Jamaica: Total immersion
in reggae
music

MONTEGO BAY, Jamaica -- Reggae music is the heartbeat of this Caribbean island. Its bubbling, pulsating rhythms emanate from radios and cassette players everywhere you go.

The music has a freshness and raw vitality that makes most American pop music pale by comparison. If you want to immerse yourself in reggae, a trip to a week-long Reggae Sunsplash festival in Montego Bay is a must.

This resort town on Jamaica's north coast is where the Sunsplash concerts were born in 1978. Live concerts are rare in Jamaica; reggae fans flock to the sound systems and dance halls, but traditionally they have had few opportunities to hear a band in person. Sunsplash was organized in an attempt to remedy the scarcity of concerts as well as to showcase the country's greatest natural resource.

When I went to Jamaica several years ago to see Reggae Sunsplash, my familiarity with the music was pretty much limited to Bob Marley and "The Harder They Come" soundtrack. Before long, I would become familiar with the music of Yellowman, Eek-a-Mouse, Burning Spear, the Mighty Diamonds and others.

The Reggae Sunsplash festival, a series of all-night concerts, literally inundates the listener with the infectious, intoxicating music. Each concert is a marathon proportions, beginning about 9 or 9:30 p.m. and ending between 7 and 8 a.m. Meddles to say, attendance requires a change in your internal time clock as well as sleeping habits.

The first few years the Sunsplash concerts were held at Jarrett Park, a soccer stadium on a hill above the town. By the mid-1980s the venue was moved to the new Bob Marley Performing Arts Center, in a sand-covered oceanfront peninsula surrounded on three sides by water.

Besides the music, the ambience of Sunsplash includes the thatched-roof stalls and booths ringing the performing area. There a visitor can buy belly root wine, Red Stripe beer, curry goat, salt fish, T-shirts, records and jewelry.

Musical highlights of the Sunsplash festival that I attended include an opening night of nostalgia, featuring veterans Toots & the Maytals, Big Youth, Roy Shirley and John Holt.

The second night served up a half dozen "toasters," purveyors of DJ music. This rhyming sing-talk style delivered in heavy Jamaican patois was the latest rage at the time and a precursor to American rap music. Performers included U Roy (the godfather of DJs), Eek-a-Mouse (a 6-foot-6 man with a flair for comic posturing) and Yellowman (an albino sensation who came out of nowhere to dominate the field with his outrageous lyrics and flamboyant style).

Other highlights included the floating roots rhythms of Burning Spear, the vocal harmonies of Israel Vibration and the Mighty Diamonds, the simmering uptempo sound of Britain's Steel Pulse and surprising Blue Riddim Band an all-white group from Kansas City.

While Sunsplash concerts in Montego Bay have attracted more Americans over the years, the majority of the audiences are still Jamaicans. Many of them are dreadlock-wearing Rastafarians, members of a religious cult who preach universal love and understanding.