Chris Steers
BBC Midlands Today
Shehnaz Khan
BBC News, West Midlands
A special concert celebrating Birmingham’s reggae history is to take place on what would have been Bob Marley’s 80th birthday.
The Reggae Origins concert will see Basil Gabbidon and musicians from Birmingham Contemporary Music Group (BCMG) join forces on Thursday evening at the city’s Town Hall.
Legendary reggae singer Marley died of cancer at the age of 36 on 11 May 1981.
Gabbidon, founding member of the Handsworth-born reggae band Steel Pulse, said the musician would “probably be as surprised as we are” that the genre was growing and still going strong.
“It’s amazing how it’s just spread across the world,” he said of the reggae scene.
“When you hear Bob Marley’s music, it’s always been there.”
The classical and reggae fusion concert will see strings and a full band performing brand new arrangements of songs from the Birmingham Reggae scene, alongside some of Bob Marley’s biggest hits.
Gabbidon said he had initially approached BCMG a few years ago to try and put the project together but there was no funding for it at the time.
“It’s something I’m looking forward to doing,” he said of the concert.
“I love fusion and I think it’s something that needs to be put across, that all music basically is one music.”
Roots reggae band Steel Pulse was formed in 1975 by school friends who attended Handsworth Wood Boys school.
The group became first non-Jamaican act to win the Grammy Award for Best Reggae Album.
Gabbidon spoke about the Catch A Fire album by Marley’s band The Wailers and a track called Concrete Jungle, which he said inspired him to “take guitar seriously” and to start playing the instrument.
“If it wasn’t for that album, I don’t think Steel Pulse would have been born,” he said.
“If you listen to Steel Pulse there’s a lot of fusion going on in there,” he added. “There’s funk, a bit of rock… pop.”
Gabbidon added the Windrush Generation also played an important part in bringing Reggae from Jamaica.
“They brought the culture, you could say the music culture,” he explained.
“We’re in an age now, in Britain, in Birmingham, where’s there’s a cross-culture thing going on. We’re fusing all those various cultures together.”
