Bongo Futures: The Reggae Revival and Its Genealogies

This essay explores the roots of the reggae revival in Jamaica. It considers what it means that the revival is not singularly located in music and sound but that revivalists imagine an artistic community and aesthetic that includes a number of other art forms as well. Through a close analysis of revivalists, it posits that while the revival suggests a reaching back to a defining cultural form—reggae, which is both local and national—it is as well globalized in its commitment to engaging sounds and forms. Insofar as the revival takes significant impetus from the 2010 Tivoli Gardens incursion, its global reach constitutes a pushback against neoliberalism. Ultimately the revival recreates reggae as a principle rather than a music or a music industry, and in so doing suggests a new genealogy for reggae that is both epistemological and ontological.