Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad
ANOTHER REGGAE ATTRACTION
Beyond Race Magazine
11-09-08
By Erica Block
One might think that a roots reggae band from upstate New York would have a hard time substantiating their sound—growing up amid blizzards— and not under the Jamaican sun. Quite the contrary is true, though, for Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad, a group that is quickly establishing itself as a distinct voice on the modern day circuit of reggae and jam music. Hailing from Rochester, New York, Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad (abbreviated GPGDS) actually comes from a substantial line of reggae artists who have lived, worked, and produced bands in the city, dub legend Lee “Scratch” Perry among the most notable. By the late ’70s (around the same time that Perry moved there), a handful of roots reggae-playing bands had begun to sprout up in the area. “Rochester has a lot of reggae history that most people don’t know about,” remarks the band’s bassist, James Searl. “It’s cool, because we [GPGDS] were influenced as much by older reggae coming from Jamaica as we were from local reggae in our hometown.”
GPGDS’ sound is heavily influenced by older roots reggae, before the introduction of synthesizers, drum machines, and other digital technologies brought significant changes to the aesthetic of the genre. Adamant that an electronic signal cannot wholly imitate the vibration a real instrument makes, the band “goes to great lengths and breaks their backs” carrying around old instruments (such as a Hammond Organ from 1947) which strictly rely on vibrations to create sound. The band agrees, along with scientists who’ve done research on the subject, that the actual vibration of something physiologically affects and moves a person differently than a digital sound does. In other words, achieving a superior, organic sound is but one of many benefits reaped from using authentic instruments. “On one hand, people have known about that since the creation of music—that it’s healthy, that it helps you mentally and physically—but even more so now that research on the differences [between analog and digital sound] have been done,” comments Searl.
It’s not everyday one hears of a bassist speaking passionately about the neurology behind his band’s music, but Searl and his fellow band mates are very conscious of how their music stimulates the listener. Giant Panda keyboardist, Rachel Orke (who plays a Fender Rhodes) attended school for music therapy to boot, so it’s a frequently discussed topic among the seven musicians in the band.
For the past two years, Giant Panda has hit the road hard. In addition to playing at music halls and festivals across North America, the band has in the last two years completed a three-week stint in Jamaica. Since their formation in 2001, they’ve opened for reggae greats such as Morgan Heritage, Toots and the Maytals, and The Wailers—just to name a few—but this doesn’t mean GPGDS is without a grassroots following of their own. Hard work on the road has, without a doubt, paid off in that respect. Even so, Searl hints that the band is eager to relax their touring schedule in order to record.
Searl explains that since releasing their first album, Slow Down, in 2006, and subsequently deciding to concentrate on playing live shows, the band’s “vocabulary has grown,” adding, “more and more we're getting interested in capturing our sound and capturing the possibility to make other sounds. We want to get in the studio and document the music that we're making right now.”
As for the band’s unique, tongue twister of name: it’s an allusion to the Tom Robbins novel Another Roadside Attraction. In the book, there’s a group, the “Giant Panda Gypsy Blues Band,” who travel up and down the west coast. The members of GPGDS agreed that they wanted to exemplify Robbins’ description of that band, although, as Searl cleverly comments, “They were more of a Gypsy Blues Band and we’re more of a Guerilla Dub Squad.”
http://beyondrace.com/articles/100-band-of-the-week/821-giant-panda-guerilla-dub-squad
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