OK, bloggers, time for something a little more contemporary - Bigg Robb! This one is bound to get mixed reactions here. But if you have never heard of Bigg Robb, bear with me for just a bit. You may end up deleting these MP3s immediately after listening to them. Or you may end up on the dance floor with a new perspective on modern Blues and Soul. As for me, I've been on the dance floor with a new perspective from Bigg Robb for a number of years already.
I remember that, back in the 90s, they would sometimes refer to the blues/soul being played on the Chitlin' Circuit as music for the over-30 crowd. Well, now it is usually more like over-50, if not over-60. So what about the future?
Well, thankfully, there are some people making serious attempts to modernize the music for the new age, while still respecting the beautiful essence of classic blues and soul. I would put Bigg Robb at the front of this movement. In my mind, he has been suprisingly successful, artistically as well as commercially. Check out some of the youtube videos of live performances by Carl Marshal of Good Love Will Make You Cry (Included on this album). What a crowd of fans, a good number of which are decidedly under 50!
Bigg Robb has recently entered the over-50 crowd, himself. He comes from Cincinnati, Ohio, and began his career as a radio DJ, where he came into contact with Bootsy Collins. His primary mentor was Robert Troutman of Zapp. Robb's early interests were primarily in the emerging Hip Hop scene and deep funk. Gradually, he developed a major interest in old school blues, soul, and gospel, and has worked in recent years to produce a modern version of this music with the full palette of Hip Hop production techniques at his disposal. In my mind, Bigg Robb uses this palette with taste in a manner that complements rather than obstructs the soulfulness of the music. This is not a Hip Hop sampling of Blues & Soul. Blues and Soul are at the core here.
Blues Soul & Old School was a quite popular release in 2008, especially Good Love Will Make You Cry, which was the runaway #1 Southern Soul single in 2008. Not every track here reaches that level. But there are a number of other standouts, including Keep on Swinging and Grown & Sexy (one mix featuring another younger sensation of the Circuit, Sir Charles Jones).
34 comments:
https://rapidshare.com/files/818550682/Blues Soul and Old School _The Latest!_.zip
Bigg does dress like Bootsy. You got me curious, so I'm looking forward to this.
Preslives this is a brave post ! I thought i'd chance it and try to give it an unprejudiced listen
For what it is it's OK but the studio effects started to annoy me - The vocals are good and rootsy but I would file this misic under modern R&B and heard very little real blues
Maybe a younger crowd would respond to this and look further afield to the roots but it didn't really move me - I think for this type of 'modern fusion blues' Taj done it with one track (Squat That Rabbit) and the Little Axe albums were interesting - However thanks for posting - I'm sure it will create more comments
Cheers
Fair enought, GuitarGus. As I wrote, I don't expect that everyone here will like it.
Thanks for posting this. I am a fanatic about what for lack of a more technical or knowledgeable term,I call cross-pollination of genres. For example, I find intriguing the influences of African and American music on ska, rock-steady, and reggae and the re-crossing of the ocean and influence of reggae on the music of African artists like Lucky Dube, Alpha Blondy,and Sonny Okusons. Similarly, Bob Marley's music was clearly influenced by his brief residence in the United States not to be mention the American rhythm and blues he heard in Jamaica. Fela Anikulapo Kuti's music was heavily influenced the tight funk and soul of James Brown and others when he lived here briefly in the late 1960s. One of my favorite recordings by Ray Charles is his reworking of country tunes and I'm no fan of country. So when I hear Beyonce's If I Were A Boy or the songs on this posting to which I am listening as I write, I am as fascinated by the merger of soul, funk, and hip-hop as I am by influences in Robert Glasper's jazz. Frankly when I listen to the music to which my eighteen-year daughter listens, I'd much rather have her listening to this synthesis any day. All this is a way of saying count me as a positive vote for this change in tempo from the usual fare. I am enjoying it.
Friends told me, Feilimid, they would listen to New Orleans radio in Jamaica, and that Ska was the result.
I have a photograph somewhere of Fats Domino and Prince Buster sharing a fat spliff.
Thanks for those thoughtful comments, Feilimid.
