Rocksteady, the roots of reggae

Over a backdrop of archive footage, the first notes of People rocksteady ring out, before we discover its author, Leroy Sibbles, in the studio. Around him, the Tamlins on backing vocals, Ernest Ranglin on guitar, Gladstone Anderson on piano… when suddenly a mobile phone rings. It is 2009, and these rocksteady players have not been brought together by chance. "Rocksteady, the roots of reggae" is something of a Buena Vista Social Club in Jamaica, where the legends of rocksteady gather in the Tuff Gong studios to re-record the genre's greatest hits and give a big concert in Kingston.

Stranger Cole is our guide on this journey into the past, to the sources of reggae. Sly Dunbar states it plainly: "Rocksteady is the mother of reggae." To see it born, you have to go back to the 60s. Out of calypso and mento emerged ska and its fast rhythm, a popular music, the soundtrack to the island's independence in 1962. The tempo slowed from 1965 and would eventually turn into reggae at the dawn of the 70s. Hopeton Lewis, now a gospel singer in the USA, was one of the first artists to slow the beat down, on Take it easy in 1966. He has his own explanation: "I tried to record on a ska rhythm, but I couldn't keep up, it was too fast for me."

Reunions
Brought together nearly forty years after their glory days, the legends fall into one another's arms. "It gives me so much pleasure to see all these musicians, some of whom I haven't seen in 40 years. It's wonderful," confides Ernest Ranglin, interviewed by Richie B. Indeed, the emotion is palpable. "This reunion means a lot to me and to all my colleagues, explains Stranger Cole, because it's a kind of renewal, of something that disappeared and is now coming back. That's what it means to me, a brand new music once again."

We thus witness some lovely reunions, such as Judy Mowatt and Marcia Griffiths reminiscing about their beginnings, or Marcia, arriving at the studio to re-record The Tide is High, running into the guitarist Hux Brown, a member of Lynn Taitt's Jets (another builder of the genre), the very man who played on Young Gifted and Black, her hit with Bob Andy recorded in 1970.

A visit to the Alpha Boys School (the famous school founded more than 100 years ago, which produced the cream of the island's musicians), a Rasta interlude with Haile Selassie's visit in 1966, Dawn Penn and her hit No No No in 1967 (whose success she admits she still does not understand)… we thus follow the thread of time, from classic to classic, plunging into an era now gone.

Rudies don't fear
"Those times were romantic. We sang love songs, recalls Marcia Griffiths. There was no violence, it was a time when people enjoyed themselves." But violence was not slow to take hold, especially in Kingston. At the end of the 60s, a rural exodus drove tens of thousands of people to settle in the capital, crowding into the shanty towns, slums such as Trench Town, which we cross with Rita Marley. With not enough work to go round, this was the start of the rudies phenomenon, the gangs that skimmed Kingston and who would inspire Derrick Morgan's hit Tougher than Tough (1966).

It makes for a lovely sequence with the prince of ska, interviewed at the Palace Theatre, the open-air theatre where he began his career "by imitating Little Richard". Skully "Zoot" Sims, who is also blind, calls out to him from the stage, inviting him to "jam" with him. Morgan laughs: "How do you see me?" Then, climbing on stage, he throws at him with a burst of laughter: "I hear you want to outdo Derrick Morgan by being blinder than me?"

Hope and diaspora
Leroy Sibbles insists on the conscious dimension of rocksteady: "We had a lot of love songs, but not only. Because we were concerned about our condition and the degree of suffering around us. We saw the distress of the poor because we were poor too, he explains after an acoustic version of Equal Rights. Stranger Cole adds: "The Tide is High but I'm holding on is not only a love song, it is also a reflection of our lives. It is a song of universal hope."

Like many Jamaicans, several rocksteady artists would leave the island, starting with Lynn Taitt, who went into exile in Canada, and whose absence from the documentary is regrettable (we barely glimpse him in the bonus material, on the stage of the Montreal International Jazz Festival, where the Rocksteady troupe performed in 2009. He would pass away in January 2010). Stranger Cole also left for Canada, where he became a machine operator. The last word is his: "We were poor, we came from humble backgrounds and from a small island. But that did not discourage us. We created a music that will continue to inspire and lift spirits."

Rocksteady, the roots of Reggae

Available since 8 December 2010 on DVD and Blu-ray
Mk2 Editions
€19.99 / €24.99