Stuff You Should Know - Reggae: Kingston’s Gift to the World

Episode Date: August 6, 2026

Although it was built atop some musical styles that came before, reggae is mostly its own thing. It evolved as local music in the Trenchtown neighborhood in Kingston, Jamaica but after Bob Marley and the Wailers came along, it became a global phenomenon.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of IHeart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here, too. She even said, Yaman, right before we started recording, because this is Stuff You Should Know, reggae edition. That's right.

And here's a little thing you probably didn't even notice, my friend, is we always clap on the count of three when we go to record so we can sync our sound. Here's a little behind the scenes for you, everybody. Sure. But I clapped on the four. Did you? Just to, you know, make it super reggae. That was pretty great. Yeah, because, so what you were doing was skanging.

That's right. And Skang is slang for Gun in Kingston. And Kingston in Jamaica is the world capital of reggae. It's where it was born. It's one of those things where you're like, well, where jazz come from? Where blues come from? Well, it came from here, here. No.

Reggae 100% came from Kingston, Jamaica. And it was built from all this other stuff, all these other influences, but there is no question where it actually emerged. And that was Kingston. Yeah, for sure. I was playing golf yesterday with my friend Justin, who you know. Justin from Trenchtown? Justin from London, which will also play a part. But he asked what we were recording on today, and I told him Reggae.

And he was like, did you know that reggae is like fairly new? And I said, he was like, I always thought it was like in the 40s and 50s. He was like, but true reggae was like the late 60s. You make Justin sound like a real milk toast. I can tell everybody that is not what Justin sounds like. Yeah, but that was, you know, that's true. And we'll get to all that and the timeline and everything. But yeah, reggae is a, I mean, on the general timeline of music history, it's a pretty new form.

Yeah, almost just a little over 50-ish years old? Yeah, I mean, I'm 55. I was born in 71, so you do the math. No. I'm not doing the man. Yeah, I think 1968 tends to be like the year that people pretty much put their finger on when reggae was born. But let's talk about all this. Let's get to the beginning, I guess, okay?

Yeah, which means we've got to talk about Jamaica as a place, right? Yeah, because one of the things about reggae, Libya helps us with this. So it had to Livya. One of the things about Jamaica and reggae is that they're like a melange of different people and cultures who are all kind of brought together a significant number of them against their will and all kind of formed this society where it was all mixed together. And one of the things that emerged was a real appreciation of music and folk music that kind of developed. And it was very unique because Jamaica is unique. I mean, every Caribbean island is unique, even though they have similar histories.

They all just, they, they form different malanges in different ways. Yeah, different malanges because you have indigenous people. And then in the case of, well, most of them, you had people from Africa brought over in the slave trade. So in this case, in Jamaica, that combined with, like, African work songs and the, you know, the European musical influence that was there at the time. they mixed together and in the 40s and 50s

the first thing we got as sort of a predecessor to reggae was called Mento capital E. Maybe that's what Justin was talking about. No, he's talking about Mento's the freshman. Right.

Capital M-E-N-T-O, which is sort of like if you heard it, it might sound a little bit like Calypso out of Trinidad. It's got banjo and like guitar. It's got something called a Rumba Box, which is like a percussive thing with plucked steel tines.

So Minto was kind of the earliest predecessor. And then in the 50s, I guess the late 50s and early 60s, because that was the 40s and 50s, American R&B on the radio, which also came from African and European influences, obviously, that produced what became the more direct predecessor to reggae, which was ska. Yeah. That's what things took a really dark turn.

Oh, man. Scott's, I like all this stuff. I guess we'll talk a little bit about our affinity for it, but it's not the kind of thing I listen to all the time, but I have my moments

where I will put on, like, for an entire morning, I will listen to like old, like 50s and 60s ska and like super early reggae. I like the early, early stuff. Okay, cool. I can't really fault you for that.

I think I just have a bad taste of my mouth about ska from the 90s. The mighty mighty ballstones? I'm not calling anybody in particular out. I am calling all. of them out, basically. Yeah, but that early stuff is,

I think you could probably appreciate a little more, like the Desmond Decker stuff. Sure, sure. I'm sure I could, too. One of the reasons that that suddenly came up in the 50s and 60s is because transistor radio started to become available. And before that, Jamaica had basically access to BBC-style radio stations

that weren't playing R&B. And so all of a sudden, they could pick up stations from Miami, and we're like, ooh, I like this stuff. And that was another thing, too, that reggae was built on, where, like, Jamaican people who were like, I like this, I'm going to pull this in,

I like that, I'm going to pull this in, so much so that, like, the concept of sampling in the hip-hop community is actually, a lot of that comes from this kind of mindset that reggae was born out of. It was like, I like this, so I'm going to use this. Yeah, for sure. Like, this episode definitely has some crossover with the hip-hop episode,

and obviously when we get to the Rustafari stuff, the highly Salasi episode, But, you know, the technology of the radio was certainly big. And also what was big was, and, you know, you see this a lot in the development of culture, like different technologies coming along. And in this case, just literally electricity being spread throughout Jamaica is what led to something called toasting. And DJs, now that they had widespread electricity, could set up these mobile discos.

They were called sound systems. And this was in and around Kingston. And the DJs developed this toasting. I was about to say tradition because that makes it sound more like something you do at a wedding. But a musical style where they would speak and sing over the recorded music, and that directly led to stuff like, you know, rap. Yeah. Like, do you ever listen to like reggae shows on college radio or something like that?