On the birth of Reggae, I really got a blast from one of the views expressed (was it by Bunny Wailer?) in the recent documentary, Marley. First, there was the basic calypso beat, which was the backbone for Ska (coming through Mento), that places a very strong accent on the 2 & 4. Then Rocksteady was basically the Ska rhythm slowed down. But how did Rocksteady evolve into Reggae? The view is that DJs began dubbing with Rocksteady. Adding a triple echo effect to Rocksteady gives you exactly the extra ch-ch-ch after the beat asociated with Reggae. So, according to this view, guitars began playing the echo sound that DJs created, and thus Reggae was born.
Anyway, sorry for that digression. I just thought "Wow!" when I first heard it. Whether or not it is actually true, it makes sense.
What Bunny Wailer omitted is that the sounds of New Orleans definitely had an influence on the development of ska, rock steady, etc. New Orleans was considered a de facto Caribbean city. Detroit also had a huge influence. Toots Hibbert was the first to record reggae and besides the obvious influence of Otis Redding among others(check out Toot's version of Dreams To Remember), the Jamaican church, pocomania, and gospel were significant influences. As the early Wailers' music and covers show, Detroit was also a huge influence as were the drum rhythms from Ratafarian worship. I know Bunny, being a profoundly religious Nyabingi man and a mystic nationalist, would like to keep it homegrown, but Marley, Tosh, and he relied on many influences including American rock which is why Marley initially achieved much more success among young American whites years before his music was accepted and played by African American radio stations. The Wailere first played in cities with large Jamaican and Caribbean island populations, and in attendance at their concerts in the early seventies were young whites with long hair like me and fans from the island. Only with the release of Jamming did Marley break through to a large African American audience.
I'm neither especially knowledgeable nor a musical historian but when I look at jazz, blues, reggae, compa, meringue, rumba, I see a commonality of influences: African rhythms and indigenous religions like voudon, gospel, and, for Caribbean music, American soul, and rhythm and blues.
For that matter, Cuba's doctors and military advisers brought their own African-influenced rumba to the former Zaire in the 1860s and the Caribbean music that had African roots heavily influenced the likes of Tabu Ley Rochereau,
Franco, and other proponants of the Kinshasha sound.
It's a cliche but music is the universal language and you haven't heard hip-hop until you've listened to Irish singer Luka Bloom's version, with bodhran drum, of L.L. Cool J's I Need Love or Black 47 mixing hip hop and ceili music. One of my favorite conversations about music was with an Ethiopian who, while I was "singing:" the praises of Aster Aweke, Mahmoud Ahmed, and others, told me that his favorite singing growing up in Ethiopia was Bobby "Blue" Bland. To quote Marley, who knows it feels it.
Please excuse the typos; my fingers work slower than my brain!!!
The Marley quote should be "Who Feels it, knows it." I obviously need to work on my proof-reading.
Well as the guy who actually lives in New Orleans I can tell you that the standard joke here is that we are the northernmost corner of the third world. Many attribute our government's slow Katrina response to a lapse of memory that we actually belonged to them. I suppose that given how utterly unlike ALL the rest of America we are, at least some excuse can be offered.
Caribbean culture and influence has long been part of our gumbo and it is no shock at all that this would be a locus of reflecting music back to the isles.
I'll point out that Cyril Neville left NO for some time to live in Jamaica and has always injected reggae into his bands, even into the Neville Brothers
Yes, New Orleans is an amazing and unique place with strong cultural and musical ties to the Caribbean. Influences have always flowed in both directions.
Feilimid - I didn't want to give the impression that Bunny left out that part of the story. The strong influence of American jazz and R&B on the development of Jamaican music would seem to be too strong to be denied by anyone, Bunny included (At least, it would be hard to believe otherwise.). The question here was a very specific one about how Reggae emerged from Rocksteady.
The influence of Cuban music on modern African music goes well beyond the Congo. The dominant popular music in most of West Africa (Highlife and its variants) goes back to African interpretations of what Cuban orchestras were playing in the mid-20th century. They say that the great melodious single string African guitar style heard in West and Central Africa first emerged from guitar players taking over the Cuban orchestra horn lines in bands that couldn't afford brass. Of course, much of the power of Cuban music comes from West Africa.
