[MUSIC – Luscious Jackson: Citysong]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. I want to highlight some of the conversations that we're going to have on the show this week that you do not want to miss. Tomorrow we've got Jane Pratt in studio. Remember how she launched the influential magazine Sassy back in the '90s? She's back with something new and she joins us to discuss. On Thursday, singer-songwriter Amythyst Kiah will perform live in studio. She has a new album coming out in a couple of weeks and she'll preview it with us. On Friday, our occasional series, Small Steaks, Big Opinions, returns with a conversation that might be our most contentious yet, what is the best tasting apple variety from the American Beauty to the York Imperial? We'll debate them, even though we know the right answer to that is the Macoun. By the way, Kate wrote that last section. Kate, my senior producer, so at her, not me. That's in the future. Let's get this hour started with a new book about the significance of reggae culture as a form of expression for West Indians, and to get us in the mood, let's listen to a little bit from Chronixx.

[MUSIC – Chronixx: Selassie Souljahz]

Sizzla Kalonji alongside Chronixx

Yes I

Ah wah Chronixx ah do?

Warn dem

Protoje and Kabaka guh calm dem

(Selassie Souljah)

I Ah

Trod jah gravel

I nuh stumble

Nuh baffle I ah

Selassie souljah man

I am

Strong and mi happy--

Alison Stewart: In the book titled Vibes Up: Reggae and Afro-Caribbean Migration from Costa Rica to Brooklyn, Dr. Sabia McCoy-Torres writes reggae culture "encompasses the dance performance practices, media images, language style, ritualized social actions and political ideologies tied to reggae music and its various subgenres from dance hall to roots and culture."

McCoy-Torres sheds light on West Indian migrants who have found themselves navigating life in a new place while maintaining a strong connection to their cultural roots. Shows how music and dance brings communities together and how queer people have carved out a space for themselves within the dance hall scene. Sabia McCoy-Torres is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology and Africana Studies at Tulane University. Sabia, welcome.

Sabia McCoy-Torres: Hi, how are you? Allison, thank you for having me today.

Alison Stewart: Thanks for coming. Listeners, to you, are you a fan of reggae and dancehall music? Who are some of your favorite artists? What are some of your favorite songs? Where do you go to dance and listen to reggae or dance hall music? Call us or text us 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC, or you can reach out to us on social media @allofitwnyc. Are you Caribbean? Do you have family from the West Indies? Tell us what songs make you feel like it's home. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. Tell us what's the catalyst for writing Vibes Up?

Sabia McCoy-Torres: The catalyst, it was partly an experience living in Costa Rica and seeing how Afro-Caribbean people here are largely left out of ideas of what it means to be a true Costa Rican and how as a result of that, Afro-Caribbean folk in Costa Rica have a sense of themselves as being ticos, another word for Costa Rican, but of a particular type, a Caribbean Costa Rican.

I asked myself, how is it that after over 100 years of living here in Costa Rica generationally, I'm in Costa Rica at the moment, that's why I keep saying here, how is it that Afro-Caribbean folk are maintaining their cultural practices and language and sense of themselves as being distinctly Caribbean Costa Ricans and observing how music and embodying music and dance and performance and the kind of ways of socializing together in space was a big part of that.

I grew up in New York. I'm a born-and-raised New Yorker, and I observed how there were similarities in how Caribbean identities were expressed and enjoyed in the Caribbean places that I was connected to in New York City as well, and how music and dance and creating party atmospheres were a part of these tools, and they were important as well, along with more formal ways of creating identity and the politics around identity, like school alumni associations or ethnic political groups, that the everyday leisure and fun was equally as important, as well as these kind of more formal ways of creating and asserting identity.

I was interested in how these were kind of shared tools across these two spaces, and then as a result of that, people who are within these spaces, including myself, could say, "Wow, I'm in Brooklyn, but this feels like a place I've been in in Barbados, or feels like a place I've been in in Jamaica, or it feels like a place I've been in Costa Rica." How is that happening?

