The Story of Lover's Rock – review

Menelik Shabazz, who made the pioneering Burning an Illusion back in 1981, has lovingly excavated the somewhat forgotten 70s subgenre of "lover's rock" – the British-born fusion of soft reggae beats with impassioned soul-diva vocals. There's lots of misty-eyed nostalgia from its now-middle-aged adherents – but, sadly, not much archive footage. Presumably, in a pre-camcorder age, if you didn't get on TV, you weren't going to be filmed, and lover's rock seemed to be roundly ignored by the mainstream – unlike the harder sounds of Rastafarian-inspired roots reggae.