Words of Our Mouth, Meditations of Our Heart. Kenneth Bilby
have continued to look outward. Indeed, whether for artistic or economic reasons, many of them have become world travelers. To get a good sense of this, one need only consider how far I myself had to journey to find some of them. This project brought me not just to Jamaica, but also to London, Birmingham, New York, Miami, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Toronto, Montreal, and elsewhere.
But sometimes it is necessary, when searching for answers, to go back to where it all started. In this case, that is where an essential part of the half that remains to be told can still be found. And many of the thousands of non-Jamaican singers and players of instruments who have carried the flame of Jamaican music around the world, I think, would agree. For no matter how much they have done to make this music their own, lending their own words and giving their own hearts to it, something crucial remains of its original spark—something without which their own creations would be diminished. In much the same way, without the words and the meditations of the actual originators of Jamaican music, our understanding and appreciation of what has become one of the world’s most influential musics would be greatly diminished. By listening to the originators, whose words and images grace these pages, and by remembering the inestimable portion they contributed, we help to keep the flame they long ago ignited burning bright.
Words and Images
Street musician who identified
himself as “Haile Selassie III.”
Port Maria, St. Mary, Jamaica,
2005
Lammy Palmer & Emmanuel Palmer
All of us is Maroon* who scattered from [the] English. Dem deh man [the “first-time” Maroons who fought against the British in the eighteenth century] a mad Jehovah God himself!†—Jehovah God who rule those man, Jehovah God who lead those man, who teach those man. [Singing]:
Guinea bird-oh, seh you gone home-eh
Sa Leone Guinea bird-oh, poor me Guinea bird-oh
Guinea man-oh, poor me Guinea bird-oh
Woy-oh, seh me a fallaline-oh [wanderer, stranger]
Guinea bird-oh, me come from Guinea Coast-oh
Guinea bird-oh, me come from Guinea Coast-oh
• Drums, vocals
• (Lammy: c. 1940–2012)
• (Emmanuel: c. 1938–2012)
• Active from the 1950s
• Maroon Kromanti master drummers
*Maroons: enslaved Africans who escaped and formed their own free communities in the interior of the island. Their present-day descendants maintain four semiautonomous communities in the hills of Jamaica. Kromanti is the name of the African-based spiritual and musical tradition in the three eastern Maroon communities of Moore Town, Scot’s Hall, and Charles Town.
†Meaning, those original Maroons were so spiritually powerful that they used to drive God himself crazy.
Moore Town, Portland, Jamaica, 2008
Alerth Bedasse
Tom the Sebastian* have one of de best sound system, like Coxsone.† Tom the Sebastian deh far ahead of Coxsone. All you hear dem talking about Coxsone, I can tell you dat! Because, to be frank, I used to go out and play a nighttime, Saturday nighttime, for Mr. [Ivan] Chin‡ too. I play whole night, and get pay. I was a sound operator also [for] Mr. Chin. And he would send me to handle de whole thing. [We play] anything [on the set]. We mix—just a mix of calypso, waltz, everything. We can play everything—jazz and all dat. You can play everything what’s happening. You mix dem. They [the sound systems] used to play a lot of my songs. When they would go fe play all “Night Food,” man—oh!—sometime you hear “Night Food” blasting down de road. Oh yeah! They had to do it [i.e., play it on the sound systems]. Because de public want it. Is what de public want, they give de public.
Standout Tracks
Alerth Bedasse and the Calypso Quintet, “Night Food” (1952); Alerth Bedasse and Chin’s Calypso Sextet, “Big Boy and Teacher” (1956)
• Vocals, guitar, banjo, percussion
• (1928–2007)
• Active from the 1940s
• Member of Chin’s Calypso Sextet
• Lead singer, session musician
*Tom the Great Sebastian: one of the most prominent of the early Jamaican sound systems, founded in Kingston by Thomas Wong c. 1950.
†Coxsone: Clement Seymour Dodd (“Sir Coxsone Downbeat”), owner of the renowned Downbeat sound system and famous record producer who launched Studio One.
‡Ivan Chin: early producer of commercial mento recordings in Kingston during the 1950s, who also owned a small sound system.
Kingston, Jamaica, 2005
Arthur Robinson (Bunny)