POPULAR CULTURE || NOTES ON REGGAE MUSIC, DIASPORA AESTHETICS, AND CHINESE JAMAICAN TRANSMIGRANCY:...

NOTES ON REGGAE MUSIC, DIASPORA AESTHETICS, AND CHINESE JAMAICANTRANSMIGRANCY: THE CASE OF VP RECORDSAuthor(s): Timothy ChinSource: Social and Economic Studies, Vol. 55, No. 1/2, POPULAR CULTURE (March and June2006), pp. 92-114Published by: Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies, University of the WestIndiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27866459 .

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Pat Chin

Randy Chin

Selector A



Social and Economic Studies 55:1 & 2 (2006): 93-114 ISSN: 0037-7651

NOTES ON REGGAE MUSIC, DIASPORA

AESTHETICS, AND CHINESE JAMAICAN TRAN SM IG RAN CY:

THE CASE OF VP RECORDS

Timothy Chin

ABSTRACT

The essay investigates the effects of diasporic movement on the aesthetics,

politics, and economics of reggae. Focusing on the involvement of Chinese

Jamaicans in the development of reggae, the essay advances the argument that the social and historical factors that condition Chinese Jamaican

migration also determine the nature of their impact on reggae. The

significant numbers of Chinese Jamaicans who have served as producers, sound system owners, band managers, and distributors reflect the roles

that Chinese Jamaicans play as merchants and middlemen in Jamaican

society as well the high degree of transnational mobility and effective familial networks they have developed. A series of videotaped interviews

with the Chinese Jamaican family that started and currently runs VP

Records, a major international distributor of reggae music, serves as the

case study from which the main conclusions of the essay are extrapolated.

With the release in 2002 of Sean Paul's "Dutty Rock," VP Records

entered another phase in its emergence as a player in the inter

national music industry. VP's strategic partnership with Atlantic

Records enabled the label ? which is well recognized in the reggae and dancehall "niche" markets but lacks the scope of an industry

giant like Atlantic ? to extend its reach into the "mainstream" pop music markets. Released jointly by VP and Atlantic, "Dutty Rock"

went platinum in March 2003 and the album as well as individual

tracks topped the Billboard charts (not only in the "reggae" cate

gory, but also in Rap/Hip Hop and Top 40 categories) for two years

running. Sean Paul was nominated for two American Music Awards

in 2003 and "Dutty Rock" won a Grammy for Best Reggae Album in

2004. VP also celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2004 and held a high

profile concert at Radio City Music Hall in New York City to mark

the occasion. The story of VP Records is a remarkable one, not only



94 SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC STUDIES

in terms of the company's gradual rise from its proverbial "mom

and pop" origins, but also because of the way it reflects the relent

lessly diasporic nature of Caribbean culture generally and Chinese

Jamaican transmigrancy in particular. In the summer of 2003,1 videotaped a series of interviews with

Pat Chin, one of the original co-founders of VP Records, and her

sons, Chris and Randy, who currently run the business.1 The

interviews were conducted at VP headquarters in Queens, New

York, where coordination for the company's worldwide distribution

operation as well as its marketing and label/artist development functions is carried out. The conversations I had with the Chin

family, other members of the VP staff, and various VP customers

and clients provide a useful context for theorizing several inter

related issues: the nature of Chinese Jamaican transmigrancy

(especially in its late 20th and early 21st century phases), the

historical involvement of Chinese Jamaicans in the development of

reggae music, and the impact of various diasporic movements on

the aesthetics, politics, and economics of reggae. In this essay I will

use selected excerpts from the videotaped interviews as a basis

from which to tease out some of the implications of these issues.2

Chinese Jamaicans and the Roots/Routes of Reggae

TO. Can you tell me how you started in the business? PC: It started about forty-five years ago. My husband, Vincent, worked for a jukebox company and we bought the old records and started to sell them. We didn't know at that time that there would be such a demand for the old records, but we did very well.

TC: Where was your first store? PC: It was on East Street in Kingston. We stayed there about two years and then we moved to 17 North Parade, which then

1 Vincent Chin, VP's other co-founder and Pat Chin's husband, died in February 2003 before I began the interviews.

2 The excerpts discussed in this essay represent a tiny fraction of the video footage I taped over a period of two to three weeks. Although much of this material is

quite interesting from a variety of standpoints, it is unfortunately not feasible to

discuss here the videotape footage in its entirety. The present discussion is very much intended as a preliminary and hopefully suggestive (rather than

comprehensive) analysis of the material and the issues and themes raised by it.

The fuller treatment of the video footage will have to await a more extensive

written and/or audio-visual project.



Notes on Reggae Music 95

developed into a music store and a studio. We did so well

selling records, my husband started to make his own records. We had a studio upstairs which we called Studio 17. That's where we started to make our own records.

TC: What do you mean by "making your own records"? PC: We got the band and the singers. We recorded the music and did the mastering. Then we pressed the records and sold them in the store. TC: Can you name some of the artists that you recorded? PC: We did Dennis Brown, Lord Creator, Gregory Isaacs, and Millie Small. My husband mainly did the softer type of music ? the roots music.

TC: Did you ever think that you would be in the record business when you were younger? PC: No, I never thought that. I was just doing it because it was a good opportunity and we did so well. TC: Were there many Chinese Jamaicans in the record business? PC: There were a few: like Byron Lee, Leslie Kong, Top Deck, Channel One. They were all Chinese Jamaicans who took the music as a career. We stayed there for fifteen to twenty years selling and distributing and making records and then my husband and I decided to move to America.

