| Given the option between greatest hits discs and the latest manufactured pop star, more often than not, the best new music addition to your collection is old.
For years now, music lovers have found refuge in the reissue. Rediscovering musical genres and long forgotten musicians and artists of the past has become a lucrative enterprise in these digitizied times. With major record labels unable to cater to niche markets , it has fallen to the dedicated efforts of music junkies and small labels around the world to round out music lover’s CD collections with compilations of obscure, high quality brazilica, jazz, rock, soul or funk.
Great Britain, long home to a flourishing and diverse music scene is at the epicentre of today’s musical rediscovery. While musical trends have come and gone elsewhere on the planet, Great Britain has always fostered rogue musical tastes. In doing so, its passion for music sets trends, and those trends trickle down to smaller outposts around the globe. This has never been more evident than with the vintage movement currently pulsing through finer music shops everywhere.
The vintage movement is fuelled and nurtured by a handful of smaller labels (namely Harmless, BBE, Ubiquity, Soul Patrol and Soul Jazz), and the common motivation is to satisfy lovers of rare groove, jazz, electronica, reggae, latin, hip hop and funk.
The Soul Jazz label, one of the leaders on the vintage scene has, for the last decade or so, been reissuing gems from days gone by, as well as a catalogue of new music. All this, while running one of the most revered record stores in the world. "Really what we wanted to do was sell music that was important to us and that translated into our first compilations.," says Pete Reilly of Soul Jazz.
In fact, their much loved and highly acclaimed Dynamite series of reissues helped put forgotten reggae back into the hands of the common man. These reissues provide high-quality compilations of Kingston’s finest from the ’60s through the modern age, with no specific emphasis except that of highlighting unknown reggae.
"Well, we’re not a connoisseur series looking for the rarest of the rare," says Reilly. "It’s not like we had Lee Perry assemble a compilation of his favourites, it was more for our friends who said they loved reggae, but wanted something more than Bob Marley."
Another reason for the development of the label is the increasing rarity of obscure records. Many of the label’s genres are more popular now than they’ve ever been, especially considering the global music trade.
"Tracks and records, well the originals are just getting harder to find" says Reilly, "but the demand for them is still there, from everywhere. That demand isn’t localized to one geographic area any more, and that’s an area we just happened to accommodate with the label."
A quick look at the EBay auctions for rare records that now command hundreds of dollars confirms that music is more than a passing fancy.
"We’re really fuelled by music – we’re passionate about it." says Reilly. "Music still matters, and I think people who buy our albums or come into our shop share that passion, that craving for something more than what they’re being sold, that music really is a timeless thing and we’re just glad to be a part of it."
Soul Jazz recently expanded to a multimedia venture with the Studio One Story, a reissue which includes a documentary DVD on the legendary Studio One label. It features interviews with the few reggae innovators who are still alive, as well as rare footage from the era. Again, it was a venture based on love for the era.
"We wanted to let people see where it all began and interview those who made it happen, who took the music to the world," Reilly says.
Soul Jazz’s success showcases the major label’s chronic inability to develop markets that fall outside its mass-marketing scheme, despite the fact that a portion of what is reissued was once on a major-label’s roster.
Soul Jazz isn’t turning records over in the millions of copies. The fact that they’ve sold vinyl and CDs in enough quantity to expand the label’s repertoire despite all the perceived monsters in the industry’s closet (namely the Internet), highlights the simple fact that there is still a market for music that isn’t manufactured by this modern age.
"I don’t think people who love music are happy downloading it,’ says Reilly. "They want to own something, to add it to their lives." |
Copyright ©2003 FFWD. All rights reserved.