REBEL ISLAND SOUL - Under The Influence: Reggae, Funk & Soul In Jamaica in the 1970s Various / Soul Jazz Records Presents

Sixteen killer 1970s reggae funk and soul cuts from the likes of John Holt, Lee Perry, Cornel Campbell, The Cimarons, The Chosen Few and more, featuring superb reggae takes on songs by artists including The Jackson 5, William DeVaughn, Diana Ross and The Supremes, War, The Temptations, Roberta Flack, The Stylistics and others.

Well-documented is the influence of American black music on Jamaican styles of the 1960s - from the birth of ska music, when The Skatalites ska-ified the jump-up Southern USA rhythm and blues music of Rosco Gordon, Louis Jordan and Fats Domino, through to the creation of rocksteady when Jamaican artists like The Techniques, The Paragons, Alton Ellis and The Melodians turned to the slower rhythms and soulful harmonies of groups such as The Impressions and The Drifters for inspiration.

Less well established is the fact that in the 1970s Jamaicans didn’t stop listening to American black music styles, with many 1970s reggae artists as invested in soul, funk and the proto- disco sounds of Philadelphia, as was the case with rhythm and blues in the previous decade.
In the 1970s, while Jamaica promoted its own roots reggae styles around the world, powerhouse USA soul labels such as Motown, Philadelphia International and Stax Records were at the same time all popular on the island.

This interaction between American and Jamaican music was not limited to Jamaica.
In Britain, first generation Caribbean-émigré children in the 1960s and early 1970s grew up with an equal love of both soul and reggae, which manifested itself in the home-grown arrival of lovers rock in the mid-1970s.

Soul Jazz Records’ new ‘Reggae Island Soul’ tells this story of how soul and funk-infused reggae in the 1970s united the sounds of Jamaica, USA and the UK into a highly addictive cultural hybrid of styles.