Roots Reggae Library

The Roots Reggae Library is a website that reviews discographies of Reggae artists. It has detailed descriptions of discographies, albums and songs. There are currently 22 discographies on the website. The website describes a large range of albums within the Reggae genre, of which some are very hard to find elsewhere. Some artists their discographies are unique indexed and new compilations are created where necessary. Songs with lyrics other than English are interpretated in English. This is done in collaboration with people of various nationalities.

Roots Reggae Library

Official Roots Reggae Library logo
Available in	English
Created by	Anton Eise de Vries
Editors	Anton Eise de Vries
Slogan(s)	"Read, Listen, Collect"
Website	www.roots-reggae-library.com
Launched	May 2012
Key Contributions Marenda Douglas Johnson Mushingwa Abubacar Sanoko

History

The Roots Reggae Library was started in May 2012 as an initiative to index, store and analyse Reggae music, with a particular emphasis on the transition period of Rocksteady into Roots Reggae. Although the first edition published in May 2012 focused on Bob Marley, the author communicated his intent to dedicate special attention to other musicians besides “the King of Reggae”.^[1] The primary focus of the Roots Reggae Library is to create a single library of both Jamaican and non-Jamaican Reggae music.

The initial name of the website was This Is Crucial Reggae. It was changed to Roots Reggae Library in order to prevent confusion with the This Is Crucial Reggae series that features best of albums of Reggae artists.

Content

The slogan of the Roots Reggae Library is "read, listen, collect". The website provides descriptions and reviews of albums, as well as individual songs. The library is a growing collection of Reggae music, including descriptions of rare albums and artists. In recent times it has aimed to add hard to find African Reggae records.^[2]

The Roots Reggae Library describes a unique index of the music from The Wailers, drawn from the period prior to their signing to Island Records and the release of Catch A Fire. The music of The Wailers has been categorized into 17 albums, of which 6 are predominantly from the 1963 -1967 Ska period and 11 from the 1968 – 1972 Rocksteady period. In a similar fashion, the singles recorded by The Tartans are compiled as two albums.

Besides The Wailers, The Tartans and Bob Marley, other editions have featured Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailer, Ijahman Levi, Prince Lincoln, The Congos, The Gladiators, the Twinkle Brothers, Israel Vibration, The Abyssinians and Judy Mowatt, the only female artist. Three English bands with Jamaican descendants have featured, Steel Pulse, Black Roots and Talisman. Artists on the Roots Reggae Library without caribbean roots are Lucky Dube, Alpha Blondy, Max Adioa, Reggae Muntu, Joe Silo and Edson Gomes.^[3]

The library has compiled three albums of the Twinkle Brothers of songs not previously released on albums. Two albums of The Congos featuring various other artists were described. Another two Steel Pulse albums of which one is an album with collaborations was compiled. Single new albums of Ijahman Levi, Judy Mowatt, The Abyssinians, The Gladiators and Talisman were made. These albums vary in time frame, whereas some are collections of recently released singles, others go further back in time.

The discographies described on the website are generally the original albums released by the artists, with the addition of singles and outtakes. This has been done in an attempt to create a full index of the discography of each artist and to describe everything an artist has ever released in studio.

YouTube

The YouTube Channel of This Is Crucial Reggae was initiated in October 2012. Although far from representing the current YouTube channel of the Roots Reggae Library, it provided a fundamental step to create the current concept. Initially all library's music was available on YouTube in order for people to listen to what had been reviewed on the Roots Reggae Library website. However, the author announced in December 2015 that albums will no longer be uploaded in order to fefrain from breaking copyright regulations. Instead the channel will host a single video per artist or group to account for their discography, highlighting extras and rarities.^[4]

References