‘Young, Gifted & Black’
July 18th, 2002 by freddie96
YOUNG, GIFTED AND BLACK
(Trojan)
You may have noticed there is something of a reggae revival going on – although ‘revival’ is undoubtedly the wrong word as reggae has never exactly gone away. It’s just that it’s always been something of a haphazard business when it comes to the actual business of packaging and promoting records.
To some extent this is related to the relentless speed of development within reggae itself over the years – Jamaica has such a wealth of talent that nothing stays still in its musical culture for very long. Certainly there are always young pretenders hungry for a slice of the cash that can follow on from a crossover hit (some of the earliest examples of which can be found on this compilation). As a result of this, the onus for managing, curating and re-issuing reggae’s heritage has largely fallen upon British and American record labels who have occasionally suffered from being insufficiently rooted in the lifeblood of the contemporary reggae scene. Witness the terrible mess Trojan have made of their back catalogue over the years.
All that seems to have changed now. Following the lead of labels such as Blood & Fire and Soul Jazz, and newcomers like Smugg Records (the subject of a separate review, soon come), a renewed seriousness and professionalism has been injected back into the Trojan camp. At first glance you might think a compilation of 50 classic reggae hits from the sixties and seventies called ‘Young Gifted and Black’, with cover notes from Don Letts and Robin Campbell of UB40 is little more than a quick cash-in on the booming reggae re-issue market. Surely we’ve all got this stuff in our collections already, haven’t we? And, besides, who really wants to hear old numbers like ‘Israelites’ and ‘Many Rivers To Cross’ yet again when there is so much excellent, lesser known material being re-issued too?
Yet sit down and listen to the three hours plus of music compiled here and you cannot but be bowled over by its sheer energy, invention and freshness. What incredibly original and vital music it is, all of it pre-dating punk and electronica and yet jam-packed with ideas, harmonies and rhythms which have been relentlessly exploited by all and sundry over the intervening years. As with all musical forms, it is always salutary to go back to the undiluted originals and find what they still have to say to us. It keeps us rooted us in our cultural history, and gives us a break from our own time’s relentless pursuit of novelty, fame and cash.
Of course, with the exception of the bigger names, few of the acts on here got quite as much fame and cash as their talent for novelty deserved. So despite the superficial sense of familiarity one might have with these classic tracks, their voices still have plenty to say to us, and still deserve to be given a proper hearing.
In this respect, this collection is essentially a celebration of Jamaican folk music during one of its most fertile periods. Co-inciding as it did with the dawn of modern recording technology yet pre-dating the contemporary communications revolution which has done so much to demolish cultural differences, a huge amount of largely unfiltered social material was captured in a very short space of time. Hence this record documents the changing mores of sexual expression (check out Max Romeo’s absolutely filthy ‘Wet Dream’ for a lesson in keeping it real here), social unrest (‘Police and Thieves’), religious belief (‘Rivers of Babylon’ et al), youth culture (‘Johnny Too Bad’, ‘Rudy, A Message To You’, ‘007’), national pride (‘Kingston Town’, ‘Young, Gifted and Black’), nightlife (‘Uptown Top Ranking’)… there are innumerable tales of Jamaican cultural change captured on here.
No wonder everyone from The Specials and The Clash to Shaggie has plundered this material, for these are the themes we are still struggling with. And musically it is pure gold, lovingly compiled here in (almost) strict chronological order. So if you don’t know your history, maybe it’s time you did.
Freddie B.
