an all time favorite from Capleton
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Friday, August 24, 2012
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Mercury Riddim ting
Ya, as mercury scientist from ever since, still can't get enough of this Jah Snowcone Riddim two months later...pure slackness, but that riddim is mad sick...infectious
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Human Resources and Social Engineering
Crucial documentary from the same crew as Psy Wars below...
"its mind control, destruction of your soul..."
Monday, August 20, 2012
Flashback: Neeko's Junior Reid Productions Boomshot mix
http://neeko.podomatic.com/entry/2009-08-23T23_17_27-07_00
Neeko is no joke. A French mixtape assassin, culture warrior, conscious youth. Here is another masterpiece from a couple years back highlighting Junior Reids talents on the mic and in the studio. All Killer, No Filler...
Neeko is no joke. A French mixtape assassin, culture warrior, conscious youth. Here is another masterpiece from a couple years back highlighting Junior Reids talents on the mic and in the studio. All Killer, No Filler...
The genesis of "war"
From Jamaican Gleaner
Genesis of War
One of the most interesting and intriguing features of early Jamaican music was the prevalence of verbal clashes between artistes. In Jamaican parlance at the time, it was referred to as 'throw word' or 'musical wars'.
Quite different from what's happening in today's Jamaican music scene, it sometimes started out acrimoniously, then peters out to friendly confrontations, devoid of physical combats by the performers. These throw words, which were conveyed in the actual recordings were at times very harsh, but as one musicologist puts it, "It was designed to create controversy in order to enhance record sales."
Unfortunately though, many ardent fans failed to realise this and sometimes formed warring factions to defend their idols - a stark resemblance to 'die hard' political party followers who sometimes kill each other for political gains, while politicians from both parties knock glasses at cocktail parties.
Many of the early verbal music clashes, or musical wars, traded lyrics to and fro, sometimes covering as many as half a dozen songs. The ska era (the early 1960s), was when this phenomenon really emerged in Jamaica. As early as 1962, late record producer and larger-than-life sound system operator, Clement 'Sir Coxson' Dodd, used the 13-year-old Delroy Wilson as a weapon to verbally chastise Prince Buster, his arch-rival and former employee. Wilson was barely out of short pants, and still attending Boys' Town Primary School when he made his first set of recordings for Dodd in 1962. Buster had just previously parted company with Dodd in acrimonious fashion, announcing his displeasure with him in a composition titled One Hand Wash The Other, which had ominous overtones in the words:
And every bad move they try,
I pass them by and by,
I leave them to cry,
They might even die.
Wilson's Joe Liges in late 1962 was in direct response to Buster's outcry when he rebuked him with:
Don't you criticise
Your name is Joe Liges,
One hand wash the other
But you don't remember your brother.
Wilson, while still in his early teens, followed up with further verbal attacks on Buster in the recordings I Shall Not Remove, The Lion Of Judas, and Remember Your Nest, the last of those warning:
Don't you forget that nest where you used to rest,
for you, the Sir has done his very best,
you are ungrateful to call him a fool,
you should never forget that nest where you used to rest.
BUSTER LIKENED TO PHARAOH
Dodd added his voice to the proceedings when he joined Wilson (as the first local rapper he claimed) in the recording Prince Pharaoh, which likened Buster to the offspring of the nefarious King Pharaoh of biblical times. Dodd raps in prelude to Wilson's entry:
'When I say go down, I mean go down.
I have no use for you,
your father was King Pharaoh and you are Prince Pharaoh,
you must go down like you father did go down,
go down and drop your crown'.
Buster, in the meantime, had replies in They Got To Come My Way, King, Duke and Sir, among others.
But perhaps the most exciting episode in these early verbal musical clashes was that between Prince Buster and Derrick Morgan.
That episode unfolded shortly after Morgan left Buster's employ to record for the Chinese producer, Leslie Kong, who paid almost twice as much as Buster.