(Excerpt from an interview with Pat Chin)

On one level, the story that Pat Chin tells about the origins of VP

Records rehearses a familiar script ? the classic immigrant success

story. The husband and wife team (the "V" and "P" in VP Records) started the business from exceedingly humble beginnings in

Kingston. In the 1950s, Vincent worked for a jukebox company and

it was his job to change the records in the jukeboxes that were

located in bars and clubs all over the island. The owner of the

jukebox company had no use for the old records that had been

replaced with newer ones so Vincent bought these used records for next to nothing and started selling them to the public. The venture

was so successful that in 1958 Pat and Vincent were able to open a

retail record store called Randy's Records in Kingston. They also

started a recording studio that enabled them to make and sell their own records.

On another level, the story of VP's early beginnings in

Kingston provides an opportunity to re-examine the development of reggae music, particularly in terms of the involvement of Chinese



9? SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC STUDIES

Jamaicans and the impact of transnational migration. While

scholarly studies that focus on the more recent phases of reggae's

development ? on contemporary dancehall culture and the glo

balization of reggae, for example ? often employ theoretical pers

pectives that foreground the effects of migration and diasporic movement, the implications of such perspectives have not been

explored as extensively or systematically in the scholarship on the

earlier phases where the issue of "roots" and the question of

authenticity still seem to predominate.3 Questions of migration and

diaspora are relevant, not only for post-1980 developments within

reggae, but for the earlier stages in the music's history as well.

Scholars such as Stuart Hall, Juan Flores, and George Lipsitz have

insisted on the crucial importance of diaspora and migration when

considering questions of Caribbean identity and culture. The

necessity to "think diaspora," arises not only from the imperatives of contemporary globalization and its deterritorializing effects

which serve to "loosen the tie between culture and 'place'," but also

because migration has been "a constant motif of the Caribbean

story" (Hall 1999: 10,1). The displacement of Africans and Europeans as a result of

colonialism and slavery, the migration of Jamaican workers during the 19th and 20th centuries to Britain, the US, Panama and other parts of Latin America, and the continuous movement of people back and

forth among the various islands of the Caribbean itself all con

tributed to the cultural influences that gave rise to and shaped

reggae. Consequently, reggae ? like other Caribbean cultural forms

? is "essentially driven by a diasporic aesthetic" (Hall 1999: 8), which means that it is characterized by syncretism and hybridity. This realization clearly has important implications for how we

understand the origins and early development of reggae. For example, one of the debates over the "roots" of reggae has

to do with the relative influence on ska (the early precursor of

3 See Chude-Sokei for an example of an approach that foregrounds diaspora.

Employing a paradigm that emphasizes networks rather then centers (i.e. Africa

or Jamaica as privileged sites of authenticity), Chude-Sokei claims that

"ragamuffin and dancehall narratives map out a sprawling Third World urban

geography which stretches from the gun-loud poverty of Kingston to the bass

heavy housing estates of South London and over to that place that Raymond Williams located as the center of modernist exile ? New York City. This is a

discourse that is obsessively local but well aware of the global network of Afro

Caribbean migration and the discontinuous histories of black diaspora" (Chude Sokei 1997: 219).




reggae) of American R&B and jazz, on one hand, and Mento and

other indigenous Jamaican musical forms, on the other. Although there are some reggae scholars who, as Kevin O'Brien Chang and

Wayne Chen point out, "insist that ska grew directly out of mento," the recognition of reggae's essential hybridity makes it possible to

see ska as arising from a complex combination of musical strands

that includes American R&B, blues, and jazz as well as Mento and

other Jamaican folk forms (Chang and Chen 1998: 24). Of course, Mento itself ? despite its use as an unqualified signifier of

"indigenous" Jamaican culture ? is also a hybrid form in terms of

its amalgamation of Trinidadian calypso, Cuban son, and the

mixture of European and African elements found in Jamaican folk

practices like Quadrille and Kumina.4 This recognition would also

help us to shift the focus from questions of "purity" and

"authenticity" to the more complex task of "trac[ing] the concrete

historical practices and relations of power that foster and maintain

transnational linkages and cultural transmission" (Stolzoff 2000:

16). The migration of small but nevertheless significant numbers of

Chinese to Jamaica (as well as other parts of the Caribbean and

Latin America) in the late 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries

constitutes another distinctive element in the island's diasporic

history.5 It should not be surprising, therefore, that the traces of this

4 See the chapter entitled "Roots Music: Kumina, Quadrille, Mento, Blues and

Jazz" in Chang and Chen and Norman Stolzoffs discussion of Mento (Stolzoff 2000: 23-35).

5 The historian, Walton Look Lai, has contributed the most sustained treatment of

the Chinese migration to the West Indies to date. His first book, Indentured Labor, Caribbean Sugar looks at both Chinese and Indian migrants to the British West

Indies in the period 1838 to 1918. His second book, The Chinese in the West Indies

focuses exclusively on the Chinese migration in the period 1806 to 1995. Look Lai

notes in the latter study that the question of what one might call cultural identity and Chinese West Indians ? i.e. "race relations issues," "levels of ... interracial

socialization," and "degrees and interpretations of Caribbean civic commitment" ? is a "complex and complicated subject" and one that his book hardly exhausts.

Indeed, Look Lai acknowledges that "[f]urther studies on the assimilation and

West Indianisation process need to approach this question from a broad

theoretical framework, one which recognizes internal community complexity, and sees the Chinese as autonomous and self-transforming subjects rather than

simply a new social dimension to be fitted en masse into preexisting categories of

national self-definition." Furthermore, Look Lai states: "The post-1960s

community evolution is an aspect of the Chinese experience which clearly needs

further study, a different kind of study to the kind we have attempted here"




migration and its subsequent phases in the second half of the 20th

century are also legible (provided we know how to read them) in

the story of reggae's development. Contrary to the perception (evidenced in much of the scholarly literature) of the Chinese as

"foreigners" or "clannish" and inassimilable elements within the

larger population, these migrants and, even more so, their descen

dants underwent (to varying degrees, to be sure) a "creolization"

process that made them culturally into Jamaicans. As such, the

impact of the Chinese Jamaican presence can be felt throughout the

culture, including what is perhaps its most recognizable artistic

achievement ? reggae music.