Well, yeah, that's why a lot of times I play on Sunday morning because that's when Album 88's reggae show was. Right, okay. So like, and then sometimes the DJ would just turn the music down all of a sudden and say something. Yeah, oh yeah. that's toasting, right? And it can be done well and it can very frequently be done not well. It depends on how toasted they are.

Sure, exactly. Or what they have to say too. Like you have to have something to say that should have to do with the song or something important. It shouldn't be like, you know, shop your back-to-school sales at Target or something. And then you turn the music back up real quick. Sometimes you hear these guys, and it's the best

because I think our old beloved WFMU New Jersey, I think they had a reggae show too. Sometimes you can hear these DJs are super, super stoned. Yeah, for sure. I mean, they're probably Ross Safarians. Yeah, oh, yeah. So then that's, like, part of their religion, you know? So it definitely makes sense.

And even if they're not, if you're so into reggae that you host a reggae show, you probably are stoned like a pretty decent amount of the time. It's probably a part of your lifestyle. Right, exactly. Yeah. They're like, time to put it. on my game face. Right.

Smoke my weekly joint before my radio show. That's right. So some people are like, okay, I like the Scott stuff, but I get really worn out dancing to it. Maybe we could slow it down a little bit. Mm-hmm.

And what came out of that was Rocksteady. One word. Probably one of the best names for any musical genre, if you ask me. Yeah, I'm with you. And Rocksteady is, it has a lot of the same components and instruments in every single. But like I said, it's slowed down.

There's much more of a focus on vocals. So, like, there's, like, you know, lyrics to the song. Right. The theme or something like that. And if you're like, I don't know if I've ever heard Rock City, you definitely have. Because there are some hits that came out of this. Apparently it's just like a two-year period that Rock City was popular. But the original tide is high.

Ain't No Sunshine, as in Ain't No Sunshine when she's gone. That came out of the Rock Steady era. if you've ever listened to the upsetters, like the early stuff, really organ-heavy. Everybody sings it once so the mic peaks and gets overloaded. Like, that's rock steady.

Yeah, for sure. And rock steady is what kind of directly led to what we know is reggae. And when they started that sort of heavy thumping bass and a little more percussive forward, that's when reggae was kind of born. You know, I know Libya points out that there were some other kind of, I guess, just maybe unusual influences.

And one was the school in Kingston, the Alpha Boy School. It was run by, it was a trade school, and it was a nun run affair. And they had, I keep wanting to say it's like unusual, but maybe it wasn't. But they had a really great music education program. And there was a nun there named Sister Iggy, Sister Mary Ignatius Davies. and she was just a big-time music fan. She was especially big into jazz and ended up having a lot of future reggae,

like, you know, not the huge of stars, although Yellow Man did go through there, but some early like ska and reggae horn players, especially because of her jazz focus came through her school. Right, for sure. Yeah, I had no idea about that, did you? No, that's super cool, though.

There's also, obviously, the Rastafari influence is significant. And Rastafarianism was around before reggae. And reggae was actually around before reggae musicians became Rastafarians. And it was, if you go back and listen to our episode on Holly Salasi, it was his visit in, I think, 1966 that just opened the doors

to Rastafarianism and reggae, being like essentially hand in hand. Yeah, for sure. And I thought we had done one on Rastafarianism, but I think I put together an article, and at the time you were like, we've been doing too much religious stuff. And I just tucked it away that never came back.

And then when we covered, yeah, yeah, this is a while ago. And then we covered highly salasi, it basically covered that well enough, I think. Oh, it did? Okay, because we definitely got into it for sure, but that episode was about Lollah. a lot more than just that.

Oh, yeah, yeah. But at the time, before his visit to Jamaica, a state visit, this was an official visit, the Rastafarians, even in Jamaica, were seen as just kind of weirdos, they were on the fringe, they weren't taken seriously at all. They were just a strange religion. And then Holly Salasi came,

and essentially, just by recognizing them, I think he awarded medals to some Rastafarian preachers there, he legitimized it, in the eyes of Jamaica. Now all of a sudden, a bunch of people, including Rita Marley, are like, I Ross the far eye. Yeah.

And that's the moment that it spread to reggae music. Yeah, and this was in the lead-up to their eventual freedom from the colonizers and the white supremacist sort of system that they have been living under. They called Babylon. So that's why you hear Babylon a lot in the songs. And I mentioned Desmond Decker. And his, you know, probably most notable songs,

is the Israelites, and that's what he was talking about there, right? Yeah, that came out in 1968, and I've seen that some people point to that, or a lot of people, I guess, point to that is the bridge between rock steady and reggae, that song. And it's that song you think it is, like, whoa, the Israelites, right? Oh, nice. And, oh, thanks. I've been practicing for weeks. This is it a lower key, but you're under the weather, so. Yes, thank you for giving me that pass. But yeah, the song, I don't think it says it necessarily explicitly, but the gist. of it is this Rosafarian idea that the stolen Africans who have spread all over the world and their descendants are the true Israelites, and they are trapped in Babylon, which is white supremacist

run Western world, and that through self-determination and deliverance by Jha, they will be able to emancipate themselves, essentially mind, body, and spirit. And that's what Rastafarianism is about. Yeah, for sure. And there was a drummer, a Rastafari drummer name. They called him Count Ozzy, but Oswald Williams. He played on a early song in 1958. So this is like, you know, still predating reggae.

It was a ska recording by the Volksbrothers called O Carolina. And, you know, we're going to be mentioning a lot of songs. But if you're in a place where you can like cue some of these up, I encourage it. Because they're all great. A lot of this early stuff. And that's kind of what I like about it is it sounds like it was recorded in a tin can. Like the recordings aren't the best quality. But it adds a lot of juge to it, I think.

