did, okay. 'Cause we definitely got into it for sure, but that episode was about a lot more than just that. - Oh yeah, yeah. 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 Salasi 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. And that's the moment that it spread to reggae music. - Yeah, and this was in the lead up to their eventual freedom from the colonizers and 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 his probably most notable song is The Israelites. And that's what he was talking about there, right? - Yeah, 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 is the bridge between rock study and reggae, that song. - And it's that song you think it is like, whoa, the Israelites, right? - That one nice. - And oh, thanks, I've been practicing for weeks. - Is it a lower key, but you're under the weather, so. - Yes, that's thank you for giving me that pass. But yeah, the song, I don't think it says it necessarily, explicitly, but the gist of it is this Rastafarian idea that the stolen Africans who 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, and that through self-determination and deliverance by jaw, they will be able to emancipate themselves, essentially mind, body, and spirit. And that's what Rastafarianism is about. - Yeah, for sure. And there was a drummer, Rastafari drummer name, they call them Count Ozzy, but Oswald Williams, he played on an early song in 1958. So this is like, you know, still predating reggae. It was a sky recording by the folks, brothers, called Ocarolina, and you know, we're gonna 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 judge to it, I think. - Nice, so one other thing about Rastafarianism too, so I said it predated reggae. I mean, it basically came out of the '20s and '30s when Marcus Garvey predicted that a emperor would be elected or ceded, I don't know what you would call it when you install, okay, there was gonna be an emperor that came out of Africa, and people were like, "Oh, holly salicy, 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. - Oh, wow. - I had no idea. - What about white guy Dreads? - Those came out of the '90s. I blamed the '90s sky revival for that too. - Probably so, huh? - Yeah, yeah. - All right, that feels like a good time for a break, right? - Yeah, I think so. - All right, and we will come back with more on reggae right after this. (upbeat music) - By age 11 or so, at least 70% have a phone. - Middle school is a different world than the one we grew up in. I'm Dr. We spent real time on it in our surviving middle school run, bringing in a child psychologist and a psychiatrist who's raising two black girls of his own to talk about what's really going on with our kids right now. - So it's literally physiological and neurological and psychological chaos happening all the same time. - We got into group chats and gaming, friendships and bullying, and how to tell the difference between healthy monitoring and the kind of surveillance that erodes trust. - You're belonging. You could think of belonging as, "I can be myself and I can still be accepted." And then they're fitting in. Spinning in says, "I have to change who I am in order to avoid rejection." - Then we turn the conversation toward the fathers, sitting down with therapists, care gains on black fatherhood, and what it means to raise a daughter through this stage. - You don't have more shorts so you can't do flips. You have one to dress up across your legs. - That's the range of this run. From screen time to identity to the fathers doing the work at home. - You have to get off her device. - The reality is there's a lot of life out there that we don't want you as your adult in the life to miss out on. - This has been our surviving middle school run. Brought to you by the people who spend their careers thinking about exactly this. I'm Dr. Joy. Listen to therapy for black girls on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. - If your bookshelf and your four-year page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. This is Pro's Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks pride and prejudice and love island deserve the same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo and every week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having. - I'm gonna have to look up this story. - Yeah, I'm obsessed, I'm obsessed. - From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table. It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, and that is a Trojan horse, whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place. Listen to Pro's Society on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. See you between the pages. - On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. - I can wait four hours for the next bus, or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I took a nap. I'm Julie Piñero, and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. Every time I tried to be alone, I kept meeting people and they were like, "You smiled at us, not a lot of people smile around here." It's when you're alone that you're most receptive to the world as it is and not the lies you're sold about it. It can be a time where you push your limits, change your mind, or wake up to a new version of yourself. So whether you're a solo travel veteran or you're too nervous to book your first trip, I hope you listen to solita on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So Chuck, we're back. Yeah, let's hear it. I threw to you really. I was being serious. Here's another little behind the scenes thing. Chuck and I decided on the fly, which one's going to bring us back from break. And this time I said, "I was going to go." And so we came back and I immediately tossed to you. The reason why I did that, apparently it was not that great of a joke, is because I'm not super musical. I know reggae, pick reggae out in a maybe two notes. I could be like, "That's a reggae song." Yeah, but I can't mimic it. 