Alison Stewart: You're an associate professor in the department of Anthropology and Africana studies at Tulane. How does your background in anthropology shape your approach, this book?

Sabia McCoy-Torres: I would say I'm a social and cultural anthropologist, so I'm interested in how history has informed the present and how our present politics and economic systems we're navigating and ways that people relate to each other are informed by history. Then thinking about Afro-Caribbean people in Costa Rica and also in New York City is thinking about the histories that have brought these people to the places where they are residing and also the kinds of experiences that inform their pain, their past, their joy, their present. My experience as an anthropologist kind of creates that grounded interest. Then I would say another part of being an anthropologist is employing the method of understanding people through conversation with them and through everyday connection and through understanding how what their experiences are, how they understand them, rather than kind of imputing knowledge and information from the outside. In anthropology, we try to think about the forms of creating knowledge and understanding experiences as they organically arise from the people who are experiencing them and how they think about them, so I wanted to approach my research with that kind of lens in mind.

Alison Stewart: In the introduction to the book Vibes Up, you begin by describing your commute through Brooklyn on the 2 train, and then you talk about another commute somewhere else, hot and humid, in Costa Rica. Would you mind reading the first two paragraphs of the introduction for us?

Sabia McCoy-Torres: Sure. I'd be glad to. Ascending the final step of the dim number 2 train platform, I slowly take in my surroundings as my eyes adjust to the light. I am visually disoriented, a consequence of the change in illumination as I emerge from the subway in a place that is quite different from where I had boarded the train an hour earlier. As a native New Yorker, I imagine myself as someone who knows the city well. Yet, this moment underscores how it is impossible to know all of its rich ethnic enclaves. I had just entered one in Brooklyn, the borough where the city's largest and most concentrated community of West Indians resides.

Flags hang in the windows of buildings— the red, white, and black of Trinidad and Tobago, the green, red, and yellow of Grenada. Dollar vans, a mode of local transportation to the neighborhood in which I find myself, whiz by with Jamaican flags attached to antennas undulating in the wind. I am struck by scents. A thin smoke billows past my nose and clouds the air, food cooking on a nearby outdoor grill. Nothing could be more quintessential an experience in a West Indian neighborhood than the smell of jerk chicken wafting through the air. Speakers rattle, unable to handle the bass of dancehall reggae tracks that blare from car radios.

I can hear the "boom-chick-boom-chick-boom-chick-boom-chick" percussive beat at various volumes around me. I am in East Flatbush, sometimes called "Little Jamaica" or Caribbean Town." I am also in a major node of the Caribbean and epicenter of reggae culture outside of the West Indies. On another commute to a different place, on a similarly hot and humid day, I find myself, this time, on a bus. Mopeds and motorcycles pass my window with chocolate-complexioned men riding in pairs or with women clutching at their waists as they navigate cars and trucks in their way.

The young men's sinewy arms and torsos are revealed through loosely fitting racer-back cotton or mesh tops. Their hair is braided in cornrows or worn in a fade, with intricate lines shaved to accent the style. The bus makes a stop; I descend the stairs and enter a restaurant. Senior-aged Afro-Caribbean women sit around a table in floral button-up blouses and knee-length starched skirts or cloth pants; their hair is pressed straight, or worn in hairdos holding the perfect curls that curling irons make. They chat in patois, their voices rising above the whirling sounds of cars, trucks, and motorcycles. They fan themselves to dry heat collecting on their brows.

The conductor beckons us with a honk of his horn and passengers head to reboard, leaving the afternoon gathering behind us. Continuing the commute, at another stop, I see outside of the bus window a barber standing behind a salon chair where a teen sits draped in a red, gold, and green gown that catches the hair falling from his crown. These are the colors of the Rastafarian flag. A giant image of Bob Marley hangs on the wall behind them. The pulse of dancehall rhythms is projected from standing speakers in the shop.

The two other young men present bob their heads from where they sit. We are in Limón, Costa Rica, yet it feels much like Brooklyn, inspiring me to reflect on how Caribbean places are made in the diaspora, and it might be that these sensual circuits, which the West Indian diaspora forms, share important cultural traits and sociopolitical functions that can be traced transnationally between Costa Rica and Brooklyn.

