Reggae, Ska and Ska-Punk in St. Petersburg | Norient.Com 2 Oct 2021 15:58:05
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My Reggery – Reggae, Ska and Ska-Punk in St. Petersburg | norient.com 2 Oct 2021 15:58:05 My Reggery – Reggae, Ska and Ska-Punk in St. Petersburg by David-Emil Wickström In 1985 UB40 performed a three-day concert at the Leningrad sport arena Iubileinyi with an after-party at the Leningrad Rock Club (Andrei Ivanov, pers. comm., 04.03.2009). Inspired by the concert the musician Andrei Ivanov became interested in reggae and in 1990 joined the group Streetboys as their vocalist. Since there were no clubs to play in they took to the streets performing at the crossing Nevskii prospekt, the main street in the city center, and Dumskaia Ulitsa – hence the name – at first playing covers of Bob Marley, Third World, Alpha Blondy and Black Uhuru. Andrei added that by playing on the street they became acquainted with people from Holland and Germany who brought them new reggae records from abroad to study (Wickström 2004). The band eventually became Reggistan and still remains active today playing a mix of covers and their own songs.1 Besides pointing to the commodification of reggae as a transnational music style this example also highlights the complexities of how music flows to new locations: Not only foreign groups performing live in St. Petersburg, but here also tourists play a central role in transporting reggae music to Russia. This opens the question around what new meanings music takes on when https://norient.com/academic/wickstroem2010 Page 1 of 17 My Reggery – Reggae, Ska and Ska-Punk in St. Petersburg | norient.com 2 Oct 2021 15:58:05 appropriated within a new context, in this case St. Petersburg. What happens when second generation groups begin to play reggae as well as ska? What sources do they draw on? The Jamaican originals or the local pioneers? And how are the cultural symbols connected to the music appropriated? Inspired by Hannerz’s (1992; 1996) concept of cultural flow this article outlines the emergence of reggae and ska as well as ska-punk in St. Petersburg. Based on fieldwork I conducted in St. Petersburg where I lived from 2004 until 2006 conducting research for my phd (Wickström 2009)2 this article’s focus is on the meaning this music has for local musicians and the music’s recontextualization in the city. I argue – especially for ska-punk – that the local pioneers of the 1990s and not necessarily the original Jamaican ska and British ska-punk groups are the main source of inspiration for contemporary musicians in St. Petersburg. Transcultural Flows In a difficult hour, in minutes of success In the circle of friends or just alone, In the cold winter, hot summer This motive will be with you: Reggie, Reggie, Reggei Everything can be easy, can be difficult People are like songs: their music is life Beauty and happiness, warmth and tenderness In each of you, in each of you, In each of us Reggie, Reggie, Reggei Reggi, reggei (Reggistan 1999) When discussing how meaning and meaningful forms arise in local contexts the social anthropologist Ulf Hannerz (1996, 69) argues that cultures are «shaped and carried by people in varying social constellations, pursuing different aims». He points out that cultural production and circulation in social relationships operate within four frames: form of life, state, market and movement. These four frames involve different agents who manage meaning and who have different motives and dimensions of interaction.3 In the following discussion, I will focus on the frames form of life, which refers to everyday communication and interaction between people, and market, which involves the commodification of meaning and people relating to each other as buyer and seller. Hannerz (1996, 132) argues that https://norient.com/academic/wickstroem2010 Page 2 of 17 My Reggery – Reggae, Ska and Ska-Punk in St. Petersburg | norient.com 2 Oct 2021 15:58:05 «a large part of world city cultural process [can be viewed] in both its local and its transnational facets, in terms of an interplay of cultural currents within and between these organizational frames [form of life, market].» This includes music production which to a large extent operates within these two frames.4 Reggistan’s lineup provides a good example of exchange within the form of life frame: Having changed over the years the line-up also included non-Russians: René (vocals, guitar from Burundi), Anzh Kombo (guitar, from Congo) and Emanio (vocals, from Jamaica). In personal conversations Andrei several times stressed the importance of the «Africans» for both himself and the band’s style. Their song Reggi, reggei (Reggistan 1999) provides a good example: Andrei sings the first verse, René the second and Emanio sings what Andrei (pers.comm., 13.11.2008) calls the ragga part (chanting over the drum/percussion and bass). Not