There are a couple of DJ nights coming up this week that I wanted to tell you guys about. One is here in Brooklyn, and the other is in Dallas. Both nights are gonna feature Reggae music so I thought it might be a good opportunity to share some thoughts on Reggae that have been bouncing around in my head for a while now.

I feel like a lot of folks don’t “get” Reggae, but I really believe that it is one of the most compelling musical forms to hit planet Earth in the last century. It is a unique amalgam of Caribbean, African, and European rhythms and melodies. When listening to Reggae one can hear the musicians summoning the whole of those various musical cultures and melding them together so succinctly. On top of that, and this is the kicker, you had hundreds of musicians in on this tiny little island (4,444 square miles to be exact) in the 60’s and 70’s who had all mastered that melding. That melding became the baseline – the standard. So, then they did something truly magnificent and somehow collectively pushed each other even further. And as if that wasn’t enough, then you had the genesis of the entire DJ culture and the fascinating advent of “studio as musician” with the introduction of technology to capture and more importantly manipulate sound. Perhaps it’s easy to take all that for granted if you’re under fifty or for it to go over your head if you’re over fifty, but I can’t stress enough how significant this movement was/is to human’s relationship to music and sound.

So yeah, I hope you’ll come out if you live in NYC or Dallas. Dance a little bit and rejoice in that revolution in sound. Although if nobody shows up to Matt’s night in Dallas that will just be one more arrow in my quiver proving that he should move to NYC.

Foundation Rockers Soundclash
DJ Franco Nero & The Diamond Age
@ The Doublewide
3510 Commerce Street
Dallas, TX
Tuesday, July 27th 2010
10-2 *Free*

More info here: https://thediamondage1.blogspot.com/2010/07/foundation-rockers-diamond-age-mix.html

And then on Thursday, I’m going to be continuing my DJ residency at The Counting Room with one of the guys who really turned me on to the whole of Reggae, Jon Bless.

DJ sets by Jon Bless & Brad Loving
@ The Counting Room
44 Berry Street
Brooklyn, NY
Thursday, July 29th 2010
9-2 *Free*

Diamond Age – JAMAICAN RECORDs 2:

1. Sir Lord Comic, Skatalites – Four Seasons
2. Upsetters – Night Doctor
3. Eric Frater – Venus
4. Roy Shirley – Dance Arena
5. Larry Marshall – Run Babylon
6. The Revolutionaries – M.P.L.A.
7. Toyan – Spar with Me
8. Mikey Murta – Rude Rock Dubplate Mix
9. Big Youth – Screaming Target Version
10. Barry Brown –
11. General Echo – Follow Fashion
12. Shinehead – Billy Jean
13. Leroy Wallace & The New Establishment – Far Beyond
14. Jackie Mittoo – Juice Box
15. White Mice – Tallawah
16. Prince Jazzbo – Pepper Rock
17. Ranking – Chatty Chatty People
18. The Gladiators – Tallawah