Alison Stewart: That's Sabia McCoy-Torres reading from her book Vibes Up: Reggae and Afro-Caribbean Migration from Costa Rica to Brooklyn. It is out now. Let's take some calls, Sabia. Maria is calling in from New Jersey. Hi, Maria.

Maria: Good morning. How are you?

Alison Stewart: Doing great. How about you?

Maria: Excellent. I wanted to share that I came to the US in the 1980s, and I remember not having time to go to any place where there was music because I was too busy completing my doctorate degree. Then years pass and I went for the first time to Jamaica, and that's when I discover reggae. I fell in love immediately with the music. I come from the Spanish Caribbean region, and even though it was hard sometimes to understand what they were saying in their lyrics, but it made total sense for me.

I just connected at many levels with the music and the singers and the groups, and then I believe that reggae has had a profound impact in Puerto Rican music. I believe that reggae is the base for one of the most popular rhythms today, reggaeton, so I would like to know if the author can say something about the connection between those two different genres. Thank you.

Alison Stewart: Thank you. She brings up the issue of reggae and reggaeton. Go ahead. I'll let you answer the question. I'll ask one myself.

Sabia McCoy-Torres: Oh, sure. I just wanted, the pronunciation of my name is Sabia, and I would love to-

Alison Stewart: Sabia, I'm sorry.

Sabia McCoy-Torres: That's okay. I would love to respond to this question from the caller. If I may, first, I just want to highlight your experience that you shared, caller, about sort of being able to connect with the music even though you didn't know the lyrics, and I think I heard you say also you're from the Caribbean as well, maybe the Spanish Caribbean.

Anyway, musics of the African diaspora, which reggae is and which other music forms from the Caribbean, including Puerto Rico and Cuba and Dominican Republic are, they share percussive similarities and emotional similarities and musical qualities that make it such that the way people experience them can be shared in common, even if they're not familiar with the different music forms. More directly addressing your question about the connection between reggae and reggaeton, reggae is essentially the foundation of reggaeton. Reggae was brought to Panama with Afro-Caribbean migration to Panama, and in Panama, Afro-Caribbeans created Reggae en Español.

Also in Costa Rica here, that was done as well, and Reggae en Español is kind of thought of the first reggae in Spanish that began to popularize dance hall percussive sounds and elements in Spanish music. Through migration of workers throughout the Caribbean, this Reggae en Español also made it to Puerto Rico, and also with migration of Afro-Caribbeans from Panama to New York, New York as well, where the Reggae en Español was meeting salsa and meeting merengue and bachata elements that ultimately would later create the medley that is reggaeton today.

The primary baseline and percussive riff of reggaeton is derived from a Shabba Ranks' song called Dem Bow, so it's the classic [imitating rhythm] that sort of makes reggaeton identifiable as a genre. It was extracted from this song Dem Bow, and that's actually how we get today Dembow as being referred to as a specific way of dance, as a specific type of music and a specific rhythm in the Spanish Caribbean from that song Dem Bow, which is a sort of patois way of saying dem bow or they bow.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Jane from Brooklyn. Hi, Jane. Thanks so much for calling All Of It.

Jane: Hi, thanks for having me on. This is so exciting to hear. I grew up in Manhattan, New York City, and now live in Brooklyn. I'm not Caribbean, but Reggae is the only music I can listen to. I cannot listen to anything else, and this is going on like year 33 for me, and I grew up young adult selecting reggae in a New York City's only all reggae bar, which was called the smallest bar in New York, and at the time, I would just put on reggae tape after reggae tape and fast forward and rewind the certain songs that I liked, and little did I know that I was actually being a selecta for a million years and that there is an art and a nod to the art of simply being able to curate good music, which is different from other musics and what they consider Djing.

