Five years will soon have passed since the death of reggae prophet Bob Marley. His peaceful messages and magnetic personality made him an international force and set standards for the music that have been hard to follow. In his absence, many critics feel reggae has passed its peak and is crumbling from a self-destructive identity crisis.
Marley’s bout with cancer ended on May 11, 1981, touching off a scramble to replace him as reggae’s focal point. None of the remaining Jamaican stars — Jimmy Cliff, Peter Tosh, Gregory Isaacs or Burning Spear — has met the challenge, nor have the newer groups such as Steel Pulse and UB40.
The relatively weak sales figures of reggae albums — most don’t sell more than 10,000 copies in the United States — have caused record companies to abandon the music as if it were just a fad.
Optimists, however, scoff at such pessimism and say that reggae, a seductively hypnotic dance music often laden with political and spiritual philosophy, has never been given a chance — especially since Marley’s death. They say there’s still much vitality to reggae, but not enough media and record-label support for it.
“Fifteen years ago, I heard reggae was going to fade. Ever since it began, they said it would fade. But I wouldn’t lose faith,” said Bunny Wailer, who, with Peter Tosh, has recently revived the Wailers, of whom Marley was a member when the group rose from the Kingston, Jamaica, ghetto in the early ’60s. They will soon have an album of new songs and archive material with fresh arrangements woven around Marley’s voice — a gesture that may anger purists but should be viewed as a “restoration project,” Wailer said.
“Reggae is moving slowly but surely,” singer Gregory Isaacs said after a recent Boston show. “And some people started to know more about reggae only after the death of Bob Marley. His death shook things up, but the music is making progress.”
“The music was not promoted, but (Marley) was. If the music was promoted, they could not say it was dying,” said Joe Higgs, who taught the Wailers how to sing in the ’60s and released last year’s exquisite roots-conscious album Triumph! on the Chicago independent label, Alligator Records.
While the debate over reggae’s future continues, the fact remains the music has never regained the American foothold it had before Marley died. The music retains commercial appeal in Europe — where Marley worked often and drew stadium-size crowds — but in the United States, it has slumped to the sales level of blues.
“It’s like what happened to all the obscure blues musicians in the late ’60s,” said Bruce Iglauer, president of Alligator Records. “B.B. King, Muddy Waters and Freddie King were able to break through, but the rest had a moment in the sun and then had to go back to the bars.”
Indeed, the American pop market has a limp reputation for encouraging minority music. Its desertion of reggae parallels that of African music, which enjoyed a moment in the sun three years ago when Nigeria’s King Sunny Ade toured the United States amid much hoopla, but then quietly disappeared. (Today, Ade doesn’t even have an American contract.)
Iglauer, whose label has put out reggae albums by Pablo Moses, the Mighty Diamonds and Mutabaruka, said there now exists a hard-core American audience of 5,000 to 7,000 people who “buy every reggae record they can get their hands on.” Yet overall sales have slumped, he said, partly because other listeners have only been “dabbling” in Third World culture.
“I’m reminded of those people who went to civil rights marches in their overalls, but then went back to the suburbs,” he said, adding that many Americans prefer to have reggae recycled by pop groups (the music of the Police comes to mind) rather than confront the real thing.
But blame cannot be assigned just to fickle consumers. Record companies, along with the organizational and creative problems of the performers themselves, must also be cited.
The major record labels, particularly, have shown little regard for the music. Most major labels view reggae as a novelty. CBS is trying to turn Jimmy Cliff into a Third World Lionel Richie (witness this year’s fluffy disco- fusion single, Hot Shot ), while Capitol-EMI’s only reggae act is the Melody Makers, a bouncy teen-age group featuring three of Marley’s sons. And speaking of trendy teen acts, MCA’s only reggae band of recent years was England’s Musical Youth, who had the hit, Pass the Dutchie, then passed from sight.
The artists themselves, however, must shoulder some responsibility, for there has been an alarming creative drought.