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. Well, if you're going to count on me to mimic reggae with my mouth, although I kind of just did with that drum intro. Yeah. People are probably going to be disappointed, but we should talk a little bit about the instrumentation, because it's. It's like you might find in a rock band, maybe minus some stuff and plus some stuff, drums, sometimes steel drums, which I was trying to mimic. You get your pace. You got your electric guitar, a lot of percussion, you know, bongos and shakers and stuff like that. Bob Marley used some cool, like, synthy sounds and organ sounds. It's my life on what? It's my life. Don't you forget in that "The Wailers"? I don't know that song. Yes, you do. Maybe it's a very synthy song. Yeah, yeah. I didn't recognize the rendition. It's just because you're sick, though. A horn section, sometimes you might get in a reggae band. But, you know, I mentioned earlier that it's that rhythm of reggae that is kind of maybe the most distinguishing aspect of it. It's a 4-beat rhythm with the emphasis on the 2 and the 4, whereas traditional rock, it's not that. So that's why when you hear that, you know, that chunking rhythm guitar, that don't chink it, don't chink, that's on the 2 and 4. And it's, you know, it's a real distinct sound. And, you know, as we'll see, you know, once they 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 sort of 2 and the 4. It's a very distinct thing. For sure, in the 70s, it definitely caught Great Britain by the Chorley. Chorley? Yeah. And Ireland too. We can't forget Ireland ever. We never do. No, of course not. Even if we don't mention Ireland, we still are including Ireland. That's right. But we should say it separately because they're not part of Great Britain. Did you know that? We didn't want to rail anyone up. So thank you. That's what I was trying to get to you is you explaining the rhythm because I can't. I have so little rhythm that I can't even explain it verbally. Yeah. 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 rock steady or ska. Is it really kind of moved away from horns? Where horns were really, really important to rock steady and in particular ska. Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah. So 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. Yeah. 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. If you've heard Bob Marley, you've definitely heard of Trinch Town. Trinch Town is a low-income neighborhood in Kingston. I think part of it's like Shanty even, it's that low-income. 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 was 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, it's really male dominated. Still today it is generally a male dominated music genre so there's just inevitably a certain machismo that's in the background there. It might not be always talked about, it's more dance hall but in reggae even too, there's this idea that the man's in charge is just how it is. 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 violent context of the gangster persona, a lot of it taken from American movies in both reggae and hip hop. The root boy culture was what it was called in reggae, but you can see a lot of similarities there. 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, 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 "streggae" ST-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-R-G-E, reggae reggae, which was about like fighting or protesting. So there's not like a definitive like hey this is where the word came from but probably maybe a mash up of those three things. Well there's another entrance to 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. So it's just completely muddled but it seemed to have come around in 1968. The year reggae broke. Yeah and 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 pretty good listening. It started out in 1962 obviously Scott at the time but their first big hit was in 1968 with the song 54-56. That's my number. Great tune. And they had a bunch of you know not they didn't take over America like Bob Marley later would because this is the late 60s 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 70s to break through in the States. Yeah but at the same time to the suburbanites in America in the mid 60s were into Caribbean stuff like Exotica and things like that which is why we have heard songs like The Tie It Is High. So they did kind of make its way over here but like no one has ever taken the world by storm at least as far as reggae goes like Bob Marley. But he just became an international icon like in a very short time even to as we'll see. Yeah for sure. So he's coming up everybody wouldn't that be funny if we did a whole episode of Marley? That'd be an April fool's episode. Yeah for sure. 