Dancehall DJ David Rodigan has been awarded an MBE.
David Rodigan’s career spans almost 35-year years, in which time he has devoted himself to promoting reggae music through his various radio programs and in musical battles against some of Jamaica’s most famous sound system selectors. He has received several major awards for his work but none is as prestigious as the Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE), which was bestowed by the Queen in a ceremony on Valentine’s Day, at Buckingham Palace. The MBE is the UK’s fifth highest award.
One of the reasons I feel so honored to be awarded for services to broadcasting is because it is so important for reggae music and, without being patronising, for the Jamaican people who migrated to this country in the 50s and 60s and brought their music with them,” explained Rodigan in an interview with Billboard.biz.
Named Broadcaster of the Year in May 2009 at the Sony Radio Academy Awards, David Rodigan was born June 24th, 1951 on a military base in Hanover, Germany to Scots-Irish parents and raised in North Africa until he was eight years old when the family moved to England. A trained actor who had a recurring role as Broken Tooth in the Doctor Who serial The Mysterious Planet, it was Rodigan’s obsession with Jamaican music, which he first heard in the mid ’60s, that ultimately defined his career path.
“There was about a four-year phenomenon of Jamaican hits impacting British pop culture like a whirlwind from the West Indies: Millie Small’s “My Boy Lollipop” (which topped the Hot 100 in 1964 and was the first major hit for Chris Blackwell’s Island Records via the Fontana imprint); “Israelites” by Desmond Dekker, the first British no. 1 for a Jamaican artist (peaking at no. 9 on the Hot 100 in 1968) among many others, that’s when I fell in love with this music and started playing it at youth clubs and at parties,” Rodigan reminisced.
Rodigan began his broadcasting career in 1978 on BBC Radio London. He moved to Capital Radio in 1979, where he remained for 11 years, hosting his legendary Roots Rockers program, cassettes of which were prized commodities among reggae fans. He further solidified his reggae street-cred when he began broadcasting his Capital Radio show live from Jamaica. He engaged in a series of on-air competitions with renowned presenter Barry “Barry G” Gordon of (Jamaica’s now defunct) JBC radio, their lively exchanges garnering a widespread audience that included Jamaicans on the island and those living in England and throughout North America.
David Rodigan can be heard each Sunday night 11 p.m. – 1:00 a.m. on London’s Kiss FM, and for the second consecutive year, he will also host a weekly summer program devoted to reggae commencing May 23 through August 13 on BBC Radio 2, which reaches an audience exceeding 14 million in the UK, according to the BBC’s website.
