Reggae's powerful imprint in Africa

If the body of reggae music is found in Jamaica, then its heart and soul are certainly African. As a brand, reggae’s following across the continent is fanatical, some would say even religious.

Nigerian singer Majek Fashek says: “If I was born in Jamaica, I would still be an African singing reggae. Reggae is African.”

Reggae, with its powerful message of freedom and hope, provided the soundtrack for the liberation of many African countries from colonial rule. Bob Marley’s performance at Zimbabwe’s independence celebrations in 1980 has been described as planting the seeds of reggae in Africa.

However, at the time Marley did his celebrated performance in Zimbabwe, reggae was already alive and well on the continent. At the same celebrations in Harare, the first musician to take to the stage was Nigerian Sonny Okosun, a veteran from the 60s who had dabbled in soul, rock, highlife – and reggae.

Okosun was signed on by the British record company EMI, which sent him to London in 1978 to record at the iconic Abbey Road studios, home of the fabled Beatles. It was here that he recorded Fire in Soweto, an Afro-reggae protest song against the apartheid system, which was promptly banned by the authorities in South Africa.

In 1979, Cameroon’s Manu Dibango became the first high profile African artiste to musically cross over beyond the continent. The album Gone Clear, including the hit song Goro City, represented the union of three black cultures: the African, the Afro-American and the Jamaican.

Musical brew

Manu Dibango set a trend with the exciting fusion of Makossa, Afro-beat and reggae to create a vibrant musical brew. By the 1980s, there was an explosion of reggae by African artistes, the most famous of whom was a man tipped to inherit the genre’s throne after the death of 'King' Bob Marley.

Hailing from Cote d'Ivoire, Alpha Blondy ('The First Bandit') had tasted his first success in 1984 with a Cocody Rock, a buoyant song about a wealthy suburb of Abidjan. The following year, he made a pilgrimage to Jamaica to record with Marley’s band, The Wailers, at the legendary Tuff Gong studios.

The resulting album, Jerusalem, cemented Blondy’s place on the world stage and is hailed as a successful bridge between pop, reggae and African music. During the rest of the decade, the “rasta-philosopher,” as Blondy described himself, recorded several more albums and toured prolifically, taking his high-energy shows around the world.

Despite an erratic personality and repeated mental depression, Alpha Blondy is second only to South Africa’s late star Lucky Dube in stamping an African imprint onto reggae music.

Dube released his first reggae album in 1984 after years of performing Zulu traditional music, known as Mbaqanga. Facing a restive apartheid system that banned all reggae music from radio and television, Dube carefully made the transition to the music whose socio-political message was relevant to South Africa.

He pioneered a distinctively African variant of reggae, spiced with elements of soul, gospel, and the trademark keyboard-dominated township jive. By the early 1990s, Lucky Dube had eclipsed Alpha Blondy to become Africa’s biggest selling reggae artiste with hits like Think About the Children, Prisoner and House ofExile.

Political upheavals

The shocking murder of Dube in 2007 left a huge void in African reggae and the emergence of a successor with a similar global stature may be a long time coming.

There are a few bright spots though, especially in West Africa, keeping the reggae brand alive on the continent at the moment. The social and political upheavals in Cote d'Ivoire have inspired the music of Tiken Jah Fakoly, a new champion of roots-reggae.

This scion of a griot family has developed a reputation for expounding hard-hitting social themes in his songs and also for his battle against political corruption. In 2007, Fakoly, who lived in exile in Mali, was declared persona non grata in Senegal after he called on President Abdoulaye Wade to vacate office.

Like others before him, Fakoly too travelled to Tuff Gong, Bob Marley’s studio in Jamaica, to record last year’s album African Revolution. He also recorded in London, Paris and Bamako, where he added West African traditional instruments like the kora, n’goni and balafon to his music.

Fakoly salutes his compatriot Alpha Blondy for showing Africans “that being a Rasta is not synonymous with being a druggie”.

Bordering Cote d'Ivoire to the east is Ghana, home of another musician who has remained true to the roots of reggae, but with a distinctive African flavour.

Rocky Dawuni arrived on the scene in 1996 with the album The Movement, described by the world music magazine The Beat as a “thoughtful, spiritual and involved debut”.

Having grown up in an army barrack, Rocky listened to lots of Bob Marley’s reggae and the Afro-beat of Fela Kuti, both of which carried revolutionary messages. It is these two icons that inspired him to use the musical platform to highlight the aspirations of his people.

“The words and the melodies are key,” he says. “When you move to the rhythm and listen to the words, it is a true tonic for the soul.”

Glorifies materialism

Rocky says reggae is on a low ebb in Africa at the moment because prominence is given to music that glorifies materialism and consumerism. His mission is to push the message of consciousness contained on his latest album Hymns for the rebel Soul.

On the album, whose production was fortuitously completed in the US on the night of Barack Obama’s election as president, Rocky ingeniously blends reggae with Afro-beat and highlife grooves.

The University of Ghana philosophy graduate sings against corruption, war and despair, using both pop and traditional music to critique and inspire.

The album has already spawned several international hits, raising Rocky’s profile even higher. The song, Download the Revolution, was used in the official video game for the Fifa 2010 World Cup.

The album was also nominated for Outstanding World Music Album at the 42nd National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) Awards in the US in March this year.

In July, Rocky will be joining Stevie Wonder on stage for a performance at the Hollywood Bowl, a prospect that thrills him. “It is not every day that musicians, let alone an African like me, get to appear alongside Stevie Wonder,” he says.

He may rub shoulders with the world’s biggest stars, but when Rocky Dawuni returns home to Ghana, he doesn’t do so as a star. He goes to help the community, dig wells and builds villages, living up to the positive ideals of his music.

Of all the continents, Africa has explored reggae as a means to challenge political and economic oppression, and also to celebrate the determination and resilience of its people.

It was Bob Marley who predicted that reggae would return home to its roots in Africa. He just had no idea it was going to be a different style from that which he brought to the continent in 1980.