“There just hasn’t been enough strong new songwriting in the past couple of years,” said Chris Rocker, guitarist for the Boston band the I-Tones and producer of two albums, The Best of Studio One, Volume I and The Best of Studio One, Volume II on the Heartbeat label.
Two of England’s top reggae bands, for example, have been caught up in the drought. Steel Pulse, a dynamic live act, has moved from urgent political anthems to a curious stasis. And England’s UB40, the most successful reggae group of recent years, wrote its best songs in the early ’80s but has since gotten by on remakes of hits of Red, Red Wine by Neil Diamond and I Got You, Babe by Sonny & Cher.
Exceptions to this trend include Marley’s former backup singer, Judy Mowatt, whose album Working Wonders (on Shanachie) has been nominated for a Grammy Award; and the controversial Big Youth, whose new Heartbeat Records album, A Luta Continua (Portuguese for The Struggle Continues ) contains a surprising African song and a verse warning his peers about “too many songs on the same rhythm.”
He’s referring in part to Jamaica’s disc jockey phenomenon, in which DJs, like American rap musicians, talk over sound-system rhythms. In the hands of the albino DJ, Yellowman, this has led to some remarkably spontaneous music about politics and current events, but also to some egregious macho posturing, or “slackness,” as the Jamaicans say. Or as Duncan Browne, general manager of the Heartbeat label, put it: “Many DJs rap about either their sexual prowess or how great an emcee they are; and that just isn’t relevant to the American market.”
Another reason for reggae’s commercial impasse is the questionable reliability of some of its touring acts.
“Many club owners are tired of hearing on the day of a show that the singer is stuck in Tucson or wherever,” said Browne. “Or they’re with a band they met the night before and haven’t rehearsed with. It’s this circular thing that feeds on itself and causes a negative opinion of the music. It makes you think reggae is going through a really self-destructive phase.”
What is it going to take to spark new interest?
Wailer is hoping his Marley restoration project will help turn the tide. He may be right if subsequent Wailers’ archive material is as strong as Music Lesson, which appears on a 12-inch single recently released by Shanachie Records. The song finds Marley complaining about being taught in school about Marco Polo and Christopher Columbus (“these wicked men rob, cheat, kill”), rather than about his African ancestors.
“The song was one of the Wailers’ old anthems, but was never released before,” said Wailer, who added a new 24-track arrangement with his reunion partners, Peter Tosh, Junior Braithwaite and Constantine “Dreamy Vision” Walker, along with backing from the famed rhythm section of Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare, plus trumpeter Johnny Moore of the Skatalites.
In all, there are a potential 25 albums of Marley archive music, spanning unreleased originals and different versions of Wailer hits, he said.
“I inherited my name from the Wailers. That’s how serious I am about this,” said the 38-year-old Wailer, whose real name is Neville Livingston. “I took the name, and it’s my responsibility to see that the Wailers’ music is restored and goes on.”
Wailer, who also has a new solo album, Marketplace (with a No. 1 reggae dance hit, Jump Jump ), left the group in 1972 after refusing to play what the band’s record company, Island Records, described as “freak clubs” in America. He said, however, that he, Marley and Tosh were discussing a reunion album before Marley’s death; and that this project was his way of making good on that wish. The reunited Wailers also may tour America this summer, he said.
“The Wailers are family more than friends. Peter has a son by my sister, and my father has a daughter by Bob’s mother . . . So we’re not living off of Bob by doing this. This is family.”
The prospect of unreleased Marley songs is a major media coup for the music, but equally thrilling for true reggae lovers is the emergence of Marley’s former teacher, Higgs. He was the first to sing about social issues in Jamaica and has had several songs banned there over the years, including Sons of Garvey, which he did with Jimmy Cliff in 1977.
Because of a fear of being exploited, he never pursued the American market until the past few years. He has only two albums available here, Triumph! and Unity is Power, “but both share the integrity of Marley’s best work.
“All I’m asking for is proper promotion and I’ll take it from there,” said Higgs, whose Triumph! LP has sold 10,000 copies in less than three months.
“The past is the past,” he said, alluding to Marley’s achievements, “but now it’s time to get on with the present.”
