Radio Rebelde

Radio Rebelde is originally born in 1988 in Venezia (Italy), with the purpose of taking inspiration from the sound coming from Jamaica to create anyway a personal and original vision of reggae, filtering it through several different musical influences. First demotape is released in 1991, called “Culturegghe” (“regghe” standing for “reggae”, as written as pronounced in italian) to testify the cultural and social side of music and the will of researching for an own personal vision of the reggae song format in its 6 tracks. The demotape, produced by Madaski from Africa Unite, that also guests him and his band's singer Bunna in a track, gets repressed the year after by italian label Paris Texas as mini LP. In the last months of 1992 the almost omologue “Cool tour reggae” gets released, a rough but fitting “official live bootleg”, showcase of the numberless live gigs that the band performs, in all kind of contexts in the whole Italian territory to spread a social, cultural and, of course, musical message. 1993 sees the release of the 12” single “Esternazione”, song against the xenophobic and extreme right wings, track that shows the band starting to use lyrics in italian and more contaminated arrangements, that, anyway, don't betray the roots matrix of the band's sound. After years of live concerts (almost 400, including warmup exhibitions before historical names of the reggae scene, such as Israel Vibration, Misty In Roots and Linton Kwesi Johnson) the first real “album” of the band sees the light in 1996, called “Tam-Tam”, 12 tracks and a remix that underline how the band is starting to leave the more filological aspects of its main inspirational models, exposing clearly a 360 degrees conception of reggae music, forwardbound without forgetting the roots. The music, apart from moving trasversally as usual in the reggae subgenres (dub, lovers, rockers, ragga …), starts heavily gaining up space thanks to the dub approach and, still being inside a “song” context, starts to come out from a mere reggae mannerism, moving the target towards experimental and ethnic-flavoured solutions in the arrangements, in an innovative although still tradition-influenced melting pot. Last work in the timeline to get released is a self produced CD single distributed with a comic book included, a project dear to the band, greedy comic books readers, that brings out a new super hero, flying high in the sky and defending the rights of every anti prohibitionist people, who responds to the name of Capitan Jamaica (Captain Jamaica). The track, a slow buildup jungle reggae with Brother D interacting with the urban rap of Loco (rapper and friend of the band), is a manifest for the contamination, always been a focal point of the roots and in the same time futurebound sound developed in the tracks beaten by the band, more and more projected towards mixing electronic, dub and song format, for a recipe with a strong identity but still open to futuristic solutions of musical technology. After a ten years pause, the will of starting the transmissions again won every doubt and fear, and the band started following again its own path “as nothing ever happened”, with the enrichenment of the personal and musical past experiences of the members, starting again the exploration in the 21st century's reggae boundaries.