Page 90 - Reggae Festival Guide Magazine 2019

official push than the music industry’s effort
Operation Jump Up: Jamaica's
Campaign for a National Sound
By Heather Augustyn
(Half Pint Press, 2018)
Heather Augustyn takes a unique approach to
the first wave of Jamaican music to hit the U.S.
in this fascinating history that peels back layers
of myth and delves into a concentrated effort
by the Jamaican government to introduce its
music to America in 1964. That music was ska,
and it did make inroads into America at the time
through original recordings from Millie Small,
Prince Buster and Byron Lee, as well as cover
tunes by U.S.-based musicians eager to jump on
the latest international dance craze. Drawing
on Jamaican government documents and
press reports, Augustyn fleshes out the story of ska releases in the "Reggae Update" column
the first attempt to bring Jamaican music and for Beat Magazine – I find this book extremely
culture to the U.S., a very different and more informative and revealing.
90 Reggae Festival guide 2019
a decade later, which succeeded in bringing
reggae to the states.
For the most part, this is not a history of ska, born
in the ghetto of Kingston, a subject the author
has treated in two previous works. Instead, it
is a story of the promotion and marketing of
the music, first in “uptown” Jamaica and then
in the United States, as a new style of music
and as one of the “dance crazes” that swept the
early ‘60s. As a result, the book deals more with
the likes of anthropologist-turned-politician
Edward Seaga, dancer-turned-manager Ronnie
Nasralla and musician-turned-cultural icon
Byron Lee and his band – than the musicians,
artists and producers who created the music
in the first place. Nonetheless, it’s a fascinating
window into the earliest penetration of
Jamaican music into upper-class Jamaican
society, New York and eventually America at
large. Some of the best parts come from the
author’s own interviews, including a lengthy
and engaging discussion with ska’s greatest
crossover artist, Millie Small.
This question of authenticity lies at the crux of
the book, from the opening passage dealing
with the often-argued subject of which artists
and musicians “ought” to have represented
Jamaica in New York in 1964, to the author’s
conclusions about America’s appropriation
of ska from the earliest days to the present.
As someone who bought Millie Small’s single
“My Boy Lollipop,” Annette Funicello’s cover of
Byron Lee’s “Jamaican Ska” and American ska
records put out in 1964 by Ray Romano, Lloyd
Thaxton, “Mango” Jones, and Bobby Jay and The
Hawks, as well as Byron Lee’s compilations and
other earlier Jamaican ska records – and who
also reviewed countless second and third wave