Paris (AFP)

They are the "elders", the elders of reggae.

Sometimes pre-retired, broke and less listened to in Kingston, veterans of Jamaican music still enjoy a good echo in France, thanks to the vitality of the reggae scene.

Take Big Youth, 72, with a white beard and golden teeth.

The former DJ and father of "toasting", a half-spoken, half-sung Jamaican style, left the Kingston sound systems a little while ago.

Yet here he sings for the French Brain Damage and the twelve tracks of an album released in May, Beyond the Blue (Jarring Effects), very well received by the critics.

The founder of Brain Damage, Martin Nathan, has been working with this flagship generation of the seventies for several years.

"There is no cry more powerful than this music," he said to AFP.

The Frenchman, pioneer of the dub scene (remixing of reggae, in a refined version and focused on bass), tells the special link that unites the Hexagon to Jamaican music, since Bob Marley.

"There are niches in Japan or elsewhere, but France, with California, is one of the strongholds of reggae in the world. There is a craze, an audience, funding and a national scene," said he does.

- The most French of Jamaicans -

He also describes a form of learning to work with these old reggae stars, taking care to avoid the tourist circuits of Kingston, "the hordes of European producers" who crisscross the island "by whole buses".

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"I needed a matchmaker, Samuel Clayton Junior, himself the son of a singer. He lived with us in Saint-Etienne and contributed a lot to these bridges between France and Jamaica", he testifies, visibly moved.

Because the story of Beyond the Blue is tragic: Samuel Clayton died of Covid, in Jamaica, during the recording of the album.

Martin Nathan, who also fell ill, "tried to get to the end" of the project, in tribute to his friend.

In France, a label has made Jamaican reggae veterans one of its hallmarks.

This is Chapter Two Records (Wagram), formerly Makasound, which produces albums by Clinton Fearon (Gladiators), Ken Boothe, or the Inna de Yard collective, a sort of "Buena Vista Social Club" of reggae which brings together great historical voice of the island.

Among them, Winston McAnuff, pocket reggaeman mounted on springs, with a warm voice and bleached dreadlocks, spent, outside the Covid period, a good part of his time in Paris.

"It is often said that he is the most French of Jamaicans. It is as if he had been adopted," smiles the French composer and accordionist Fixi (from the group Java), who has participated in many of his projects.

- "They told me about Gainsbourg" -

"These are singers who put their lives on stage and at stake. It's very important to burn their voices on records, there is a dimension of posterity, heritage. It's a bit like collecting folk music in the regions of France, "he continues.

The vitality of Jamaican music in France also owes a lot to festivals such as Reggae Sun Ska in Bordeaux or the former Parisian Garance Festival, now relocated to Bagnols-sur-Cèze in the Gard, but postponed to 2022 due to a pandemic.

Without measuring too much the impact on the current public, Martin Nathan and Fixi also cite the role of Serge Gainsbourg and his two reggae albums: Aux arms et caetera "in 1979, and" Bad news from the stars ", in 1981 (Philips).

"It is the artist who made it possible to advance at full speed in this melting pot of music while remaining in connection with the French cultural identity," says Fixi.

"They told me about Gainsbourg in Jamaica, about someone who knew where he was going, and who presumably had money," says Martin Nathan.

There are few women at the forefront of this reggae scene in Jamaica and France.

"Jamaican society is macho, like others. But there are strong personalities in reggae such as singer Jah9", 38, and present in the Inna de Yard album, underlines Fixi.

© 2021 AFP