Caribbean music in the United Kingdom
This article needs additional citations for verification. (October 2013) |
Music of the Anglophone Caribbean | ||||
Genres | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
|
||||
|
||||
Regional music | ||||
|
||||
People from the Caribbean have made significant contributions to British Black music for many generations.
Trinidadian calypso
Large-scale Caribbean migration to England recommenced following the
Reggae and ska
Cecil Bustamante Campbell (Prince Buster) was born in 1938 in Orange Street, Kingston, Jamaica. In 1961, he signed to Blue Beat Records.
In 1962, Jamaica won its independence and
Symarip (also known at various stages of their career as the Bees, the Pyramids, Seven Letters and Zubaba) were a ska and reggae band from the United Kingdom, originating in the late 1960s, when Frank Pitter and Michael Thomas founded the band as the Bees. The band's name was originally spelled Simaryp, which is an approximate reversal of the word "pyramids". Consisting of members of West Indian descent, Simaryp is widely marked as one of the first skinhead reggae bands, being one of the first to target skinheads as an audience. Their hits included "Skinhead Girl", "Skinhead Jamboree" and "Skinhead Moonstomp", the latter of which was based on the Derrick Morgan song, "Moon Hop".
Trojan Records was founded in 1967, named after producer Duke Reid, known as 'The Trojan'. It brought Jamaican recordings to Britain. Their first hit was Jimmy Cliff's "Wonderful World, Beautiful People" in 1969. The label had 28 other hits.
The first Jamaican performers to reach number one in Britain were Desmond Dekker and the Aces with "Israelites" in 1969. The second act was Althea & Donna with "Uptown Top Ranking" in 1977. Bob Marley came from Jamaica to London and recorded "Catch a Fire" in 1972, returning to record "Exodus" and "Kaya" in 1977. Eddy Grant was born in Guyana in 1948 and grew up in Brixton. He was part of the Equals, the first multi-racial group to reach number one in the UK with "Baby Come Back" in 1968. He took Caribbean music further in the direction of rock than anyone else. His gritty voice took "Electric Avenue" to the top 10 twice. His studio in Barbados has been used by Sting and Elvis Costello.
Roots and dub
Roots reggae was increasingly popular with the UK's black working-class youth from the 1970s onwards, its message of
A number of producers such as Dennis Bovell and Mad Professor began to record UK and Jamaican artists and release their records.
Bands such as
As roots music's popularity waned in Jamaica in the 1980s, soundsystems such as Jah Shaka kept the faith in the UK, influencing a new generation of producers, soundsystems and artists, including The Disciples, Irration Steppas, Jah Warrior and The Rootsman. This scene has been referred to as "UK Dub".
The 1990s saw a resurgence of interest in 70s roots reggae and dub with a number of UK-based specialist labels such as Pressure Sounds, Soul Jazz and Blood & Fire being set up to re-release classic recordings.
"Punky Reggae Party"
"Punky Reggae Party" is a song written by Bob Marley as a positive response to the emerging UK punk scene.
Roots and Dub music gained popularity with UK punks in the mid-70s, with
The Clash started out as a straight-ahead punk rock group, but their first album covered "Police & Thieves", a reggae track by Junior Murvin. Their bass player Paul Simonon was a reggae enthusiast. Increasingly the group took significant influence from reggae, on tracks such as "The Guns of Brixton", which used themes of impoverished criminality and a renegade lifestyle, with a punky edge. Their track "(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais" was written about the group's experience at a reggae dance. Jamaican reggae producer Lee Perry was brought in to produce the tune "Complete Control".
The Ruts recorded the reggae-inspired "Babylon's Burning", "Jah War", "Love in Vain" and "Give Youth a Chance", while The Members recorded similar white reggae tracks such as "Don't Push" and "Offshore Banking Business". The Boomtown Rats similarly released a number of reggae-inspired records, such as "Banana Republic" and later "House on Fire".
