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The legends walk the streets in Jamaica, and
they do so slowly. They move in the purposeful but nonchalant amble,
as only Jamaicans can, along lanes walled in corrugated iron and
past sleeping dogs to pull up a wooden stool and toke ganja in
the midday heat. In this instance the legend is the magnificently
dreadlocked singer Big Youth, a contemporary of Bob Marley whose
54 years have narrated in song the variety of Kingston life, canonising
what the world overseas understands as reggae – not so much
a music genre as an entire mode and chronicle of Jamaican being.
Big Youth relaxes into the afternoon in Matthew’s Lane,
a track deep in the anarchy of downtown Kingston whose humble appearance
belies its importance the Jamaican political makeup. A tinderbox
in the midst of Marley’s Concrete Jungle, in the past disputes
here have been settled on the trigger of an M16; blood spilt underfoot,
because Matthew’s Lane marks the frontline between the factional
garrisons pledged to the island’s adversarial JLP and PNP
parties.
Today the violence is gone, but the people like Big Youth remain,
as does their happier legacy of music.
‘Bob Marley come to dis place for teaching; Marcus Garvey
used to run around ere,’ he explains in a Patois as broad
as his dreads are long. ‘Right now, there is love in Kingston,
in Matthew’s Lane an’ Tivoli Gardens… everybody
livin’ good, yeah? Nobody war, nobody gettin’ shot
after nobody. That’s why after 30 years I could be sitting
in Matthew’s Lane. As a man I live a public life so many
years.’ He gestures around the shacks and painted walls. ‘This
is my house, this is in mi born town. You have to stick to your
roots.’
In the correct company, meetings like this - the equivalent of
strolling around Liverpool and running into Paul McCartney – occur
routinely in Jamaica. Visitors to the island often describe its
sweltering, verdant and ramschackle towns and jungles as
being almost physically alive with music. Everyone you meet in
the land of bass – and being the friendliest people on earth,
you have no choice but to meet them – insists on the all-important ‘vibe’,
which pulses from each backyard, shopfront, roadside shack, pub,
car stereo, dancehall, nook, corner and cranny, weaving deep and
wide in the fabric of island life.
There is literally nowhere Reggae isn’t played or heard.
Jon Carter, the DJ and husband of Radio 1’s Sara Cox, who
recorded in Jamaica recalls Sunday mornings where, ‘you can
hear all the soundsystems playing reggae versions of gospel music
when the sun comes up. It was incredible,’ he says, ‘like
a gigantic dub church coming through the jungle.’
And it does so because its artists are the same as its street
folk, people who never left the places and experiences that their
music expresses. While musicians in the UK often seem content to
recede after a run of success and then return as heritage acts
in a 20-year cycle, a musical vocation in Jamaica means a job for
life as an ambassador for the island’s soul. Big Youth, for
example, has no idea how many songs he has ‘voiced’ in
a career spanning 30 years. Probably thousands; the venerable dread
has lost count. ‘I make so much music,’ he nods, ‘and
I just live! I always record, always making sounds, yu ’ear?
Life is just normal and natural, vibes and inspiration’.
Matchless in its productivity, innovation and enthusiasm, the
tastes of Jamaica’s meagre population – just 2.5 million – exert
an octopoid influence over global music culture that far exceeds
any of its Caribbean neighbours, and only really tails the US and
UK. Since hip hop has lapsed to become the global language of product
placement , Jamaica’s native sounds are emerging again as
heavier, blacker and more thrilling undertow led by figures like
Sean Paul, Beenie Man and Shaggy who combine cast-iron credibility
in ‘back a Yard’ with worldwide chart appeal.
But reggae’s assortment of evolutions since the Fifties
- from early ska, bluebeat and rocksteady to dub, lovers’ rock
and the digitized strains of dancehall and ‘bashment’ – have
in particular fused a close bond with the UK, the island’s
former colonial ruler, a two-way commerce in singers, producers
and sounds in which has evolved the popularity of expatriate reggae
in parallel with its native strain. No mere staging post on the
promotional hamster wheel, communities in the UK have been affectionately
nurtured by generations of reggae figureheads – Marley in
the Seventies, Gregory Isaacs in the Eighties, Shabba Ranks in
the Nineties and most recently the poppier figures above. Each
August bank holiday when the Notting Hill Carnival ignites the
capital’s smarter postcodes, Europe’s largest festival
reveals the true colours of London’s underground tastes.
