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There's
No Reggae in Orkney
by Will Self
'There's
no reggae in Orkney,' the young proprietor of Sounds
in Kirkwall said, and looked up at me with mild disbelief
in the afternoon fustiness of his emporium. 'There's
not much call for it,' he extemporised. 'We've Gaelic
music of all stamps, and naturally the local traditional.
There's folk - eclectic and electric; and all manners
of pop and rock; there's a steady demand for classical
music ... but - '
'
- No reggae?'
'No
reggae, no blue beat, no rock steady, no ska, no dub,
no lovers' not roots - '
'
- No reggae.'
'Aye
- right enough; see, we'd a peedie little thing called
the Human Genome Project pass through here a while ago.
Now, it would appear that while the Orcadians are an
ancient people, we are not - as we might wish to believe
- one of the Lost Tribes of Israel; we are not as some
fools say - Rastafarians; and so, you see, we have no
reggae.'
No
deep bass thud or strummed chop of rhythm guitar as
I step out into the curiously bright gloom of a premature
dusk. The lights of the tea shops opposite are strung
up over displays of small iced mountains and ...many
rivers to cross ...across the way, from out of a wynd
comes Jimmy Cliff and he's etched for a moment against
the serrated stone corner of a house, his patchwork
cap, his leather jacket, his nickel-plated automatic
all caught for an instant, sharply defined as plastic
wrapped bags of lady struggle by together with many
others leaning against the wind, like grounded gulls.
Then Cliff turns and skanks back up the wynd, in the
direction of the Cathedral and still there's no reggae
in Orkney.
As
I wheel out of Kirkwall and hammer over the shoulder
of Wideford Hill, past the newspaper, past the golf
club I can hear no sounds at all save for the continuous
drum skins of rubber unrolling beneath me, smitten by
the endlessly lengthening sticks of tarmac. Dawning
wheels around the hills and the golden, mackerel sky
wheels around the outer islands, and the whole, tide
cosmology of Orkney wheels within this: a right, tight
little orrery; a lobster balanced on a salmon balanced
on a cow - and still there's no reggae in Orkney, no
music in this beautiful sphere.
And
as I pass through Finstown and pass by the wood at Binscarth,
I see ancient Rastas as old as Maeshowe - in amongst
the spindly trees, their dreadlocks like great lianas,
carpeting the compost floor.
And around them in the painfully clear, golden light
of an Orkney summer's dawn, there's an inshore catch
of that mackerel sky: balls and bombs of smoke which
issue from their dark mouths to wheel and disperse,
as I plunge on and over and down to the shores of Loch
Harray.
And
the wandering Jew stones wheel around the water, and
the car courses along the shore, whilst the oyster catchers
bend backwards to accommodate their legs. There's no
reggae in Orkney, simply this divine backbeat: the shoreline
lapping, the skylarks not flapping, the burial mound
static and the car tyres slapping the taut way south.
To
where, beyond the final ragged line of Stenness the
road mounts once more to breast Quholm; and there another
breaker of darkling green swells up to encompass the
flashing sea of Scapa, a great rushing tsunami of cacophonous
silence, which sits solid, immutable save for coloured
copings: white and silver and blue and tawny.
And
in the thickening light of day I can see the Ola drawing
into dock and I can see the cars and vans and bikes
and people massing into lines, each to be engorged,
each to be reborn in a lesser smaller place. I know
you're on the ship, my love, and that you will come
to me in room No 3 of the Stromness Hotel, so I do,
and such sharp love smites me, lances through me that
in that moment at last hear the music from across the
water.
There's
no reggae on Orkney - not the mainland that is, but
there's plenty on Hoy. Oh yes, when push comes to shove
- there's plenty on Hoy. There's a lilting then a braying
saxophone which blazons forth from the Cuilags sending
notes like balls of lightning down in to Rackwick Bay;
where, in amidst the giant lumber of rocks sits an outcropping
of congas, laying down a beat as heavy as the old red
sandstone itself. And atop the Knap of Trowieglen the
rhythm guitarist lops the land into the lengths of time
as cleanly as a spade's blade bites into peat. And down
below in the dark confines of the Dwarfie Stane the
eternal thrumming comes forth; the great bass susurration
which is the steady pulse of Orkney reggae.
Yes,
there's reggae on Hoy, my love, there's spiritual music
in this protective rampart, this reclining nude - that
priapic spire. At Longhope Bob Marley walks the strand,
staring across to the sands on the far side of North
Bay. He can feel the reggae on Hoy, the reggae in Hoy,
It's no exile for Bob, my love, no exile at all.
And
I'll see you walk across from the jetty my love and
mount the steps to the hotel, And it will always be
the fifties here my love and we'll always never have
been born. And in the bar the divers drink Dark Island
my love and talk of the metal below, but we can hear
the reggae coming from Hoy my love, growing louder over
the sound of the storm.
©
Will Self
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