The Darker Side of Black - ACE274.2

View of Kingston, Jamaica, "capital of reggae music… a place where the memory of slavery remains close to the surface of life… where … music and dance retain the special power endowed in them by longs years of terror and brutality." Local cultural forms have come from Christianity and surviving African traditions. Hip hop and dancehall were confirmed as part of world music in 1992 when deejay Shabba Ranks won his second Grammy award. In 1991, Ice Cube’s gangsta rap album Death Certificate reached the top of the American charts. The new music is "a complicated tale of sex, death, religion and redemption in which the aftershocks of slavery can still be felt." Dancehall deejay Buju Banton is a central figure in the new music; his banned recording Boom Bye Bye "has come to symbolise recent changes in Black popular culture, in particular the shut-down of its political hopes". Mural of Bob Marley. The desire to change the world through a mixture of reggae and Rastafarianism has been abandoned. Mr Michael Manley, Former Prime Minister of Jamaica 1972-80 & 1989-92 (P.N.P.), talks about the death of Bob Marley and the social developments he had been involved in in the 1970s, and of a society in psychological crisis. Street scenes. Dancers in a club. Commentary says that reggae has retreated into dealing with purely local concerns, and personal image is the only thing over which people have any control. Deejays and rappers now dominate the music which has suffered from musicians’ skills being downgraded by the introduction of new technologies. Musician, Shabba Ranks talking about sound systems. Stone Love, Dancehall Soundsystem. People dancing in club. Commentary says that the transplantation of Jamaican sound systems to New York resulted in hip hop. Harlem, New York. Young women say they believe gangsta rap is influencing young men towards violence.