Words by Eddie STATS Houghton

Sometime last year, Sizzla Kalonji linked up with Brazilians Eduardo “Bid” Bidlovski and Gustah Sola while they were in Jamaica voicing riddims from Northeast Brazil for their Bamba Dois music project. The result was “Only Jah Love (Raggatu)”–one of the strongest Sizzla excursions in recent memory and something unique in the current spectrum of reggae. If there’s been a conspicuous absence in the auto-tuned world of nowadays one drop, it is the rejection of parallel sounds from the African diaspora in favor of a one-way transmission of influence from American pop, lacking even the occasional licks of Bollywood and Latin American rhythm that animated dancehall into the early 2000s. Part of the problem maybe that one drop has itself been so influential in the Third World that it often remains weirdly segregated from the local musics it plays alongside in Latin America and Africa. Or as Bidlovski put it to the Jamaica Gleaner: “This is the first time anyone came to Jamaica from Brazil with a riddim.”