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 Ruddick 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 dub plate and that's what the DJs would toast over. Yeah which as we'll see sounds a lot like me hip hop and rapping right? Yeah. and dub music. - 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, as another originator of dub, Hopton Lewis, who came to be known as scientists. In my, for my money, the best dub musician of all, but 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 craft work in Devo who came later did. It was like, I want to make the sound, but there's nothing out there that makes that sound. So I'm going to build my own thing. 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. - Yeah, man, I would love, I used to be scared of doing these music episodes because 45 to 50 minutes to encapsulate 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 list. - Oh, that's a good idea. - We don't, I almost, so that's where, we don't even need to come up with an article for that, we can just go back and forth on it. How about that? - That sounds great. - I'd say ish instead of this word is what people do. - Yeah, that's like on the radio or something. - For sure ish, 'cause I think it's the sound that it makes when you scratch the record backwards at that moment. - Is that it? - Oh, okay. - I'm almost positive. - All right, so we're getting to Bob Marley, but if we're talking about Lee Scratch Perry, he's one of the guys in the early 60s who was working with the whalers 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. - Yeah. - But I guess we should talk about the whalers a little bit. And if we're gonna talk about the whalers, we gotta back up a little bit and talk about Joe Higgs. - Did you know who Joe Higgs was? - I did not. But now I'm like, I love seeing the tent, like the early tendrils being, like, tenderling. - Sure, there might have been whalers at one point, but we probably wouldn't know of them, because Joe Higgs taught them most of what they know about music. - Yeah, I think I heard of them probably in the Bob Marley documentary now that I think about. - That makes sense, because 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. He also taught Peter Tosh and Bunny Whaler at the same time. So he essentially taught the whalers how to play music. So yeah, they might have been around, 'cause 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 Trinchtown. So they probably would have formed a musical act, but they would have just sucked. - Well, Joe Higgs was definitely the glue early on and the mentor to them. He had a big hit as a singer in 1960 with Higgs and Wilson. It was called Manio. And it was, again, if you listen to some of this stuff, you definitely hear like the American R&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, Manio 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 a lot of records for back then. And he is, yeah, he's the guy that like, all these like teenagers basically were crowding around just like sponges to everything he knew. - Yeah, that was something really cool about him. Like he was living in Trinchtown or at least Kingston at the time too. And he would teach other younger musicians. Like he took time to do that, rather than just focusing on his career and getting bigger and bigger. He like took his talents and helped other people develop their own talents, right? So hats off to Joe Higgs for sure. Just from putting the whalers together. But you mentioned how the, like a lot of this stuff, this early reggae in Rock City. It's how you can really hear the R&B coming through. And that's true with those early whalers songs too. If you go listen to Simmer Down, which came out in 1963. - Great song. - 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, you're just like, you can hear Bob Marley's voice, but it's total R&B. - Yeah, they dress the part too. Like when you look at the old, like the early whalers they were wearing the cool shark skin suits and stuff and they were styled out like the OJs or something. - Right, exactly. Yeah, so it's a little jarring when all you know about Bob Marley is as a reggae icon, you know? - Yeah. - But yeah, they all met together in Trinch Town where they all lived. And one thing I didn't realize is that Bob Marley's father was a white man, did you know that? 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 an army, like a British army veteran, but was a plantation overseer basically and was in his 60s when he married Bob Marley's mother when she was 18. And so you know, you hear that and you think like a boy is the worst thing happened. And apparently that wasn't the case. I mean, there was a huge age difference. I'm not saying there was a balance of power by any means. But everything I've read and seen it was, 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 was like a real father figure. - Okay, gotcha. - Yeah, 'cause I hear white rural overseer and I'm like, oh no. - Well, yeah. 