“Reggae has a fight”.

“We’re losing our culture.”

These are the sorts of things people in Kingston have been saying to me all week – most of them venue and music store owners.

Gone are the days when Jamaicans bought music from music stores.

Now Jamaicans get music on-line for free or buy it from bootleggers on the streets.  Economic conditions for most Jamaicans mean that is the only option for getting music, but it is a choice for many others.  An important one, I think.

Gone are the days when Jamaicans bought lots of Jamaican music.

Now, the radio stations and record stores are inundated with music from North America.  “Jamaicans are less and less Afro-Centric” a venue owner said to me this week. If the Jamaican wedding reception I’m listening to outside my door right now is any indication, every song from the U.S.A., that person may be right.

Gone are the days when music stores sold lots of Jamaican music.

Now, as I discovered on my missions to different Kingston music stores this week, very little current Jamaican music can be found in those stores.  It is mostly foreigners like me who are looking for it. Most Jamaican music, even when made in Jamaica, is sent overseas to be pressed to CD, and not much of it comes back to Jamaican shores. “You need to go to London or New York to find Jamaican music” they tell me.

Gone are the days when Jamaican bands played regularly in Jamaica.  Gone are the days when those bands had lots of venues to play in.

Now, for many Jamaican bands to make most of their income for the whole year, they tour overseas for the Summer.

Now, there are few venues in Jamaica supporting regular live music gigs.

Gone are the days when sound systems could set up on the street and go.

Now, government regulations imposing shut down times, and requiring a sound system operator to get five or so permits, makes it hard for sound systems to be set up and to make a profit.

These are the things I’ve been told this week when searching for current/recent Jamaican music to buy and take home with me, and also for live gigs to go to. This is what that record store owner meant when he said “Reggae has a fight”.

You might say these same stories apply everywhere in the world.  That’s probably true, certainly in Australia as well as most countries I’ve visited (always looking for the same thing – local music and gigs).  I’m always just as disappointed about it.

Do these things affect Jamaica more than other countries where the stories are the same?  I don’t know.  I can’t help thinking about another thing said to me by the same Kingston music store owner who said “Reggae has a fight”:

 “Reggae is Jamaica’s biggest export. What will we do when that’s gone?”

I have my bag of Jamaican music to take home with me and enjoy.  It was a bigger mission finding it than I had hoped – and I wanted the bag to be bigger – but they ain’t bootlegs.

I found some live gigs in Kingston town, and a few supportive venues – but I wish there were more.

Maybe you’ve been to Jamaica?  Maybe you had a different experience to me? I’d love to hear good news stories that prove I don’t know what I’m talking about. 

For anyone in Kingston looking to buy current Jamaican music (on CD): Most items in my music bag are from the Music Mart in Half Way Tree (8 South Ave).   A couple are from Tuff Gong.  Strangely enough, every album in that bag and a couple more, I found on my way out of Kingston – at the airport music shop.  Stranger still is that they were cheaper than I paid in the city.