I got tremendous pleasure from the Lotta Continua: Roots Music and The Politics of Production article sent to me from my dub-marxist pal John Eden. My favourite bit was this, loosely in reference to the Reggae practice of re-versioning old tracks:
“There is no ‘first time’ but only ‘again’ of certain popular tracks being played over and over on the Sound-system. Such tracks represent a peculiar nexus: not just a tryst between ‘first persons’ of the DJ and producer (an assemblage of expression), but a well-protected ‘eternal return’ whereby those participating in a living culture produce a context through which they can realise the surplus value of their living labour (an assemblage of reception). The labour of the past is therefore not squandered and wasted (the ‘murder of the dead’ of capitalist production), but re-activated on to spar with the living labour of the present. Marx understood this cultural revolutionary effect when in a letter to Ruge he wrote: “Mankind will not begin any new work, but will consciously bring about the completion of its old work”. Originality, then, as the marker of bourgeois cultural legitimation in the West becomes more than a misnomer and operates as an oppressive cultural-structuration that seeks to deter a wider-scale production of culture……”
I really felt this. Not least as someone who worries about being too Retro. In fact it’s about the best argument for Retro I’ve ever heard. I was about to join the brothers at the barricades (clutching my share portfolio) but then I slept on it.
I’m going keep my critique of this piece by Howard Slater to the points in hand. Thing is I believe the good Mr. Slater has a soft-focus perspective of how politicised roots music was. The opening tract of the article features a snippet from the film Rockers in which a record producer warns a cop about the ramifications of taking on the recording business: “Once these jokers get hungry enough to start trading without you, then you’re finished, then law and order is finished in the whole area”. Slater sees this as prima facie evidence that the Reggae Music Industry is in some way a threat to the status quo. I think he’s making the mistake of mapping too altruistic aims onto the music industry. What we’re seeing here is two competing strains of capitalism, not capitalism in competition with Marxism/Anarchism.
Sure there were strong currents of Marxism in Jamaica at the time. Prime Minister Manley told the USA to get lost (they’ve been back-pedalling ever since) and snuggled up to Castro and African Communist states like Angola. It clearly cost them the security of their economy, which was previous to this largely being propped up by a small trickle of American Investment. Manley was a crazy bastard and surely had some New Testament cosmic profile of himself, no doubt reinforced by Bob Marley who propped up the campaign trail for Manley, helping him secure the ghetto vote.
Roots music certainly did offer a space for an expression of these kind of politics. Slater pinpoints the proliferation of minor labels which got set up, quoting Burning Spear: “Although we was up against the establishment it actually wasn’t so hard, because then you didn’t have to go to one of the big studios to get your record made.” However while there were a whole heap of little labels (Dread at the Controls, Morwells Esquire, Jackpot, Rockers, Jah Life, Monicas, Negusa Nagast, Song Bird, Pantomime, Propherts, Virgonian etc) many of these were freelancers hiring other people’s studios to cut a few tunes. Glen Brown, Augustus Pablo, Big Youth, Yabby U, Jimmy Radway and even Lee Perry himself (early on) rented other big studios for sessions. And even if they did use their own studios, Willie Lindo’s outfit where Burning Spear recorded his stuff is out in the country on the north coast at Ocho Rios (been there), they would have used the usual avenues of distribution. The same record stores, big dances and radio airplay to sell their stuff.
Slater discusses stoned sessions in Lee Perry’s yard in which everyone would be expected to chuck a bit of chicken or fish in the pot with dewy-eyed sentimentality. This is not some north Italian commune! Lee Perry was a shit who would do anything to avoid paying his artists. Sure let them hang out get tree-d and fill their bellies, but that was it. The same ruthless capitalistic instincts would have been found at all the big popular profitable studios (Channel One, Bunny Lee’s, Joe Gibbs, Impact, Studio One).
One can grant a certain generosity of spirit to the string of (often talented) punters who trekked to the studio desiring to record their little tune. But by in large all the producers were, well, cunts. Certainly not riffing on utopian ideals, even mid-roots. The big producers probably saw Roots as being effectively pitched at gullible foreigners wanting to hear Black Radicalism. This doesn’t necessarily mean the recording artists didn’t believe in what they were espousing. But once the artists are as big as Marley or Burning Spear you wonder. The only Reggae producer I’ve heard anyone talk about with respect was Keith Hudson. Apparently he paid well and on time. However Keith had a profitable primary profession, as a dentist.
For me what all this boils down to is that YES in terms of the sonics (and Slater talks interestingly about the suggested politics of dub) and conveyed attitude of the lyrical content of Roots Reggae there is a good deal of utopianism. But in terms of whether Roots is “offering an example of the re-appropriation of a totality of the means of production into its different ‘specialised’ moments as a means of creating monetary value” and “is a political threat to the rule of capital for many reasons”, I’d have to say NO.
Posted by Woebot at May 18, 2003 02:11 PM