VETERAN British disc jockey David Rodigan has been awarded the Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire or MBE in Queen Elizabeth II’s New Years Honours list.

The 60-year-old Rodigan is well known to reggae fans worldwide. He helped introduce grassroots reggae to british audiences in the late 1970s when he began working on BBC Radio London.

Rodigan was among a wave of white British youth who became fascinated with Jamaican pop music in the 1970s, when artistes like Ken Boothe (Every Thing I Own) and Junior Murvin (Police and Thieves) had big hit songs in Britian.

Though roots luminaries like Bob Marley and Burning Spear were the biggest names coming out of Jamaica at the time, Rodigan and his contemporaries were more into the raw, edgy sound of ska and rocksteady of the 1960s, and the gritty production of Lee Scratch Perry, who produced Police and Thieves.

Among the white youth who were also influenced by Jamaican pop culture were the punk rock band The Clash, who came to Jamaica and worked with Perry, and singer Robert Palmer.

During the last 30 years, Rodigan has expressed his affection for reggae through several well-received radio programmes in the United Kingdom. They include Roots Rockers on London’s Capital FM. After leaving capital, he joined the 24-hour dance radio station Kiss FM in 1990, hosting its Sunday night reggae show.

Rodigan was first introduced to Jamaican audiences in the 1980s through his popular ‘clashes’ with disc jockey Barry ‘Barry G’ Gordon, who was then at the (now defunct) Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation.

He and his soundsystem has also played throughout Europe, North America and Japan.

The MBE is Britain’s fourth highest honour, following knighthood, CBE, OBE.