desert reggae

While reggae has been popular in Australia since the early 1980s, it has taken a new direction in more recent times to produce the genre desert reggae. Indigenous singers of Central Australia have found that this is an appropriate vehicle for their voices, their culture.  They sing in English and Indigenous languages.  Some, like Michael Hogan pictured above, sing about country. Some focus on the dark side of Aboriginal life in the hope of connecting to their community and showing a way out for their young people.  In this they find the radical background of reggae sympathetic to their situation.

No one is sure of the origins of the word reggae (although a West Indian language is suggested) but we are even less sure of the origin of reggaeton, the genre originating in Panama in the late 1980s and enormously popular around the world since then, which blends reggae, hip hop and traditional Latin American music.  It is suggested that it is a blend of reggae and maraton meaning ‘marathon’ that was used for an album title in 1995.