Nashville, New Orleans, Kingston

I've been meaning to pass on this tidbit to music-loving friends for a while: It's a 1997 radio interview with Keith Richards (with Liza Richardson on KCRW), promoting his Rastafarian drum and chant project "Wingless Angels".

Commenting on reggae music's multiple roots, Keith notes that, back in the formative days, in Jamaica they could just recieve the high-power radio transmissions from two U.S. cities: Nashville and New Orleans. Keith posits that reggae fused those influences: the back-beat of New Orleans funk becoming the reggae off-beat rhythm (I'm sure I'm muddling the rhythmic terms here), and the melodic approach of country-western informing the singing.

Not being as knowledgable about things reggae as some, I'll leave it as a fascinating fable (maybe mostly true) of cross-cultural pollination.