Nice. So, oh, one other thing about Rastafarianism, too. So I said it predated reggae. I mean, it basically came out of the 20s and 30s when Marcus Garvey predicted that an emperor would be elected or seated. I don't know what you would call it when you install. There was going to be an emperor that came out of Africa. People were like, oh, Holly Salasi, that's him. And so from that moment on, Rastafarianism was born.

And apparently Dredds had been part of Rastafarianism as far back as the 1940s. Oh, wow. I had no idea. What about white guy dreads? Those came out of the 90s. I blame the 90s Sky Revival for that, too. Probably so, huh?

Yeah, yeah. All right, that feels like a good time for a break, right? Yeah, I think so. All right. And we will come back with more on reggae right after this. There's no shortcut for saving time, but saving money is simple. Just combine your car and home insurance with Bel Air Direct and save. Get a quote at bellairdirect.com.

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So, Chuck, we're back. Yeah, let's hear it. I threw to you really, I was being serious. You guys, here's another little behind the scenes thing. Chuck and I decide on the fly. which one's going to bring us back from break. And this time I said I was going to go. And so we came back and I immediately tossed to you.

But the reason why I did that, apparently it was not that great of a joke, is because I'm not super musical. Like I know reggae. I would pick reggae out in a like maybe two notes. I could be like, that's a reggae song. Yeah. But I can't mimic it. And when I read about it, I don't have any idea what's going on.

It actually confuses my understanding of reggae, which is dumb. Well, if you're going to count on me to mimic reggae with my mouth, although I kind of just did with that drum intro. Yeah. People are probably going to be disappointed. But we should talk a little bit about the instrumentation because it's like you might find in a rock band, maybe minus some stuff and plus some stuff.

Drums, sometimes steal drums, which I was trying to mimic. You got your bass. You got your electric guitar. A lot of percussion, you know, bongos and shakers and stuff like that. Bob Marley used some cool, like, synthi sounds and organ sounds. Like, it's my life. What? It's my life.

Don't you forget. Isn't that the whalers? I don't know that song. Yes, you do. It's talk, talk. Well, maybe I just don't recognize. Oh, okay. Yeah.

I got you. It's a very synthy song. Yeah, yeah. I just, I didn't recognize the rendition. It's just because you're sick, though. Yeah, it's because I'm under the weather. Horn section, sometimes you might get in a reggae band. But, you know, I mentioned earlier that it's that rhythm of reggae that is kind of maybe the most distinguishing aspect of it.

It's a four-beat rhythm with the emphasis on the two and the four. Right. Whereas traditional rock, it's not that. So that's why when you hear that, you know, that chunking rhythm guitar, that don't-chee. That's on the two and four. And it's, you know, it's a real distinct sound. And, you know, as we'll see, you know, once they, this kind of transferred over to London, you had tons of groups like the police and the specials and madness kind of like latching on to that sort of two and the four, you know.

It's a very distinct thing. For sure. In the 70s, it definitely caught Great Britain by the... Short and Curly's. Curly, yeah. And Ireland, too. We can't forget Ireland ever. We never do.

No, of course not. Even if we don't mention Ireland, we still are including Ireland. That's right. But we should say it separately because they're not part of Great Britain. Did you know that? We didn't want to rile anyone up. So thank you. That's what I was trying to get to was you explaining the rhythm because I can't.

I have so little rhythm that I can't even explain it verbally. Yeah. But that's essentially what you just said. Like that's one of the hallmarks, if not the hallmark of reggae. And then you also said that sometimes they have horns. I feel like that's one of the main things that distinguishes reggae from rock steady or ska. Is it really kind of moved away from horns, where horns were really, really important to rock steady and in particular ska. Oh, yeah, for sure.

Yeah. So one of the other things about reggae, too, that's good to know, that's easily over. overlooked if all you've ever listened to is, say, Bob Marley or maybe even Burning Spear or something like that. Yeah. They tend to focus more in, like, spiritual aspects, self-determination. There's a lot of reggae out there that focuses on violence and crime because it definitely emerged in that context. If you've heard Bob Marley, you've definitely heard of Trenchtown. Trenchtown is a low-income neighborhood in Kingston.

I think part of it's like shanty even. It's that low income. And you lived in Kingston. There was a really good chance that one of your only options was to turn to crime to make a living. And so there was this romanticization of crime that was going on in the area at the same time that reggae was emerging in the same area. So they are kind of intertwined. There's also like a real, like, male. It's really male dominated.

It's still today. It is generally a male-dominated music genre. So there's just, like, inevitably a certain machismo that's still, that's in the background there. It might not be always talked about. That's more dance hall. But in reggae, even, too, there's this idea that, you know, the man's in charge. It's just how it is. Yeah.

And, you know, there's a lot of sort of, like I mentioned, the influence on hip-hop and a lot of sort of lines that you can draw. I think definitely more women broke through in hip-hop. than in reggae. But this, you know, this violent context of the gangster persona, a lot of it taken from American movies in both reggae and hip-hop. The Rude Boy culture was what it was called in reggae. But you can see a lot of similarities there. The actual word reggae probably didn't come around until 1968.

It was a song by The Great Great Tuts and the Metals. Frederick Toots-Hibbert, there was a song called Do the Reggae, R-E-G-G-G-A-Y. Yeah. And when asked about that word, he didn't say like, hey, I invented the word, but he said that he was replacing the word strege-R-E-G-G-A-E,

which was like a raggedy-looking woman. But he said that had a negative connotation. It was like a derogatory term, so I didn't want to use that. So I changed it over. And then there's another story where it was R-E-G-G-A-Y, which was a dance trend taken from the terms for ragged clothing. And that turned into R-G-E-R-G-E-R-G-E-R-G-E, which was about, like,

fighting or protesting. So there's not like a definitive, like, hey, this is where the word came from, but probably maybe a mash-up of those three things. Well, there's another entrant, too, an artist named Little Roy, who the same year that Toots and the Maitals song came out at 1968, he released a song or maybe even an album called Reggae Soul, and he spelled it the way that we spell it today, too. Right.

