Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean

/ARTS WEEKLY/MUSIC-JAMAICA: Seminal Reggae Album Back in the Spotlight

Howard Campbell

KINGSTON, Jul 15 2003 (IPS) - It was as dynamic as the movie it accompanied and helped push a rebellious new Jamaican beat called reggae into the international spotlight. Thirty years after it was released in the United States, "The Harder They Come" soundtrack will be reissued in that country with three new songs.

The two-CD set is scheduled to be released in the United States Aug. 5 by Hip-O Records, the reissue arm of the Universal Music group, as part of the company’s ‘Deluxe Edition’ series which has also included packages from reggae luminaries such as Black Uhuru and Toots and The Maytals.

Dana Smart, head of Hip-O, says working on "The Harder They Come" soundtrack was extra special as it contained music that introduced many people in the U.S. to the Jamaican beat.

"The Deluxe Edition explores the point in time, the late sixties and very early seventies, when reggae started making an impact on the pop music scene," said Smart. "’The Harder They Come’ was crucial to the opening of British and American ears to reggae music."

Hip-O has added three songs to the original soundtrack. They are remastered versions of singer Jimmy Cliff’s songs, "You Can Get it If You Really Want," "Sitting in Limbo" and "The Harder They Come."

Cliff starred in the movie as Ivan, a country boy who ventured to Kingston, the Jamaican capital, to pursue a music career. Prior to the movie, he was a minor star in the United Kingdom with "Wonderful World, Beautiful People" and "You Can Get it If You Really Want," but once "The Harder They Come" was released in 1972, his career skyrocketed.

So did the stocks of some of the other performers on the album, including The Maytals, who did "Pressure Drop", and Desmond Dekker, whose "007" ("Shantytown") was a hit in the U.K. in 1970.

The second CD contains songs that signalled reggae’s rise as an international force. Among them are Dekker’s "Israelites," Johnny Nash’s "I Can See Clearly Now" and "Guava Jelly" and Dave and Ansell Collins’ instrumental "Double Barrell."

"For the second disc, we gathered those crossover recordings plus some significant in Jamaica, and some – though not hits – are vital to this era of reggae’s international development," Smart explained.

Typical of reissues in the past five years, "The Harder They Come" soundtrack 2003 is accompanied by extensive liner notes by U.S.-based reggae archivist David Katz, the movie’s co-writer/director Perry Henzell, and Chris Blackwell, whose Island Records company distributed the soundtrack.

Both "The Harder They Come" movie and soundtrack were released in the U.K. in Jul. 1972. Their raw energy created an immediate impact that spilled over to other European countries, including Italy where the movie won Best New Cinema at the 1973 Venice Film Festival.

The movie opened in small theaters in the United States in late 1972 while the soundtrack made record stores there in Feb. 1973 through the Island Records subsidiary, Mango. Released in the era of guitar rock, it failed to make as big a noise as it did in Europe but in the last 15 years some of rock’s biggest scribes have sung its praises.

Rolling Stone magazine selected it as one of its Top 100 Albums; and last year, the cable channel E! Television cited it as one of the best soundtracks in movie history.

When "The Harder They Come" was released, a Rastafarian singer named Bob Marley was still an unknown to music fans in Europe and the U.S., even though he had written "Guava Jelly," a minor hit for Nash, a Texan, on both sides of the Atlantic.

At the time, Marley was lead singer of The Wailers, a group that also included Peter Tosh and Bunny Livingston (later Wailer). The trio had signed with Island in late 1971 and was getting set to record "Catch A Fire," their first international album.

In a 1995 interview with the Gleaner newspaper, Henzell said "The Harder They Come" helped pave the way for Marley, who split with Tosh and Livingston in late 1973, and went on to become a superstar shortly after with the acclaimed "Natty Dread" album.

Dancehall reggae has found new fans in the United States in the last two years thanks to glamour acts like Shaggy and Sean Paul. With the reissue of "The Harder They Come" soundtrack, a new generation will get an opportunity to learn where it all started.