By Roy Black
Music Writer
Perhaps only the United States of American (USA) has given the world more musical genres than the tiny island of Jamaica. There is a widely inaccurate view, propagated in international music circles, that label all Jamaican music as reggae. But those of us, who grew up with the music and experienced its development, will well recognize that Jamaicaâs popular music has gone through several phases, resulting in some half a dozen genres. They could be categorized as Ska, Rocksteady, Reggae, Dub and Dancehall. This is a monumental achievement which, like athletics, has caught the attention of the entire world.
However, there is one other Jamaican music genre of great importance and influence, which has oftentimes been overlooked – thatâs Mento, or what is sometimes referred to as Jamaican Calypso. Even to this day, Mento, which reigned as Jamaicaâs most popular music of the early 1950s, remains a most dominant force on the island:Â A visitorâs first exposure to Jamaica music would more likely be a Mento band, either on a cruise ship docked in the harbor, at the airport, or at one of the government-sponsored festivals on the island. Mento music is extensively used in tourism promotions and its rhythms helped to shape some of the succeeding genres. Additionally, Mento is the islandâs most indigenous music, having its root in the slave plantation system, and it is also Jamaicaâs first commercially recorded music, so it canât be discounted. Perhaps the reason why Mento is seldom mentioned among Jamaicaâs popular music genres is because it came at a time when the Jamaica recording industry had not yet been established. It did so in 1957.
Before the euphoric rise of the thunderous Jamaican Ska beat, there existed a stream of Jamaican recordings that drew heavily on Latin rhythms, and primarily sung by Wilfred Jackie Edwards. The main bands that epitomized that genre were The Caribs, Kes Chin and The Souvenirs, Carlos Malcolm and the Afro Jamaican Rhythms and Luther Williams and his Orchestra. A series of Jamaican R&Bs also surfaced at about this time.
Ska eventually became Jamaicaâs first legitimately established foundation music, quite appropriately, at the birth of the nation in 1962. There were rudiments of ska pieces months before, like, Humpty Dumpty and Money Canât Buy Life by Eric Monty Morris, and Shake a Leg by Derrick Morgan, but when it became full-blown Morgan again stole the show with seven songs at one time on the Jamaican charts. Stranger Cole hit hard with Rough and Tough among others, while Jimmy Cliff sent producer Leslie Kong and himself on the road to success with Hurricane Hattie, Miss Jamaica, One-eyed Jack and others. A number of Ska ensembles soon emerged. They included The Drumbago All Stars, Clue J and The Blues Blasters, Baba Brooks Band and The Skatalites. Boasting nine talented musicians, the last group, once managed by former Prime Minister P.J. Patterson, was rated as the best instrumental aggregations ever assembled on the island.
Between mid-1965 and late-1966, Ska went through a transition period that produced recordings like Delroy Wilsonâs Riding For a Fall, Peter Toshâs Iâm The Toughest, The Ethiopians Iâm Gonna Take Over, The Wailersâ Let Him Go, Ken Bootheâs I Donât Want To See You Cry and the Gayladsâ No Good Girl. But when Bob Andy, Ken Boothe and Delroy Wilson recorded Iâve Got To Go Back Home, The Train Is Coming and Dancing Mood, respectively in late 1966, the music had drifted into a direction that would change the musical landscape forever. The Rocksteady beat was on the horizon. There was a gradual disappearance of the hard-driven horns that had dominated Ska. It was being replaced by heavier drum and bass lines, and in general the slowing of the beat.
The Rocksteady genre came on stream proper by early 1967 with several persons claiming that they started it, the five main contenders being Roy Shirley with Hold Them, The Uniques with Peopleâs Rock Steady, Derrick Morgan with Rudies Donât Fear, Alton Ellis and the Flames with Girl Iâve Got a Date and Hopeton Lewis with Take It Easy. The last cut, recorded in late 1966, received the most support for the title. Undocumented evidence has been blamed for the mix-up in the recording dates, many of which were very close to each other.
Reggae like Rocksteady also suffered this fate with The Cablesâ Baby Why, The Beltonesâ No More Heartaches, Stranger Cole and Lester Sterlingâs Bangarang and Larry and Alvinâs Nanny Goat vying for the title. The Larry and Alvinâs recording was given the edge by most musicologists.
Reggae sprang out of Rocksteady by the mid-late 1968. It is incorrect to state that reggae was all about a quicker tempo, because there were some reggae songs that were slower than Rocksteady ones, while there were others which were faster. It had more to do with a shift in the construction of the Rocksteady rhythm. The view of the experienced record producer Bunny Lee seems to concur with mine: âIt is just the inclusion of an organ shuffle that change the rocksteady into reggae most timesâ, he once told me in an interview. A keen listen to Delano Stewartâs Thatâs Life validates this point.
Dub music was born out of experiments conducted on existing rocksteady recordings by studio engineers, resulting in the removal of the vocal track, the accentuation of the drum and bass and sometimes retention of the rhythm section, to create heart-throbbing musical masterpieces. The rudimentary stage of the phenomenon, which occurred in 1967, saw the instrumental section of recordings placed on the flip-sides of records and being referred to as âversionsâ. The spaces created by the removal of the vocal track facilitated Jive-talking and toasting by Disc Jocks, a phenomenon that started way back in the 1950s by Count Machuki and Lord Comic. It was the beginning of the rapping genre that exploded in the USA in the 1970s. Studio engineer and sound system operator, Osbourne âKing Tubbyâ Ruddock, is cited by many sources as the man most responsible for masterminding the most radically remixed versions in Jamaicaâs music history.
The Dancehall genre, with predominant reggae components, was fully established by 1983. It had been lingering in the dancehalls (the actual buildings) for over half a decade since Sugar Minott gave Jamaica and the world a glimpse of it at Studio 1 in the mid-1970s, with cuts like Oh Mr D.C., Vanity, Is It True and others. In its full-blown state, Dancehall music took unto itself digital instrumentation that changed the sound considerably. It became characterized by faster rhythms, the use of patois instead of Standard English, with the focus on risqué lyrics. The key elements of the Deejay and the Dub style remained a dominant feature.