I'll say that it is so pleasurable to hear mentions of reggae and hear crossovers and references in non-reggae spaces because it shouldn't be such a niche community, but it is. I live my life feeling very lonely in my community, thinking I'm the only person that lives reggae. I met my husband, and the only reason I married him is because he is someone that lives reggae, and it really is sort of the backbone to our politics, the backbone to the food, to how we just navigate everyday life, and it is beautiful, and it feels like I'm living in a world of reggae that is large.

In the same sense, it's also very alienating in that you don't hear it when you're shopping in the supermarket unless you're specifically in certain area, Flatbush or [unintelligible 00:17:22] market, and you don't hear it on the soundtrack in movies unless the movie is about West Indian culture or someone's taking a trip to the Caribbean. I really yearn for those vehicles and artistic expressions that are not about Caribbean culture but you hear and the influence.

Alison Stewart: Thank you so much for the call. I wanted to ask you, Sabia, right? I wanted to ask you, following up on her comments, you talk about the reggae culture, how would I know someone is involved in the reggae culture?

Sabia McCoy-Torres: That's a great question. I think partly hearing the kinds of things that that last caller just said, like, what does it mean to want to curate a space and an experience? That's what I'm gathering from that caller as well. That's one that's grounded in emotion, and it's also grounded in a type of way of being and moving in a space, like, this is someone who has an understanding of what it means to participate in culture in mind.

I would say that thinking about reggae culture and what someone who identifies it might say, it's the music, it's the knowledge. The knowledge that comes from the music, the knowledge that comes from what people are sharing in space. The knowledge that comes from interpersonal communication, the ways of learning about what is a way of expressing your gender identity or a way of expressing your sexuality and actually expressing yourself in that way, like, this is someone who's grounded in the culture.

Knowing and respecting and being a part of the history of the people who are the creators of culture, that having a sort of groundedness in the experience, either directly because one can identify it as their own, or, I think, cultural or ethnic outsiders can participate in music cultures by sort of respecting and understanding the politics of the space, how people interact, what forms of knowledge and priorities and treatment of people in the space is important, and also, again, respecting the history and knowledge producing of the people who make the culture.

Alison Stewart: In the book, you highlighted a song called In the Corner by an artist named Toledo, who's both Afro-Caribbean and from Limón. Let's listen to it and we can talk about it on the other side. Let's listen.

[MUSIC – Toledo: In the Corner]

Real rastaman we take it further

So we no wanna murder

Memba this think u neva heard

Only ganja thing we a burn out

The boy haffi learned out

We keep it straight

And we neva neva turn yaaaooo

We burn out

Okay, we too real when I bake

Burn out mi earth straight

Fi meditate

Real rastaman [unintelligible 00:20:28] straight

Just like [unintelligible 00:20:30]

We ah buss it till the earth quake [unintelligible 00:20:33]

Hot like a cooker when it bake

And sometime we sit down, relax

And then ganja kick

Only quality ganja we [unintelligible 00:20:41]

Passa passa [unintelligible 00:20:43]

Meet me in the corner--

Alison Stewart: Sabia how does the song and music video reflect life in Costa Rica for Afro-Caribbean people?

Sabia McCoy-Torres: That's a great question. I just want to comment first on the linguistic elements of that song and how it reflects life. There is significant movement between a sort of Caribbeanized Spanish and also an English Patois that is spoken out here, and we see with that the kind of moving in between Caribbean identity and also Caribbean tico identity, and also a movement between different kinds of social spaces, like what it means to be in your home and you're speaking in Patois versus being in the street or interacting with people in the supermarket or in schools, institutions, and speaking in Spanish.

As well, I'm hearing, continuing on this linguistic, the use of words like nyam. Nyam is a word that's still widely used in Jamaica to refer to like eating, so thinking about cuisine and the foods that people eat as a connection to their sense of themselves as Caribbean. This song as well, it's an ode to Limón in particular, and at one point in the song, someone references Puerto Viejo. This is a particular town in the Limón region.

I see that as well as a sort of call and recognition of what it means to be in a nation that might not be largely thought of as Caribbean, but to want to seek out and ground oneself in particularly Caribbean spaces. Again, the kind of use of patois is saying, "Hey, this language is important," and I think that all of these ways of asserting identity and talking about space and demonstrating how people move through space speak to the experience of being Caribbean in Costa Rica.

