Reggae Music in Canada, according to the Canadian Encyclopedia Historica
Reggae. Caribbean/black music genre. Its introduction, in Jamaica, is dated to the song 'Do the Reggay' (1968) by Toots (Hibbert) and the Maytals, but its pre-history lies in a fusion of the indigenous calypso form 'mento' with US R&B, jump blues and shuffles, emerging first (ca 1957) as the upbeat, largely instrumental, horn-dominated 'ska' and then (ca 1966) in the slower, subtler songs of 'rock steady'. The keyboard player and composer Jackie Mittoo was one of many important figures in the evolution of ska through rock steady to reggae. The etymology of 'reggae' is apocryphal - perhaps a verbalization of the music's trademark rhythmic guitar scratch ('reggae-reggae'), or a derivation of 'streggae' (patois for 'rudeness'), 'regular,' or 'raggamuffin' (the last a reference to the downtrodden youth of Kingston).
Recordings 1968-72 by Desmond Dekker & The Aces ('Israelites'), Jimmy Cliff, Bob (Andy) & Marcia (Griffiths), Greyhound, and Dave and Ansel Collins carried reggae's bouyant rhythms (with their singular emphasis on the third beat of 4/4 metre), prominent bass pulse, and melodic and soulful vocals beyond the Caribbean. These recordings in turn set the stage for The Wailers, whose LP Catch a Fire (1972) launched the international career of the singer Bob Marley (1945-1981), the first pop 'super star' to emerge from the Third World. Marley's 'Jah music,' which spoke for the dispossessed, honored African culture and upheld the political and theological tenets of his Rastafarian faith, has had both great popularity and inestimable influence throughout the world.
Canada's reception to and acculturation of reggae followed the same pattern as that of the United Kingdom and the USA, where Jamaicans also settled in the late 1950s and early 1950s. At first they imported music from Jamaica for entertainment and recreation and then began to promote and record their own music in competition with - and eventually for the appreciation of - the established Jamaican culture. Pioneers in the 1960s included Toronto's first ska and rock steady groups, the Rivals, the Sheiks, the Cougars, and the Cavaliers, who took their place alongside Byron Lee and the Dragonaires and other visiting bands. Favored venues at this time in Toronto, which would become the centre of reggae in Canada and indeed one of its hotbeds in North America, included the WIF (West Indian Federation) Club, Club Jamaica, Tiger's Den, and the Blue Angel. The first artist to record reggae in Canada was Jackie Mittoo, followed by Stranger Cole, Tony Eden, Audley Williams, the Webber Sisters, Leroy Brown, and Joe Issacs.
In 1976 Toronto's Ishan People made the first of two albums for GRT. In the next 15 years, however, few would be the reggae artists - Messenjah, Sattalites, Leroy Sibbles - to record for a major Canadian label. Sibbles, who sang rock steady with the Heptones in Jamaica during the mid-1960s, moved to Toronto in 1973 and has made albums for Micron, Boot, A & M (the reggae-rock Evidence, with the participation of Bruce Cockburn, whose own 'Wondering Where the Lions Are' showed a reggae influence), and Attic. With the world-wide demand during the late 1970s for reggae, recording activity in Canada also increased; Nana McLean, One Love (featuring the guitarist Tony Campbell), Ital Groove, Winston Hewitt, and Earth, Roots and Water, were among the performers heard at this time.
During a period of intense political and social turbulence 1972-82 in Jamaica, a number of then-current and future stars took up self-imposed exile in Toronto and elsewhere in southern Ontario, bringing a measure of visibility and creative vitality to the domestic reggae scene. Among them: the singer and songwriter Ernie Smith (whose Roots Revival would evolve by 1980 into the integrated group Bloodfire), Carlene Davis, Ken Boothe, Willie Williams, Fabienne Miranda, Joe Cooper, and the comedic singer Lovindeer (who wrote songs for Ishan People). The 'roots rocker' Johnny Osbourne sang for Ishan People under the name Bumpy Jones before returning on the band's demise in 1980 to Jamaica. The record producer Prince Jammy(Lloyd James), whose 'sleng teng' computerized 'riddim' launched the 'DJ-style' (or 'dancehall') reggae variant (toasting or 'talkover,' to sparse rhythm tracks) in 1985, lived in relative obscurity in Toronto during the 1970s.
Through the 1980s domestic reggae flourished in Vancouver (Mango Dub, Chester Miller, and Ras Lee), Montreal (Kali & Dub) and Toronto (R. Zee Jackson, Lazo, Noel Ellis, Truth & Rights, Mojah, Adrian Miller, 20th Century Rebels, and Jimmy Reid). Messenjah, recognized as Canada's leading roots-reggae band, was formed in Kitchener, Ont, in 1981. Jamaica's major artists toured to Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal; in Toronto a club circuit that has included the Soul Palace, Karib Tavern, Pirate's Cove, BamBoo, the Silver Dollar, and the Real Jerk Pit has served local reggae performers.
One hallmark of Canadian reggae has been the melodicism of, and relative absence of confrontation in, its songs, which is considered a legacy of the country's conservatism and placid social ambience. Another is the rise of integrated bands, most prominently Chalawa (led 1977-82 by the producer John Forbes), Bloodfire 1980-4, the Sattalites (formed in 1981 by the flugelhorn player Jo Jo Bennett and the singer Fergus Hambleton), and Boncongonistas, One, Fujahtive, Revelation, and Sunforce, all active in the early 1990s.
Reflecting the continuing evolution of reggae internationally, several dub poets - poets inspired by the example of Britain's Linton Kwesi Johnson to read their verses to the rhythms of electronically-altered, instrumental 'dub' tracks - emerged in the mid-1980s from the literati of Toronto's black community, including Lillian Allen, Clifton Joseph, and Devon Haughton. The dominant influence of hip hop (rap) on black music in 1990 and 1991 encouraged Carla Marshall, Devon Martin, Special Ice, and others in Toronto, to work in the 'raggamuffin' or 'ragga' style. Meanwhile, ska was seen to make a comeback in the early 1990s as played by such young, white groups as the Scatterbrains in Ottawa and Skaface and the eclectic King Apparatus in Toronto, whose efforts, however, evoked less the Jamaican original than the British revival ca 1980.
Two other musicians, the guitarist and record producer Carl Harvey and the singer Glen Ricketts (also known as Glen Ricks), members in the 1970s of the Toronto funk band Crack of Dawn, have moved easily between reggae and R&B. Harvey has toured with Jackie Mittoo and Toots Hibbert and produced recordings by Messenjah, the R&B singer Kim Richardson, and the Toronto pop trio Sway ('Hands Up,' a hit in 1988). Ricketts has recorded soul and reggae albums in Jamaica, England, and Canada.
Canada's performers have been honored by the annual Canadian Reggae Music Awards, established by Winston Hewitt in Toronto in 1985, and by a Juno Award for best reggae/calypso recording, introduced the same year. The latter has been won by Lillian Allen (1986, 1989), Leroy Sibbles (Mean While, 1987), and the Sattalites ('Too Late to Turn Back Now,' 1990). Reggae in Canada, however, largely remained in thrall in the early 1990s to Jamaica's dominant figures and had not yet drawn successfully on its own experience in exile - as had reggae in Britain, for example - to fashion a music that would enjoy broad mainstream acceptance.