Towards the end of the 1970s, punk and reggae groups would appear on the same bills at Rock Against Racism events.
Lovers rock
While most of the developments in the music took place in Jamaica (
The early years of "lovers rock" have two main resonances: London "blues parties" and discs by girl singers who sounded as if they were still worrying about their school reports. The record that kick-started the phenomenon was the 14-year-old Louisa Mark's plaintive reading of Robert Parker's soul hit, "Caught You In A Lie", with Matumbi as backing group and production by sound-system man Lloyd Coxsone (b. Lloyd Blackwood, Jamaica); this appeared on Coxsone's Safari imprint in 1975 and was impressive enough to see release in Jamaica by Gussie Clake. Several of Louisa Mark's subsequent titles, including "All My Loving" (Safari) and "Six Sixth Street" (Bushays), repeated the success and have remained favourites at revive sessions ever since.
Mark's hit was followed by Ginger Williams' "Tenderness" (Third World), and a genre was born-essentially Philly/Chicago soul ballads played over fat reggae basslines. The style was consolidated by the husband-and-wife team of Dennis and Eve Harris who had a big hit with the white singer T.T. Ross's massively popular "Last Date" (Lucky), another key record, and set up a new imprint, Lover's Rock, giving the genre its name.
Later labels such as Fashion Records and Ariwa would go on to take lovers rock to more sophisticated plains and beyond the music's original market of working-class teenagers. and while the music media largely ignored their performers-singers like Peter Hunnigale, Sylvia Tella, Michael Gordon and Keith Douglas they have deservedly scored hit after hit with audiences who trust what they hear rather than read.
White reggae
The influence of reggae was felt in rock almost immediately, but usually surfaced as a tangential reference in some stars' isolated songs. The
Ska/reggae artist
Mixed-race reggae
More long-term success was achieved by UB40, of Birmingham. They started life performing reggae-influenced material of their own creation, but their biggest contribution is perhaps covering songs, whether that was reggae originals made into their own, or non-reggae songs that they were able to cross-over into the genre. "Kingston Town", "I Got You Babe", "Many Rivers to Cross" and "Here I Am (Come and Take Me)" are a few of the more famous examples they did. Their chart-topping cover of "Red Red Wine" was an accident of sorts - they knew a reggae version of the song, but were unaware that the American pop singer Neil Diamond was its original author.
2-tone
2 Tone Records, founded in 1979, combined ska, reggae and rock, which evolved out of punk rock, spawning the 2 tone movement with bands such as the Specials, the Selecter, Madness and the Beat. The 2-tone sound continued and evolved into the 1980s, with bands such as the Hot Knives, the Loafers and Potato 5.
Gospel
In later years and decades when black people began to settle in the UK, groups such as the Doyleys, Paradise, Lavine Hudson and the Bazil Meade-inspired London Community Gospel Choir began to drive the music much further towards the mainstream and out of the comfort zone of the black churches.
The Singing Stewarts are featured in the book British Black Gospel: The Foundations of This Vibrant UK Sound by Steve Alexander Smith.[4] The Huddersfield-born Smith was inspired to write the book after spending time in the US in the mid-1990s and witnessing the best that black gospel could offer.
The book is the world's first to cover the underground British black gospel scene and is published with a 13-track CD.
Folk music
While many immigrants from the Caribbean brought with them the folk music of the area, it was not until the 1960s when
See also
- British Afro-Caribbean community
- British black gospel
References
- ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2023-10-11.
- ^ Nathaniel, Daina (2006). Finding an "Equal" Place: How the Designation of the Steelpan as the National Instrument Heightened Identity Relations in Trinidad and Tobego (PhD thesis). Florida State University. p. 85.
- ^ Reggae [Relation to Rock & Roll], Richie Unterberger
- ISBN 978-1854248961.
- ^ "Cliff Hall Obituary: Singer with the pioneering multiracial folk group The Spinners". Independent.co.uk. Archived from the original on June 30, 2008. Retrieved 10 January 2019.