Words of Our Mouth, Meditations of Our Heart. Kenneth Bilby
in this book represent excerpts from interviews I myself conducted (or in some cases, songs I recorded in traditional contexts). All texts are verbatim (except for the bracketed passages), though they have been edited to make them more readable. The texts are in Jamaican English, but many of them also incorporate, to varying degrees, elements from Patwa (Jamaican Creole). I have borrowed a variety of nonstandard spellings commonly used by Jamaican “dialect” writers to indicate differences from “standard” (or metropolitan) English speech.
Each interview excerpt is supplemented with two additional features intended to provide the reader with a bit of background on the interviewee: 1) examples of what I call “standout tracks,” and 2) a capsule summary containing very basic biographical information.
The “standout tracks” represent examples of recordings on which the interviewee played, sang, or otherwise performed, and which I see as somehow special. I limited myself to two such tracks per interviewee. (“Standout tracks” are provided for traditional musicians only in the rare instances in which they are known to have ventured into a studio and made recordings that were released at some point.) The criteria for selection varied, and sometimes were purely subjective. Some tracks were major hits. Some contain original versions of what were to become perennial “riddims” (backing tracks used for many later versions). Some exemplify innovative trends or critical stylistic shifts. Some were pointed out to me by interviewees as recordings of which they themselves were particularly proud. And some I selected simply because they appeal to me personally. In no way should any of them be taken to be the “best” tracks in the career of the individual in question.
The very idea of representing each of these amazingly prolific musicians and singers with only two examples might seem absurd. (Most of the musicians included in this book, even those who have received the least attention for their contributions, have played on hundreds or thousands of recordings; by some estimates, the team of Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare, to take two musicians who have achieved fame, have played on or produced over two hundred thousand records.) If you have listened to a good amount of Jamaican music, chances are that you have already heard most or all of the session musicians featured in this book. In fact, since studio sessions in the early days were so poorly documented, it is often impossible to tell with certainty who the individual musicians are on a particular recording. The “standout tracks” listed in the following pages, for which the contributing musicians have been identified with a high degree of certainty, are intended simply as pointers. Listeners already familiar with Jamaican music are likely to recognize many of these recordings from the titles; others may use them as a starting point to explore further the individual contributions of these originators of Jamaican music. Careful Internet searches by name of even the least-heralded session musicians appearing in this book will quickly reveal some additional tracks on which they are known to have played, and I encourage readers to use this method to seek out their work. (For additional listening suggestions, see the appendix titled “Recommended Listening” near the end of the book.)
Each capsule summary provides a few lines of background information. When known, the following information (except in the case of a few of the traditional musicians) is presented: instrument(s) (including voice) for which the individual is (or was) known; year of birth (and if applicable, death); period during which he or she first became active in recording or professional performing (or in the case of nonprofessional musicians, in performing in traditional musical events); recording or performing groups of which he or she was at some point a member (not an exhaustive listing); and general musical roles for which he or she was known (e.g., session musician, lead singer, harmony singer, producer). These brief capsule summaries are intended to help the reader quickly fit these important contributors, many of whom have unjustly been consigned to anonymity, into the larger picture of Jamaican music.
As we follow the flow of ideas, some of which appear and reappear in various guises throughout the book, we become privy to what these musicians see as the true sources and key properties of their music. Music, we learn, is for them an important conduit to an unwritten past, a means of communion with the ancestors. It is a carrier of spiritual power, a container of “magic” (as guitarist and singer Bobby Aitken puts it, music is itself a spirit). Music is something from deep within, something “inborn” and “in the blood” (as drummer Horsemouth Wallace puts it, something first experienced in the womb)—something that can suddenly and spontaneously “come out” of people when the time is right. Music is fundamentally a matter of “feel” (intuition and sensation); and because it relies so heavily on intuition, it offers a natural platform for experimental and creative impulses. Music is also fundamentally about “feeling” (emotion); and when feelings are painful, it becomes a healing balm. Music functions in the material world as a crucial means of economic survival, yet is fundamentally about love for one’s fellow human beings and a sense of community rather than commerce. Music serves as a barometer of human suffering and a measure of social conscience that remains ever sensitive to the enormity of Jamaica’s founding sin—the enslavement and attempted dehumanization of an entire people—and its painful echoes in the present. It is a privileged vehicle for messages of all kinds, a powerful voice of and for the people. It is a bearer of warnings and prophecy. It is a cry for freedom and social justice. And, we learn, music is much more than all of this. It is, when all is said and done, an irreducible and essential part of the flow of life in Jamaica. When we view it with a wide-angle lens that takes in the broad array of music makers and genres brought together in this volume, we see that the old and the new, the rural and the urban, the “traditional” and the “popular,” are all integral to this irrepressible flow.
IF THERE IS TO BE a last word in this book, it belongs to the musicians, the original crafters and performers of sounds that, transformed but still recognizable, now circulate around the globe. But, as these musicians themselves might remind us, there is always more to a story than any single telling, or series of tellings, can capture. Some seeking to explain the “miracle” of Jamaican popular music might choose to focus not on the session musicians, but on the ingenuity of the studio engineers who interacted with and influenced the playing of these musicians; at a later point, these engineers took the raw materials created by the musicians and enhanced them with ideas of their own, eventually conjuring entirely new sonic worlds and musical aesthetics through the creation of electronically manipulated “dub” mixes, and in the digital dancehall era, radical new configurations of synthesized sounds. Others might wish to highlight the contributions of the crews who developed the complex and innovative sound system culture that has helped to spread Jamaican music around the world, or the vocalizing deejays who have added yet another tremendously influential dimension by regenerating the verbal artistry that has long been a prominent part of Jamaica’s vigorous oral culture in the new context of mass-mediated performances. One could even argue for the critical importance of the creative entrepreneurship and risk taking of the “producers,” without whom, after all, the enterprise could not have gotten off the ground either; some of these energetic businessmen also helped to shape their “products” in important ways, at times deciding what to record, how to record it, and what to release. All of these parties—sometimes in overlapping roles—played their parts. Creativity, after all, is not exclusive to “artists” (which, in Jamaican musical parlance, most often refers to singers) or “musicians” (players of instruments). But, in the written history of Jamaican popular music, the musicians remain, paradoxically and regrettably, the most unsung of all.
There are yet other portions of the proverbial half that has never been told that cannot be given equal time here, though these too are deserving of attention. Although the testimonies in this book occasionally point to sources of musical inspiration from beyond Jamaica, the primary focus stays on local roots and concerns. Once again, this is because I selected passages in which points were made emphatically; and these musicians tended to become particularly animated and to speak with special conviction when discussing ways in which they felt their music was specifically Jamaican. Yet Jamaica has never been closed to the rest of the world. If one were to draw on other interviews (or indeed, other sections of those excerpted in this book), it would be possible to construct a view rather different from what is presented here—one oriented more toward North American or other foreign influences than indigenous sources. This view has value as well. Make no mistake: Jamaica’s session musicians always have been cosmopolitan