EVERY GENRE PROJECT - October 19 - Rocksteady

Genre of the Day - Rocksteady

Album of the Day - Bob Andy’s Song Book by Bob Andy (1970)

Rocksteady is not just a genre name but an excellent compositional directive for an instrumentalist: simply play the bass steady, but improvise within the lines. This forms the melodic basis of rocksteady, which occupies a brief but critical period of Jamaican music history before it gave way to reggae. Reggae has become such a force that it has gained so many well-known connotations globally: a pan-Africanist protest medium, a platform for religious expression among Rastafarians, a musical manifesto for musicians expressing love for their tropical homelands from Polynesia to Mauritius, American stoners’ ubiquitous music go-to for decades. Before it took on the weight of global acclaim, rocksteady fleshed out reggae’s central components and opened a new era of Jamaican music. 

Rocksteady is one of those genres that acts more like information passing through between different musical neurons. For a brief few years in the mid-’60s, it bridged the gap between ska, Jamaica’s first breakthrough of many in visionary sonic fusions, and reggae. Ska also lives on in its own strange way, so clear your ‘90s preconceptions of the genre as we grasp the origins of rocksteady’s predecessor. Ska evolved from fast-paced shuffling dance music circulating across the global musical landscape in the ‘50s. It was set apart by its skank rhythm, a guitar chop on the offbeat that gave it an instantly recognizable feel.

That rhythmic innovation translated into an ecstatic dance genre, fast-paced and replete with raucous horns. Popular music tends to oscillate between high-intensity speed and moodier chillness, though—we’re currently moving back into the former—and in the Jamaican landscape, rocksteady scaled back ska’s pace around 1966. Quite literally, it steadied the rhythm with rhythmically stable basslines that stood out for being picked, making the bass’ role as musical anchor more pronounced. It took more cues from American soul, which had been hitting a new stride of commercial popularity in the early ‘60s. Rocksteady also grappled with social questions facing Jamaica at the time, particularly with the figure of the rudeboy. Rudeboys were fashionable rebellious types who organized in gangs and became known for troublemaking, though they also took prominent roles within the music scene. Many rocksteady artists either expressed kinship with rudeboys or protested their perceived delinquency.

Bob Andy deftly interprets the range of rocksteady’s musical influences before it began to be swept away by reggae on 1970’s Bob Andy’s Song Book. “My Time” is a veritable odyssey; those familiar jumping bass notes leaping from their fretboard, his voice traveling to space via reverb, horns gently singing. The horns are more complimentary than ska’s blasts, such as in the saxophone weaving through the forlorn “Desperate Lover.” The equal-parts vigor and emotionality of his voice recalls soul greats like Sam Cooke, speaking to the rapport between these forms and lending a passion to not only love songs but a wide purview in the communal themes of “Life Could Be a Symphony,” addressing adversity in the face of economic woes in “I’ve Got to Go Back Home,” and the rudeboy callout of “Crime Don’t Pay.” It’s a beautiful, albeit unevenly mixed, illustration of the sublime tranquility of rocksteady in its brief moment in the sun.