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Title: Reggae Routes: The Story of Jamaican Music by Kevin O'Brien Chang, Wayne Chen ISBN: 1-56639-629-8 Publisher: Temple Univ Press Pub. Date: February, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $17.84 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.62 (16 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: FASCINATING READING!
Comment: Got Reggae Routes as a Christmas gift and it was a wonderful read - well researched, well written and consistently entertaining. A must for any fan of Jamaican music. I would like to have seen more on reggae abroad and on the great instrumentalists, but this book certainly tells the best story of Jamaican music I've ever seen. It may not be perfect but it's certainly better than anything else out there.
Rating: 1
Summary: INADEQUATE
Comment: This book certainly makes a lot of bold claims for itself. According to the back cover it's "the authentic story of Jamaican popular music" as well as being "the best book ever written on reggae". So my first disappointment after receiving "Reggae routes" (a gift from a well-meaning friend) was to discover how short it is. Although the authors seem to think that they've written a "reggae bible", in reality it barely qualifies as a primer, and not a very good one at that.
The book is divided into 3 sections, so it makes sense to consider each one in turn.
Section 1 briefly outlines the history of Jamaican music and on the whole is a pretty good introduction to the subject, but it's nothing like the definitive account I was expecting. The only really bad chapter is "Reggae international", which mainly consists of well-worn cliches about Bob Marley and actually says very little about the impact reggae has made beyond the shores of Jamaica, particularly in the UK since the 1960's, or about the huge influence of Jamaican music on today's rave and dj culture, or its specific contributions to the development of hip hop as well as more recent phenomena like drum & bass and speed garage.
In Section 2 the authors list and discuss memorable recordings from the 1960's, 70's, 80's and 90's in roughly chronological order, and although most of their choices are worthy of inclusion, it's a far from comprehensive selection, mainly because they focus entirely on singles. It's true that reggae is without doubt a singles-driven genre, but failure to include some of the great albums from the last four decades means that many of Jamaica's finest recordings aren't even mentioned in "Reggae routes". What's worse is that some really significant singles are also missing, for example Wayne Smith's seminal King Jammy produced "Under mi sleng teng" (which kicked off the digital era in the mid-1980's) isn't included in the authors' 80's selection.
It also rapidly becomes clear that they don't have anything original to say about the music, and their comments about individual records are often brief, insipid or clearly borrowed from other sources. This part of the book is also littered with mistakes, and mainly demonstrates the complete opposite of what Chang & Chen would like you to believe, ie the mere fact that you're from Jamaica does not make you an expert on reggae music, or for that matter, a great writer....
They are clearly unfamiliar with some of the records they review. For example their brief description of U-Roy's "Natty rebel" correctly states that it's based on a recording of the Bob Marley song "Soul rebel", but they don't seem to realise that the recording in question is a cover version by the Gladiators (from their excellent "Trenchtown mix-up" album) and not by Bob Marley himself. Quite a few of the singles have also been assigned to the wrong year, which might be understandable for some of the more obscure tracks, but it's hard to believe that they don't know when massive hits like Marley's "Three little birds" came out....
Section 3 mainly consists of lists: Jamaican radio charts for each year from 1960 to 1997, a "most popular artists" chart (based on the radio charts), the authors' top 100 reggae chart (featuring their favourite tracks from 1960 - 1980) and top 30 dancehall chart (featuring tracks from 1983 - 1996). It's a pity that the latter two charts consist solely of the two lists of records with no explanatory comments, because it would be interesting to know why the authors decided that these 130 tracks are better than the huge number of others which weren't included. Failing this, it would have been helpful to cross-reference each item in the chart with the page on which it is discussed in Section 2 of the book (although I was surprised to discover that quite a few of them don't actually appear in Section 2!). It's also a shame that the authors didn't compile an album chart, which readers would probably find more useful, and I'm mystified as to why they don't seem to think that anything worthwhile happened in 1981 and 1982! The book finishes with a list of sources and references and a very short essay about Rastafarianism, which for some reason is tagged on rather untidily at the end.
Throughout the book the very variable quality of the photos and artwork is another let-down. Many of the images are either not well integrated with the text or poorly reproduced. For example, check out the pic of Lady Saw on p213 - although I'm quite prepared to believe it's really her, the photo is so blurred that it could just as easily be Nancy Reagan or even an alien from another planet! In addition, the choice of images to accompany individual sections of text is sometimes rather strange. For example, the authors illustrate their review of Black Uhuru's "Solidarity" with a picture of the front cover of the group's "Sinsemilla" album, which came out four years earlier and doesn't contain the track in question (it's actually from an album called "Anthem"). And there are other examples which are just as bad....
Overall, "Reggae routes" is the worst book on the subject that I've read, and as there are several infinitely superior reggae guides on the market, I'd strongly recommend that you avoid it.
Rating: 5
Summary: GREAT BOOK!
Comment: A great read. Wonderfully informative, very well written, and totally authentic. This is not some visiting foreigner's take on reggae. This is a labour of love by guys who grew up with modern Jamaican music. By far the best book ever written on the subject.
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Title: This Is Reggae Music: The Story of Jamaica's Music by Lloyd Bradley, Prince Buster ISBN: 0802138284 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: 07 October, 2001 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
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Title: The Rough Guide Reggae: 100 Essential Cds (Rough Guides) by Steve Barrow, Rough Guides ISBN: 1858285674 Publisher: Rough Guides Pub. Date: November, 1999 List Price(USD): $5.00 |
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Title: The Rough Guide to Reggae by Steve Barrow, Peter Dalton, Orla Duane, Adrian Boot, David Corio, Rich Elgood, Beth Lesser, Everton Sharp ISBN: 1858285585 Publisher: Rough Guides Pub. Date: 05 July, 2001 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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