Reggae music: To the world and beyond

This YouTube video is an interview with Winston Hubert McIntosh(Peter Tosh)at the reggae sunsplash in Jamaica in 1979. Before his death in 1987 Tosh was a core member of The Wailers with fellow Rastafarians Bob Marley and Bunny Wailer. In this excerpt he discusses the roots of the reggae subculture and provides an insight into why reggae musicians believe their music is created for the people, to be accepted universally around the four corners of the earth with the ability to take over the world. Despite the interview having been conducted a considerably long time ago Peter Tosh's words demonstrate the key ideas which still surface from artists today. He was an extremely influential leader in his time and his career in reggae music was considered one of the best, his music becoming a favourite amongst Reggae lovers and Rastafarians with its political and social messages criticising the hypocritical "shitsystem" often becoming a regular target of the Jamaican police force.

He talks about the music as a psychology, created to, "penetrate the mind, the soul and the body." He highlights thought-provoking ideas that music should not be something you simply hear, but something you feel deep in the core of your soul and with purpose. Without feeling the intense connection Tosh presumes should come from music he implies that it is impossible to "know it". In saying this we can understand the soulfulness associated with the reggae subculture and the notion of inspiration that derives from the "spiritual ingredients" which bridge the gap between the meanings spoken by lyrics and rhythms.

He gives me the impression that reggae music is like a campaign. A campaign created to fill the voids in audiences' lives where feeling and a sense of identity is lacked. This perceived consumption of reggae music aligns with much academic research on the rhythms of the cultural struggles for indigenous identities around the world.

Further to introducing me to the very real spiritual nature of the roots of reggae, developing from followers of the Holy Trinity, or the "creator" as Tosh calls him, Jah Rastafari, Tosh personifies the reason for the growth of Rastafari. Although not really evidenced in this interview, Tosh was a principle popularizer of reggae music, articulating a message of liberation and redemption which had the power to transform a world of injustice and war into one of peace and love. His music was a significant force in the increased popularity of the movement thrusting the rasta cosmology into the middle of the world's cultural arena.

I think Peter Tosh's ideas are extremely relevant to the notions of reggae subculture as he demonstrates Dick Hebdige's argument that, 'we should not underestimate to the signifying power of the spectacular subculture not only as a metaphor for potential anarchy but as an actual mechanism of semantic disorder: a kind of temporary blockage in the system of representation.'*

*From Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (London and New York: Routledge, 1979)