So it's just completely muddled, but it seemed to have come around in 1968. The year reggae broke. Yeah, and a lot of that was thanks to, like I said, Frederick Toots-Hibbert. If you want to dial up some early Toots in the Maytalls, it's pretty good listening. They started out in 1962, obviously Scott at the time. But their first big hit was in 1968 with the song 54, 56. That's my number.

Great tune. And they had a bunch of, you know, not, they didn't take over America like Bob Marley later would because this is the late 60s. So America was consumed with all, you know, like the hippie culture and everything that was going on musically there. So it would take Bob Marley in the 70s to break the. through in the States. Yeah, but at the same time, too, the suburbanites in America in the mid-60s were into Caribbean stuff, like Exotica and things like that, which is why we have heard songs like the tide is high.

So it did kind of make its way over here, but like no one has ever taken the world by storm, at least as far as reggae goes, like Bob Martin. He just became an international icon, like, in a very very important. cotton, like in a very short time, even, too, as we'll see. Yeah, for sure. So he's coming up, everybody. Wouldn't that be funny if we did a whole episode and didn't mention it up early? That'd be an April Fool's episode.

Yeah, for sure. But we, you know, producers, just like all genres, like producers and engineers, had a lot to do with, well, it's not all music, actually, some more than others, but definitely with reggae. There was a guy named King Tubby, born Osborne Ruddick. And he was one of the. the guy's, you know, kind of a studio wizard that was like building his own hardware to create effects. And he was the guy that first started stripping out vocals to create dub plate.

And that's what the DJs would toast over. Yeah, which as we'll see, sounds a lot like hip-hop and rapping, right? Yeah, and dub music. Right. And so dub music, I don't know if King Tubby was the guy who was credited with actually coming up with it. There are others, Lee Scratch Perry, As another originator of dub, Hopton Lewis, who came to be known as scientist. For my money, the best dub musician of all. But the thing that these guys had in common was they were using, like, recording equipment, often cast off recording equipment that they built their own rigs out of,

that they were using essentially as early synthesizers. And it was a lot like how Kraftwerk and Devo, who came later, did. It was like, I want to make. make the sound, but there's nothing out there that makes that sound, so I'm going to build my own thing. And that's what dub music essentially was based on. It was taking reggae and then making it into essentially electronic music with all sorts of effects. Yeah. Man, I would love it. I used to be scared of doing these music episodes because 45 to 50 minutes to encapsulate a genre is really, really hard. But since we've done it a few times, I'm not as scared of it. And I would love to

check new wave off the list at some point. Oh, that's a good idea. We don't, I almost said the S word. We don't even need to come up with an article for that. We can just go back and forth on it. How about that? That sounds great.

I think you say is instead of the S word is what people do. Yeah, that's like, on the radio or something. For sure, ish. Because I think it's the sound that it makes when you scratch the record backwards at that moment. Is that it?

Mm-hmm. Oh, okay. I'm almost positive. All right. So we're getting to Bob Marley, but if we're talking about Lee Scratch Perry, he's one of the guys in the early 60s who was working with the whalers very early on. And he, you know, Lee Scratch Perry went on to have an incredible long career, eventually in hip hop and rock and like everything else. Yeah. But I guess we should talk about the Whalers a little bit. And if we're going to talk about the Whalers, we've got to back up a little bit and talk about Joe Higgs. Did you know who Joe Higgs was? I did not, but now I'm like, I love seeing the early tendrils being like, tendriling.

Sure. There might have been whalers at one point, but we probably wouldn't know of them because Joe Higgs taught them most of what they know about music. Yeah, I think I heard of them probably in the Bob Marley documentary now that I think about it. Oh, that makes sense because you kind of couldn't talk about Bob Marley. without talking about Joe Higgs first. He taught not just Bob Marley how to sing and how to write songs and everything you need to know about, you know, making music.

Yeah. He also taught Peter Tosh and Bunny Whaler at the same time. So he essentially taught the Whalers how to play music. So, yeah, they might have been around because I know that Bunny Whaler and Bob Marley were essentially raised together from childhood as almost stepbrothers of sorts. and they met Peter Tosh as teenagers in Trenchtown. So they probably would have formed a musical act, but they would have just sucked.

Well, Joe Higgs was definitely the glue early on and the mentor to them. He had a big hit as a singer in 1960 with Higgs and Wilson. It was called Manny O. And it was, again, if you listen to some of this stuff, you definitely hear the American R&B sound coming through. Like some of this stuff sounds like James Brown at first, and then like that reggae beat kicks in.

But it was one of the first, Maniot was one of the first records ever pressed and released in Jamaica and sold 50,000 copies in, what was this, 1960. So that's a lot of records for back then. And he is, yeah, he's the guy that like all these like teenagers basically were crowding around just like sponges to everything he knew. Yeah, that was something really cool about him. Like he was living in Trenchtown or at least Kingston at the time, too. And he would teach other younger musicians.

Like he took time to do that rather than just focusing on his career and getting bigger and bigger. He like took his talents and helped other people develop their own talents, right? So hats off to Joe Higgs for sure, just from putting the whalers together. But you mentioned how the, like a lot of this stuff, this early reggae in Rock City, it's how you can really hear the R&B coming through. And that's true with the early whaler songs too. If you go listen to Simmer Down, which came out in 1963. Great song.

