Buffalo Soldier Lyrics

KCSBeat, Meet Yardbeat

Think of freeform, community, or college radio, and sooner or later you’ll think of reggae. I don’t quite know why it’s become such a pillar of KCSB’s kind of station, but it has. In certain years, KCSB’s schedule has featured up to four or five reggae programs, each with its own sensibility, but at the moment, only a few such shows hold up KCSB’s reggae tent. Still, they’re going strong. But could the term “reggae” be too broad a brush to describe any one of them in particular?

When he joined the station two years ago, Villet had no doubt he’d create a program involving reggae. “I enjoy lots of music,” he said, “but this is the main thing I listen to. It’s funny; I always had an affinity for the reggae beat, even in my old-school punk phase. I listened to ska — SST Records, Bad Brains, Minutemen — but tended toward reggae over time and got absolutely hooked.”

A lot of the “reggae” comes from places other than Jamaica, Villet explained. “That’s global reggae. It’s not bad, but it’s separate from Jamaican music. It’s not purely about the sound, but also the cultural sensibility. In Jamaica, you strike a balance between sweetness and heaviness. You hear falsetto voices in a soul style, but they’re singing about enslavement. Then there’s a hard-hitting bass line; there’s danceability. Some reggae outside Jamaica gets too heavy, almost narcotic. In Jamaica, music has always been, first and foremost, dance music — music meant for consumption in dance halls.”