Freakoftheweekanomics Part I: From Bauxite to Brixton

It happened that in 1942, a wealthy landowner, attorney and businessman from the parish of St. Ann, Jamaica, Sir Alfred D'Costa, grew concerned by the failure of the corn growing on his farm as part of a wartime food production campaign. D'Costa took his concerns to the local authorities, sending them a sample from the red soil where the crops were planted. The results of these soil tests changed Jamaica, and as I will suggest here, Western music as we know it. Consider this post my entry into the world of Freakanomics.

So what was in the soil? Bauxite. Lots of it. What is Bauxite? Bauxite is the most important mineral in aluminum production. First discovered in Jamaica in 1899, the process for conversion of the ore into aluminum was far too complicated and costly at that time. Not so by 1942. Indeed, within a decade of D'Costa's discovery, the three largest aluminum producers in the Western hemisphere, Alcan, Kaiser Aluminum, and Reynolds Metals Company (of Reynolds Wrap fame!) had begun mining Jamaica's precious bauxite, a crucial element in post-War construction. Much of Jamaica's heartland was chock full of Bauxite, accounting for 12% of known worldwide reserves and by 1957, Jamaica was the number 1 Bauxite producer in the world.

So what does Bauxite have to do with music? As you can imagine, the massive influx of foreign capital dramatically changed Jamaica's economy and by the same token, its culture. An island colony that had for four hundred and fifty years been driven by a sugarcane plantation economy all of a sudden was flush with new mining money. By 1963, half of Jamaica's domestic exports consisted of bauxite-derived metals, and these metals brought in about twice as much foreign exchange as sugar and other traditional exports combined.

In 1958, Jamaica took its first steps toward independence, joining the Federation of the West Indies, a confederacy of small Caribbean island nations, including Barbados and Trinidad & Tobago. The purpose of the Federation was to create an interim political entity with the intention of ultimately breaking away from English colonial rule as an independent confederate nation, similar to Canada and its political relationship to its provinces.

By 1961, Jamaicans were displeased with the arrangement, believing that, among other things, the smaller islands in the Federation were unfairly draining Jamaica's newfound wealth. After a referendum to leave the Federation was passed, Jamaica declared its independence from Great Britain in 1962. Now, whether this turn of events can be attributed to Bauxite is debatable, but it no doubt played a part.

More importantly, Jamaica's rapid industrialization in the 1950s accelerated what had already been a trend in the 1930s, its urbanization. Farmers who sold their land to the mining companies, poorer subsistence farmers kicked off land they did not technically own, a new youthful generation attracted to perceived job opportunities in Kingston, new road and infrastructure developments funded to facilitate transport of ore but that also made travel to Kingston easier, and a higher birth rate all contributed to an explosion in Kingston's population. (link is JSTOR, so $)

But the new optimistic population of Kingston that had come there for work was in for a letdown. Bauxite production, and the strip mining work itself, was not actually labor intensive and produced proportionately fewer jobs. The growing clothing manufacturing sector was in its infancy and paid poorly. It did not help that the new migrants to the cities were largely unskilled laborers. The now-infamous Trenchtown and the government yards (aka housing projects) swelled by the mid-1960s. Finding limited options available for them in Kingston, this generation of Jamaicans sought opportunities abroad in England and then the United States.

Joining an ex-pat community of Jamaicans in London that had been growing since 1948 when British colonials were granted the right to reside in England, these new immigrants like others before them brought the culture they had known. [For a really good history of Jamaican immigration to England, replete with lots of first-person accounts, check this site out]. Ska music, popular since the late 1950s in Jamaica was imported to the immigrant community in London's Brixton neighborhood and soon caught on among the Brits, who at first called ska music "blue beat." By 1962, a poppy ska song, My Boy Lollilop by Millie Small was a Top Ten hit in the UK. The song's popularity was not just a natural outgrowth of the Jamaican's population's influence on British culture, but can be attributed to the tremendous efforts of canny Island Records owner Chris Blackwell, a Londoner who had grown up in Jamaica and moved his business from the island in the West Indies to the colder island in the Atlantic in 1962. Blackwell later helped popularize reggae and can be given some credit for making Bob Marley overseas - so yeah, blame him for your college roommate's poster. Still, the cross-pollination of Jamaican and UK culture happened more organically as well.

Jamaican sounds and Rudeboy styles were picked up by some of the English Mods, already huge fans of American Soul, resulting in the amalgam skinhead ska and reggae culture known sometimes as Trojan Skinheads (not to be confused with the racists who later co-opted this white working class look). By 1969, bands like Symarip, made up of West Indian immigrants, were writing the anthems for this sub-culture. The music was so much a part of English culture that the Beatles wrote a reggae-lite song that referenced Desmond Dekker. In the 1970s, Desmond Dekker even moved to the UK where he was arguably more popular than in Jamaica by then more enamored with roots reggae.



A few years after that, second wave ska took off, notably under the 2 Tone Label based in Coventry, a sound and a style that was in-turn closely associated with the nascent punk and post-punk scene. The whole revival scene was big enough that The Clash saw fit to tweak it in White Man in Hammersmith Palais.



I could go on, and elaborate on how the West Indian and in particular, Jamaican community in the UK helped popularize dub, which in turn influenced so many electronic musical genres that I won't bother listing them. But so much for England, the story of the influence of Jamaicans abroad was felt right here in the States equally. I will address that as well as what happened to Jamaica when the Bauxite ran out in my next post.

UPDATE: Second Post - "From Bauxite to Biggie" about the influence of Jamaican immigrants in American musical culture here.