Bizarre rant over at Agony Shorthand about reggae.

It seems to me that getting into dub and the more instrumental side of reggae is a common route for people who have previously been into punk or experimental music. But people often then move on to being interested primarily in the artists – the singers and players of instruments. This has been my experience and it’s something which seems to be shared with people who become reggae obsessives.

My guess is that this is partly because it’s easier to categorise (and therefore map) the vastness of reggae by holding onto a few names like Lee Perry, King Tubby, Coxsone etc rather than try to pick out the literally thousands of names which have ever been on the other side of the studio glass.

But, to dismiss the lyrical content of 70s roots as “the stuff they were prattling on about (Jah, weed, mystical Rastafarianism) was so goddamn bothersome and alien to the lives of so many non-Jamaican reggae listeners” seems unusually bigotted.

The music and lyrical content all emerged out of the experiences of people living in Jamaica in the 1970s, but you would have to be almost superhumanly retarded to not find value there if you live, oh I dunno, in Hackney in 2003.

And by this I don’t mean that everyone should embrace rastafarianism as a way of life – to me that is precisely missing the point of some of the more universalist aspects of reggae lyrics.

In fact, the removal of the lyrics from the equation makes me somewhat uneasy. It’s almost like people are saying “oh well of course it’s great to hear the music that those Jamaican chappies are making, I simply love to bounce about to their funky bass lines and ting. But you wouldn’t want to listen to what they have to say about the world”.

You ignore the message at your peril – there is far more there than a bit of creativity with bass and reverb.

Dig deeper.