Roots Archives Forum

A good album to listen to is
UPSETTER IN DUB
Heartbeat CD77

"Here's how a Reggae musician friend of mine explained it to me.....

ONE DROP = Bass drum and snare on the 3rd beat of 4/4

ROCKERS = Bass on 1st and snare on 3rd

STEPPERS = Bass on all 4 beats snare on 3rd" --- selecta bing

How about citing one or two classic reggae songs for each to illustrate the differences?

I 100% agree with anbessa... and am absolutely certain that your definition of rockers is in fact the classic DANCEHALL riddim. Take almost all recordings post 82 and youlll find examples... it is still the ruling riddim more than 25 years after...

Almost all barrington levy's stuff is like this, the same with barry brown... Tum - Clash - Tum Clash...

Roots Radics are typical dancehall players, even if the have a few rockers. A rich dancehall instrumental is for example Barry Brown's GIVE ANOTHER ISRAEL A TRY.

Rockers: listen to Johnnz Clarke - Bad days are going (greensleeve) or the recent rerelease of Niney - Mutiny, or an instrumental: spirit of umoja augustus pablo, or the recent Ras Danhi - Nowhere Release pon KINGSTON CONNEXION.

A One Drop... As for both before thousands to cite.. it rules all 70s till 1976 more or less...
Most of Marley's stuff... Almost all studio one's famous stuff... Or to take a wicked tune pon the ROCKERS label that is like most in fact a ONE DROP... Asher and Trimble - Humble Yourself... Or on the same KINGSTON CONNEXION 12" release, the fli by Pablo Paul called Respect is one drop too...

Most of the people seems to prefer the more energic STEPPER / ROCKERS... but I really prefer the subtility of One Drop...

Respects

Litelet

One Drop and Steppers are easy to define.
Rockers is not so easy because drummers will mix it up a bit to keep it interesting
and to be different from other drummers.

Night Nurse is an example of Rockers.
Drummer:Style Scott (Roots Radics,pioneers of Dancehall)

I usually identify Rockers+Steppas with the dance that goes with it, like alot of gregory isaacs music is what i'd call Rockers, music u can just rock to, back+forth with the bass, rolling basslines. Then steppas is the militant sound, with more predominat drums usually with like a ska guitar sound, like a repetative ching, ching, ching, and the dance is like a march, rebel music, steppin rather than rocking. With the basslines standing out more as opposed to rolling like with rockers basslines. The bass tends to be a repetative heavy bass rather than with rockers where the bass tend to flow. I've no idea how u would describe it technically but u can always tell by how u dance to it.
And theres gonna be people who will disagree with my description i'm sure, i think people have there own interpretation of the styles.

Found this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reggae

Hi again, one last post pon this subject...

I just uploaded a wmv file to help those whod like to understand the difference between reggae genres...

Its 1mo / 1 minute soundfile with a sample of ONE DROP followed by ROCKERS and finally DANCEHALL drumbeat...

www.geocities.com/litelet/reggae-drumriddim.wmv

Hope it help

guidance

just GREAT explanation Amael... agreed totally with your one drop / rockers / dancehall selection....

(do i need to mention wich one i love the most? )

Blessings,

Well yes guno, tell me... Im not sure... really... but guess it coud be the one drop... true?

I'm sorry to inform that you're wrong my friend...

I love them all... but for sure the one I love the most is ROCKERS... that's why I named my radio and website over it...

Blessings,