A look at the unlikely career of DJ David Rodigan and the UK’s passion for reggae music.
Reggae Fever: David Rodigan is an hour-long documentary for BBC Four that both documents and celebrates the career of one of the UK’s best-loved broadcasters, but also charts a parallel story of the UK’s love affair with Jamaican music. It broadcasts on BBC Four on 16 November 2018 at 10pm. It was produced and directed by Yemi Bamiro and Sam Anthony and executive produced by Ian Sharpe.
David Rodigan’s unlikely career as a reggae broadcaster and DJ has developed in parallel with the evolution of Jamaican music in the UK. His passion and his profession have given him a privileged, insiders’ view of the UK’s love affair with Jamaican music that began in the 1950s. His constant championing of it has afforded him national treasure status with generations of British Jamaicans and all lovers of reggae music.
This is a film about the career of David Rodigan but it’s also a window through which to see a wider human story about social change in the UK: a story of immigration and integration, and music’s role within it. Now in his 40th professional year, David is quite rightly celebrating, his passion for the music he loves burning as brightly as ever. This film is a testament to this most unlikely of reggae aficionados – a celebration of a man whose story is strangely intertwined with not only the evolution of music in this country but also the evolution of the culture.