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 a 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 definitely got from being his grandfather's grandson. - Yeah, for sure. But as a result of that sort of displaced childhood, Marley didn't get to Trinchtown until he was a teenager. Spent a lot of time out in the country in Kingston, hanging out with his granddad, like you said. And like you mentioned earlier, he and Bunny Wailer, it's a cutest thing. They 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 Wailer's dad. And they, yeah, they were raised like brothers. - Yeah, super sweet. - It is super sweet. And they met Peter Tosh and a gambling hall. I think when they were all like early teens, right? - Yeah. - I don't know when Bob Marley met his wife Rita. But I do know they were married by the time Highly Salicy came to visit Jamaica in 1966. And it was her influence. She went and saw Highly Salicy. I think we said in the Highly Salicy 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 Wailers go. And they were hugely influential in spreading that connection. - Yeah, for sure. And like you mentioned, it's catch a fire in '72 as 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. - For sure. - But now like I really, really like that 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. - Well, wait a minute. It was that I feel like they came out with this box set or something like that around that time. And that's what got everybody into Bob Marley again with that age. - I don't know. - Was it legend? I thought for sure there was that. - Well, that legend was the sort of greatest hits for lack of a better word. - Yeah, for sure. - Yeah, legend was the one that like everybody had 'cause those were all like all the big, big songs. - Right. - But it's, I really like 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 great. It's such a thick accent. Like you can hardly understand them. - Right. It's kind of great. - Yeah, and even I was reading a quote from Shabba Ranks about how the like. - Oh man, Shabba Ranks. - 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 'cause they had a block quote from him. And I'm like, I have no idea what Shabba Ranks just said. And I wasn't even listening. I was reading it. I could not make heads or tails out of it. - It's one of my favorite that you may know. - Making accent is one of my favorite accents on planet Earth. I love it so much. - It's definitely up there with Scottish for me too. - You see the, you ever seen the stuff on the internet where people would be like, if you want to say this in this accent, say these words in American English? - You taught me to say Michael Cain. You say Mike Cokain. - Mike Cokain. - No, Mike Cokain. - Yeah, that's what I just said. 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. - Let's hear it. - So like, ask me what I did over the weekend. - What did you do over the weekend, Chuck? - I went to a concert and then asked me who I saw. - Who'd you see Chuck? - The space ghettos? - Oh yeah, that was pretty dead on. - Pretty good, huh? - Why did you have to drink there? - Was it urinal drinker? - What'd you say? - I'm a non-drinker. - You didn't drink any urinal brew? - What is that? - Remember that's like their drink. It's like some almost an orangey weird. - I don't remember that. - Oh yeah, it's like urinal brew, but they spell it like urinal brew. - Oh, I do remember it. I didn't know. - Yeah. - It's something specific. - I liked it, but it was like, you could easily drink too many at once. - Yeah, I could see that. - So. - Rege, I think it's where we were headed. - Yeah, so yeah. What you have when you put together reggae, reggae music and rastafarian perspectives and outlook and world view, that's the word I was looking for. You have what's known as root reggae. And what most people think of as reggae, what they're thinking of as root reggae. Bob Marley and the Whalers roots reggae from catch of fire on. - Yeah, for sure. And catch of fire was 72. And like we said, that was their first big reggae album, but they actually, the Whalers broke up two years later in '74. - Yeah. - And most of the college got into Bob Marley stuff and the legend stuff is all post official like the Whalers as the Whalers. And all of them went on to do their own solo stuff, obviously I think Bob Marley had six albums after that until we'll get to his death in 1981. But everyone did. Peter Tosh, who was, he was the real deal man. He had some great albums, legalize it in 1976. It was a great one. - Yeah. - Equal rights a year later. And then later on in the '80s, he had a very sort of political album called Nuclear War that was really good. - Yeah, I had this Peter Tosh live show that I cannot find, it drives me crazy. It's like every other show from that tour exists except for that one. And I can't remember what city it was. - I get a tape or something. - So yeah, it was like a burn CD. It was so good, man. You could just listen to that on repeat, right? - Yeah. - But yes, 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 whalers. He could play all sorts of different stuff. He was also a good songwriter too. But when you put 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 album like with really cool themes in it, right? And I saw it, there's a