The move infuriated Buster. That anger was compounded by Morgan's recording of a ska number called Forward March, one of the most played songs about Jamaica's Independence.
The problem arose when Buster claimed that a saxophone solo which he created was copied and used in Forward March.
Buster voiced his views on 'the theft' in a recording where he says:
You stole my belongings and give to your Chiney man,
God in heaven knows that you are wrong,
Are you a Chiney man or are you a black man?
It needs no eyeglass to see that your skin is black.
Morgan's response was emphatic:
'You said it, I am a blackhead Chinese
But when I was with you, I was like a bull in a pen,
Live and let others live and your days will be much longer.
The verbal exchanges between the two continued with Buster's Praise Without Raise, Creation, and Chinese Jacket, and Morgan's No Raise No Praise and Don't Call Me Daddy.
OTHER CONFRONTATIONS
Morgan also had other verbal musical confrontations, one with the gifted vocalist Lloyd Clarke, who berated him in a recording titled You Can't Sing. Morgan responded with:
You should be ashamed to hurt a good-hearted woman,
a man of your type should die insane
Imagine a baby you refuse to mind.
According to Clarke, who hangs out in the St William Grant Park, he was being rebuked by Morgan for leaving behind a young baby to go on an overseas tour.
On another occasion in 1962, Morgan rebuked Owen Gray in a recording titled Be Still part of which ran:
Be still I'm your superior, so please be still.
when a lion is sleeping never you try to wake him.
According to Morgan, he was responding to Gray's boastful declaration that he was a better singer.
In 1968, I Am The Upsetter by Lee 'Scratch' Perry was a big hit for producer Joe Gibbs.
The song was a personal attack on Dodd, with whom Perry had previously worked:
You'll never get away from me,
I am the upsetter
Suffer you bound to suffer.
You take people for fool yeah,
Then use them as a tool yeah,
But I am the avenger.
Perry, who gave yeoman's service to Coxson and then Gibbs as co-producer, engineer, talent scout and audition man, became very successful doing his own business in later years. He also parted company with Gibbs unceremoniously with a cut called People Funny Boy directed at Gibbs.
Gibbs hit back with one he wrote titled People Grudgeful. There were other instances of verbal clashes in early Jamaican music, but perhaps these stood out.
Genesis of War
The colourful Lee 'Scratch' Perry in performance.
One of the most interesting and intriguing features of early Jamaican music was the prevalence of verbal clashes between artistes. In Jamaican parlance at the time, it was referred to as 'throw word' or 'musical wars'.
Quite different from what's happening in today's Jamaican music scene, it sometimes started out acrimoniously, then peters out to friendly confrontations, devoid of physical combats by the performers. These throw words, which were conveyed in the actual recordings were at times very harsh, but as one musicologist puts it, "It was designed to create controversy in order to enhance record sales."
Unfortunately though, many ardent fans failed to realise this and sometimes formed warring factions to defend their idols - a stark resemblance to 'die hard' political party followers who sometimes kill each other for political gains, while politicians from both parties knock glasses at cocktail parties.
Many of the early verbal music clashes, or musical wars, traded lyrics to and fro, sometimes covering as many as half a dozen songs. The ska era (the early 1960s), was when this phenomenon really emerged in Jamaica. As early as 1962, late record producer and larger-than-life sound system operator, Clement 'Sir Coxson' Dodd, used the 13-year-old Delroy Wilson as a weapon to verbally chastise Prince Buster, his arch-rival and former employee. Wilson was barely out of short pants, and still attending Boys' Town Primary School when he made his first set of recordings for Dodd in 1962. Buster had just previously parted company with Dodd in acrimonious fashion, announcing his displeasure with him in a composition titled One Hand Wash The Other, which had ominous overtones in the words:
And every bad move they try,
I pass them by and by,
I leave them to cry,
They might even die.
Wilson's Joe Liges in late 1962 was in direct response to Buster's outcry when he rebuked him with:
Don't you criticise
Your name is Joe Liges,
One hand wash the other
But you don't remember your brother.