I think they had four albums before they came out with their actual full reggae album in 1972. I can't remember which one it's called. But you're just like you can hear Bob Marley's voice, but it's total R&B. It's strange. They dress the part, too. Like when you look at the old, like the early whalers they were wearing like the cool, like, shark skin suits and stuff. And they were like styled out like the OJs or something. Right.

Exactly. Yeah. So it's a little jarring when all you know about Bob Marley is as like a reggae icon, you know. Yeah. But yeah, they all met together in Trenchtown where they all lived. And one thing I didn't realize is that Bob Marley's father was a white man. Did you know that? Yeah.

His dad was, his name was Norville, Sinclair Marley. And he was Jamaican. He was a white Jamaican of English descent. And he was an army, like a British Army veteran, but was a plantation overseer, basically. And was in his 60s when he married Bob Marley's mother when she was 18. And so, you know, you hear that and you think like, oh, boy, like, did the worst thing happen. And apparently that wasn't the case. I mean, there was a huge age difference, and I'm not saying there was a balance of power by any means.

But everything I've read and seen is it was a consensual relationship and that he provided financial support for a while to the family, but he was not like around much after Bob was born. He wasn't like a real father figure. Okay, gotcha. Yeah, because I hear white rural overseer, and I'm like, oh, no. Well, yeah. But one of the other things that was. was a huge influence in Bob's life was his grandfather, his mom's father, who was a farmer and

herbal healer. And so a lot of the kind of mystic qualities, or at least interests of Bob Marley, that just kind of he exudes in a way, you know, he got, he definitely got from being his grandfather's grandson. Yeah, for sure. But as a result of that sort of displaced childhood, Barley didn't get to Trench Town until he was a teenager. Spent a lot of time out in the country in Kingston, hanging out with this granddad, like you said. And like you mentioned earlier, he and Bunny Whaler, it's the cutest thing.

They, like, were friends from the time they were, like, two and three years old. And when Bob's dad died, his mom moved in with Bunny Whaler's dad, and they, yeah, they were raised like brothers. Yeah. Super sweet. It is super sweet.

And they met Peter Tosh in a gambling hall, I think when they were all like early teens, right? Yeah. I don't know when Bob Marley met his wife, Rita, but I do know they were married by the time Holly Salasi came to visit Jamaica in 1966. And it was her influence. She went and saw Holly Salasi.

I think we said in the Holly Salasi episode that Bob Marley didn't go, but Rita Marley did. And she came back like, guys, this is amazing. and she was the influence who connected Rastafarianism with reggae, at least as far as the whalers go. And they were hugely influential in spreading that connection. Yeah, for sure. And like you mentioned,

Catch a Fire in 72 is considered kind of their first, like, full-blown reggae album. And I think you're right. I think it was like their fifth record as a group. I like that stuff, too. Like, I definitely had a Bob Marley phase in college, like literally every person. on planet Earth.

For sure. But now, like, I really, really like that those early albums more than anything, like, that I, you know, my legend cassette that I wore out, of course, in college, like everyone else had. Well, wait a minute. Was that, I feel like they came out with a box set or something like that around that time, and that's what got everybody into Bob Marley again at that age. I don't know.

Was it legend? I thought for sure there was a... Well, Legend was the sort of greatest hits, for lack of a better word. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, Legend was the one that, like, everybody had because those were all, like, all the big, big songs. Right. But it's, I really like that early stuff.

And if you go listen, like, I think Talking Blues is a compilation, too. That's the one where the songs are interspersed with Bob, like, talking in the studio and stuff. And, you know, it's great. It's such a thick accent. Like, you can hardly understand them. Right. Yeah. It's kind of great.

Yeah, and even I was reading a quote from Shaba Ranks about how, like, Oh, man, Shabber Ranks. Like old dance hall guys need to lay off of the younger dance hall guys because they're doing their own thing. And the only reason I know that he said that was from the context of the article, like, explaining that he said that, because they had a block quote from him. And I'm like, I have no idea what Shabar Ranks just said. And I wasn't even listening. I was reading it.

I just could not make heads or tails out of it. It's one of my favorite. The Jamaican accent is one of my favorite accents on planet Earth. I love it so much. It's definitely up there with Scottish for me, too. Did you see the, you ever seen this stuff on the internet where people will be like, if you want to say this in this accent, say these words in American English? You taught me to say Michael Cain.

You say my cocaine. Moy cocaine. No, my cocaine. Yeah, that's what I just said. I saw one recently that was very funny, which was if you want to say spice girls in Scottish, you say, kind of have to quickly say space ghettos in English. Let's hear it.

So, like, ask me what I did over the weekend. What did you do over the weekend, Chuck? I went to a concert and then asked me who I saw. Who did you see, Chuck? The space ghettos. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that was pretty dead on. Pretty good, huh?

What did you have to drink there? Was it Earned brue? What'd you say? I'm a non-drinker. You didn't drink any urn brew? What is that? Remember, that's like their drink? It's like some almost an orangey, weird...

Oh, I don't remember that. Oh, yeah. It's like iron brew, but they spell it like earned brew. Oh, I do remember it. Yeah. I didn't know. Yeah. It's something specific.