I don't disagree about the broad influence of Cuban music in Africa but a failed attempt at brevity was the reason I focused on two of the most widely known proponents of the African rumba and their home base. I can't conceive of much of west African guitar playing withoutthe Cuban influence. As I wrote in my initial comment, the synthesis of different genres has always fascinated me.
Thanks for the clarification about Bunny's comments. I am not sure I agree with the notion that DJs were a factor in the transition from rock steady to reggae but I will definitely be reading up on it because it is interesting.
As for Katrina and New Orleans, I remember when some advocated that the city should not be rebuilt or should be greatly reduced in size after Katrina. I was outraged. For all of its internal problems, New Orleans is a unique national treasure. Then again Barry Goldwater wanted to sever New England from the rest of the country and some have argued wistfully that our sentiments are closer to Canada's than to mainstream America. I don't pretend to know a great deal about New Orleans itself but having been raised in a city that was called either the second Dublin or the last Irish ghetto in the United States depending on one's perspective, I understand the sense of being different from much of the country.
Rocksteady and reggae are actually more like twins than cousins. Much like gospel and soul music into the later 60's and 70's, the only difference is often lyrical content.
Rocksteady had already slowed down the ska tempo and musicians had begun to change up the feel of the skank.
DJs like Lee Perry were there every step of the way and were instrumental in the creation of this new sound, but their influence was more sonic than technical. That "ch-ch-ch" was really a part of ska, albeit in a different feel and tempo, known as the skank. As the tempo changed when Rocksteady came in, so did the skank.
Reggae really signified the arrival of the Rasta movement, and was established as a religious music for "Rasta people". Of course it was popularized and had all kinds of commercial value. Guys like Jimmy Cliff are a great example of this. But eventually even Marley's music grew to something more than anything he had intended for it.
Reggae started to have its own little sub genres as it grew more popular, with different ways of playing it. I think the whole course of Jamaican music has always been influenced by outside forces, and those have been what brought about change.
My 2 cents...
You and I are in agreement although, as I wrote, the pocomania influence shows that there was religious influence in the beginning that was not exclusively Rastafarian.
Rasta predates and precedes reggae.
Bigg Robb is totally new to me - thanks for the sharing opportunity, Preslives - and I am only just starting to check it out - so far for me it's a definite keeper and an interesting curio.
There is a great deal to like about it - the soulful grooves and aching voices, the roots are right there for all to hear, definitely has a place in the lineage mined at Chitlins...
Aspects of the production aesthetic groove me much less - some of which makes it sound so... er.. "dated" somehow - frozen by technology, effects. Overall - the drum sound pisses me off. Badly. It's crude. Insensitive. Unnecessary. Serves the material ill. And there is no escape from it.
And I wish there was escape from it - because there are some absolutely beautiful things happening here. Completely a matter of taste, I guess - but my imagination is dreaming how Quincy or Adrian Sherwood might have flambeed the same ingredients differently.
The ingredients - let me celebrate and underline - are effin stupendous in all directions. I am simply not digging the way it's been served-up.
But I am really happy to be getting a taste.
Thanks again, Preslives.
Rastafarianism precedes reggae by decades and is based on the Nazarite sect, fundamentalist Christianity, and some influence from the Ethiopian Coptic and orthodox churches. Where Rastas deviate from other Christian sects is in their belief that Ras Tafari Mekonnen, Haile Selassie, is an incarnation of God. I think what Poppachubby was referencing and I know what I was referencing is that Rastafarians and adherents to Marcus Garvey's philosophy seized upon reggae as a means of addressing social conditions and spreading the word. The first reggae musicians and artists such as Alton Ellis, Toots Hibbert, Jimmy Cliff, Desmond Dekker, and others were not Rastafarians. However, as Marley did with the song Rastaman Chant or as shown by the song Setta Amessagana, Rastafarians incorporated Rasta chants and drumming in the music. For the most part,the music allowed them to spread their religious and social message far beyond the borders of Jamaica. Prior to reggae, Rastafarianism was regarded as a small, strange, and unpopular cult even in Jamaica and encountered considerable political and social opposition. With Marley as a charismatic proponent, Rastafarianism became more acceptable but you still find Jamaicans, especially older Jamaicans, who have a strong dislike of reggae and Rastafarianism. The response of orthodox Christian and older Jamaicans is somewhat similar to those older religious African Americans who regarded blues as the devil's music.