reggae archivist, which is, I'm not sure what you would go study in school to become that. The guy named Roger Stephens, and 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 whalers universally palatable and Peter Tosh inserted like that kind of militant political bent that is also like a big part of reggae to you. - Yeah, and I think a lot of the credibility for at least suffrage Jamaicans were concerned. - Yeah, I saw also that like apparently around the world, he's respected at least as much as not more than he is in Jamaica because he was like known to walk the walk and like he was beaten nearly to death by the police several times, legalize it was banned in Jamaica. So he took out a newspaper ad and printed the lyrics in it. Like he was a, he was a cool dude for sure. - Yeah, all right, so I think we should take another break and we will come back and talk a little bit about a guy named Jimmy Cliff right after this. I'm Dr. Joy and this is therapy for black girls. - So it's literally physiological and neurological and psychological chaos, I think all of the same job. - We got into group chats and gaming, friendships and bullying and how to tell the difference between healthy monitoring and the kind of surveillance that erodes trust. - They're belonging, you could think of belonging as, I can be myself and I can still be accepted. And then they're fitting in. Spitting in says I have to change who I am in order to avoid rejection. - Then we turn the conversation toward the fathers, sitting down with therapists, cure gains on black fatherhood and what it means to raise a daughter through this stage. - You don't have more shorts so you can't do flips, you have one to dress up across your legs. - That's the range of this run, from screen time to identity to the fathers doing the work at home. - I have to get off her device. But the reality is there's a lot of life out there that we don't want you as you're adult in the life to miss out on. Brought to you by the people who's been their career thinking about exactly this. I'm Dr. Joy. Listen to therapy for black girls on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast. - I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I choose option B. - I'm Julie Piñero and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. - Every time I tried to be alone, I kept meeting people and they were like, "You smiled at us, not a lot of people smile around here." It's when you're alone that you're most receptive to the world as it is and not the lies you're sold about it. It can be a time where you push your limits, change your mind or wake up to a new version of yourself. So whether you're a solo travel veteran or you're too nervous to book your first trip, I hope you listen to Solita on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. - If you're bookshelf and you're for you page or equally important to your personality, welcome home. This is Pro's Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives and anyone who thinks pride and prejudice and love island deserve the same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet and the conversations everyone can't stop having. - From bestselling authors and your favorite book talk for creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table. So like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters and that is a Trojan horse, whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place. (upbeat music) - All right, we're back, take it away Josh. - Chuck, have you ever heard a song by Jimmy Cliff? - Yeah, I like Jimmy Cliff. 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 sort of proselytizer for reggae, kind of took it around the world in a lot of ways. - Yeah. - And one way he did so was in a movie, which I have not seen, it was one that's always been on my list, but the harder they come in 1972 is definitely a cult classic, and was a big, not a huge American hit, but on the movie scene like the film lovers it was. - Yeah, it's also widely considered one of the best soundtracks too. - Yeah. - Because it's about reggae and the reggae music industry and Kingston and the way things are and Kingston. And it's like Jimmy Cliff plays kind of a bandit to an extent. - Yeah. - Yeah, I haven't seen it either, but it's, I don't know. I just know it's, like you said, a cult classic. And that, as much as, you know, I think simultaneous to Bob Marley touring the world and the Whalers, 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. - 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? - Two thumbs up if I'm not mistaken. - 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. - I know I've told you this before, but do you know that Gene Siskel's stated favorite movie was Saturday Night Fever? - Yeah. - And he owned the white suit that Travolta War in Saturday Night Fever? - Yeah, that was in our disco episode. - Okay. - But it's just such a great fact. - Yeah, and you know what, since that episode, I've had as a copy pasted from the original New York Times article that inspired Saturday Night Fever, it's been sitting on my desktop, on my computer like 10 years, unread. - 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. - Oh, was it? - I don't remember that part. - Oh, I'm