Reggae Routes: The Story of Jamaican Music

Rating:
Summary: THE BEST REGGAE BOOK EVER?
Review: 'Reggae Routes' claims to be the first book on reggae written by Jamaicans and covers every conceivable aspect of Jamaican music. The authors have an authentic feel for reggae and Jamaica and write quite stylishly. The photos and illustrations are excellent, the criticism is thought provoking and it's well researched - this is the only reggae book with footnotes I've ever seen and it's spiced with high spirited quotes from living legends past and present. I don't always agree with Chang and Chen's judgments, but on the whole their taste is pretty good and I can't seriously quarrel with their all-time reggae top 100 and dancehall top 30 lists. All in all it's a fascinating look at Jamaica through its music and is a must read for anyone interested in the country or its culture. I particularly enjoyed the asides on Jamaican women and men. 'Reggae Routes' is the best book on reggae or Jamaica I've seen and probably one of the best I've read on popular music.

Rating:
Summary: Best Guide to the hippest music: Reggae
Review: As a New Englander, I have enjoyed Bob Marley and lately,the newest crossover reggae performer, Shaggy ; although their styles are really worlds apart. There's an energy in Reggae music that I absolutely love and realized that there must be tons of reggae music that I never had the opportunity to hear because, they weren't in the USA Top 40. Therefore,in an effort to learn more about the artists, the history, the various styles of Reggae music and all the music in between that I missed out on, I searched the many books on Reggae and luckily, came across this book in my local bookstore. I found it to be a GREAT guide for someone like me. It is an easy,enjoyable read, an objective perspective,lots of history, pictures and a perfect guide to finding and listening to some really great Reggae music. Really a must have.

Rating:
Summary: FASCINATING READING!
Review: Got Reggae Routes as a Christmas gift and it was a wonderful read - well researched, well written and consistently entertaining. A must for any fan of Jamaican music. I would like to have seen more on reggae abroad and on the great instrumentalists, but this book certainly tells the best story of Jamaican music I've ever seen. It may not be perfect but it's certainly better than anything else out there.

Rating:
Summary: Best Guide to the hippest music: Reggae
Review: This book certainly makes a lot of bold claims for itself. According to the back cover it's "the authentic story of Jamaican popular music" as well as being "the best book ever written on reggae". So my first disappointment after receiving "Reggae routes" (a gift from a well-meaning friend) was to discover how short it is. Although the authors seem to think that they've written a "reggae bible", in reality it barely qualifies as a primer, and not a very good one at that.

The book is divided into 3 sections, so it makes sense to consider each one in turn.

Section 1 briefly outlines the history of Jamaican music and on the whole is a pretty good introduction to the subject, but it's nothing like the definitive account I was expecting. The only really bad chapter is "Reggae international", which mainly consists of well-worn cliches about Bob Marley and actually says very little about the impact reggae has made beyond the shores of Jamaica, particularly in the UK since the 1960's, or about the huge influence of Jamaican music on today's rave and dj culture, or its specific contributions to the development of hip hop as well as more recent phenomena like drum & bass and speed garage.

In Section 2 the authors list and discuss memorable recordings from the 1960's, 70's, 80's and 90's in roughly chronological order, and although most of their choices are worthy of inclusion, it's a far from comprehensive selection, mainly because they focus entirely on singles. It's true that reggae is without doubt a singles-driven genre, but failure to include some of the great albums from the last four decades means that many of Jamaica's finest recordings aren't even mentioned in "Reggae routes". What's worse is that some really significant singles are also missing, for example Wayne Smith's seminal King Jammy produced "Under mi sleng teng" (which kicked off the digital era in the mid-1980's) isn't included in the authors' 80's selection.

It also rapidly becomes clear that they don't have anything original to say about the music, and their comments about individual records are often brief, insipid or clearly borrowed from other sources. This part of the book is also littered with mistakes, and mainly demonstrates the complete opposite of what Chang & Chen would like you to believe, ie the mere fact that you're from Jamaica does not make you an expert on reggae music, or for that matter, a great writer....

They are clearly unfamiliar with some of the records they review. For example their brief description of U-Roy's "Natty rebel" correctly states that it's based on a recording of the Bob Marley song "Soul rebel", but they don't seem to realise that the recording in question is a cover version by the Gladiators (from their excellent "Trenchtown mix-up" album) and not by Bob Marley himself. Quite a few of the singles have also been assigned to the wrong year, which might be understandable for some of the more obscure tracks, but it's hard to believe that they don't know when massive hits like Marley's "Three little birds" came out....

Section 3 mainly consists of lists: Jamaican radio charts for each year from 1960 to 1997, a "most popular artists" chart (based on the radio charts), the authors' top 100 reggae chart (featuring their favourite tracks from 1960 - 1980) and top 30 dancehall chart (featuring tracks from 1983 - 1996). It's a pity that the latter two charts consist solely of the two lists of records with no explanatory comments, because it would be interesting to know why the authors decided that these 130 tracks are better than the huge number of others which weren't included. Failing this, it would have been helpful to cross-reference each item in the chart with the page on which it is discussed in Section 2 of the book (although I was surprised to discover that quite a few of them don't actually appear in Section 2!). It's also a shame that the authors didn't compile an album chart, which readers would probably find more useful, and I'm mystified as to why they don't seem to think that anything worthwhile happened in 1981 and 1982! The book finishes with a list of sources and references and a very short essay about Rastafarianism, which for some reason is tagged on rather untidily at the end.

Throughout the book the very variable quality of the photos and artwork is another let-down. Many of the images are either not well integrated with the text or poorly reproduced. For example, check out the pic of Lady Saw on p213 - although I'm quite prepared to believe it's really her, the photo is so blurred that it could just as easily be Nancy Reagan or even an alien from another planet! In addition, the choice of images to accompany individual sections of text is sometimes rather strange. For example, the authors illustrate their review of Black Uhuru's "Solidarity" with a picture of the front cover of the group's "Sinsemilla" album, which came out four years earlier and doesn't contain the track in question (it's actually from an album called "Anthem"). And there are other examples which are just as bad....

Overall, "Reggae routes" is the worst book on the subject that I've read, and as there are several infinitely superior reggae guides on the market, I'd strongly recommend that you avoid it.

Rating:
Summary: GREAT BOOK!
Review: What an amazingly good read this book hs been, and continues to be, for me. I agree with most of the other reviewers who mention the fact that this book sets itself apart by geing a book about Jamiacan music written BY Jamaicans. It becomes tiresome to read books on Jamaican music, Rastafarianism, etc. that are written by academics. This book is pure and real, written by people who are the most learned when it comes to Jamaica- her inhabitants.

The guide to the top 100 lps that they list is a decent one, as well. Lists, of course, are biased, but I'd rather have the bias of musicians who make the music versus those who don't.

If you are, in any way, interested in Jamaican culture and music, then this book needs to be in your library. So stop reading this review and get it- NOW!