I heard reggae for the first time when I was 10, in the summer of 1972. My expat father was home on leave from Hong Kong, visiting my mum and I in our Devon bungalow. He had just broken the news that I was to be sent away to boarding school and Mum was upset. There was shouting and tears. In the midst of it all, I hunkered down in front of the evening news.
What I saw took me by surprise. In a place called Jamaica, people were dancing in the street to steel pan and reggae, and on the backs of tooting lorries. The celebrations were for the 10th anniversary of the island’s independence – and in that moment, with the row over my future raging above me, all I wanted was to be sucked up into the television screen and transported 4,500 miles to the other side of the Atlantic to be there with them.