The impact on reggae of the Chinese migration to Jamaica is

reflected, not so much in the aesthetic features of the music, but

especially in the economics of its production and circulation. Given

their predominant role as merchants and "trader middlemen"

within Jamaican society, Chinese Jamaicans were uniquely

positioned to contribute to the economic conditions and structures

that facilitated reggae's emergence and development.6 The

significant numbers of Chinese Jamaicans (relative to their

percentage within the general population) who served as record

producers, sound system owners, band managers and backers, wholesale and retail distributors, recording studio owners, club and

bar owners, and so on, attest to the important role they played in

creating the economic and entrepreneurial infrastructure that

enabled the synergies that produced reggae and its island-wide and

eventually world-wide dissemination.

(Look Lai 1998: 19-20). The present discussion is intended, not so much as an

answer to Look Lai's call, but as a gesture in the direction to which he points, with

the hope that other scholars will come forward with new work that begins to fill

in the gaps that he identifies.

6 Look Lai divides the Chinese migration to Jamaica into two phases: an earlier

group of migrants who came as indentured labourers between 1852 and 1884, and a later group who came as free migrants between 1890 and 1950. According to Look Lai, the second group of migrants forms "the basis of the modern Chinese

communities of the West Indies" (Look Lai 1998: 234). Of the earlier group, Look

Lai states that "[b]y the 1880s and 1890s [they] had moved out of agricultural life

completely, and taken up their new roles as economic trader middlemen within

the class/colour hierarchy of West Indian plantation society" (Look Lai 1998:

210). Of the group that came as free migrants, Look Lai states that "they

gravitated right into the petty trading community, bypassing the earlier

agricultural option of their predecessors" (Look Lai 1998: 234).




Most studies that treat reggae's early development emphasize the importance of the sound system to reggae/ska's emergence in

the late 1950s/early 1960s. The sound systems ?

Chang and Chen

describe them as "essentially large, mobile discotheques playing at

dances, house parties, fairs and nightclubs" (Chang and Chen 1998:

19) ?

provided the training ground for musicians and DJs and they were integral to the birth of the Jamaican recording business which, in turn, set the stage for the emergence of ska, rocksteady, and

reggae. In their discussion of the growing importance of the sound

systems and the emergence of key figures such as Duke Reid and

Clement "Coxsone" Dodd, these studies often mention another

important figure ? "Tom the Great Sebastian." These studies do

not always point out, however, that "Tom the Great Sebastian" was

the stage name, if you will, of Thomas Wong, a Chinese Jamaican hardware merchant. Nor do they connect the role that Wong played in the growth of the sound systems to the wider role that Chinese

Jamaicans played in the early production and circulation of reggae.7 One notable exception is Norman Stolzoff's study, which points out

that "many of the early soundmen were Jamaicans of Chinese

descent." Stolzoff also notes that "Wong's was widely regarded as

the leading sound system of the day" and that "[h]e is now

universally considered the sound system pioneer because he was

the first soundman to popularize the sound system dance and to

establish a large following on the dancehall circuit" (Stolzoff 2000:

43-44). But it was not just as sound system operators that Chinese

Jamaicans participated in reggae's early development. Chinese

Jamaicans like Leslie Kong also served as record producers. Others

like Byron Lee were involved in the creative process as bandleaders

and musicians. Still others like Pat and Vincent Chin owned and/or

operated record stores, recording studios, and distribution

7 Lloyd Bradley notes in his study that "Tom the Great Sebastian's was the most

important sound system in the first half of the 1950s" (Bradley 2000: 9), but he does not mention either his real name or the fact that he was Chinese Jamaican.

Chang and Chen credit Tom the Great Sebastian with creating "the first real

dancehall sound system." According to Chang and Chen, after his initial success, "Tom was turned off by the violent rivalry among systems downtown and

opened the Silver Slipper Club at Cross Roads." The authors go on to relate the

story of how Tom "committed suicide by gassing himself in his car, supposedly over financial troubles" (Chang and Chen 1998: 19).




companies.8 The scope and nature of the Chinese Jamaican involvement in reggae's early development reflects both the extent to which Chinese Jamaicans had become an integral part of

contemporary Jamaican society and the specific race and class

positions they occupied within that society. Stolzoff notes, for

example, that "most of the early sound system owners were men

who straddled the lower-class/middle-class social divide" (Stolzoff 2000: 43). As shopkeepers, traders, and small businessmen, Chinese

Jamaicans often had access to capital, technological and other resources that many working-class and poor black Jamaicans did not. At the same time, Chinese Jamaicans' proximity to the poor and

working class population ? the Chinese grocery shop was and still

is a ubiquitous fixture in both urban and rural areas ? also gave them ready access to and the potential to participate in popular cultural forms.

It is often suggested in accounts of reggae's history that the

role played by Chinese Jamaicans in the music was simply one of

exploitation.9 Obviously, the social relations (including racial and

8 Perry Henzell's 1972 film The Harder They Come, which is set in the early days of

the reggae industry, implicitly acknowledges this historical role that Chinese

Jamaicans played in the production of the music. In the scene where Ivan enters

the recording studio to cut his record ? the owner of the studio is a light-skinned Jamaican possibly of Syrian or Lebanese ancestry

? we see a Chinese Jamaican man, the sound engineer apparently, at the controls of the recording equipment.