I liked it, but it was like, like, You could easily drink too many at once. Yeah, I could see that. Roots reggae, I think, is where we were headed. Yeah. So, yeah, what you have when you put together reggae, reggae music, and Rastafarian perspectives and outlook and worldview, that's the word I was looking for,

you have what's known as Routes Rage. And what most people think of as reggae, what they're thinking of is Routes Ruge. Bob Marley and the Wailers, Roots Ragee, from Catch a Fire on. Yeah, for sure. And Catch a Fire was 72, and like we said,

that was their first big reggae album, but they actually, the Whalers broke up two years later in 74. Yeah. And most of the, like, the college got into Bob Marley stuff and the legend stuff is all post-official,

like the Whalers as the Whalers. And, you know, all of them went on to do their own solo stuff, obviously. I think Bob Marley Marley had six albums after that until we'll get to, to his death in 1981.

But everyone did. Peter Tosh, who was, he was the real deal, man. He had some great albums. Legalize it in 1976 is a great one. Equal rights a year later. And then later on in the 80s, he had a very sort of political album

called Nuclear War that was really good. Yeah, I had this Peter Tosh live show that I cannot find. It drives me crazy. It's like every other show from that tour exists except for that one, and I can't remember what city it was. Like that a tape or something? So, yeah, it was like a burned CD.

It was so good, man. You could just listen to that on repeat, right? Yeah. But yes, his lyrics were, and just the whole vibe, was way more militant compared to Bob Marley. Yeah. So I've seen it described as like when you put Marley and Tosh together, and also Tosh, by the way, was the, like,

far and away, the most musically gifted of the whalers. He could play all sorts of different stuff. He was also a good songwriter, too. But when you put Bob Marley's lyrics together and Peter Tosh's lyrics together into one show or one album or whatever, you had like a really rich, complex album with really cool themes in it, right?

And I saw it, there's a reggae archivist, which is, I'm not sure what you would go study in school to become that. The guy named Roger Stephens, and he likened, Marley to Martin Luther King Jr. and Tosh to Malcolm X. And like they kind of had those, they approached things from those viewpoint. So Marley made the Whalers universally palatable. And Peter Tosh inserted like that, that kind of militant political bent that is also like a big

part of reggae too. Yeah. And I think a lot of the credibility for, you know, at least as far as Jamaicans were concerned. Yeah, I saw also that like apparently around the world, he's a respected at least as much, if not more than he is in Jamaica because he was, like, known to walk the walk. Yeah. Like, he was beaten nearly to death by the police several times. Legalize it was banned in Jamaica, so he took out a newspaper ad and printed the lyrics in it. Like, he was a cool dude for sure.

Yeah. All right. So I think we should take another break. Okay. And we will come back and talk a little bit about a guy named Jimmy Cliff right after this. There's no shortcut for saving time, but saving money is simple. Just combine your car and home insurance with Bel Air Direct and save. Get a quote at bellair direct.com.

Our town is small taters by most standards, right? But to the people who grew up here, it's everything. What happens when a quiet Tennessee town becomes the front line in a battle over the future of America? Developers with right-wing ties have purchased hundreds of acres of land in the area. The first thing you see when it pops up is pioneers in Appalachia. But they weren't just planning houses. We need cities on a shining hill that exemplify and embody the Christian way of life. Stop right there. Is that normal?

A podcast about what happens when a small town becomes the site of a social experiment. God need men to rule. Great. And decides to fight back. Do not use my hard work to sell your bull. They're not just opposing. what's being planned for here. Our hometown is not a test tube. They feel like they're standing in opposition

to an entire administration. Guess you didn't move in on a bunch of dumb hillbillies now, did you? Listen to Our Town on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, this is Hayes Davenport. And Sean Clemens. We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook. Every episode

we're trying to help our guests improve their careers by mainly focusing on how they can help us improve our careers. The show is famously super accessible so you can easily jump in any of our 650 episodes and understand what's going on. We recommend some of our recent episodes with Ben Stiller. The definition of what is a movie has kind of changed anywhere too, right? What do you think it is now?

It's images and words being spoken, captured by some sort of technology. Danny McBride. He loves Nova. Oh, that's fantastic. And you make it on, you make your own. That's great. I call him Terro Reed. It's a good name.

They're all named after cast members of American Pie. Yeah. I call, I don't, I never looked up if she was in this, but I call him Leachie Sobieski. Yeah, I don't think she was an American pie, but I still like that. Haven't looked it up. She was prominent around the same time. Yeah. Then Mary Steenbergin.

Why are you guys talking to me? I'm worried. I'm worried. Why are you talking so down to me that you think I don't understand your little play play game? I just really. I get it. I'm trying to set you up for success here.

Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast. or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we're back. Take it away, Josh. Chuck, have you ever heard a song by Jimmy Cliff? Yeah, I like Jimmy Cliff. Hurricane Hattie was his first big hit in 1962. He was just a kid.

He was like 18 years old. And he moved to London, and he got a lot more reggae after he moved to London. And he was a big sort of proselytizer. for reggae. Kind of took it around the world in a lot of ways. And one way he did so

was in a movie, which I have not seen. It was one that's always been on my list, but the harder they come in 1972 is definitely a cult classic and was a big, big, not a huge, like American hit,

but on the movie scene, like to film lovers it was. Yeah, it's also widely considered one of the best soundtracks too. Yeah. Because it's about reggae in the reggae music industry, in Kingston and the way things are in Kingston.

And it's like Jimmy Cliff plays kind of a bandit to an extent. Yeah. Yeah, I haven't seen it either, but it's, I just know it's, like you said, a cult classic. And that, as much as, you know, I think simultaneous to Bob Marley touring the world and the Whalers, like that movie coming out and being seen outside of Jamaica, like really helps spread the concept of reggae and what it was all about. Yeah. I mean, when you've got Siskel and Ebert reviewing the harder they come on their TV show,

like it's spreading fairly mainstream, you know? Two thumbs up, if I'm not mistaken. Well, I don't know. I know Ebert gave it a thumbs up, but I don't know about Siskel. We'll have to go back and look. I know I've told you this before, but do you know that Gene Siskel's stated favorite movie was Saturday Night Fever? Yeah.

