Courtney John, The Future: Taking Reggae into the Theatre of Ideas

There's no serious listener of Jamaican music who would contest that the idiom has gone into a prolonged and unhealthy stasis over the last 25 years. Its not that not good music ha been released over that period, but rather that the few worthy tunes have been bowled over by the tide of mediocrity and even excrement that has prevailed. Simply put, Jamaican music has run out of ideas.

Barely a minute into Courtney John's rendering of Errol Dunkley's "Black Cinderella" one gets the first thrilling jolts of hope; the track is one off his latest project entitled "The Future" - the album's been out for months now and the music's been worked on for even longer but - with material this good - the public may forgive us for being a bit tardy in covering it.

For The Future - notwithstanding that it references the past in covering a decades-old classic (among other tunes) - is Courtney John's theatre of ideas, and those ideas are very powerful, especially from the sonic viewpoint. For the fuss that has been made about "riddims" in the dancehall space since their 90s heyday, only handful of those have proven to be truly transcendent. Onr of that handful is the "Diwali"  the handiwork of keyboard ace Steve "Lenky" Marsden, who is one of John's recording and producing cohorts on this project which he has dubbed "Rootstronic".

On the "Cinderella" track, John's spare yet urgent vocals form a cool counterpoint to the super -spaced-out dub and ambient sounds that form the backdrop, addin

g even greater urgency to the question of the title. But this is far from the album's only stellar offering. Cue up "Soul of A Man" and an even more marvelous contrast emerges, this time with John employing the more familiar falsetto. If "Cinderella" is an homage to the classics, "Soul of a Man" is a torpedo - John, Marsden and drummer-performer Wizzard have put together a sonic storm that sounds not only perfectly logical, but entirely heart-felt and, in fact........human. Similalr effects are realized on "Rain Like Gold" and "Nothing For free"

this is indeed the great virtue of this entire project. john and his partners have managed to  sincerely reinvigorate the Jamaican sound and make it more globally accessible but without robbing it of the warmth and spontaneity for which it deservedly grabbed world attention in the first place. This sounds easier said than done and may come off as casual praise, but if one patiently takes in this album and allows the sounds to simply find their way and wash over one's consciousness, the simplicity and daring within them becomes apparent - in most cases wonderfully so. this is an album which will elicit many an unintentional smile and a nod of the head - not simply in time with the often staccato beat, but in recognition that one is witnessing the evolution of an artist who is intent on pushing the sound forward on his own terms.

it's about time.

"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"