9 Lloyd Bradley recounts the conflicts between Leslie Kong and some of the other

early producers. According to Bradley, Kong was "the first Chinese-Jamaican to come into the business at the creative end, and who made his name as the most

immediately effective 'outsider7 producer of the ska era." Bradley reports that some of these producers "deeply resented the idea of a Chinese-Jamaican moving into what had been an exclusively and importantly, black neighborhood." This conflict came to a head when Prince Buster used his "Voice of the People" sound

system to blast his song, "Black Head Chinee Man," which took Derrick Morgan to task for working with Kong instead of with Buster.

According to Bradley, "

[t]he song kicked off a war of words and music, in which

Morgan and Kong responded with a tune attacking Buster, who in turn felt

obliged to answer." Bradley states that Prince Buster's motives "were as political as they were personal and professional." Bradley suggests that Buster "saw the

business side of this unique art form as a means to generate wealth from outside the ghetto and keep the black shilling in community circulation. Now here was a Chinese man, far less musically gifted than the core of ska producers, looking to clean up. Never less than aware of just how deeply the black Caribbean psyche had been scarred by decades of colonialism on top of centuries of slavery, Buster was determined to speak out against the alarming prospect of black artists

becoming subordinate to producers/label bosses of other races" (Bradley 2000:

104-6). In his discussion of Bryon Lee, Bradley reports that "an astonishing




class dynamics) that define the position of Chinese Jamaicans within the wider society are also reflected in their involvement with

reggae. Chinese Jamaican sound system operators, producers, record store and studio owners, distributors, managers, and so on, no doubt profited from the music, as did their non-Chinese

Jamaican counterparts. And the ranks of Chinese Jamaican

entrepreneurs in the early music industry most likely included

some who used unscrupulous or exploitative business practices as

well as some who treated the singers and musicians fairly (or, at

least, as fairly as others involved in the business at the time).10 In addition, given the highly racialized nature of con

temporary Jamaican society and the racial discourses that are

circulated (both officially and informally) within the culture, it is

certainly not surprising that tensions between Chinese Jamaicans and non-Chinese Jamaicans in the music business were often

expressed in racial terms, even when such terms clearly served as

proxy for class conflicts. However, accounts that characterize the

Chinese Jamaican role in reggae as one primarily defined by relations of exploitation

? especially insofar as they imply that the

Chinese Jamaican role in reggae constituted exploitation (or was

somehow more exploitative) because the Chinese [sic] were

number of musicians seem to view [him] with suspicion/' Bradley suggests that this suspicion "would seem to have much to do with Lee becoming Jamaican

music's first indigenous millionaire" (Bradley 2000:109).

Another story about Kong that is often circulated concerns Bob Marley's

allegation that Kong "swindled" him out of the money Kong owed him for songs he had recorded. According to the story Marley prophesized that Kong would not live to enjoy the profits he would reap from Marley's music. One version of

the story that appears on the website, www.bobmarley.com, offers the following account and characterization of Kong: "Several weeks after 'The Best of the

Wailers' was pressed, packaged, and burning up the marketplace, Kong's accoun

tant popped into Beverley's record shop to inform Leslie, that based on the latest

bookkeeping figures, the conniving Chinese-Jamaican was now officially a

millionaire. Later that same day, Kong went home early complaining that he

didn't feel well. Within hours he was dead at thirty-eight of a sudden heart attack.

The coroner was puzzled by the case; Kong had no history of heart trouble. The

young producer's untimely demise made no medical sense."

10 Bradley reports that Jimmy Cliff acknowledged the tension between Leslie Kong and some Black Jamaican producers but Cliff said that he continued to work with

Kong because "[Kong] had a reputation for being straight and paying the going rate." Cliff goes on to say that he "had experience with two other producers prior to Leslie Kong

? Nubians ? and one of them didn't pay [him], so Leslie made a

big difference in that respect. Outside of his race, he was a good person" (Bradley 2000: 106-107).




"outsiders" ? are uncritically reinserting such racial discourses

and reifying the construction of Chinese Jamaicans as inassimilable

"foreigners." A more rigorously critical account of reggae's early

history would situate that history (and the part played by various

actors within it) in terms of the complex social relations that defined

Jamaican society at the time. In addition, such an account would attend to racial and class structures, not so much in order to

adjudicate questions of authenticity or purity, but in terms of their effects and consequences on the production and circulation of the

music.

In this sense, the part played by Chinese Jamaicans in the

development of reggae was determined by their position ? vis-?

vis class and race, as well as other social structures ? within

Jamaican society. The involvement of Chinese Jamaicans especially in the production and entrepreneurial aspects of reggae's develop

ment reflects their prominence in the merchant and small trader

niches of the island's economy as well as their ability to use family and kinship networks to extend their control over these niches

rather than any inherent racial or even cultural propensity for

business. The historical, social, and cultural dimensions of this

Chinese Jamaican experience deserve to be studied much more fully than it has been to date.11 One area of inquiry, for instance, might involve investigating the experience of Chinese Jamaican women in

relation to changing gender roles and expectations. In this regard, the central role that Pat Chin played (and continues to play) in

building VP Records might serve as an instructive case study in

terms of the ways in which some Chinese Jamaican women were

able to assume roles and operate in social arenas outside of the ones

prescribed by traditional Chinese or Caribbean societies.

In the early as well as later phases of reggae's development, the interstitial location and relative mobility of Chinese Jamaicans determined the nature and extent of their involvement in the music.

