The Cowboys of Kingston's Music Culture with Jamal Khadar
Strictly Facts: A Guide to Caribbean History and CulturePlay episode
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Country music in Jamaica sounds like a contradiction until you hear the connections. We connect the dots between Radio Jamaica Rediffusion, Western films on local screens, farm work migration, and a Caribbean listening culture that never treated genres like sealed boxes. We are joined by Jamal Khadar, writer and host of Reimagining Country, who explains how artists like Jim Reeves and Patsy Cline became part of Jamaican soundtracks, and why the cowboy image traveled so well across the Black Atlantic.
We go deeper than influence and ask what listeners recognized in country: rural self-recognition, church-rooted morality, survival stories, heartbreak, and the constant question of home. That recognition shows up in reggae’s early formation, in rude boy outlaw symbolism, and later in dancehall’s Western references and stage names. We also unpack cover culture as a Jamaican superpower, where a song gets re-voiced, re-scored, and re-felt until it becomes something else entirely, sometimes even pushing back into the global north through collaborations and reinterpretations.
The conversation also challenges today’s narrow story about who “belongs” in country music. Yes, Black roots matter and contemporary moments like Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter open doors, but Jamaica’s long-standing love for classic country complicates the picture in a different way: Black audiences have always had wide tastes, including deep affection for “classic” country often made by white artists. We close by widening the map again to African country histories, showing how radio networks, empire, guitars, and post-independence creativity helped build global country scenes that still thrive.
Jamal Khadar is a writer, broadcaster, DJ and a key voice on the global history and resurgence of country music, with by-lines in The Guardian, Bandcamp and The European Review of Books and mentions in publications such as the Swiss-German Newspaper WOZ. He also hosts Reimagining Country on NTS Radio. Jamal has shared his research via talks at Goldsmiths, University of London and Newcastle University; with brands like DAZED and Nii Journal; and album liner notes for Mississippi Records. Born in the UK, raised in the Netherlands, but connected to Nashville, he regularly interviews major country artists on their Amsterdam tour stop. After 15 years in London, he now lives in the Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
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