Pitchfork did a recent write up below, but this line stuck out to me since I always wondered how a very organic and live music based genre did a total 180 in the 80's going onto the 90's:

http://pitchfork.com/news/54057-wayne-smith-under-mi-sleng-teng-reggae-singer-dead-at-48/

Smith was best known for popularizing digital technology in reggae, creating the very recognizable 80s hit "Under Mi Sleng Teng" with Noel Davey on a Casio keyboard. It would go on to become an influential single in Jamaica,...Smith helped kick off an era during which live instrumentation in reggae was replaced by digital technology

It was quite... but it definitely was the beat that changed everything, not only in reggae but in adjacent genres as well.


RIP.

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The man who thinks at 50 the same way he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life - Muhammed Ali

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56hVoZ93QkA

Classic tune, classic riddim...

However, I wouldn't say that reggae was necessarily organic and live before that. Sure, the rhythm-tracks were organic but it was not uncommon that producers voiced the exact same backing track numerous times down the line, sometimes years later. That's not really organic but more along the lines of the modern remix regardless of how organic the original track was. Much Reggae was in many ways already in the dancehall stage in the 70's even if it was done with "real" instruments...

> a very organic and live
>music based genre did a total 180 in the 80's going onto the
>90's:

I suspect this is something of a misconception as the re-use of riddims had been common in Jamaican pop for 15 years or so before Sleng Teng broke, no? So while, yeah, the riddims were re-uses of instruments that were recorded live, the recordings re-using them weren't exactly organic and live in the sense of a whole band in the studio jamming together to produce a single vision.

I mean, I understand what you mean, and yes it changed everything, but I think it would be more accurate to describe Sleng Teng as both streamlining riddim creation and also popularizing the colder digital sound (which was something happening across pop music worldwide at the time) rather than causing a 180 out of nowhere.

In the end that's just a different interpretation of the same set of evidence, and I'm far from an expert.

-------
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album ---> http://greenwoodburns.bandcamp.com/releases
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avy by buckshot_defunct

>I suspect this is something of a misconception as the re-use
>of riddims had been common in Jamaican pop for 15 years or so
>before Sleng Teng broke, no? So while, yeah, the riddims were
>re-uses of instruments that were recorded live, the recordings
>re-using them weren't exactly organic and live in the sense of
>a whole band in the studio jamming together to produce a
>single vision.

as is Jakob.

Which was one of the things that made the Wailers unique and attractive to foreign labels and audiences... they were a self-contained band in the rockist model, which was actually a fairly unusual thing in the reggae world.

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The man who thinks at 50 the same way he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life - Muhammed Ali

>I suspect this is something of a misconception as the re-use
>of riddims had been common in Jamaican pop for 15 years or so
>before Sleng Teng broke, no? So while, yeah, the riddims were
>re-uses of instruments that were recorded live, the recordings
>re-using them weren't exactly organic and live in the sense of
>a whole band in the studio jamming together to produce a
>single vision.
>

Actually, I've read that even "sleng teng" is based on some old shit. I'm not very well-versed in 60's ska and rocksteady but producers like Bunny Lee and Joe Gibbs and others in the 70's LOVED to loot the basslines and horn-riffs and chord-progressions from old Studio 1 classics; it can be a bit disheartening when you find out but in the end, if it's dope it's dope. There were some producers like Lee Perry and Niney the observer and others (actually, the latter was a good songwriter as well, many other jamaican producers were more "Hollywood"-producers) who often built rhythms from, um, scratch (n pun intended!) but even they used old shit as well.

Actually, one of the reasons the top musicians in jamaica continued to work with Perry in spite of the lack of monetary compensation and hits (he had some but not too many) and general asshole behaviour was because they could jam and come up with riffs rather than just having, say, Bunny Lee or whoever telling them to remake an old riddim in whatever rhythmic style that was cool at the moment...

fuck.

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I wanna go to where the martyrs went
the brown figures on the walls of my apart-a-ment...