Take, for example, the case of Byron Lee. The discussions about the

part that Lee played in the development of ska and reggae have

11 Aside from the previously mentioned two books by Walton Look Lai, there are

maybe a handful of articles and essays that treat the Chinese Jamaican

experience. In terms of literary works, one can point to the poems of Easton Lee

as well as the essays and autobiographical reflections of Victor Chang. From a

somewhat different angle, one might also look at the provocative novel, The

Pagoda, by the young Jamaican diasporic writer Patricia Powell.




often turned, either implicitly or explicitly, on the question of

authenticity. In such discussions, Lee is often characterized as

playing a form of ska/reggae that was "not representative" of the music that originated in the ghettoes of Kingston and popularizing a cleaned up version of ska/reggae that was "more palatable" to

middle class Jamaican and international audiences.12 It might be

useful to shift the question somewhat (i.e. away from issues of

authenticity) in order to examine the specific processes and

mechanisms through which reggae circulated between and across

various geographical, cultural, racial, class, and political boundaries. In this respect, Chinese Jamaican entrepreneurs,

producers, and bandleaders like Byron Lee played an important

part in reggae's development by facilitating the movement of the

music across such boundaries. This is exemplified in the way that

Lee "opened up new arenas to the music" (Bradley 2000: 109) by

taking it to uptown clubs and tourist resorts and participated in the

"first attempt to market Jamaican music internationally" (Chang and Chen 1998: 36) by playing ska at the 1964 World's Fair in New York.

This is not to say that the movement of the music across

various social and geographical borders does not have aesthetic or

political consequences; clearly it does. But I would argue that it

might be more productive to think through such consequences in

terms of the different meanings reggae can convey and the different

purposes it can serve as it travels rather than in terms of questions about authenticity or origins. In addition, reggae's movement

between and across various geographical, social, racial, and cultural

borders underscores its essential hybridity. The role that Chinese

Jamaicans played in the development of reggae also foregrounds the ways in which that hybridity reflects the diasporic nature of

Jamaican culture itself. In other words, the movement and

migrations that have been definitive of Jamaica's history profoundly affect reggae's aesthetic features and the nature of its production and circulation.

12 See Chang and Chen for an account of the controversy over the decision of

Edward Seaga (Jamaica's Minister of Culture at the time) to send Byron Lee and The Dragonaires rather than the Skatalites to the 1964 Worlds Fair in an attempt to market Jamaican music to an international audience (Chang and Chen 1998:

36-37). See Bradley also for a discussion of Lee's role in giving ska a "sheen of

respectability" and the "suspicion" with which some Jamaican musicians view

him (Bradley 2000:108-109).




Moving the Music

TO What was behind the decision you and Vincent made to come to the US? PC: Well, I guess most of it was politics. The change in the

politics of the country. With communists and Cuba. TC: Were there a lot of Jamaicans leaving at the time?

Yes, there was a lot of movement at that time. A lot of my friends and a lot of business people, a lot of professionals did

move at that time.

TC: When was this? PC: In the seventies ? around 1975/1976. But when we first came we still went back and forth because Jamaica was the

place where we got our product. My husband moved two years before I did and I kept the store in Jamaica going. The business we started in the US was distribution and then we started to do

retailing. The retail store did so well that the original location

got too small so ten years ago we moved to our current location

at 170-21 Jamaica Avenue in Queens, New York.

TC: So what did the distribution side of the business entail? PC: We would buy the records in bulk that we think would sell and then we would get them pressed, manufactured here in the states because it was much cheaper, and then we would distribute them all over. TC: Where did you get the records? PC: Everything came from Jamaica. It was one hundred

percent products from Jamaica. Then eventually, after a time, it was the other way around. We didn't import anymore; they were importing from us because we were more up to date than

they were. Because everybody wanted the American dollar,

they would give us the record first before they release it there. We would press the record here and then we would export it. TC: Who was giving you the records? PC: All the producers and the artists. We would go down sometimes and do a recording session and then bring the

recording up and press the records and distribute them. TC: Were you going back to Jamaica pretty often? PC: Yes, we did go back pretty often the first ten to fifteen

years. But after a time we didn't go back that often. Chris [Pat's son] would get all of his communications through the phone and he had feelers in Jamaica to know what's going on in the

dances, what's good and what's not so good, who is hot and when the beat is changing.

(Excerpt from an interview with Pat Chin)




The migration of the Chin family to the US in the 1970s was part of a broader Chinese and middle class Jamaican exodus in the wake of

the PNP victory in 1972. Pat Chin's comment about "politics" and

"communists and Cuba" alludes to the perception among many middle and upper-middle class Jamaicans that the country was

headed for communism. As a result of this perception there was a

massive movement of people and capital out of Jamaica during this

period.13 The more recent phases of reggae's development ?

particularly its increasingly global reach in the latter decades of the

twentieth century ? needs to be understood and more carefully

contextualized in relation to the diasporic movements that occurred

in the 1970s and after, just as the music's early emergence and

development needs to be understood in relation to migration in the

50s and 60s as well as the hybrid structures that are the historical

legacy of colonialism and indenture. These diasporic movements ?

not just from Jamaica to the US and other metropolitan centers but

also the other way around as migrants return home and/or continue

to travel back and forth ? are essential for understanding the

emergence of contemporary forms like dancehall, the growing

impact of reggae across the globe, and the disjunctions and

discrepancies between local and global meanings that result from

the globalization of reggae. The case of the Chin family and VP Records, the company

Vincent and Pat started in the late 1970s, provides an opportunity to

think through this relation between reggae and migration, to

examine the processes that define the contemporary production and circulation of the music, and to further exemplify the role that

Chinese Jamaicans played in the development of reggae. As with

the early soundmen, producers, and bandleaders like Thomas (the Great Sebastian) Wong, Leslie Kong, and Byron Lee, the role that

the Chins played in worldwide circulation of reggae has to do with

building the entrepreneurial structures and mechanisms that enable

the music to move between and across various localities. And as

13 According to Brian Meeks, "[a] growing panic that Jamaica was on the road to

communism had consolidated among the already skittish Jamaican upper middle

and upper classes/' in the wake of a second PNP victory in 1976. Meeks notes

that "[sjome fourteen thousand trained people had migrated to the United States

and Canada between 1972 and 1974 alone ? the earliest phase of the flight. By the end of 1976, it was discovered that some US$300 million had, by various

means, left the country and the government was faced with a negative net foreign reserve situation for the first time in Jamaica's history" (Meeks 2000:123-4).




with the other Chinese Jamaicans who were involved in reggae's emergence and early development, the role that the Chins have

played in the contemporary (global) phase of reggae's development reflects their position

? vis-?-vis class, race, and their relative

mobility ? within Jamaican society.

