July 2009

Rocksteady: The Roots of Reggae (Director: Stascha Bader): Well, I’ll get one thing out of the way first. The poster for this movie kind of sucks. But I think if you watch the trailer (embedded below), that might help you forget how bad the poster is. Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, I think you’ll enjoy Rocksteady: The Roots of Reggae.

I have always been a fan of ska, the fast dance music that ori­gin­ated in Jamaica in the early 1960s. This doc­u­mentary intro­duces us to Rocksteady, a musical style that formed a bridge between ska and the slower, more polit­ic­ally con­scious reggae music of the 1970s. Even though Rocksteady as a style really only lasted from around 1966 to 1968, its influ­ence can still be found in pop­ular music today, from Jamaican styles like dance­hall and reggae to American hiphop. Director Bader takes us on a journey, much like the one Wim Wenders doc­u­mented in Buena Vista Social Club, gath­ering musi­cians together from the era to record again and to put on a reunion con­cert in Kingston, Jamaica.

But rather than focus on who’s behind the reunion, as Wenders did with Ry Cooder in his film, Bader chooses to have one of the musi­cians nar­rate the story of Rocksteady. Wilburn “Stranger” Cole (nick­named because he didn’t resemble anyone else in his family) recounts how Jamaica’s inde­pend­ence from Britain in 1962 cre­ated a new sense of optimism in the country. Young people from the coun­tryside swarmed into Kingston to find work, but there wasn’t enough work for all of them. Rocksteady music mostly focused on themes of romance, but as Jamaica’s social prob­lems increased, the music reflected them. Later, Reggae music would incor­porate the same social con­scious­ness with polit­ical and reli­gious themes.

The his­tory is effort­lessly woven into the story of the reunion, and archival footage of Jamaica in the 1960s is jux­ta­posed with modern footage, often to dra­matic effect. Bader shoots some beau­tiful scenes in decaying loc­ales, including the old Palace Theatre (where blind Derrick Morgan per­forms his hit “Tougher Than Tough”) and an aban­doned railway sta­tion. Combined with the clos­eups of the life-lined faces of these musi­cians, it paints a rather mel­an­choly pic­ture. The musi­cians lament that the country has lost its inno­cence. Singer Judy Mowatt remem­bers: “The Rocksteady era was a romantic era. We sang love songs. There was no viol­ence. You could walk the streets of Jamaica at 12 o’clock, 1 o’clock, 2 o’clock without being harmed.” This all changed by the late 1960s when all the young men who had come to the city looking for work found none. These “rude boys” got into trouble with the law, and the streets were no longer safe. Some of the dance halls and theatres were forced to close down after people became afraid to ven­ture out at night. This coin­cided with a period of change in black con­scious­ness, led by the civil rights move­ment taking place in the US and the inde­pend­ence move­ments in Africa. All of these devel­op­ments led to the evol­u­tion of Rocksteady into the Reggae that put Jamaican music on the inter­na­tional map.

With all the excel­lent back­ground to the music, Bader’s film still works best as a show­case for the songs and the tal­ents of those who per­formed them. Seeing these musi­cians come together to play after more than 40 years is a joy to watch. There are gen­erous scenes of the new studio record­ings, but one dis­ap­point­ment is that the big reunion con­cert is really only seen during the end credits. A full con­cert movie might make a great com­panion piece to this film. The studio ses­sions have already been released as a new CD.

Official site of the film

(8/10)

Tagged as: jamaica, music, reggae, ska

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