And he owned the white suit that Travolta wore in Saturday Night Fever? Yeah. That was in our disco episode. Okay. But it's just such a great fact. Yeah. And you know what? Since that episode, I've had, as a, I copy-pasted from the original New York Times article that inspired Saturday Night Fever.

It's been sitting on my desktop on my computer for like 10 years, unread. Oh, it's good. It's just, especially if you go into it knowing it's just one big lie, it's actually even better. Oh, was it? I don't remember that part. I'm sorry. I wish I could take that back. I thought you did. No, that's all right. I'm sorry. I'll still read it. Okay. It's worth the reading. I read it 10 years from now. I'll forget by then. Okay, cool. But you'll never forget that Gene Siskel fact I like to bust out every few years.

That's right. So we should talk a little bit more about, I guess we talked a little bit about the violence that was going on when Reggae was born in Kingston. But over the years, reggae has just sort of been intertwined with a lot of political violence and violent clashes, especially within the country politically. And, you know, they were always in the middle of it. And Bob Marley was usually in the middle of it trying to bring people together. In 1976, they were in the middle of a clash between the People's National Party, which was the ruling party at the time. And their opponents. And Bob Marley went to play an anti-violence. concert and some of the people dragged them on that for like say no like you're you're siding with the

p and prime minister michael manly just by even playing this event so i think he'd never i think there's a lot of frustration there judging from the from the documentary about like trying to do the right thing uh by bringing people together but some people on the opposition being like you can't even like talk to the other side yeah and the the the pmp the ruling party they were left wing they was a socialist experiment i essentially saw. And one reason a lot of people point to is why there was so much unrest and violent clashes

and all that was because the CIA was running around trying to destabilize the country because it was moving to the left rather than the right. That concert you mentioned that Bob Marley was frustrated about it seeming like he was kind of like a

handmaiden or whatever to the unpopular prime minister. Two days before, he was shot. He was shot. Rita was shot. Rita was shot, two other people were shot in his home. And after being shot in the chest and the shoulder, he still went on and played that show. Yeah, it was incredible.

Two years after that, in 1978, he had the very famous One Love concert because there was still that divided political climate. And once again, Bob Marley's there in the middle trying to make peace. And he brought the two guys together. He brought Prime Minister Manly together with Edward, I think, of the Jamaican Labor Party, and that was a huge, huge deal.

Yeah, there's a very famous picture of them holding hands because Bob Marley's making them. Yeah, exactly. So Marley actually died of a cancerous growth that started on his toe that he didn't get looked at because he thought it was an old soccer injury, and he actually collapsed in Central Park after a pretty great show in Madison Square Garden. Yeah, he opened up for the Commodores. and apparently blew the Commodores off the stage. And the real sad thing about his death is that from everything I saw

was that that was, he probably could have been very successfully treated for cancer had he gotten it looked at earlier on. Yeah, I saw the survival rate for black men from that particular type of cancer is like 70%. So, yeah, that sucks. But he thought it was a soccer injury, I think. I'm trying to, I mean, is that what you said? Yeah. I don't remember.

For some reason, I thought it had something to do with religion, but maybe I'm just not remembering right about that part. Maybe he did so well in the game he considered a religious experience. Or it might have been a little bit of both. So Bob Marley was shot, but he didn't die from that. He died from natural causes. Peter Tosh and two years after Peter Tosh, King Tubby, were both murdered by gunmen.

That's how their lives ended. That's, I mean, like, there's, nowadays, there's a lot of reggae artists who've, you know, come along over the years. This is not, like, there was still rather limited reggae artists, a limited number. So two major reggae stars being murdered is actually pretty significant. Oh, for sure. Peter Tosh's murder was brutal. Like, he had these three guys that busted in, basically held him hostage in his house and tortured him, trying to get money from him. and as people, like, friends would come by the house

just through the course of the day, they would be taken in and held hostage. And eventually, like, there was just a big, like, kind of crazy shootout, and he was shot in the head. It was brutal. Yeah, the worst thing about that, aside from the fact that he was murdered,

his murderer was a guy named Dennis Lobin, Lepo, was what people called him. And he knew that Peter Tosh had money because he had gotten out of prison, and Peter Tosh gave him a place to stay, fed him, took care of him to help him get back on his feet. And that's how Lepo-Lobin repaid him by murdering him

because he was trying to rob him for more money. Yeah, pretty brutal. Yeah. And then King Tubby was murdered in what they think was a botched robbery in 1989. Well, that's essentially what this was with Tosh, too, because the whole time they were just trying to get money that he said he didn't have at the house. Yeah, I guess so.

All right, so we mentioned London earlier. London is probably like the second city of Reggae after Kingston. It's the Chicago of reggae. Yeah. So because of what's called the Wind Rush Generation, which is when Caribbean immigrants post-World War II from British colonies and former colonies,

they started, you know, moving elsewhere, and a lot of them arrived in the UK. And that came over, you know, their music and their culture and their food and everything came over. And that happened in London. And there were all of a sudden a bunch of, Well, it sort of depends.

