Friday, March 14, 2008

“It's Reggae Mahn, er.. ‘Tol?!”: Reggae In The Philippines


It’s Saturday night and you tune the radio. You switch from one station to another. It’s almost the same musical genres in almost all radio stations. But try to try to set the radio frequency to the farthest left of the tuner. Ahh. Finally, something different enters your ears.

New music, eh? It’s something unique. It sounds cool. The tempo makes you want to sway with the music or at the least makes you want to tap your fingers following the almost monotonous, but not boring, beat it imbibes. The music’s rhythm is consistent. The artist’s voice is sounds cool and soothing amid accent that at first you would find hard to understand.

No idea what type of music it is? Hint. Bob Marley. Still don’t know? Well, does Jamaican music ring a bell now? If you still haven’t got it yet, well, it is reggae.

Not exactly a new genre, reggae music, which started in Jamaica, has been around for approximately 50 years. But yes, it’s relatively new here in the Philippines.

Dobbie Nights aired at Jam 88.3 every Saturday night at 6:00 p.m., is a radio show that features international and local reggae music. Originally it’s just DJ Migs who hosts the show, but recently, two weeks ago actually, Tracy Abad, who is a former UAAP basketball courtside reporter, joined DJ Migs in Doobie Nights.

Dobbie Nights doesn’t have a Billboard-like top charts featuring the week’s most requested song. Why? For the reason that there aren’t much reggae songs recorded. Reggae itself is not that popular. Sure the show is not that known yet, but the fact that there are many callers that the show gets, is a good indication that Filipinos do appreciate and enjoy such a groovy kind The show mostly airs original foreign reggae songs. But there are also some mainstream songs that some artists do a “reggae-ized rendition.”

Aside from the usual, and becoming so normal, delivering of green jokes, the atmosphere that the DJs create is friendly, relaxed, and quite funny. Of course, the show is entertaining especially for music aficionados looking for a fresh sound, a hard-find nowadays in the radio industry, wherein two radio stations playing the same song at the same time, is very probable. Apart from that, the show is also a good opportunity for Filipinos to expand their knowledge on the different musical genres aside from hip hop, rap, RnB, Soul and of course, OPM. - TERESA CAMILLE NONES

Photograph Source:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/jam883/

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