Alison Stewart: Got a text that says, "I spent 2007 to 2009 living and traveling in the Caribbean, and I don't think a day went by when I didn't hear the song August Town by Duane Stephenson, from the Bahamas to Grenada to everywhere in between. I haven't heard the song in 15 years, but I think I could sing the whole thing from memory." Thanks for texting in. Jessie on line three has been holding for a little bit. Hi, Jesse. Thanks for holding.

Jesse: Thank you. Thank you for having me. How are you?

Alison Stewart: Doing well.

Jesse: Yes, I just want to give you my background. I'm 48 years old. I'm from East Indian heritage, from Northern Indian Punjab, and in the late '80s, early '90s, I heard reggae through friends of mine who are Caribbean and not knowing a word of what they were saying. I was drawn to the drumbeat, the so called, the rhythms or the rhythms. Then kind of fast forward through life, college, medical school, I would seek out reggae parties on my own because, like one of your previous callers said, it was isolating. Not a lot of people enjoyed it to the extent that I did.

Wherever I was, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and now New York, I would seek out places to go, and then I met a DJ out here, DJ Liondub, and we shared this kind of passion for reggae to the point that we started actually developing and getting what are called dub plates. I'm sure your speaker can talk about those. We actually have established songs by established reggae artists with his name and my name in it, and I guess the funny thing is that I'm actually a surgeon, and so I play reggae and dub plate music in Brooklyn where I operate, and it really kind of brings together the entire operating room between a lot of the-

Alison Stewart: I love that.

Jesse: -West Indian staff. It's relaxing to me while I operate. Yes, I'm just lover of reggae music, primarily late '80s, early '90s, and places where I go in the city is Bembe on Tuesday nights in Williamsburg. Great place to go.

Alison Stewart: Great call. Jesse, thank you so much for calling in. That was really fun. That was a good call.

Sabia McCoy-Torres: Yes, I love the curation of space, going back to the caller as well, how this surgeon is kind of curating space, and curating space, it involves curating emotion within the space, and to think of this caller creating a tone within the surgical room, I think is a beautiful image.

Alison Stewart: As we wrap up, I did want to ask about the generational differences, and in terms of looking forward, how do you hope the future generations looks at this idea of reggae and the music and their identity?

Sabia McCoy-Torres: Oh, that's a great question. I'm going to try not to be too long-winded. Generational differences, I would say that we can kind of track through the generations. I'm just going to speak of Afro-Caribbean families that I've worked with. What people are saying about the change in music, we can track the kinds of critiques and commentaries that we can about other music forms or cultural change in general.

I remember a friend's mom saying, "When I was a kid, when people would talk about sex and reggae, it was using adjectives about fruits and things that were, like, a little more nuanced, but now it's just, like, so raw, and it's explicit, and it's in your face." I think that whether it's about how people are talking about sex or how people are talking about the political interventions that need to be made, or how people are talking about their bodies, it gets more in your face and more palpable and powerful over time, and that this can kind of create divisions between the youth and the elders.

In terms of future generations and reggae, I hope that reggae will remain and continue to have the sort of groundedness and connection to identity and culture, and not just become so mass consumed that it becomes an unidentifiable music form as reggae, even though we allow the room for evolution and change to happen, but I also hope that thinking about the continuation of reggae, that we don't see the disappearance of Afro-Caribbean and Afro-descendant people as representations of reggae and embodiments of reggae and creators of reggae, as we have seen with other music genres, like reggaeton. I would imagine that it's always going to speak emotionally to people as it has these colors in today and the people who I work with who continue to mold their lives with reggae as a part of its ingredients.

Alison Stewart: My guest has been Sabia McCoy-Torres. The name of the book is Vibes Up: Reggae and Afro-Caribbean Migration from Costa Rica to Brooklyn. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Sabia McCoy-Torres: Thank you for having me. Allison, thank you so much.

Alison Stewart: Let's go out on some music.

[music]