Like sometimes white London acts, sometimes Londoners that were black, depending on the band. But like I mentioned, the police and the specials in madness, obviously. They were in UB40, and, you know, those ended up being like really big bands, but they also influenced, like, the punk scene

with the clash and the sex pistols even. Yeah, Johnny Rotten was heavily influenced. He went on to found Public Image Limited. And thanks to him, Johnny Rotten, liking reggae and Jawa the bassist really liking dub reggae. PIL had a certain reggae thing dub reggae thing to it going on.

So heads off to reggae for giving us public image limited. And, you know, it wasn't just London. Like, you know, we can't get into all this, like, in a super detailed way, but it, you know, reggae went across Africa. There were, like, native-born South African artists that, like, became reggae stars. I know the Ivory Coast really got into. the Rastafari culture for a while.

Yeah, no, for sure. And some of them, the taking up that kind of political causes and calls for revolution, some have actually happened to become political leaders in their country, like Bobby Wene of Uganda or Shadawale in Ghana. Like, these are reggae artists who actually have talked to talk and they're now political, whether they like it or not. Yeah. New Zealand, we're looking at you because who knew? I didn't know. In 1979, Bob Marley played in Auckland, and it kind of, he kind of caught a fire there. And Maori musicians sort of adopted reggae for a while. And, you know, they brought their own thing. Like, you know, always happens when you sort of adopt a music, they brought their own vocal harmonies and stuff. But they, they also, like everywhere reggae went that it caught fire, I think people, except in college dorms in the 80s and 90s in the United States.

There was a big, like, identification with the politics, sort of the bottom-up politics of it all. Right. Yeah. Yeah, that was kind of lost on the dorm crowd, was it? I mean, I think we all like to think we were down with the movement, but we just wanted the bumper stickers. But I'm sure it definitely helps shape our worldviews as well.

Yeah, yeah. I think it opened us up to other things, for sure. There are two other things that you can draw a direct line to, from reggae to current music. One is hip hop, like you said, and that line seems to go through DJ Cool Hurt. Oh, yeah. He was definitely prominently featured in our hip hop episode because he was actually born in Kingston, I think, and ended up in the Bronx. And it just so happened that within a few years of DJ Cool Herc moving to the Bronx, hip hop came up in New York out of nowhere.

So they think that it was him. Yeah, I mean, he didn't come to the Bronx until he was 12. So he had a lot of years in Jamaica to, like, bring. that influence. And yeah, like I said, that toasting, Jamaican toasting tradition came right along with them. Yeah, and remember you talked about how Dubb would strip the vocals out of music, so you had instrumental music. He would do that with two turntables and a microphone, as Beck said.

That's right. Other places, Panama, like Central and South America, had a big thing. They called reggae on a Hispaniol. And Puerto Rico, they had like an underground Spanish language like reggae rap called reggaeton that came along and like you can draw a direct line from that to somebody like Bad Bunny. Yeah, I think it's even like they call Bad Bunny's music regatun.

Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Boy, that Super Bowl performance was so fun. Yeah. He really did set the world on fire. I thought it was great. It was a lot of fun. Yeah, like he prefigured Erling Holland.

He was like the Erling Holland. of Super Bowl halftime shows. So, Chuck favorite reggae band of all time? I mean, early whalers, for sure. Okay, I'm going with Burning Spear. Oh, yeah. Chuck, did you like the 90s Sky Revival? Nah, I wasn't into that.

Me either. What's in my bag? I got us to listener mail now. I managed to unlock it for us. Oh, okay. Are we there? Yeah, because back in 2008, one of us predicted that we would bag on the 90s, mid-90s Sky Revival in one of our episodes, and that would trigger listener real. All right, we got a short one here because this episode is a little longer.

It's just a quick correction from Dave in California. He said, hey, guys, in the Eleanor Roosevelt episode, instead of Inflagrante Delicto, which is the common term, Josh coined the term inflagrante delicato which could perhaps mean gently a fire which Dave says

is actually not entirely inappropriate perhaps Right, that's what I It's kind of what I thought I didn't realize it It was delecto What does delecto mean like I don't know

On fire Yeah what does delecto mean Chuck You don't know Delicto? Well I think it means caught in the act, which is what that means as a phrase. Oh, okay. No, I see that it's, yeah, caught red-handed.

Yeah. All right. That's fine, but I like mine better. Well, I think stuff you should know T-shirt should clearly be in Flagrante Delicado. Yeah, the gentle fire. Yeah, the soft touch. Lay down by the gentle fire with me, baby. You got anything else?

I got nothing else. I hope we did reggae justice. Oh, well, I think we did. I hope so, too. Yeah. I feel like every time I reassure you, I'm setting us up for people to be like, you guys suck. You did a terrible job. So I'm just going to say, I hope so too.

How about that? Yeah, actually what usually happens is we get like, hey, you guys did a pretty good job, but also there's this, this, this, and this, which is exactly what we want. Yes, but usually it's from experts, and we love that, too. That's true. All right. Well, if you want to get in touch with us, like Dave, you said? Yeah, Dave.

Well, you can email us just like Dave did. Send it off to Stuff Podcast at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of IHeartRadio. For more podcasts, My Heart Radio, visit the Iheart Radio app. Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, this is Hayes Davenport. And Sean Clements. We host the podcast, Hollywood Handbook.

Every episode we're trying to help our guests improve their careers by mainly focusing on how they can help us improve our careers. The show's famously super accessible so you can easily jump into any. of our 650 episodes and understand what's going on. We recommend some of our recent episodes with Ben Stiller, Danny McBride, Riz Ahmed, and Mary Steenberg. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

On Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. Your duolingo is not going to come back to you when a man is inside of you. Oh, no. I'm Julie Pinero, and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes, without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word Solita, trading the pity for possibility. Listen to Solita on the IHeart Radio app,

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