...This chapter explores nationalists’ understandings of musical essentialism, of whether musical sounds can possess inherent and immutable political, cultural, or ethnic characters. It investigates this topic by tracing reactions to the recent emergence of nationalist rap and reggae—genres long...

... examines how musical elements, timbres, rhythms, and stylistic conventions from reggae, salsa, flamenco, and other musics are redeployed as representations of Nan’ao Dao, a small island off the southeast coast of China. More broadly, the chapter outlines an approach to understanding how musical genres...

...The history of reggae music is long and complex and, in reference to a common expression within reggae and the Rastafari movement, ‘half the story has never been told’. Record labels in Jamaica are sometimes nothing more than a studio and backyard. The presence of both old and new recordings...

...The messianic character of the Rastafari movement, and especially its apocalyptic representation of the future, deeply influences the daily life as well as worldview of the rastas. In reggae music, the eschatology is everywhere: it defines both practices and representations that belong...

...Reggae has always been a socially and politically engaged musical style, which conveys a strong and explicit revolutionary message. Indeed, the narrative contained in reggae music is not only a denunciation: it also puts forward a call for political engagement and struggle, and even for revolution...

... of the mainstream global left, but his unconventional aesthetic and language of social critique also offered new antisystemic imagery that appealed to a generation seeking an introspective vision of social change and an authentic Third World voice. ¹²¹ Bob Marley’s brand of roots reggae captivated...

..., the direct consequence of the expulsion of Jews from Europe; the African diaspora, the displacement of Africans resulting from colonial slave trade; and the South Asian diaspora, which draws upon music to represent the historical implosion of the post-colonial world. Bob Marley's ska and reggae and Abraham...

... the 1980s. Rastafarian influence on Jamaica's indigenous culture is quite pervasive, but the most celebrated influence has been on reggae, Jamaican popular music, made famous around the world by Bob Marley and the Wailers, Jimmy Cliff, Third World, and others. Though Rastafari does not have the centralized...

...So much has been written about the Rastafari, yet we know so little about why and how people join the Rastafari movement. Although popular understandings evoke images of dreadlocks, reggae, and marijuana, Rastafarians were persecuted in their country, becoming a people seeking social justice. Yet...

... appearing on 1950s and 1960s LPs designed to display hi-fidelity home stereo equipment; orchestral versions from the 1940s meant to elevate tunes from the Broadway stage into the category of concert music; and a rather unlikely cluster of laid-back recordings from the 1970s and 1980s by reggae musicians...

... not concerned with the artists or their audiences. Popular music has often been the soundtrack of protest movements, if only because it represents the people as opposed to the elite: blues, rock, folk, soul, reggae, rap and so on are all musical styles that affirm a ‘different’ identity, even when they do...

..., purified and regenerated world. This is the case of the Rastafari movement, whose eschatology is centrally based on the Revelation of Saint John. Interestingly, the eschatological narrative is one of the most central in reggae music. We live in the time of the prophecy, and the Apocalypse announced...

...Reggae music expresses a central will: the recognition of a history of struggle – against slavery, segregation and colonisation – which is logically attached to Jamaica, but also goes beyond its borders. This historical memory has three main goals: first, to reveal a history of resistance...

...The message contained in reggae music is above all a message of denunciation: the point is to show what is really happening, based on the fundamental distinction made by Rastafari between Good and Evil, between Zion and Babylon. Within a world viewed as a permanent struggle, reggae music develops...

..., but most of the intellectual world at UWI did not understand the Rastafari movement, which was not at all accepted by mainstream Jamaica. The middle class and the faculty and administration of UWI did not accept Rastafari thought or reggae music, even that of the landmark singer and composer Bob Marley...

..., beginning with the Sephardic diaspora, which arose in turn from the expulsion of Jews from Europe; the displacement of Africans resulting from colonial slave trade; and the South Asian diaspora, which draws upon music to represent the post-colonial world. Diasporic music is diverse, including reggae...

... shaped Handsworth, and how the place has, in turn, birthed waves of globally recognised art. Black British Handsworth Birmingham pan Africanism reggae Selassie Moqapi Zephaniah Benjamin urban planning Africa repatriation Rastafarian Steel Pulse Manzoni Herbert Leeds Steel Pulse Benjamin...

... of the reggae star. The track featured the chorus of Marley’s “Zimbabwe”, albeit with altered lyrics. Where Marley’s chorus opens with the resolution to fight for political rights, “Don’t Matter (Nobody Wanna See Us Together)” narrates a strained romantic relationship and the chorus concludes with a promise...

... Ghana Guyana Nkrumah Kwame Rodney Walter Popular cultures race performance reggae sport ‘Popular culture means absolutely nothing to me except as it surrounds me’, Edward Said told Jennifer Wicke and Michael Sprinker in 1992, and despite recent suggestions that his tastes ranged more widely...