The Hustla Playbook: Negotiating the Business Politics of Reggae in the Jamaican Rock Music Scene

The hustla philosophy of the Jamaican economy advocates the use of innovative and/or illicit methods to negotiate the harsh economic realities of the society. From two years of ethnographic fieldwork in Jamaica, I gleaned that local musicians applied this philosophy to support themselves and family. Most notably, local rock musicians used this mindset to survive their disadvantageous position on the periphery of the Jamaican reggae industry. They earned this status because their merger of “foreign” genres with reggae was perceived as undermining the cultural heritage of the Black populace. As a result, my analysis interrogates the attempts of rock musicians to secure work and legitimacy in a precarious and prejudicial job market. Institutionalized prejudices limited the popularity of local rock music and enforced repressive scripts. Despite these disadvantages, the Jamaican rock scene has made major contributions to the music economy by merging rock music with reggae and facilitating innovation and creativity within the contemporary Reggae Revival.