only are the timbres of the vocalists different, but also the diction (both René and Emanio have distinct accents when singing in Russian) – including Emanio chanting in English with a Jamaican (?) diction (the transcription is in normalized English – I left the beginning in Russian marked by italics to point out the language shift):5 «Vy gotovy? Ea. Vy gotovy? Ea. Smotri! Ia pridu, ia pridu, ia seichas pridu. Ia pridu, ia pridu – obiazatel’no pridu!6 We no give a damn about the color of our skin, one hit you with the rhythm in a dancehall style. Got to make your move because it fun feel a good and we are coming with the rhythm in a dancehall style. Roll you belly like we don’t just care, forget about the propaganda – this for real. Sit upon the rhythm like we don’t look scared, feel comfortable with the drum and the bass. He knows just where them [unclear] mmm, la-la-la-la-la. Davai!»7 (Reggistan 1999). This is just one example of how musicians interact on a daily basis both with each other and with visiting groups.8 They exchange ideas, participate in projects and draw on each other’s musical (and other) resources. At the same time, the musicians are part of a market, selling commodified meaning (here music which has been created through interaction from the form of life frame) both live at concerts and medialized, as recordings. Unlike the previous this is more asymmetric or one-sided (from group to audience/consumers) (cf. Hannerz 1996, 69). Externalizing and distributing meaning and meaningful forms in society through media enables people to communicate with one another without being in each other’s presence.9 This implies both a spatial separation in the production and consumption of forms of meaning as well as a temporal separation, since meaning can be stored (records, CDs, mp3-files etc.) for later use. This separation is essential to the functioning of radio and discotheques where the material is primarily stored on CDs and LPs.10 The https://norient.com/academic/wickstroem2010 Page 3 of 17 My Reggery – Reggae, Ska and Ska-Punk in St. Petersburg | norient.com 2 Oct 2021 15:58:05 impact of media also implies a broadening of the concept of relationships (from a face-to-face to a detached one) and contributes «greatly to making the boundaries of societies and cultures fuzzy» (Hannerz 1992, 30). Even though cultural flows are to a great extent mediated through the increasing mobility of media, the human component and its increasing mobility also play an important role. These are the two components Hannerz (1996, 19) and Appadurai (1996, 3) identify as particularly important in changing the cultural organization in the late 20th century. Even though media is available, it first becomes accessible through human interaction (either face-to-face human contact, virtual chatting or surfing the net) as the example with tourists bringing recordings to Reggistan demonstrates. Thus, the musical flows operate on different levels of interaction between media and human agency. One example is the flow from Jamaica to Great Britain, the United States and to Russia of the musical styles ska and reggae whose main style indicator – defined as «any musical structure or set of musical structures that are either constant for or regarded as typical of the ‹home› musical style» (Tagg 1999, 28) – is the accented up-beats/backbeats. Ska emerged on Jamaica from the late 1950s and onward following a rise in national awareness and the country’s independence in 1962. The style is marked by a blend of different influences including local music (mento) and Afro-American music from the United States. Jamaican ska is characterized through the use of a horn section, an upbeat tempo (110-130 bpm), staccato offbeats played on the guitar (aided by piano and horn section) which is contrasted with accents on the downbeat on the drums (which are rhythmically aided by a walking standup bass). Today the rhythm together with the use of a horn section playing (short) riffs provide the main style indicators for the musical style ska. Reggae, which emerged in the late 60s is slower, mostly without a horn section and with a more prominent electric bass and pulse-like metre (cf. King 2002, 20ff; Chang et al. 2005; Davis n.d.; Steffens n.d.). Both labour shortage in the United Kingdom in 1950s and early 1960s (Hebdige 1987, 90) as well as poverty and anti-Rasta repression in Jamaica since the early 1960s (Manuel 1988, 78) opened for migration from the West Indies which created, amongst others, Caribbean communities in the United Kingdom. These migrants brought and played ska and subsequently reggae which not only became popular within the already established Caribbean emigrant communities, but also with white Mods, Rude Boys, Skinheads and Punks (Barrow and Dalton 1997, 325ff; Webb 2007, 14) – in other words the flow of humans and interaction on the form of life level.