Wilson, while still in his early teens, followed up with further verbal attacks on Buster in the recordings I Shall Not Remove, The Lion Of Judas, and Remember Your Nest, the last of those warning:
Don't you forget that nest where you used to rest,
for you, the Sir has done his very best,
you are ungrateful to call him a fool,
you should never forget that nest where you used to rest.
BUSTER LIKENED TO PHARAOH
Dodd added his voice to the proceedings when he joined Wilson (as the first local rapper he claimed) in the recording Prince Pharaoh, which likened Buster to the offspring of the nefarious King Pharaoh of biblical times. Dodd raps in prelude to Wilson's entry:
'When I say go down, I mean go down.
I have no use for you,
your father was King Pharaoh and you are Prince Pharaoh,
you must go down like you father did go down,
go down and drop your crown'.
Buster, in the meantime, had replies in They Got To Come My Way, King, Duke and Sir, among others.
But perhaps the most exciting episode in these early verbal musical clashes was that between Prince Buster and Derrick Morgan.
That episode unfolded shortly after Morgan left Buster's employ to record for the Chinese producer, Leslie Kong, who paid almost twice as much as Buster.
The move infuriated Buster. That anger was compounded by Morgan's recording of a ska number called Forward March, one of the most played songs about Jamaica's Independence.
The problem arose when Buster claimed that a saxophone solo which he created was copied and used in Forward March.
Buster voiced his views on 'the theft' in a recording where he says:
You stole my belongings and give to your Chiney man,
God in heaven knows that you are wrong,
Are you a Chiney man or are you a black man?
It needs no eyeglass to see that your skin is black.
Morgan's response was emphatic:
'You said it, I am a blackhead Chinese
But when I was with you, I was like a bull in a pen,
Live and let others live and your days will be much longer.
The verbal exchanges between the two continued with Buster's Praise Without Raise, Creation, and Chinese Jacket, and Morgan's No Raise No Praise and Don't Call Me Daddy.
OTHER CONFRONTATIONS
Morgan also had other verbal musical confrontations, one with the gifted vocalist Lloyd Clarke, who berated him in a recording titled You Can't Sing. Morgan responded with:
You should be ashamed to hurt a good-hearted woman,
a man of your type should die insane
Imagine a baby you refuse to mind.
According to Clarke, who hangs out in the St William Grant Park, he was being rebuked by Morgan for leaving behind a young baby to go on an overseas tour.
On another occasion in 1962, Morgan rebuked Owen Gray in a recording titled Be Still part of which ran:
Be still I'm your superior, so please be still.
when a lion is sleeping never you try to wake him.
According to Morgan, he was responding to Gray's boastful declaration that he was a better singer.
In 1968, I Am The Upsetter by Lee 'Scratch' Perry was a big hit for producer Joe Gibbs.
The song was a personal attack on Dodd, with whom Perry had previously worked:
You'll never get away from me,
I am the upsetter
Suffer you bound to suffer.
You take people for fool yeah,
Then use them as a tool yeah,
But I am the avenger.
Perry, who gave yeoman's service to Coxson and then Gibbs as co-producer, engineer, talent scout and audition man, became very successful doing his own business in later years. He also parted company with Gibbs unceremoniously with a cut called People Funny Boy directed at Gibbs.
Gibbs hit back with one he wrote titled People Grudgeful. There were other instances of verbal clashes in early Jamaican music, but perhaps these stood out.
Mama Said mash up
I was wondering if there was a reggae version of this, this mash up does the trick...
Search for the Spiderweb
This video was very inspirational in writing Computer Rise for Red Bull Music Academy as it showcases the loss of traditional instrumentation in the onslaught of digital music. I love digital music, and there is no Luddite tendencies for exploring sound, but it is tragic when Africa refuses her native percussion for 8-bit laptop programs. The sounds from Africa to Jamaica to Brooklyn are becoming homogenized into a trendy, pasteurized and inorganic amalgam of "world music." This genre has its place, but witness the effect on cultures as a slow march towards monotone sonic hegemony.
