The Zika virus, while not nearly as serious as other viruses that spread recently, such as ebola, can still cause a whole lot of trouble in a person who gets infected. The symptoms include fever, rash and fatigue (so basically like a typical Tuesday for me) and they usually clear up in a week, but the worst part, which is what has made health authorities everywhere go on high alert, is that if a pregnant woman gets infected with Zika (or Zik V, as it’s sometimes referred to), her baby might be born with an otherwise extremely rare birth defect known as microcephaly. To put it simply, babies with microcephaly have underdeveloped brains and a smaller head, and I don’t need to be a doctor to tell you precisely why this is bad. While the Zika virus is of little danger to the mother, it can potentially destroy her child’s life, which is why health authorities everywhere have banded to raise awareness of the virus and give tips on how to reduce the chance of infection.

We’ve all seen the instructional videos in which a boring doctor explains to us that we should exchange the water regularly to prevent it from stagnating and handle our garbage properly to avoid attracting bugs, and according to studies conducted by yours truly, those videos, while informative, are not particularly fun to watch. The government of Jamaica seems to entirely agree with me, as it has decided to forego the boring instructional videos entirely. How, or how, would they inform Jamaicans in a language that they would understand? By using the power of reggae, of course! In a brand new 45-second PSA released and officially condoned by the Ministry of Health, a reggae singer quickly and efficiently takes us through the steps of minimizing the chance of a Zika outbreak, and while he might be a little bit hard to understand at times if you’re not used to the particular pronunciations of Jamaican English, especially in the context of reggae, the overall message is pretty clear.

As of the time of this writing, the video has about 20,000 views, which isn’t bad for a channel with only 26 subscribers! Spreading not only across Jamaica, but also all over the Americas, the clip has reached the status of a minor meme due to how light-hearted and funny it is for something that’s coming directly from the government. As I mentioned above, most PSAs (or Public Service Announcements) are fairly dull even when they attempt something different. A special shout-out should be given to the numerous anti-drug PSAs that ran in several countries across the 80s and 90s, some of which were so bad that they’re still remembered fondly even today (“Where did you learn this stuff?” “You, alright? I learned it by watching you!”), so kudos to the Jamaican Ministry of Health for choosing to do something different.

Sadly, while reggae still has a whole lot of fans out there (hello, world!), it’s far from the most popular musical genre out there. Certain genres, such as rap, rock, pop and, as of a few years ago, dubstep and electronic, have always been the more popular options when it comes to what the people prefer. Still, that’s both a blessing and a curse. It’s a curse for obvious reasons – less fans means less tracks being made, and less tracks being made means less exposure, and less exposure means less fans, you get the idea. But it’s a blessing because the low exposure makes the reggae sound very unique. Now, of course, we all know that reggae sounds unique in general, but so do the other music genres – metal, for example, is also quite different, and yet since it’s so popular and used in so many products of media people have grown desensitized to it. Reggae, on the other hand, can be used to craft moment that define the entire experience.

Let’s turn the clock back to 2012, when a game called “Far Cry 3” was released. Far Cry 3 is about a young man named Jason who, after a skydiving accident, ends up imprisoned by pirates cooped up on an island alongside his friends and brothers. Managing to break free, Jason meets up with the Rakyat – a tribe of indigenous people who train him in the ways of the warrior. Slowly, he turns from an ordinary young man into a desensitized killer, turning on the pirates and going on a quest to not only save his friends, but to take revenge on the guy who put them in this position. But the more Jason fights, the more he finds the joy in fighting. Remember – he’s just an avatar for the player, and he feels what the player is feeling. While he’s killing hundreds of people, Jason starts finding that fun and exciting, and nowhere is this more prominent than in the best mission in the game.

One of the pirates’ main source of income is growing marijuana on the island and selling it to whoever is willing to buy it. Armed with a flamethrower, Jason sets out to annihilate the marijuana fields, but suffice to say the smoke gets to his brain a bit. As a result, the reggae song “Make It Bun Dem” by Damian Marley starts playing in the background, representing Jason’s descent into insanity. It’d take me a long time to explain just how perfect the song is, but suffice to say, not only is it a very fun-sounding song to match Jason’s predisposition (he repeatedly exclaims how much fun he’s having while burning people to death), but it also fits the game’s themes. Remember – Damian Marley’s father, Bob Marley, believed that marijuana should be used for religious purposes. Meanwhile, the Rakyat’s religion is precisely the myth of the warrior. And what happens when Jason gets high with the marijuana fumes? He unleashes the warrior within him. Just like that, a reggae song managed to tie the themes of the entire game together. And it was awesome.

My All-Time Favourite Reggae Artists

In the welcome post of my blog, I said I wouldn’t bother you with too many details about myself, but when I started doing a research for an article about the greatest reggae artists and songs, I changed my mind. The reason for this is that I saw that I cannot contribute much to what’s already out there. If you google-search ‘greatest reggae artists’, you’ll find more than enough great articles rankings pretty much the same singers as the top 10 in the genre: Bob Marley always at the top (duh!), then Toots, Gregory Isaacs, Peter Tosh, Jimmy Cliff, Tanya Stephens, Burning Spear and so on. On top of that, on Wikipedia you can find a pretty exhaustive list of notable reggae musicians which can help you expand your reggae horizons by exploring the music of artists you maybe haven’t heard of before. In this case, only sharing my personal story of how I got hooked on reggae music, which are my favourite reggae artists and which are the reggae songs that are closest to my heart would have any value to at least some of the visitors. So that’s exactly what I will write about in this article. Here it goes.

The Beginning

I was in my early teens and those were the times when it wasn’t that common for a household to have more than one TV, one stereo system and one computer. And them being in pretty much the same room, you had to choose something that fits everyone’s taste. Not an easy task when one family member listens to folk, the other – to pop, the third – to rap, and the last one – to heavy metal. We had countless fights as to what music we should play and it was almost impossible for everyone to be happy at the same time. Until one day I randomly put Bob Marley on. Not a single complaint! Everyone went about their business humming and with a dancing step. Same happened a few days later with UB40. This is pretty much how I started listening to reggae regularly and discovered that I simply love the genre.

From Reggae to Ragga and Dancehall

Since these early days of my journey in exploring reggae music, I’ve fallen in love with countless reggae artists – be it the classic or the more contemporary ones – and their songs. Every time I hear Tanya Stephen’s It’s a Pity I immediately start singing. In my playlist, you will always find Black Roses by Barrington Levy, Night Nurse by Gregory Isaacs, Don’t Break My Heart and The Earth Dies Screaming by UB40, Shaggy’s Oh, Carolina, Murder She Wrote by Chaka Demus & Pliers, Why Am I a Rastaman by Culture and many more. Whenever I hear Sister Nancy’s Bam Bam or No No No I cannot stop myself from dancing. I can’t help myself but love Boom Bye Bye by Buju Banton even though I’m not exactly OK with what the song is about. Other songs from him that I will always like are Champion and Wanna Be Loved. I simply adore 54 46

by Toots which, by the way, has an awesome cover by Sublime who were, obviously, heavily influenced by reggae music. I also started listening to reggae’s subgenres ragga and dancehall and its precursor – ska. There are so many great artists in those genres – Beenie Man, Mr Vegas, Elephant Man, Capleton, Sizzla, to mention but a few. But no matter how many great artists there are in the genre, there will always be one name that will outshine them all. Guess who!