Welcome to Jamrock
The late nineteen-sixties and the nineteen-seventies was a substantial period in Jamaican history. The general election of nineteen eighty between the PNP and the JLP plagued Jamaica with violence, corruption, and chaos. During this time period reggae music was used as a medium for Jamaicans, particularly Bob Marley, to express their feelings and attitude toward the conditions of their homeland. Approximately forty years later, artists such as Damian Marley have re-mastered the genre of roots reggae with relevance to the very foundation it was built upon. In Damian Marley’s track “Welcome to Jamrock”, he incorporates themes of political corruption and violence as his father had under the very principles of roots reggae. During the early nineteen sixties, two “highly electable” political parties, the Jamaican Labour Party (JLP) and the People’s National Party (PNP) had come head-to-head with one another as competitors for membership in office (Clarke, 422). To secure votes the ghetto, characterized by low-education value and stricken by poverty was targeted as a prime source for votes and support. Street violence was used by both major parties as a method of winning positions in office (Clarke, 423-424). By the mid-seventies this street violence had been transformed into the development of hierarchal gangs and party-affiliated neighborhoods. Jamaica was virtually at war- the supporters of the PNP versus those of the JLP. Parallel to the onset of the corruption and violence within Jamaica, reggae music began undergoing a change in both sound and content. This period of “roots reggae” focused primarily on the roots and culture of Jamaica and Rastafarian, as well as spiritual and political conditions. Roots reggae includes references pertaining to the “Rastafarian worldview” which is characterized by the influences of Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie, writings of the Old Testament, and the teachings of Marcus Garvey (Anderson, 208). Bob Marley has been accredited
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