Shinehead and Keefaz
Saturday, August 18, 2012
Friday, August 17, 2012
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Psy Wars
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Monday, August 13, 2012
Sunday, August 12, 2012
Saturday, August 11, 2012
Friday, August 10, 2012
St. Josephine Bakhita Primary School "Welcome"
Settle down and feel at home while the St. Josephone Bakhita Primary School sweetly sing you a welcome:
Thursday, August 9, 2012
Kinky Reggae
Kinky Reggae: The Agony and The Ecstasy of Sex in Jamaica
By Frederick R. Dannaway (www.HighStylus.com)
In its 50th year of independence, Jamaican music scholar Frederick R Dannaway charts the ebb and flow of a nation’s sexuality through its music – from mento, rocksteady, reggae, dancehall and more.
Blue Beat
Although there are more churches per capita than anywhere else in the world, Jamaicans are not, and never have been, puritanical. Perhaps it’s the island heat that makes clothing superfluous, combined with the seductive riddims that infuses Jamaica with sexuality. Sex and music go together like ackee and saltfish, and Jamaica is saturated with both from the rent-a-dreads trysting with white woman, to the orgies of the Hedonism resort and the indigenous sexuality of the dancehall. The rhetoric and fundamentalism in Jamaica emerged when foreigners descended en masse into military guarded enclaves for the rich – otherwise known as resorts – which overtly broke Jamaican laws of decency in an orgy of neo-colonialism, debauched materialism and racial elitism, expressed in fortified tropic paradises firewalled from the island poverty by razor wire and military guards.
Read the rest at Red Bull Music Academy: http://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/magazine/kinky-reggae
Saturday, August 4, 2012
Friday, August 3, 2012
Righteous Indignation
http://themalaika.com/2012/06/19/luciano-burns-fire-on-sizzla-beenie-man-khago-more-during-sound-chat-radio-interview/
It was a heck of night on Irish and Chin’s Sound Chat Radio on Tuesday, June 12, when Luciano “The Messenger” called in to give his very opinionated view on the state of Dancehal music with host Chin. The singer spoke his mind openly on the state of the music industry, often making very direct statements, with no regrets. Luciano touched on his feelings concerning Beenie Man’s apology to the gay community; Sizzla recording a diss track aimed at his fellow dancehall artists; Khago admitting to not being a Rasta despite wearing locks and having a catalogue of concious music; Natural Black cutting his locks in order to pursue Dancehall among a host of other current controversies. During this rather piercing interview, no stones were left unturned.
In case you didn’t catch this interview, we urge you to click below to listen. It would be a disservice to give away all of the specific comments that Luciano made, but you better believe that more than one person will forever remember such quotes as “Beenie Man is like a spider caught in his own web” and “Anthony B too has thrown away his turban and is now wearing tight up pants and pointed-toe boots setting no good example.”
It was a heck of night on Irish and Chin’s Sound Chat Radio on Tuesday, June 12, when Luciano “The Messenger” called in to give his very opinionated view on the state of Dancehal music with host Chin. The singer spoke his mind openly on the state of the music industry, often making very direct statements, with no regrets. Luciano touched on his feelings concerning Beenie Man’s apology to the gay community; Sizzla recording a diss track aimed at his fellow dancehall artists; Khago admitting to not being a Rasta despite wearing locks and having a catalogue of concious music; Natural Black cutting his locks in order to pursue Dancehall among a host of other current controversies. During this rather piercing interview, no stones were left unturned.
In case you didn’t catch this interview, we urge you to click below to listen. It would be a disservice to give away all of the specific comments that Luciano made, but you better believe that more than one person will forever remember such quotes as “Beenie Man is like a spider caught in his own web” and “Anthony B too has thrown away his turban and is now wearing tight up pants and pointed-toe boots setting no good example.”
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