Rodney Thompson:

Reggae Ambassador to Appalachia

By David M. Calandra

Rodney Thompson, better known as "RT," is the lead singer and guitarist with
the State College-based musical group, the Earthtones.

A couple of months ago, the Earthtones, whose main forte is reggae, soca
(soul-calypso), and world beat music, ventured into the Northern Appalachian
village of Milroy, PA, to perform a concert for the Milroy bicentennial
celebration.

I went to Milroy to see how the World Beat would be received deep in "Froggy
Country". What I found prompted me to do this interview with "RT," a true
Reggae Ambassador to Appalachia.

DC: What is the origin of reggae music?

RT: Reggae music originated in Jamaica in the early to mid 1960s. It emerged
from the popular music forms of that time; ska, rock-steady and American
soul music. The early reggae musicians, like U-Roy, Jimmy Cliff, Lee
"Scratch" Perry, Joe Hibbs and others, began experimenting by slowing down
the ska tempo, drawing from rock-steady and soul music to come up with
reggae. Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and Bunny Wailer, were on the scene by the
mid-sixties as the Wailers, and they were largely responsible for bringing
reggae music to international attention.

DC: What is the connection with reggae music to the Rastafarian movement?

RT: The Rastafarian movement began in Jamaica probably in the early 1930's.
Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican prophet, predicted that a black King would be
crowned in Africa and that this King would be the Conquering Lion from the
Tribe of Judah. He would bring redemption to those who suffer at the hands
of the wicked or the establishment powers of Babylon. Babylon being the
biblical symbol of corruption and injustice. Of course this happened in the
1930's when Haile Selassie was crowned King of Ethiopia. Selassie is a
direct descendent of King Soloman and Queen Sheba. The Rastafarians
considered him as the human manifestation of God. They called him,
"Rastafari".

DC: So the Rastafarians wore dreadlocks back in the 1930s?

RT: Yes. They go way back. They were always looked down upon as the most
down-trodden part of Jamaican society. They believed in not cutting their
hair or shaving like it says in the Bible. They are going back to that holy
foundation. There are many places in the bible that say you shouldn't cut
your hair, going back to Moses and Jeremiah, so, in a sense, all these
biblical figures were "dread". There's a lot of misconceptions about
dreadlocks. Some people think you grow dreads by twisting your hair and
using mud, or not washing your hair, or by going for some special hair
treatment, but it's really quite a simple and natural thing. If your hair is
curly enough, all you do is wash it and leave it. That's all you do. The
hair acts like a morning glory around a fence. It just naturally twists
around itself.

DC: Would you say that reggae music is based upon the Rastafarian world
view?

RT: Reggae is deep-seated in the Rastafarian religion. At some point rasta
and reggae became one to address important social and political issuesÑlike
standing up for one's rights.

DC: Does reggae music typify the black struggle?

RT: I think maybe originally it addressed the black experience, and then it
evolved into the human experience. At first it expresses life as you know
it, then life as your people know it, and then, over time, you realize that
it's the human experience. It encompasses anybody who is struggling;
everyday working people who struggle against repression or negativity.

DC: When did reggae music first get your attention?

RT: 1973. My sister turned me on to it. She was up here at Penn State and I
was visiting. She played some Bob Marley which I liked, but at the time I
was more into soul music. So I went back to my Motown, the Isley Brothers,
the O'Jays, but by the following year the message of reggae really hit me.

DC: What are your musical roots? What types of music most influenced you as
a youth?

RT: When I was growing up near Pittsburgh, I listened a lot to the radio
station WAMO. I also listened to a lot of music that my mom and older
sisters and brother listened to. Blues, Bobbie Bland, Brooke Benton, Sam
Cooke. They were always putting on 45s and we'd all dance the night away. I
was the youngest of five, so they all thought I was greatÑdancing and
singing. I was into it, I was digging it. We'd love to get our mom dancing
with us, that was always a big thrill.

DC: When did you discover that you could sing?

RT: I don't know. I've been singing all along. Even when I was little I
thought I sounded okay to myself. I remember my sisters and brother and I
used to sing to see who sang the best. We'd imitate different singers. When
I was in college at Lock Haven, I used to sing and always felt I was hitting
my notes. Then when I was getting heavily into reggae music in the early
1980s and working as a social worker in Harrisburg and a friend of mine,
Tony Cooper, who was living here in State College, came to visit and he
heard me singing some reggae tunes and he thought I should come up to State
College and audition as the lead singer for a newly formed reggae band he
was in. By the time I decided to do that, the band broke up, but I decided
to move here anyway and met with Wally George, a percussionist, and together
we began auditioning musicians for a new reggae band. By the summer of 1984
we found Paul Young, our lead guitarist. Then Terry Griffin, the keyboard
player with the Atmorays, joined, and Bill Ward was on bass.