sorry. I wish I could take that back, I thought you did. - Yeah, I'm sorry. - I'm sorry. - I'll still read it. - It's already been 10 years from now. Now forget about that. - Okay, cool. But you'll never forget that gene sysco fact. I like to bust out every few years. - That's right. So we should talk a little bit more about, I guess we talked a little bit about the violence 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, especially within the country politically. And they were always in the middle of it. And Bob Marley was usually in the middle of it trying to bring people together. In 1976, they were in the middle of a clash between the People's National Party, which was the ruling party at the time. And their opponents and Bob Marley went to play an anti-violence concert and some of the people dragged them 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 never, I think there's a lot of frustration they're judging from the documentary about like trying to do the right thing by bringing people together, but some people on the opposition being like, you can't even like talk to the other side. - Yeah. And 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 'cause it was moving to the left rather than the right. That concert you mentioned that Bob Marley was frustrated about it seeming like he was kind of like a handmaiden or whatever to the unpopular Prime Minister. 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. - Yeah, it was incredible. Two years after that in 1978, 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 two guys together. He brought Prime Minister Manley together with Edward, I think Seagah of the Jamaican labor party. And that was a huge, huge deal. - Yeah, there's a very famous picture of them holding hands 'cause Bob Marley's making them. - Yeah, exactly. So Marley actually died of a cancerous growth that started on his toe that he didn't get looked at 'cause he thought it was an old soccer injury. And he actually collapsed in Central Park after a pretty great show in Madison Square Garden. - Yeah, he ovened up for the Commodores and apparently blew the Commodores off the stage. And the real sad thing about his death is that from everything I saw it was that that was, he probably could have been very successfully treated for cancer had he gotten it looked at earlier on. - 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. I'm trying to, I mean, is that what you said? - Yeah. - 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. - Maybe he did so well in the game he considered a religious experience. Or might have been a little bit of both. - 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 Doneman. That's how their lives ended. That's, I mean, like there's nowadays, there's a lot of reggae artists who, 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. - Oh, for sure. Peter Tosh's murder was brutal. Like he had these three guys that busted it. Basically held him hostage in his house and tortured him, trying to get money from him. And as people, like friends would come by the house, just through the course of the day, they would be taken in and held hostage. And eventually, like, just, there was just a big, like kind of crazy shootout and he was shot in the head. It was brutal. - Yeah, the worst thing about that, aside from the fact that he was murdered, his murderer was a guy named Dennis Lovin. Leppo 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 Leppo Lovin repaid him by murdering him 'cause he was trying to rob him for more money. - Yeah, pretty brutal. - Yeah. And then King Tubby was murdered in what they think was a botched robbery in 1989. - Well, that's essentially what this was with Tosh too, 'cause at the time they were just trying to get money that he said he didn't have at the house. - Yeah, and guess so. - All right, so we mentioned London earlier. London is probably like the second city of Reggae after Kingston. - It's the Chicago of Reggae. - Yeah. (laughing) So because of what's called the win-rush generation, which is when Caribbean immigrants post World War II from British colonies and former colonies, they started moving elsewhere and a lot of them arrived in the UK. And that came over, their music and their culture and their food and everything came over. And that happened in London and there were all of a sudden a bunch of, well, not, it sort of depends. Like sometimes white London acts, sometimes 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 you know, those ended up being like really big bands, but they also influenced like the punk scene with the clash and the sex pistols even. - Yeah, Johnny Rotten was heavily influenced. He went on to found public image limited and thanks to him, Johnny Rotten liking Reggae and Jawabble, the bassist, really liking Dubrage. P-I-L had a certain Reggae - Yeah, for sure. - The Dubrage thing to it going on. So hats off to Reggae for giving us public image limited. - And you know, it wasn't just London. Like, you know, we can't get into all this like super, in a super detailed way, but it, you know, Reggae went across Africa. There were like native born South African artists that like became Reggae stars. I know the Ivory Coast really got into the Rastafari culture