In addition to the movement of people and capital out of Jamaica in the 1970s and 80s, reggae music was also experiencing an

unprecedented migration during this period. As the music

migrated into new (global) contexts, it invariably took on cultural

meanings and aesthetic inflections that were often different from the ones reggae embodied in (local) Jamaican contexts. At the same time that the PNP was harnessing the power of popular Jamaican

music in its "reggae and Rastafari-influenced campaign for the 1972 elections" (Meeks 2000:121), reggae was also crossing borders and

finding new international audiences and markets. Chen and Chang note that although Bob and Rita Marley played (along with many other reggae artists) on the PNP "Musical Bandwagon," the Marleys "left for England before the elections." Indeed, Chen and Chang suggest that "Catch A Fire," The Wailers' first album for Island

Records, inaugurated a new "international" era in reggae's development (Chang and Chen 1998: 48-49).14

The story of Pat and Vincent Chin and VP Records enables us to trace one of the paths that reggae took in its global travels. It also allow us to see how the movement of the music was often linked to and even depended on the diasporic networks that Jamaican

migrants were able to establish. Insofar as the story of the Chins and VP Records is inextricably tied to political changes in Jamaica and the flight of the middle-class in the 1970s, it also exemplifies the

impact that class structures and dynamics continue to exert on

reggae as well as the nature of the particular role that Chinese

Jamaicans have played in the development of the music. Moreover, the evolution of VP Records (now in its 26th year)

? especially in

terms of the transnational production models and entrepreneurial

14 Chang and Chen state that "Catch A Fire" was "

perhaps the first reggae album conceived as a seamless unit and not just a collection of singles arranged around hits. Here for the first time Jamaicans were making music with a foreign audience in mind." They also quote dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson, who later stated that, with "Catch A Fire," "a whole new style of Jamaican music [came] into being.

. . . what [he could] only describe as 'International Reggae'" (Chang and Chen 1998: 49).




structures that characterize the company and the diasporic family networks on which they depend

? reflect the current state of both

Chinese Jamaican transmigrancy and the global reggae industry. In

the context of the transnational structures that define the con

temporary production and circulation of reggae, the discrepancies that arise between various "local" and "global" contexts are often

exacerbated. As a major distributor, producer, and marketer of

reggae and dancehall, and as Chinese Jamaicans representing a

musical form so intimately associated with "black" identity, VP

Records and the Chin family often finds itself at the crux of such

discrepancies, having to negotiate the tricky terrain between

disparate localities and/or cultural contexts.

In light of the historical experience of Chinese Jamaicans

(during indenture and the later periods of migration) and the

economic and social niches they occupy in Jamaican society, certain

values and strategies emerge as ones that have played a key role in

enabling Chinese Jamaicans to survive and even flourish in some

times extremely uncertain conditions. Mobility (in both geographic and social terms) is clearly foremost among such strategies and

values. I suspect that the factors that contributed to the flight of

many Chinese Jamaicans (along with other middle-class Jamaicans) in the 1970s are perhaps more varied and complex than has been

heretofore acknowledged. Although the fear of a perceived turn

towards communism was certainly a factor, this explanation by itself seems somewhat limited and superficial. The class and racial

politics of the period, which constitute the broader context of the

migration, are complex, multi-dimensional, and far from being fully understood.15 Indeed, the whole question of the relation between

Chinese Jamaicans and the discourses of national, cultural, and

racial identity deserves to be examined more carefully. Such

questions, unfortunately, are beyond the scope of this essay. The

more limited point that I wish to make here is that the migration of

15 In his study, Brian Meeks mentions the debate between Michael Manley and

economist Kari Levitt, who "suggested] that the reason capital flowed so rapidly out of the country was at least in part because of a heightened 'rhetoric' that

accompanied the party's 'rededication' to democratic socialism in 1974" (Meeks 2000: 123). See also Obika Gray's seminal study (1991) for one analysis of the

impact of class conflicts on Jamaican politics in the period immediately before

and following independence, and especially the role and meaning of the anti

Chinese sentiment that emerged as a marked feature of this political landscape.




Chinese Jamaicans in the 1970s was also, at least partially, an

historically conditioned response to social and political instability. What this suggests is that many Chinese Jamaicans, like Pat

and Vincent Chin, made the decision to migrate in the 1970s, not

only because their middle-class status made it an economically viable option in the face of a perceived threat to their livelihood, but also because mobility had proven to be an effective (if sometimes

arduous) survival strategy in the collective experience of the group. In addition and clearly related to the value placed on mobility, portability

? of resources, talents, skills, family and kinship struc

tures, and culture itself ? stands out as an important principle in terms of the survival strategies of Chinese Jamaican trans-migrants.

Hence the high premium that Chinese Jamaicans as a group tend to

place on readily transportable resources such as education,

expertise in trading, and the mercantile ethos itself. Pat Chin's comments underscore the value of such portable resources and skills and in the particular case of the Chin family reggae music itself becomes a crucial resource that can help ensure a successful transition from one locality to another.

