Culture Clash: Bob Marley, Joe Strummer and the punky reggae party
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Version 0 of 1. By sheer synchronicity, a magical transformation happened just as I was about to embark on my live Punky Reggae Party Show, using talk, music and visuals to illuminate the tumultuous 1970s moment when punk and dub intertwined. My old records finally migrated from decades of slumber in an east London storage unit, first to Westminster University’s Black Music Research Unit and then to New York University’s Fales Library. Henceforth my 45s and 12ins are to be known as the Vivien Goldman Punk and Reggae Collection, the first such academic acknowledgement of the genre. There, it will add echo and reverb to the archives of Riot grrrl, Richard Hell and the Lower East Side. It is a strange disconnect to see the contents of your old record shelves in a university and know that your youth is now literally history. But it’s easy to get used to. I will happily ferret among the boxes to find the white-label test-pressing of the Clash’s first album that helped to prompt Jah punk: new wave reggae digs, a 1977 article I wrote for the rock weekly Sounds tracing the new sub-cultural connection. Among the interviewees were Bob Marley and reggae super-producer Lee “Scratch” Perry. Bob was on the run, recording Exodus, having just escaped an assassination attempt in Kingston. The quiet west London streets around us had recently experienced their own civil war in the form of the 1976 carnival uprising. Bob and Scratch expressed bewilderment at the safety-pinned punks in Portobello Road, right before I dropped the stereo’s needle on to the Clash’s unreleased version of Police and Thieves. “Well, what do you think?” I eagerly asked. Originally a Scratch production sung by Junior Murvin, the track’s cynical realism had helped it become a punk anthem. At first listen, Bob and Scratch were startled by Joe Strummer’s harsh bark, compared to Murvin’s mellifluous falsetto. “It is different, but me like ’ow ’im feel it,” was Marley’s verdict, though. He liked the link between the two tribes of alienated, angry youth – punks and Rastafari. “Punks are outcasts from society. So are the Rastas. So they are bound to defend what we defend,” Marley concluded. Shortly thereafter, they began recording the single Punky Reggae Party, and by naming an underground social phenomenon, helped further it. The punky reggae party flared just as the shock of Britain’s loss of empire clashed with the Queen’s silver jubilee. Britain was about to realise that, long-term, colonialism is not just a one-way street; that Britain was now multicultural and always would be. Class, the foundation of the British system, was shaken in the 60s and cracked further in the 70s. The times they were a-deconstructin’, and inevitably, confusion reigned amid garbage strikes, homework by candlelight and three-day weeks. Unpredictable dub was the soundtrack to our fragmented times. Music was central to the many struggles in the street – the National Front, teds and skinheads v punks and dreads, and the police against them all – in a way it isn’t now. Bands took it as a point of pride not to only write songs about love. Teaching about punk and reggae in America, I was initially surprised to find several students fascinated by this novel idea of using music as a way to communicate about topics other than sensual or material urges. In Jamaica, there is a revival of conscious reggae music, spearheaded by Chronixx. But generally, fans as well as artists no longer turn to music as a medium for exploring social issues. The punky reggae party was riddled with contradictions. Musically, it was a one-sided love affair. While punks dug dub, reggae artists liked punk’s energy. The roots music that inspired the new crop of female bands in particular – girls love bass – was made by Rastas of the old patriarchal school who didn’t like women to wear miniskirts or makeup. But conscious music was crucial to the culture that confronted the National Front by forming a national organisation, Rock Against Racism. A generation’s resolve was strengthened by songs like Doctor Alimantado’s punky reggae favourite Born for a Purpose: “If you feel like you have no reason for living / Don’t determine my life.” Still, as Marley once stoically said to me: “I and I is Rasta, and the struggle continues.” The essence of punky reggae party, when we could look to music for meaning as well as wind’n’grinding (as twerking was known) seems more relevant than ever when political parties cloak racism in resonant weasel words, and conflicts are visibly less about melanin, more about mindset. British cynicism can make us undervalue our own achievements, and punky reggae is a uniquely British fusion, kept alive today by Lily Allen and Hollie Cook. Its function as an inspiration round the world is a validation we tend to ignore; but frontline Mexican, Indonesian and Russian punks, and reggae bands in Hawaii and South Africa, all get the punky reggae message. Wielding revolution and redemption, conscious reggae gave punks something beyond the sonic innovation of dub. It was the symbiotic flip side of punk’s perceived negativity – hope, without which no struggle can be won. Vivien Goldman’s Punky Reggae Party Show, with guest DJs, takes place on 8 October at Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club, London; 16 October at the Boileroom, Guildford; 17 October at the Plough Arts Centre, Great Torrington, and 19 October at the Cube, Bristol. |