Over the past couple of decades, as traditional reggae music has been displaced in Jamaica in favor of increasingly hard-edged dancehall and its various subgenres, interest in keeping the old-school sounds alive has grown in other parts of the world – certainly in the UK (home to the largest segment of Jamaica’s diaspora) but also in locations that might seem less likely: Germany, France, Austria, even Poland and Romania. Since the turn of the current century, serious reggae scenes have cropped up in cities as unexpected as Marseilles, Berlin, Vienna, and Geneva.
Inevitably, artists in these areas create reggae music that is tinged with their own cultural backgrounds, sometimes blending those traditions very deliberately and strategically, and sometimes creating musical hybrids without particularly intending to. And the music that comes out of these far-flung scenes covers a broad spectrum of stylistic approaches, from very traditional roots-and-culture reggae to experimental electronic and multicultural adaptations of foundational reggae structures and tropes. The music is sometimes made by displaced Jamaican artists who moved to Europe for a variety of reasons, sometimes by the offspring of Jamaican immigrants who came to Europe decades ago, sometimes by immigrants from other world regions (especially members of the African diaspora), and sometimes by native Europeans who have simply fallen in love with old-school reggae music and want to keep it alive – either by returning wholeheartedly to its roots or by bringing it into the 21st century with up-to-the-minute sounds and techniques. What emerges from these new centers of reggae production is often startlingly good – sometimes even great.