Gavin B.

Sleng Teng & the Globalization of Music

An editorial by Gavin B.



The rise of King Jammy's sleng teng riddim ended the 12 year rule of the one drop riddim in the dancehalls with the digital (or digi) riddim. Reggae mutated into another subgenre under the amophous umbrella of "worldbeat" music which blended elements of hip hop,international, socca, reggae and even synth pop.

Sometimes in our haste to move on to the next big thing, we forget about what was really great about the last big thing. Such is the case with the rise of the sleng teng riddim craze in Jamaica which all but pushed roots reggae out of the picture in the mid Eighties.

Digi riddims refer to riddims created around the time that Jamaican producers began to use the drum machine and the ubiquitous Casio synthesizer. Three major digi riddims, sleng teng, ragga (or raggamuffin) and raggaeton began to displace Carelton Barrett's organic one drop to the snare riddim he developed with the Upsetters.

The song that began this mind numbing synthesizer dance craze was Wayne Smith's 1986 smash hit Sleng Teng Riddim. It's not rastaman, nor roots reggae... it's souless dance music for the Attention Deficit Disordered.



It's hard to believe that such an inane dance ditty would bring down the entire roots reggae musical idiom....But nobody looked back after the rise of the sleng teng & critics were all too quick to pronounce roots reggae dead on arrival. The next big thing had arrived, and even if it was lame, reggae music was the last big thing and therefore obsolete.

Producers, instead of performers, became front and center with the rise of digi riddims and skilled musicians playing old school roots reggae became irrelevant to both the production of and the performance of music. It was far cheaper to produce an album using canned soundboard riddims rather than having to hire an entire band of backup musicians to play in a recording session. And guess what?...Music producers got a much bigger cut of the royalties by eliminating the need for session players.

In the early Nineties the major American and British record labels were all too happy to drop roots reggae artists from their labels. In the late Seventies, the major labels saw reggae music as the latest gold mine but by the late Eighties record company executives were disappointed by the sales of reggae music. As it turned out, only Bob Marley & Peter Tosh sold millions of records worldwide, while other reggae artists were lucky to sell 100,000 units of their latest albums. 100,000 units is a respectable sales figure, but not good enough in a world where Michael Jackson & Whitney Houston were selling 30 million units of their latest album product.

Sometimes we forget that the production of music is driven by the all mighty corporate dollar...And we're deluding ourselves if we think that music is a special force of nature that transcends the even more powerful force of global capitalism. It's all about the money, honey...Musical generosity and artistic integrity was over with when Woody Guthrie died in a New Jersey hospital with Huntington's disease. John Lydon was right, it's all a big corporate swindle.

I don't like the post-reggae era (from 1986 and beyond) any more than I like music from the post-rock era. Nearly all of the real authentic roots genres of popular music have devolved into digitized parodies of the real thing. Even electronica and dub music have become subgenres of "dance music" in the music marketing nomenclature.

The end result is the globalization of all music. All genres of music are beginning to sound like they were produced using the same banal mass produced template. Pop music sounds like pop music, ethnic music sounds like pop music, rock sounds like pop music, rap music sounds like pop music, blues sounds like pop music and even country music sound like pop music.

We're all heading to toward the inevitable day when all music sounds like it's come off the same slick factory production line and all of those outlying fringe subgeneres will be consumed by globalization just as roots reggae was.

There's still the remote possibility that the music consumer might rise up demand real authentic music instead of crappy pop digitized dance music. The jury is still out, but the future of music looks pretty grim from where I'm standing.

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There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff.
Townes Van Zandt

Gavin B.

Ina Soulful Style- Jimmy and Tarras Riley


Father & son, Jimmy & Tarrus Riley singing at the 2008 Reggae Sunsplash

Jimmy Riley and his son Tarrus Riley have both had successful solo careeers but frequently appear and record as a duo in Jamaica. Jimmy and Tarrus rocked Sunsplash 2008 with a take no prisoners performance.

Jimmy Riley was born Martin James Norman Riley on May 22, 1954 in Jones Town, Jamaica. His first success came as a member of The Sensations (with Cornell Campbell, Aaron "Bobby" Davis, and his older brother, Buster Riley), who recorded such hits as "Everyday Is Just a Holiday" for Duke Reid's Treasure Isle label in the mid-1960s. Riley was just ten years old when he began performing with the Sensations.

Riley left the Sensations in 1967 and as a solo singer and writer, Riley worked with a host of Jamaican producers, including Bunny Lee and Lee "Scratch" Perry, before settling in with Sly and Robbie.

Jimmy was deeply influenced by the music of American R&B singers like Otis Redding, Curtis Mayfield and Sam Cooke.

Sexual Healing - Jimmy Riley This stunning cover of Marvin Gaye's tune rocked the dancehalls in 1981 and shows Jimmy's affinity for American R&B. He is backed by the deep grooves of Sly & Robbie's Taxi crew.



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My Woman's Love - Jimmy Riley- My Woman's Love was a little known Curtis Mayfield song that Jimmy transformed into a big hit in Jamaica in 1980. It was also recorded at Taxi Studio at a time when Sly and Robbie were refining their bottom heavy sledgehammer drum and bass style that later became the signature sound of Black Uhuru.



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One of the most promising of the second generation of Jamaica roots reggae singers, Tarrus Riley is the son of Jimmy Riley. Like his father, Riley has a sweet, nuanced tenor vocal style, although his first connection with the Jamaican music scene was as a DJ (under the name Taurus). Riley taught himself to play keyboards and several percussion instruments and began writing his own songs, many of which had strong Rastafarian and consciousness-leaning themes.

She's Royal is a 2007 single release by Tarras.



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There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff.
Townes Van Zandt

Gavin B.

Three Dancehall Killer Hits


An outdoor dancehall in the bush country of Jamaica

Billie Jean- Shinehead This version of Michael Jackson's Billie Jean complete with Ennio Morricone style whistling was a big dancehall hit in 1984. Shinehead (Edmund Carl Aiken) was normally a sound system deejay and toaster but he sounded eerily like the King of Pop on this Jackson tribute. Whether Shinehead was toasting or crooning or flat-out rapping, he always balanced his material between the positive and socially conscious with more lighthearted sentiments. Shinehead was born in London of Jamaican parents and moved to Brooklyn as a youth. He got his start by performing at New York sound systems events in the early '80s. His cover of Michael Jackson's Billie Jean, truly got his career rolling. Shinehead currently divides his time living in both and NYC and Jamaica.



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Roll It Gal - Alison Hinds- Alison Hinds is from Barbados and currently lives in London. She is currently the top ranking female singer all over the Caribbean, including Jamaica. Alison sings a rasta conciouness blend of soca and reggae. She is taking soca places it had never been before and has major record labels in both the UK and the USA interested. Her first solo track, the empowering woman anthem Roll It Gal, appeared in 2005 and topped the charts in Barbados, Trinidad, and Jamaica.



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Murderer- Barrington Levy- Murderer first appeared on the Jamaican issued showcase album, Barrington Levy Meets Frankie Paul which I purchased in 1984. Strangely enough, the song didn't receive much attention early on, but when I visited Jamaica two years later, in 1986, in was a wall-to-wall smash hit on every sound system from Mo Bay to Kingston. Barrington Levy Meets Frankie Paul was culled from sessions produced by Henry Junjo Lawes and nearly every track on the lp became a monster hit in JA over the next couple of years. The album is currently out of print and has never been issued in cd form in the United States.


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There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff.
Townes Van Zandt