The diasporic networks ? including entrepreneurial infra

structures ? established by Jamaican migrants like the Chins

provided many of the mechanisms that facilitated, at least initially,

reggae's movements across various local and global spaces. The creation of such infrastructures entailed, among other things, main

taining connections to local Jamaican producers and suppliers,

cultivating new markets (starting with the Caribbean diasporic populations centered in places like Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx and then later branching out to other potential customers), and the gradual building of distribution networks (encompassing, initially, a number of small West Indian music stores scattered across New York City and its environs and eventually including a

retail record store and warehousing operation). Within the mercantile ethos that characterized the modus operandi of Vincent and Pat Chin and many of the Chinese Jamaicans who migrated in

the 1970s, reggae was preeminently a commodity (the one hundred

percent Jamaican "product" that they bought and sold). The

portability of this commodity ? both in terms of the music itself as

well as its potential appeal ? was, no doubt, a large part of what




made it such an ideal medium of exchange for these Chinese

Jamaican transmigrants.16 At the same time that the mobility and portability of reggae as

a commodity ? a feature which is considerably enhanced by

continuing advances in audio and recording technology ? make it

particularly well suited for contemporary modes of production and

consumption, this mobility also heightens the cultural discrepancies that inevitably arise when the music travels such distances. Pat

Chin's comments about the reversal of the import-export circuit ?

where Jamaican distributors were importing records from VP who

would record and/or press the records in the US before they were

released in Jamaica, instead of the other way around ? highlights

how the notion of a "one hundred percent homegrown Jamaican

product" becomes problematic given the realities and practices of

the contemporary reggae industry. The logistics of production that

currently define this industry (including VP Records) reflect, not

just the economic and political imbalances between First and Third

World countries (i.e. Pat's comments regarding everybody wanting the American dollar), but also the transnational strategies and

models that have become the norm. While such strategies permit businesses to decentralize production functions (recording, administration, marketing, distribution, etc.) and thereby maximize

profits, they also often underscore the disjunctions between

different sites of production and consumption ? hence Pat's

comments regarding the need to have "feelers" and other sources of

information about what's going on in Jamaica ("what's hot and

when the beat is changing") when production practices no longer

require frequent trips back to Jamaica. Interviews I conducted with Randy Chin, Vice President of

Marketing and one of the two sons of Pat and Vincent, further

highlight the way in which VP's business models and strategies tend to emphasize mobility and transnational frameworks. For

example, in the following excerpt, Randy's comments illustrate how

distribution and marketing functions are "decentralized" in order

16 During another part of the interview, Pat Chin recounts how she and Vincent

would often carry suitcases full of records on their trips from Jamaica, which was

a way of transferring valuable assets since the Manley government had placed strict limits on the amount of cash and other forms of currency that migrants could take out of the country.




to maximize access and proximity to resources and markets as well

as to enhance the global reach of the company.

TC: Does VP have branches in other cities? RC: We have a distribution company in New York and also in Miami. The New York branch handles all of the US,

European, and Asian distribution and the company in Florida handles the Caribbean. We also have an office in the UK that is primarily a marketing company that handles all of the

promotions and marketing in the UK.

(Excerpt from and interview with Randy Chin)

The interviews with Randy also suggest that the mobility patterns that are typical of contemporary Chinese Jamaican transmigrants enable the Chins to more readily put such strategies into practice.

Randy's comments, elsewhere in the interview, about the Miami

distribution operation that is run by his sister, Angela, illustrate

how Chinese Jamaican diasporic family networks (which typically encompass multiple branches in places like Toronto, New York,

Miami, London, Hong Kong, and Vancouver) can provide the basic

scaffolding for transnational entrepreneurial structures.17

In another part of the interview, Randy's comments under score the fact that it's not just marketing and distribution functions

that are less and less tied to a single fixed locale, but also the

recording function and even the artistes themselves are more likely to be mobile.

TC: In terms of the recording side of the business, to what extent would you say that reggae is still Jamaica-based? Don't a lot of the artistes live outside of Jamaica in places like Miami or New York? RC: Many Jamaican artistes do reside in New York or Florida. But most of them probably travel back and forth. Getting around is so much easier than it was years ago. The concert

circuit is also a vibrant market in places like New York, Miami, and London so the artistes are traveling around all the time. So the distinction between borders is less and less. Although, I

17 Randy's older brother, Chris, is VP's president. Pat's grandson, Joel, heads up the

A and R (Artist and Repertory) department, which involves scouting for new

talent and trends in the clubs and dancehalls of Kingston. Pat Chin, currently in

her late sixties and showing no signs of slowing down, is still very active in the

business. She divides her time between the warehouse/distribution center and

the retail record store on Jamaica Avenue.




have to say I think there is a certain magic that happens for the artist when they are in Jamaica, recording in Jamaica, and just that whole vibe, that can't be discounted. But, yes, these artists are all over the place, recording in Miami, recording in New York. They're recording all over the place.

(Excerpt from an interview with Randy Chin)

However, at the same time that reggae seems less and less tied to a

particular place (i.e. Jamaica) as a result of these transnational

networks of production, circulation, and consumption, place seems

to take on a heightened salience as the music widens its sphere of

influence. This salience is alluded to in Randy's comments about

the "magic that happens for the artist when they are in Jamaica." I would argue, Randy's allusions to the supernatural notwith

standing, that it is the very mobility of reggae ? its consummate

ability to cross borders ? that produces this salience of place. As

the music travels from one locality to another, the differences

between various sites of production and consumption are brought more sharply into relief and it is this difference that, in fact, constitutes reggae's appeal

? "the appeal," as George Yudice puts it, "to local difference within global circuits" (Yudice 2003: 241).

