STORY · REGGAE
The critics, the columns and the airwaves
Well supported
How a scattered corps of print critics and radio DJs first wrote and broadcast reggae into international recognition.
Before DancehallMag and Reggaeville, reggae's overseas reputation rested on a handful of specialist writers and broadcasters - in London's Black Music and Black Echoes, Miami's Reggae Report, Germany's Riddim, and on pirate and BBC airwaves alike.
Writing reggae into being
Reggae's serious critical reputation abroad was not handed down by the mainstream music press; it was argued into existence by a handful of specialists. In London, Carl Gayle's reporting helped persuade a publisher to launch Black Music in 1973, the first British magazine to treat reggae as a serious subject, while Penny Reel made his name profiling artists like Dennis Brown and Culture's Joseph Hill for NME and Black Echoes. Vivien Goldman, writing for NME, Sounds and Melody Maker while briefly working Bob Marley's own press at Island Records, was among the first to carry Rasta reggae to a mass white readership.
Radio told a parallel story of outsiders and access. Britain's reggae broadcasting grew up partly on pirate stations such as Dread Broadcasting Corporation, and partly on the licensed BBC dial, where Tony Williams's Radio London show and Ranking Miss P's Radio 1 slot each carried reggae into homes a pirate signal could not always reach. David Rodigan, an Englishman honoured with both an MBE and Jamaica's Order of Distinction, became the clearest example of how far that outsider's advocacy could travel - and how much of a lightning rod it could be.
Somebody, somewhere, had to be the first person to take the music seriously in print.
An ocean of specialist coverage
Outside Britain, a similar patchwork of dedicated titles carried reggae's reputation further still. Miami's Reggae Report and the U.S. magazine The Beat tracked the music for North American readers from the early 1980s, while Germany's Riddim did the same for a German-speaking Europe that had built its own devoted reggae and dancehall fan base.
None of these titles or shows still exist in their original print or broadcast form - all either closed or moved online - but between them they built the reference points, the interview archives and the critical vocabulary that later, web-native outlets inherited. The columns changed address; the argument about what reggae means kept going.