Thanks for those thoughtful comments, LAZZ. I am glad that you are enjoying it overall, and apologize about the drum sound. :D
I am more than a little impressed by the knowledge of Jamaican culture and music displayed in these comments - given my own academic background the comments on the religious content were particularly fascinating. I freely acknowledge that this is a musical realm in which my own ear is without reference or education but through Unky Cliff I have my rip of an album that seems to be well thought of so I have uploaded it for y'all.
Knotty Vision
http://www.embedupload.com/?d=0NDPBOFUSZ
Thanks for much for this. I was fortunate enough to see Winston Rodney, also known as Burning Spear, Max Romeo, and Toots and the Maytals perform at Tanglewood in western Massachusetts in 1978. Burning Spear is a giant (a young Burning Spear appears in the film Rockers in a scene on the beach with drummer Horace Andy). I also was able to see Bob Marley and the I-3s in Boston in 1975. It remains one of my favorite concerts, was intensely spiritual, and delightful because a seven year-old Ziggy and his sisters came out and danced on stage to his father's music. Bunny Wailer is simply the great Bunny Wailer; of the three superstars that emerged from the Wailers, he had the better voice than Marley or Peter Tosh and his Bunny Wailer Sings The Wailers recording is well worth owning.
I neglected to mention that Gregory Isaacs died of cancer at age 60 but his music is a must, especially his pre-1989 recordings, for any reggae fan, The High Stepper could croon like no one else and his version of Tyrone Davis' Can I Change My Mind is wonderful.
Feilimid!!! I am impressed with your knowledge!!
In truth my mother is Jamaican and came to Canada at age 16. Indeed Rasta is older than reggae, but when reggae really took off, the Rasta movement really peaked and became emboldened.
The result of this was varied. My grandparents moved the family out of Jamaica as the violence had simply become too much. Rastas played a role in this, famously walking around publically with machetes in tow. Much of the violence was actually politically motivated as politicians paid handsomely for intimidation. Unlike the ganja smoking, peaceful image many people have of Rastas - the truth is that back then, many of them were violent thugs. Manley had made promises to the Rasta movement, and as a result they helped him out.
So Feilimid, your most perceptive comment is infact regarding the popularity of Rastas in Jamaica. Unlike the myth that this movement was somehow a popular ideal, it most certainly WAS NOT!!! Reggae music? Of course. Jamaicans who experienced those turbulent times back in the 70's usually have a bad taste in their mouths.
I have piles of vinyl from my Uncles - Desmond Dekker, Toots and Byron Lee to name a few.
Up until the 70's, there was infact a sect of wildly militant Rastas whos goals were political. They wanted to position Rasta high up the political ladder. You can Google it but there was a famous standoff in the late 50's in which a bunch of heavily armed Rastas tried to snatch a high ranking political leader. The army was required to fend them off. I really forget alot of the details.
Once Manley realised the size and power of the movement, he began trying to harness it rather than fight them. This led to the situation in the 70's...
I can't see the link to Bigg Robb and Reggae
Nonetheless guys I'm not getting into Religion/Politics - Just to say here in the UK we accepted this great genre years before you woke up across the pond ! Our 1st No 1 Reggae Hit single was back in 1969 - As with the blues the UK was a driving force to awaken the USA to some important
musical greatness - Nuff Said !
I'm not one for nationalism or jingoism but Desmond Dekker's Israelites peaked in the Top Ten of the US Billboard Hot 100 in June 1969 and was very popular in communities with large West Indian communities like Boston. Johnny Nash also did much to popularize reggae here in the late sixties. In addition, The Harder They Come played for ten straight years at Cambridge's Orson Welles Cinema.
In the United States reggae initially had to compete with homegrown soul and rhythm and blues music for people's attention and was considered too foreign for American tastes. Unlike England, we also didn't have a huge influx of West Indians because, but for Puerto Rico and the U.S Virgin Islands, we had no ex-colonials with U. S. citizenship who could immigrate freely. Ironically, here young whites and West Indian immigrants were the first to crowd reggae concerts and African Americans came late to the genre chiefly through Bob Marley's music in the late seventies and early eighties and Stevie Wonder's homage to Marley.