Reggae has long been an invisible DNA in music made within these
shores, its thread of influence discernible in The Specials and
Madness as it is in names as grand as Soul II Soul, Massive Attack,
and Basement Jaxx. And while the less said about 10CC’s ‘Dreadlock
Holiday’ the better, it’s nevertheless true that the
space and reverb of King Tubby and Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry’s
cavernous dubs are as vital a template in British dance music as
New York disco. Meanwhile, evolutions in dancehall by pioneers
such as Ninjaman, Supercat and Yellowman have determined
the direction of the British-bred drum & bass, UK garage and ‘grime’ of
Goldie, So Solid Crew, Ms Dynamite and Dizzee Rascal as much as
American hip hop. Back in the early Eighties Brixton’s dub
poet laureate Linton Kwesi Johnston declared ‘England is
a bitch’: yet it’s a ‘bitch’ with a profound
affinity for the music of a tiny island thousands of miles across
the Atlantic.
“I was one of the first performers outta Jamaica that really
strike London, I’m proud to say,’ Big Youth reflects. ‘We
were the one who had the yout' getting up in lines to buys records.
When we toured ’77, England was the place to go. European
people love the real roots- where you speak the truth.’
***
A further truth is that the convergence comes vividly alive among
the tracks of a new album, ‘Two Culture Clash’, which
successfully pulls off an idea so blindingly obvious it’s
astonishing nobody conceived of it before: pairing British electronic
dance producers with Jamaican singers and DJs to make explicit
the genetic link. An idea forged in a suitably transient place
- -the departure lounge of Kingston’s Manley Airport - ‘Two
Culture Clash’ was born when a mover – music biz executive
and studio owner Jon Baker – met a shaker, Mark Jones, whose
independent record label Wall Of Sound has pioneered groundbreaking
dance music with artists including the Norwegian instrumentalists
Royksopp.
Naturally, the idea presented a logistical nightmare. ‘It
could’ve been a disaster,’ confirms Mark Jones. ‘But
it could only have been made in Jamaica. I wanted people to meet
face to face, and you can hear that in the music. Spiritually the
link between the UK and Jamaica is there; everybody on each island
is obsessed with music.’
‘Two Culture Clash’s ambition is matched by the calibre
of performers. It coralls a prismatic, cross-generational squad
of 16 Jamaican singers (technically ‘DJs’) out of Jon
Baker’s extensively well-connected Rolodex – terminally
active veterans like Big Youth, Horace Andy and Ernest Ranglin
alongside established blades (Barrington Levy, Patra, General Degree,
Innocent Crew) with newer names including Ce’cile, Miss Thing,
Spragga Benz and the gladiatorial Ward 21 crew (named after the
psychiatric wing of Kingston’s University Hospital). Meanwhile
13 producers from the undergrowth of dance music were flown into
Baker’s Geejam studio complex in the jungle above Portantonio,
among them Mercury Prize winner Roni Size, Jon Carter, Justin Robertson
and Jacques Lu Cont, the widely-fancied young producer who moonlights
Madonna’s bassist.
The fusioneering began in January, with all involved eager to
explore dance music’s secret affair with reggae. What results
is a collection whose nuances extend far beyond the chart-friendly
One-Loveisms of Marley by which mainstream audiences have traditionally
understood reggae. ‘The people making the music have a great
idea,’ Big Youth told me. ‘Some of the beats remind
me of the ska. These youts have vision… it’s
a joy man.’
The tortuous rhythmic complexities of dancehall – a sound
often as incomprehensible to Anglo-Saxon ears as to the feet – evolve
anew on songs like Motorbass & Innocent Crew’s rabblerousing ‘Get
Crazy’, or Roni Size & Spragga Benz’s ‘Knock
Knock’. Some of tracks are notable for their pairings: Big
Youth’s ‘Rudie No’ is a goodtime skank produced
by West London Deep, a former skinhead. Others surprise in their
execution: U2 producer Howie B and Horace Andy’s ‘Fly
High’ drifts between flickering dub and the trip hop of Massive
Attack.