Reggae's appeal or, in Yudice's terms, its "cultural capital" resides

precisely in its capacity to embody place and perform locality.

Consequently what's at stake in the debates over authenticity ?

which only seem to intensify with the increased globalization of

reggae ? is not really "origins" so much as attempts to negotiate

(i.e. lay claim to, police, protect, control, capitalize on) this terrain of

difference produced by reggae's migrations. In the following

excerpt the appeal to "local difference" is implicit in Pat's comments

regarding the relation between the "core" audience and the

"massive." Although the "core" is relatively small, it defines "local

difference" and is therefore in a privileged position to determine the

value (cultural capital) of a given reggae song, even (or especially) within the context of the wider global market.

PC: The West Indian audience is just a small portion ? the

massive [the global market] is where the money is ? but there's a value in the core because this is where you know

what's going to sell. That's why you have to put it out there and

let it play in the dances and see what the people like. That's the

first stage, then you get the feedback of what you can promote to sell big, but it starts in the core.




TC: So, who makes up the core? PC: West Indians. People back from Jamaica. Sometimes we even produce the record here, but we send it back home to let it play in the dances, to make it a hit and to see the reaction of the crowd and what they like.

[Excerpt from an interview with Pat Chin)

Although Pat's comments seem to suggest a degree of

predictability in the relation between what the "core" likes and

what will sell in the "massive," as reggae travels farther and farther afield from some of its initial sites of production (i.e. Jamaica and its

diasporic communities) the cultural meanings and identities that

reggae embodies are anything but predictable. In such far-flung sites of consumption reggae's "local difference" still signifies, but how and what it signifies is another matter entirely. As a major distributor of reggae music as well as a producer and independent record label, VP plays a significant role in facilitating reggae's

ongoing global migrations. If the growing popularity of reggae in

places like Japan and Germany often highlights the gaps between

local and global meanings, it also reflects the malleability of the

identificatory processes that are always at play in the enjoyment and consumption of forms of popular music like reggae.

I would like to end these reflections on reggae and migration with an excerpt from an interview I conducted at the VP warehouse

with a young Japanese reggae fan and amateur deejay who called

himself "Selector A." It will be evident from the comments that follow that the identities Selector A and other Japanese reggae fans

express through their consumption of reggae have little enough to do with the "local" realities of Jamaican life. In fact, Selector A's

experience and understanding of Jamaican culture is relatively

superficial, mediated predominantly if not entirely by mass media

images and popular stereotypes. The identifications that these

Japanese fans express through reggae clearly have more do with

"local" Japanese realities ? with their need to express rebellion or

non-conformity, for instance. Nevertheless, Selector A's comments

highlight the great geographical and cultural distances that reggae has traveled and the mobility as well as malleability of the identities

that it can embody. Selector A's devotion to reggae also affirms the

power of such identifications and the capacity of popular music to

mobilize them.



Notes on Reggae Music

TC: How did you start listening to reggae music? SA: I was a waiter [in Japan] and my restaurant played reggae

music so I unconsciously started to listen to reggae music.

TC: What did you like about reggae music? SA: The beat is different and the baseline is very different. I couldn't understand what they were talking about at first, but now, I almost get it.

TC: What was the first song you said you heard? SA: Buju Banton's "Murderer." [Sings a verse from the song.] TC: Did you know what they were saying? SA: No, I thought he was talking about love or about his mother. After three years, I checked the dictionary. It said, to kill or something like that. I was surprised. TC: Is reggae music big in Japan? SA: Yes, huge. Every year we have a Reggae Japan Sunsplash and almost twenty thousand people come to the concert. We have a concert in Tokyo, Okinawa, and Hokkaido. So many

people support reggae music today. TC: Do they/you know anything about Jamaican culture? SA: Actually, I haven't been to Jamaica, but they [Jamaican people] are so friendly and they respect people and take care of

everybody. I like their culture and I like their relationships.

References

Bradley, Lloyd (2000). This is Reggae Music. New York: Grove Press.

Chang, Kevin O'Brien and Chen, Wayne (1998). Reggae Routes: The Story of Jamaican Music. Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers.

Chude-Sokei, Louis (1997). "Postnationalist Geographies: Rasta, Ragga, and Reinventing Africa." In Chris Potash (ed.), Reggae, Rasta, Revolution. New York: Schirmer Books, pp. 215-227.

Flores, Juan (2000). From Bomba to Hip-Hop: Puerto Rican Culture and Latino

Identity. New York: Columbia University Press.

Gray, Obika (1991). Radicalism and Social Change in Jamaica: 1960-1972. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press.

Hall, Stuart (1999). "Thinking Diaspora: Home-Thoughts From Abroad." Small Axe 6 (September 1999), pp. 1-18.

Lipsitz, George (1994). Dangerous Crossroads: Popular Music, Postmodernism and the Poetics of Place. London: Verso.

Look Lai, Walton (1993). Indentured Labor, Caribbean Sugar: Chinese and Indian Migrants to the British West Indies, 1838-1918. Baltimore: The

Johns Hopkins University Press.




Look Lai, Walton (1998). The Chinese in the West Indies 1806-1995. Kingston: The University of the West Indies Press.

Meeks, Brian (2000). Narratives of Resistance: Jamaica, Trinidad, The Caribbean.

Kingston: The University of the West Indies Press.

Stolzoff, Norman (2000). Wake the Town and Tell the People: Dancehall Culture in Jamaica. Durham: Duke University Press.

Yudice, George (2003). The Expediency of Culture: Uses of Culture in the Global Era. Durham: Duke University Press.



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