I would also suggest that the size of our country and the much larger population have to be considered and that reggae had an impact in the late sixties and early seventies in many cities but didn't hit the heartland until the late seventies and really eighties.
I can also remember U2 getting airplay much earlier in Boston than in many US cities because of the large Irish and Irish-American population but that fact signifies no prescient discovery or keen foresight as much as it does the ethnic makeup of the city at the time and its receptiveness to Irish music.
Continued:
As for the blues and other genres of what was sadly categorized as race music, they would enter into the mainstream when some disc jockeys and radio stations willfully ignored racial conventions and strictures, and played the music for white audiences. Once it was heard by white kids, there was no turning back. The music was suppressed by racism here and its appeal in England was based not only on the greatness of the music but the allure of new genres of foreign music which were conveniently in the same language.
There is no connection between Bigg Robb and reggae other than the discussion's beginning with reference to a synthesis of styles and the ability of music to transcend borders and languages. I suppose one could go on a stretch and note that hip-hop and rap owe part of their heritage to Jamaican d.j.s in New York as well as Gil Scott Heron and others of west Indian heritage. The initial point was that the blending of genres and music, such as Bigg Robb's effort to meld soul and hip hop, that results is fascinating to some of us.
As far as politics, no Caribbean country was immune from U.S. interference to ensure that it towed the line and did not defy U.S. foreign policy and economic interests. Regardless of one's political affiliation, the CIA had its hand in the political violence in Jamaica to ensure that Manley's tenure was not especially successful. Declaring one's nation non-aligned and not loathing Fidel Castro will do it every time.
Better did not soon come and the more conservative Edward Seaga was elected. Our legacy in the Caribbean is not one of which we can be proud and since the 1990s NAFTA has caused economic ruin for many small farmers in the islands as it has done in Mexico. Consequently, the acceptance of reggae and its political message among many American whites is, at a minimum, interesting if not ironic as an indirect form of protest against U.S. intervention. The assassinated Guyanese scholar Walter Rodney wrote an interesting, albeit small book, entitled Groundings With My Brothers about the African diaspora in the Caribbean and the impact of imperialism on the Caribbean nations for anyone who is interested in a different view from much of the accepted dogma about development in the Caribbean.
Of course, all this is just my biased perspective and others are welcome to dissent which I have come to appreciate is part of the reason for the Comment section and makes this blog so keenly interesting to me.
Nice reply Feilimid
Of course you knew my comment was tongue in cheek -
It's just good to let the big country know that it's tiny cousin has a decent influence especially re music - Naturally we got all or most of our musical influences from the USA ( and some say sold it back in the 60's)- Post-war Britain was a dowdy colourless grim place up until 60's - Music spiced things up and somehow promoted optimism and hope - Most of the music was influenced directly by black R&B and prompted many covers - That's where I first started to get interested in Blues etc -
Anyway thanks for you thoughtful replies
Cheers
In addition to blues, reggae, jazz, and other genres cataloged on my computer and all across my house on shelves and in boxes, there's also John Renbourn, Maddy Prior, Fairport Convention, Sandy Denny, Davey Graham, Bert Jansch, Billy Bragg, the Waterboys, Aswad, Black Uhuru, and Linton Kwesi Johnson, as well as music in Scotch Gaelic, and Welsh. of course, there's also Van Morrison and Them who aren't from England but are from the United Kingdom. Listen to Harry Smith's great folk compilation and the origin of much of the European influences in our music is starkly clear.
The fact that enslaved Africans were not deprived of the drum by the British and French in the West Indies and Caribbean as they were in the United States has had a profound effect on the genres that developed there and made the reggae beat initially sound very foreign. When reggae first hit these shoes, I remember reading articles in Rolling Stone and Jet that naively sought to explain why the reggae beat was so complex that American and other musicians could never hope to play it well because the beat seemed so foreign. Fortunately, living in Boston, a small city of many ethnic enclaves that often looked to Europe and Africa for musical influences, one could find it all, Exuma the Obeah Man, Boukman Eksperyans, and other lesser known artists, and I won't even describe the surprise with which I was greeted, as a person of European descent and non-Amharic speaker, when I entered Ethiopian grocery stores in Dallas when I lived there and now in Washington, D.C. and began inquiring if they carried certain artists I enjoyed and whose Ethiopian and Eritrean music I began listening to at home.