for a while. - Yeah, no, for sure. And some of them, the taking up that kind of political causes and calls for revolution, some of actually happened to become political leaders in their country. Like Bobby Weenie of Uganda or Shada Wale in Ghana. Like, these are Reggae artists who actually have talked the talk and they're now political, whether they like it or not. - Yeah, New Zealand. We're looking at you because who knew? I didn't know. In 1979, Bob Marley played in Auckland and it kind of, he kind of codified there in Maori musicians sort of adopted Reggae for a while and they brought their own thing like it always happens when you sort of adopt a music. They brought their own vocal harmonies and stuff. But they also like everywhere Reggae went that it caught fire, I think people except in college dorms in the 80s and 90s in the United States. There was a big like identification with the politics, sort of the bottom up politics of it all. - Right, yeah. Yeah, that was kind of lost on the dorm crowd wasn't it? I mean, I think we all like to think we were down with the movement but we just wanted to bumper stickers. - But I'm sure it definitely helped shape our world views. - Yeah, yeah, I think it opened us up to other things for sure. - 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 Hurt. It 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 Hurt moving to the Bronx, hip hop came up in New York. out of nowhere. So they think that it was him. Yeah. I mean, he didn't come to the Bronx. 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. 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. That's right. Other places, Panama, like Central and South America had a big thing. They called reggae on Espeniole. And Puerto Rico, they had like an underground Spanish language, like reggae rap called reguten that came along and like you can draw direct line from that to somebody like bad bunny. Yeah. I think it's even like they call bad bunny's music reggae tune. Yeah. I think so. Yeah. Boy, that's super bowl performance was so fun. Yeah. He really did set the world on fire. That was great. That was a lot of fun. Yeah. Like he prefigured Erling Holland. He was like the Erling Holland of Super Bowl halftime shows. So Chuck favorite reggae band of all time? I mean, early whalers for sure. Okay. I'm going with Burning Spear. Oh, yeah. Chuck, did you like the 90s sky revival? No, I wouldn't end of that. Me either. Well, it's my bag. I got us to listen or mail now. I managed to unlock it for us. Oh, okay. Are we there? Yeah. Because back in 2008, one of us predicted that we would bag on the 90s, mid 90s sky revival in one of our episodes and that would trigger listening. 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 Fla Grande Delicdo, which is the common term, Josh coined the term in Fla Grande Delicato, which could perhaps mean gently a fire. Which Dave says is actually not entirely inappropriate perhaps. Right. That's what I kind of what I thought. I didn't realize it. It was Delicdo. What does Delicdo mean? Like I don't know. On fire. Yeah. What does Delicdo mean, Chuck? You don't know. Delicdo. Well, I think it means caught in the act, which is what that means. There's a phrase. Okay. No. I see that it's caught red handed. Yeah. All right. But that's fine. But I like mine better. Well, I think a step you know, T-shirt should clearly be in Fla Grande Delicato. Yeah. The gentle fire. Yeah. It's all touch. Lay down by the gentle fire with me, baby. You got anything else? I got nothing else. I hope we did rig A justice. Oh, well, I think we did. I hope so too. Yeah. I feel like every time I reassure you, I'm setting this 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? Yeah. Actually, what usually happens is we get like, hey, you guys did a pretty good job. But also there's this, this, this, and this, which is exactly what we want. Yes. But usually it's from experts and we love that too. That's true. All right. Well, if you want to get in touch with us like Dave, you said? Yeah. Dave. Well, you can email us just like Dave did send it off to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. So what, like, by Asia revenue or so, at least 70% have a phone. I'm Dr. We spend our surviving middle school run getting into what's happening inside your kids brain, the group chat, and their friendships, and what you can do about it. Your child is not doing this on purpose. That's the kind of perspective we've been pulling from the psychologists and psychiatrists who study this for living. Listen to therapy for black girls on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I choose option B. Listen to Solita on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Gemma Speck, host of the Psychology of your 20s podcast, and this month we're helping you make sense of the person that you are becoming from setting boundaries and navigating friendships, to understanding anxiety, confidence, relationships, and attachment. Sometimes our biggest decisions, without us even realizing it, aren't driven by what we truly want, but by what will prevent us from feeling lonely or being alone. Listen to the psychology of your 20s on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Guaranteed Human.