‘To be honest, the fusion is crazy,’ notes General
Degree, a wiry and somewhat perplexed 32-year-old DJ, who describes
his track with Jacques Lu Cont as ‘acid house’. ‘You’re
hearing dancehall, you’re hearing the techno vibe as well
and you’re hearing people like Big Youth from the early days
of reggae. And it’s good to work from that time to the now
- when people hear the LP, they know it’s a two-culture clash.’ It’s
arguably more than that: a muscular, thrilling mix multiculture-clash
of ages, races and geography, it seems guaranteed to fire soundssystems
on whichever side of the Atlantic.
***
Recorded at Jon Baker’s Geejam studios – where banks
of ultrahigh-tech music equipment bleep and wink in plushly-appointed
wood huts overlooking the sea - ‘Two Culture Clash’ also
illustrates other convergences in the musicmaking process. Reggae
artists are the fittest musicians on earth, forged by a discipline
of relentless productivity through the fiercely competitive studio
systems and studio circuit, where singers are paid a flat fee to ‘voice’ (record) ‘sides’ (tracks).
Traditionally in Jamaica, the ‘riddim’, or instrumental
track, is star of the show. At any one time hundreds of riddims
can be vying for attention with singers recording a ‘version’ of
each, leading to a curious situation in which the dancehall public
can enjoy effectively the same song sung by hundreds of different
artists (current riddims are ‘Chrome’, ‘Rebirth’, ‘Mad
Guitar’, ‘Thriller’ and ‘Blackout’ ).
Yet the established network of island studios – King Jammy’s,
Penthouse, Music Works – is being challenged by a new generation
of bedroom-based studio set-ups, where cheap computer technology
allows of the kind of DIY productivity that directly spawned the
boom in dance music in the UK of the Nineties.
‘A lot of British producers are enormously influenced by
Jamaican music,’ reflects Justin Robertson, an English techno
DJ with a deep affection for reggae. ‘There are techniques
and styles that I’ve always tried to use: the sparseness
and space, and there’s a lot of common ground between the way
dancehall is being made and electronic producers.’
‘Now, things get so advanced, a studio could be right here
in your backyard, explains the singer Bling Dawg, the voice of
City Hi Fi’s track ‘Ole’. ‘I’ve seen
guys recording a dubplate in a car on [computer music application]
Protools. That’s Jamaica man – it’s always competition
down there. You could write five songs and that would last one
day. It makes you real sharp as an artist – you always gotta
be on it.’
‘Its crazy,’ concurs 28-year-old Ce’cile, a
singer whose full-frontal lyrics contrast with her extremely sweet
demeanour. ‘”Competitive” doesn’t do justice
to it.’
But music by any means necessary is the unspoken code here, and
this hot afternoon GeeJam’s in-house engineering team, Tkae
Sanchez and Al Borosie, a 28 year-old rastafarian of Italian origin,
are guiding the veteran Jamaica guitarist Ernest Ranglin through
his take for Justin Robertson’s ‘Save Me’.
The tapes begin to turn, and 72-year-old Ranglin – a thoughtful,
quiet fellow - spontaneously and note-perfectly complete his take
on one go, having never heard the song before. The packed studio
afternoon duly breaks into applause, and an electrical storm sparks
above the sea outside. He looks up with a smile, and says ‘shall
I do some more?’ A more dynamic and harmonious ‘clash’ of
the Anglo-Saxon and the Caribbean it’s impossible to imagine.
‘That was the greatest musical experience of my life,’ a
breathless Robertson later tells me. ‘Ernest Ranglin is a
particular hero of mine - it’s not often you get to work
with someone as instinctive. The attitude is that the performance
is all, so the people give it their all.’
Which is why in Jamaican today as in London during the Notting
Hill Carnival, music is a living thing, as immediately sensory
as the fug of ganja smoke it regularly floats in with. When the
artists who worked on ‘Two Culture Clash’ retired,
as they did night after night, to the dark, shuddering dancehall
called The Roof in the nearby town of Portantonio, it feels yet
more alive. Like the legends, it seems to walk beside you in the
street.
You watch the crowds move to the sound of Cutty Ranks and General
Degree, Sizzla and Lee Perry, and you see a bottle of Foreign Export
Guinness on the bartop vibrate in time with the world’s heaviest
music. The vibrations seem to reverberate up out of the very ground
beneath your feet.
© Kevin Braddock
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