Jamaica was at a dangerous and combustible spot as the 1970s rolled in, beset by class disparity, crushing poverty, increasingly barbed friction between the countryâ™s two political parties, and violence that amounted to open warfare in the streets, all of which fermented and came together creatively inside the islandâ™s maverick music industry, resulting in what was undoubtedly Jamaicaâ™s greatest pop music era, the era of true roots reggae.
Poised to export all this to the rest of the world was Chris Blackwell‘s fledgling Island Records imprint, which grew in time into a major player in the rock market, but back then, it was all roots. This two-disc set mines Islandâ™s impressive â™70s Jamaican catalog, and if not everything...