Intro

My friend Stella asked me to record some of my old vinyl Ragga tunes for her and basically I got carried away and decided to create a blog to accompany the compilation. So, welcome to The Ragga Years and I hope that you enjoy the music.
Ragga is now referred to as Dancehall but back in the late 80's and early 90's no one called it that. In 1985 Wayne Smith created the Sleng Teng rhythm on his Casio Music Box at King Jammy's studio in Kingston Jamaica and the rest is Ragga history. Digital had arrived and was here to stay.
Today I don't really listen to much modern music from Jamaica but prefer the classic analogue sounds of Ska, Rocksteady and Reggae. Perhaps this is partly to do with age, partly that the music of the 1960s seems to endure. However I will always have a fondness for the Ragga sounds of the late 1980's and early 90's as this was when I grew up and when the sounds were fresh. Perhaps it is nostalgia, but one thing's for sure, those batty riders don't fit no more!
From the age of 13 I was into Ska, Rocksteady and Two Tone as well as some more mainstream pop of the time. Then when I was 14-15 I began to listen to contemporary music from Jamaica which flooded the streets of South London. Luckily I had been taught by my parents that vinyl was king and I largely ignored CDs when they arrived and stuck to buying records and taping them. This means that I now have quite a good collection of Ragga records in excellent condition. In fact I didn't realise how many I had accumulated over the years until I was asked to make this compilation.
Now that is enough words I think, time for the bass lines and Buju to do the talking....