It could be the name of an infectious disease, a moss lichen or a law-school seminar. Reggae (pronounced ray-gay) is the local jargon of Jamaicans distinguishing "regular" rhythm from calypso. To millions of fans, the lilting pop rock with the spicy island beat is the Caribbean's most captivating musical export since steel bands.
Enthusiasts say that it is intoxicating, detractors complain that it is monotonous. Both find it oddly difficult to describe. Paul Simon is the first white American to record reggae (Mother and Child Reunion), which he describes as having "a little New Orleans sound and that one-and-three feel. Or, you know, two-and-four—with no hit on the one-and-three ... It's hard to explain ... But I love it."
Appreciative listeners agree: on the current U.S. charts, reggae is represented by Johnny Hash's Stir It Up; his 2,000,000-record smash last winter, I Can See Clearly Now, was also reggae. Johnny Rivers' Rockin' Pneumonia-Boogie Woogie Flu is reggae, although, title to the contrary, his L.A. Reggae album lacks true reggae's eccentric upside-down shuffle beat. Three Dog Night's Black and White qualifies and Harry Nilsson's Coconut (1972) has a whiff of the island sound.
Like American Negro blues, reggae is black ghetto music, born of the misery of island shanty towns. It first became commercialized in the early '50s when "sound systems men"—itinerant disc jockeys who became reggae's first record producers—traveled from village to village with amplifiers and a stackful of primitive recordings made by local musicians. By 1964 Singer Millie Small's reggae recording My Boy Lollipop sold 6,000,000 copies, scoring in the top ten on both sides of the Atlantic. But it was not until Johnny Nash's Hold Me Tight, in 1968, followed a year later by Jimmy Cliff's Wonderful World, Beautiful People, that reggae captured an American following. It is getting bigger each year.
Sensuality. So popular has reggae become that a movie, The Harder They Come, was made this year about a fictional reggae composer. It is the story of a naive country musician—played by Jamaican Jimmy Cliff—who goes to Kingston, records his song, and is ripped off by the crooked record industry, receiving only $20 for a record that may sell thousands of copies. In many ways, the story parallels Cliff's own early experiences in record making and those of many another native reggae musician. Unlike his screen counterpart, Cliff was never paid for his own first record.
Initially reggae was earthy, sexually explicit and abounding in joie de vivre: "Work with me, Annie, let's get it while the gittin' is good," a typical reggae began. While reggae retains a core of sensuality and haunting folk wisdom ("I can see clearly now that the rain must fall..."), the theme of today's reggae is emphatically one of social protest. It is often menacing, as in the Wailers' new single, Slave Driver:
Every time I hear you crack the whip
My blood runs cold.
Slave driver, the table is turned,
I've got your fire,
ou're gonna get burned.