Historical Memory , Symbolic Marketing and Racial Cultural Identification in Reggae Music

Reggae is unique in contemporary western popular music. This music took shape from the styles of Creole, Rastafari, Mento, R&B, Ska, Rocksteady, etc., with historical memories of Africa culture and colonial slave culture, and bred black cultural identification, as well. Reggae’s black identification developed trans-race, trans-class and trans-region mode under reggae musician’s keen innovation and black-white audience’s positive participation. Reggae marketing symbolic system constructed by black dressing, creole language, reggae element and rastafari made contribution in the process. Reggae thus presented significances of black cultural identification in consuming society, such as anti-racial and anti-class pressure, national identification, cultural integration, etc.. Reggae case could provide inspiration for building for national cultural identification with modernity spirit in the age of globalization, while, its negative effect should not be neglected.

Keywords:Cultural memory, Symbolic marketing, Consuming society, Racial identification, Reggae