DC: The Earthtones have been together now for more than a decade.You've had
a number of personnel changes and your music has become very diverse. What's
next?

RT: We've had many, many, personnel changes over the years. Andrew Jackson
replaced Wally on percussion in 1986. Don Berinato, also a percussionist,
joined in 1987. Bill Vendetti, our bass player, joined in 1992. We've been
broadening our musical horizons over the years, writing originals and taking
up on some soca and world beat influences. We're hoping to write some new
songs and do a CD sometime next year.

DC: Who came up with the name "Earthtones?"

RT: Actually, I did. I was trying to find an appropriate name for what we
wanted to do and also to satisfy Wally, our percussionist who was very
picky. So I was looking through some albums one day, and on the back of a
Grover Washington album, "Mr. Magic," I think, there was an instrumental
called Earthtones. I thought, "that's it!"; you can think of musical tones
as colors, it's earthy, it would make a great name for a reggae band. Well,
everybody liked the name except Wally. He wanted it to be "Earthtone,"
instead of "Earthtones." But we finally got him to agree on "Earthtones."

DC: A couple of months ago, you guys played a concert for the Milroy, PA,
bicentennial. I went there disguised as an anthropologist for what I
considered to be a very unusual gig for a reggae band. It must have been
challenging to get several hundred indigenous farmers and townsfolk to
feeling "Irie."

RT: Yeah. Mr. Burke, who organized this, told the bicentennial committee
that they would have a musical treat. They would be hearing "music from the
islands", from the Caribbean. The people from Milroy are used to hearing
Country music, so they were told to expect something "totally different". I
felt it would be good to talk a little more between numbers, to explain some
things to the audience about our music, about dreadlocks, about feeling
"Irie", the Jamaican word for being happy and positive. I knew we would seem
foreign, so I wanted to give them a better understanding.

DC: It looked to me like things came off well. It wasn't your normal
"dancing crowd", although I did see a group of three- to five-year-olds
dancing by the stage.

RT: Yeah. (laughter). They were into it. The people gave us a pretty good
applause after each number. You see, reggae is an extremely positive music
focused on something everybody can relate to; nature, God, humanity. So it
leaves the listener with a positive feeling and glow. It's not the kind of
music that makes you want to bang your head against the wall. It brings
people together. It brings diverse groups of people together. We see this at
our shows. Over the years we've been drawing a more inter-national crowd.
People from all over, together as one, happy and having fun.

DC: Maybe that's where "World Famous" Earthtones comes from.

RT: Oh yeah, our music gets heard all over the world. So many students are
here from other countries and they buy our music and take it home when they
leave. They're listening to us down in Mexico, South America, Africa, Asia,
Europe, all over.

DC: Let's talk a little about Bob Marley. Any particular compositions of his
stand out as most impressive to you?

RT: All of it. For anybody interested in getting into reggae music, a good
place to start is Bob. His music was simple yet at the same time
sophisticated. He was a clairvoyant, you know?

DC: No, I didn't know that.

RT: He was really on to something. I remember having a conversation with Al
Anderson a few years back. Al was a guitarist who played with Bob years ago.
In fact he was with Bob when they got stopped at the road block. Remember
that song, "Rebel Music," about the three o'clock road block? Well, he told
me how Bob wrote that song a day or two after that incident. He was real
close to Bob those days and he told me how back then the music just poured
out of Bob. It was amazing, from 1973 to 1980 he wrote enough songs for ten
albums. He was larger than life, even to them.

DC: So what's the future of Reggae music? Over the years there has been a
lot of experimentation with dub and synthesizers giving it an almost cosmic
sound. Lately we are seeing a rap-reggae fusion. Where are things going?

RT: Roots. There's a return to roots because it's enduring. I'm not real
sure where the dub and electronic stuff evolved; probably just messing
around in the studio one day. As for rap, a lot of people don't realize that
there were musicians rappin in Jamaica back in the 60s and 70s. Singers like
U-Roy, LKJ, Mutabaruka, and Michael Smith were rappin way back then. This
preceded and influenced the American rap music scene today. Black Americans
need to take a closer listen to reggae. There's a message there, an
important message. But, as for the future of reggae, I see a return to the
roots. As for myself, I know I'm stuck on the roots. The roots run deep,
man.

DC: I hear you. Well, thank you, "RT," you are truly a Reggae Ambassador.