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The author expresses his views on the impact of the Bobo Shanti Rasta Mansion of Rastafari on such reggae artists as Junior Reid, Anthony B, and Capleton. Topics discussed include the life at a Bobo Shanti settlement in Ghana, the difference of the Bobo Shanti order from other Rasta branches, and the Rastafarian philosophy.

This article examines the participation of transnationally migrating Japanese in Brooklyn's reggae culture. I propose that to understand Japanese migration, it is important to consider the relevance of personal commitments to a model of information exchange that foregrounds embodied learning and direct engagement with skilled specialists, practices that otaku captures. Reggae migrants see otaku as integral to the Japanese national persona. In light of this, the article conceptualizes otaku and demonstrates how Japanese settling in Brooklyn creates avenues for cultural heterogeneity and undergirds the expression of alternative Japanese identities through reggae. Furthermore, I argue that Japanese acceptance in Brooklyn is evidence of socially and historically contingent politics of difference and cultural participation. The article is useful to interpreting cross-cultural music exchange. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study investigates the sociolinguistics of globalisation and performance, focusing on the linguistic appropriation of Jamaican Creole (JC) by white reggae artists in reggae performances and interviews.1 By adopting a multi‐faceted approach including a phonetic, morpho‐syntactic, and lexical analysis of the singing and speaking style of seven reggae artists and bands from the USA, Bermuda, and Europe, this study explores the similarities and differences between on‐ and offstage uses of Jamaican Creole, and whether the singers' access and exposure to this variety as well as the topic of the song has an effect on their language behaviour. The findings provide evidence for the claim that Jamaican Creole has developed into a prestigious linguistic resource in non‐Jamaican artists' performances of a global reggae persona, both on‐ and offstage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses various issues surrounding the presence of Jamaican popular music in Mexico and focuses on issues of great importance as the arrival, development, adoption and adaptation of these musical practices that arise in specific times or time periods; in different levels of locality that are related to each other, at the same time related to the global; and that they express themselves by reinterpreting these genres in their own ways. Each period has characteristics that distinguish it and at the same time coexist today in a same musical scene that involves several smaller scenes, as much regional as stylistic, in which continue to arise new expressions of reggae in Mexico. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the history of Sonia Pottinger, who produced classic ska, rocksteady, and reggae recordings by artists such as Marcia Griffiths, Bob Andy, and the singing group Culture. It is argued that the history of women in reggae has often been overshadowed by the stories of male reggae artists, and the entire musical genre has been overshadowed by a glut of attention paid to reggae superstar Bob Marley. The rise of dancehall, which allowed some female artists to attain greater celebrity, is noted, and an overview of Pottinger's career is presented in this context.

The article discusses the importance of percussionists and drummers in Jamaican popular music, especially reggae, arguing that their contributions have often been under-estimated. It emphasizes the traditional African roots of characteristic Jamaican drumming styles. An overview of the history of Jamaican percussion and drumming is provided. Musicians discussed include Babu Bryan, known for his Kumina drumming, Watta King, a drummer in the Buru tradition, and Oswald "Count Ossie" Williams, who developed the Nyabinghi style of Rastafarian drumming.

This article examines how marginalized Maroon youth in Paramaribo, the capital of the Caribbean nation of Suriname, employ musical strategies in combating ethno-racial stigmatization and improving their socio-economic position. Traditionally, Maroons, after escaping the plantations during slavery, have lived in semi-isolation in Suriname's dense rainforest. In recent decades, they have become increasingly urbanized, to the discontent of many in Paramaribo, who view Maroons as backward, violent criminals. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and popular culture analysis, the article discusses how young Maroons use reggae and dancehall to create and recreate physical and social spaces of their own within the city and outside the forest. They protest local conditions and inequity by drawing on regional images of marginality that have been shaped by Rastafari musicians in Jamaica. Simultaneously, they use this Caribbean frame to imagine Black Atlantic unity. Connecting to global soundscapes, young Maroons strategically use music to combat their urban marginality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the murder of the reggae icon Lucky Dube in late 2007 and on the events that followed until his burial a few days later. The article tries to assess why his music carried such power on the African continent and globally - as the instant digital responses to his death made clear. Did he sing to the subalterns of the world across and beyond national boundaries in a tradition that set the anger of reggae within the 'phatic and ineffable' power of the sonic, as Paul Gilroy writes of music in The Black Atlantic? The article also explores the tensions of the conjunction of sacred and secular as Lucky Dube's global, African and South African fans mingled with members of the Nazareth Baptist Church at his memorial and later at his funeral. It discusses the unease of the post-apartheid, postcolonial nation briefly made public by the manner of his death, the conflicts of national subjectivity that surfaced as the events of murdered icon and world success at rugby flashed up together in the national consciousness. In describing the memorial for Dube at the Bassline in Newtown, Johannesburg, the article asks if we should see this as a ritual of rebellion or a moment of liminality in the postcolonial state, searching for healing in a moment of crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article the author surveys the production and consumption of reggae music among diverse indigenous groups, including Native Americans, Maoris, Aborigines, and Pacific Islanders. Drawing from oral interviews, music and lyrics, artist and record label websites, and recent accounts of cultural and political activism, he argues that the cultural connections between different indigenous reggae artists and their fans constitute a Diaspora, one based not on any single race, ethnic, or place-based identity, but on their shared struggles for dignity in the face of the dehumanizing effects of globalization. He ultimately demonstrates how reggae reveals the political, economic, and social possibilities and contradictions of indigenous identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on Jamaican reggae musician Jah Cure. According to the author, Cure was convicted for raping a girl who came from a comfortable family in Montego Bay in November 1998. The author adds that those claiming Cure's innocence insist that he was discriminated against because he was and is a Rastafarian and Rastas have long confronted the contempt of West Indian elites. It discusses the implication of Cure's popularity on contemporary Jamaican culture. It explains the irony of a so-called "reggae-star rapist" who sings some of the most beautiful love songs and spirituals in contemporary reggae music.

This article examines the role of Hasidic reggae musician Matisyahu in the deconstruction of music. The message behind Matisyahu's music is founded on an ontotheological discourse and the dogmatic system of beliefs of the Lubavitch sect, where the God of the Jewish Old Testament plays the role of the transcendental signified. Rabbi Levi Brackman claims Matisyahu is a deconstructionist rabbi because his performances show the inversion of bringing a Godly message to the intensely profane one. Matisyahu's appeal to God for his success represses more concrete tangibles such as racial issues, capitalist profit motives, and cultural industrial forces.