REGGAE EXPLOSION (Summer 2001)

Jamaica's contributions to modern music so outmatch its size as to demand investigation. In their impressive coffee-table tome, subtitled The Story of Jamaican Music, vet music scribe Salewicz and photographer Boot use interviews with native music luminaries, hundreds of pictures, and an instructive if occasionally dry narrative text to explain the nation's supersize impact. Before Bob Marley fused reggae music with a rock aesthetic and became the West Indies' first music superstar, Jamaican innovators created musical styles like mento, ska, rocksteady, and dub that inspired everyone from English punks to American rappers to deejays around the world. The authors' lush presentation and insider's view of the religion, violence, and humor that shape the island help explain its explosive creativity.