"Burning Illusions: The Riddim Decade

To hear the magazine's founders and editors tell it, before the advent of Riddim magazine, reggae coverage in Germany was confined to sundry fanzines and the occasional feature in mainstream music press, the latter mostly enamored with the similarly emergent punk rock and New wave scenes at the turn of the 1970s into the 80s.

The editors, Pete and Ellen (shown here flanking reggae artist Prophecy), are themselves longtime punkers, except that both also got bitten by the reggae bug - Ellen first, then Pete some time later. Their first visit to Jamaica cemented the love of the culture and since then they have been annual fixtures here and i Europe, interviewing artistes and persons of all stripes who are part of the diverse Jamaican musical tapestry.

The magazine itself came into being some ten years ago and soon established itself as the source of reliable current info on musical happenings, extensive features on both reggae veterans and rookies, and the gamut of album, single and concert reviews.

Ten years on and the pair were again in Jamaica, thanks to the beneficience of UWI Reggae Studies Unit's Carolyn Cooper(at left). In the opportune Reggae Month period, the Riddim team gave an oral retrospective of the medium to an appreciative audience at Studio 38, with the late-peak traffic providing a harsh counterpoint to the presentation inside.

Poet Robert(below) got the evening off to a fine start with some intense yet free-flowing verse, and roots artist Janine "Jah9" Cunningham was on hand to deliver her excellent track "Warning" a capella at the end. Media types and well-wishers gathered afterward to hear more, in private, from the pair who, with many other reggae mags folding, may be the "last book standing" in Europe. There's talk even of reviving the English-language version.

So, the cross-fertilization between Jamaica and Germany continues - as the mag's website (http://riddim.de) says "dance will never die"