To me, it's all great and the commonality of our language makes it easy to enjoy the reciprocity of musical styles and influences. So much music, so little time, but as Marley sang, One good thing about music when it hits you feel no pain." When I am finally retired, I hope to study music at one of the local colleges so I can articulate as well as you, Poppachubby, Preselves, King Cake, and the other well-versed contributors to this blog why I love the music I do. For now, it suffices to just feel it and fumble around not to be redundant.
Re the ban on drumming - I do believe slaves were allowed drums and other percussion instruments in Congo Square New Orleans and this must have kept some African roots intact and influenced the future music created there - Anyway that's KC's patch and I've only ever read about it - Incidentally Sonny Landreth wrote a song 'Congo Square' which first appeared on his 'Down In Louisiana' album and reworked on his 'South Of 1-10' release , also covered by John Mayall and others
I, too, defer to King Crypt on New Orleans as well but I have read about the ban in many books about slavery and their musical traditions. For instance, writer Dena Epstein has noted that drums were progressively banned by European-Americans during the 18th century, although African-Americans were allowed to play the drums in militia bands because their style was European-inspired. Gikendi observes that drumming was, for instance, banned in South Carolina in the aftermath of the Stono Rebellion of 1739, the largest slave uprising in the British mainland colonies before the American Revolution Knowles noted that a similar prohibition took place in Virginia, and other states based their legislation on the South Carolina and the Virginia model According to Epstein, the South Carolina Slave Act incorporated many of the terms of earlier slave acts of the West Indies, including thebanning of “wooden swords, and other mischievous and dangerous weapons, or using or keeping of drums, horns, or other loud instruments, which may call together, or give sign or notice to one another of their wicked designs or purposes” Slave owners in what would become the United States did their best to extirpate all traces of African culture and continued to do so even after the thirteen colonies acquired independence.
My current half-assed understanding is that different colonial overseers had different philosophies and approaches to managing one's slaves most effectively.
The British were the heavy bastards. Their process was to undermine kinship, separate families, suppress cultural expression, strip the traditions from them as much as they could - crush them, impose rigid order, and keep them under control.
My sense of Jamaica is about the stain it leaves.
Just thinking is all. On the one hand there's the loose interweaving of familial relationships that I have heard outsiders judge 'amoral', an accepted tradition of children being reared by kin and neighbours other than a parent, stuff like that. And on the other hand is an old guy from Jamaica I once knew in South London who, when his kid was real bad, would tie the boy naked to a tree in the back-yard - and whip him.
Dude is probably dead now, and I'm getting old now, but it means that historically there is living breath between our shared time here at Chitlins and the world this poor father came from where he had learned that whipping his kid was the righteous and legitimate response to transgression.
Yup - the British were bastards - just ask the Irish.
Your Spaniards and your Portugeezers, however, were more of a mind that if you allowed slaves the small pleasures of family and accomodated a little bit of their song and dance here and there, they could become more easily manageable as a labour force, made less troublesome and more pliant with some portion of contentedness.
And hence Cuba and Brasil retain a real potent African legacy - even down to marginal pockets of linguistic survival - while Jamaica had more of those roots stolen from the start.
I think it all colours the cultures in different ways.
Just how to categorise and generalise about how the French handled their colonial affairs - singularly and especially in regard of how it pertains historically to New Orleans arts and culture absoyessitively - is something I might be working towards - but it is my sole reason for being present here among the rest of us.
Goodness knows how such a welcome conversation has managed to blossom beneath Bigg Robb, of all people, rather than Bobby Bland or Ray Charles or Sam or Percy. Personally, I blame Feilimid. And Gus. And PresLives for the drums.
I think we should be shooting the shit like this in other threads, too. It's cool and wonderful.
Crikey.
Hush my mouth.
Just discovered other threads.
Conversations everywhere.
I didn't get the memo.
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