Reggae – The Original Mashup

If you ever get the chance to hear DJ Spooky speak about music and culture do so – his breadth of knowledge plus deep thinking on the subject really helps you understand the macro-forces at play in popular culture. We mentioned his record In Fine Style: DJ Spooky Presents 50,000 Volts of Trojan Records which celebrates Trojan’s 40th anniversary a while back on PSFK, and now Wired picks it up and interviews the young fella. Here’s a nice excerpt:

Reggae is all about the mashup! The Caribbean is a place where so many cultures were in collision: Spanish, Portuguese, Indian, British, Chinese. People tend to forget that one of Bob Marley’s producers (Leslie Kong) was Chinese-Jamaican, or that Lee Gopthal who was one of the co-owners of Trojan Records was Indian. Even the term “Ganjah” is pronounced Hindi style; it’s the Ganges river! And don’t even get me started about dreadlocks. Any holy man on the Ganges could tell you that they’re Indian too. ?

Everyone borrows from everyone. That’s what digital culture is all about. Information, the cliché goes, wants to be free. I guess Jamaican culture got there a little before everyone else.

One of the funniest things I noticed when I was going through Trojan’s archives is how many cover versions of American pop culture were in play. Jamaica was tuned into all the pop music coming in over the coast from Florida, and the songs people heard really left an impression. I mean, c’mon, a whole box set of Jamaican covers of The Beatles? Every possible James Brown song you can imagine has a Jamaican cover version; ditto for Curtis Mayfield. Trojan put out a lot of that kind of thing, which is very, very cool.

DJ Spooky: How a Tiny Caribbean Island Birthed the Mashup