The Specials: only in England
Tricky said this in an interview:
No other country could have produced the Specials
Terry Hall grew up with Jamaican culture as well as English culture, that’s the only way The Specials could have happened. It couldn’t have been Jamaican music on one side, and English music on the other, then you’d just have had reggae and punk rock. They bled into each other. In America I know guys who’ve got Jamaican parents and they can’t understand a Jamaican guy talking, but Terry Hall can, and his parents are white. No other place on earth could have produced the Specials, unless a whole group of white English people did a mass migration to Jamaica, and they mixed. If you listen to American ska bands, they don’t sound authentic, it's like surf music with reggae mixed with it.
I think he's got a point. Do we agree? Full interview's here (and his views on violence are fascinating and illuminating).
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I would say that was true but then
there is no way a band such as The Eagles could have come out of anywhere but America.
It's the culture and environment.
Not sure what point Tricky is making there.
It's not true any more
Thanks to the wonders of technology, people on different continents who have not necessarily even met in person can now work as closely together as if they were physically in the same studio. It's becoming commonplace in electronica - with Jerome Sydenham working with Hideo Kobayashi in Japan in the morning and with Tiger Stripes in Sweden in the afternoon, without ever leaving Brooklyn, for example - but there's no reason why such collaborations couldn't happen across the board now.
That's not the point though Archie...
...isn't it about the assimilation of different cultural values over a goodly number of years, brought about by growing up side by side with people from a different culture so, in part, it becomes 'your' culture as well?
Something you'd never get living and working on different continents - Jerome and Hideo might be collaborating successfully at a distance of 10,000 miles (or whatever) - but do either of them have any real, deep understanding of their respective cultures?
Or am I missing the point?
No, I'm tangentialising again, sorry
Wur's me medication?
Accents
Yes, I agree. The key cultural point in what he's saying is simply this: Terry Hall could understand what his bandmates were saying! Simple as that, perhaps.
Furthermore
"No other place on earth could have produced the Specials", possibly because they're a product of what used to be called the British Empire. A shared tongue, a different experience, emigration and immigration etc.
However there are parallels in other lands. Booker T & the MGs were two black guys and two white guys brought up in an apparently segregated society who oddly enough shared a common vernacular.
Given the Jake the Poacher thread.....
.... I will make a gratuitous mention for the mid period Beach Boys, round about Holland, when the shiny white teeth and fair hair of the californian middle classes were joined by 2 mixed race south africans, with little shared cultural background that I can see. Yet, in my wholly biased and personal opinion*, the sings written by the latter and performed by whole are amongst their best. And Ricky Fataar went on to join the Rutles..
*don't do humble
Paul Simonon and Don Letts make similar claims
in Westway to the World.