I have found myself once again coming to understand what really happened in Jamaica, in this case, Port Antonio. Ignorance is a kind of reverse (but reversable) amnesia. I am realizing the significance of how I fell right into the heart of the Mento scene and met the ghost Errol Flynn. Well not really. But really. Sort of.
Follow me…
On my first visit to Jamaica, on a whim, feeling a bit guilty that I recorded ‘Bush Doctor’ with Earl Chinna Smith, instead of Joseph Whitmore and Bull after becoming friends with them by fate or chance on the streets of Port Antonio, I executive produced their debut album.
Bull and Joseph are part of a generation of Port Antonio musicians carrying the torch of the legendary The Jolly Boys. They are purveyors of a style of Jamaican music that gave birth to everything that followed and changed the world in a movement that literally was a Revolution – Ska, Rocksteady, Reggae, Dancehall.
It was Joseph and Bull who explained to me this last trip that Errol Flynn actually gave The Jolly Boys their name and executive produced their first album.
How I wanted to be in Port Antonio this last trip, but the radio and TV bookings kept coming, until Lenni I-Music was able to smuggle me out of Kingston in the final days on the island, and what a weekend that was. I ended connecting with Reggae Powerhouse Band at the radio station Stylzfm Portland Jamaica, about half way into a magic brownie and the weekend followed that arch of enchantment as I returned to the studio with Joseph & Bull at Burning Spear alumni Devon Bradshaw’s Axxe Studio.
It was there we recorded a song I wrote with Bull and Joseph in mind called ‘Go Tell It To The Mystics’ that was my take on Mento with my Cowboy Creole spin.
This time they brought the current guitar player for The Jolly Boys, Jah T. The first time he heard me sing was at their trio gig at a posh hotel where Mento survives with dignity and rum. I drank a few of the free Rums at Goblin Hill and at Joseph’s nod started singing at their unamplified performance over looking the ocean bay.
My voice cuts through everything with what the Irish call the “Harrah”. For what would often earn me detention and reprimand from my teachers in school, is a tactical weapon on stage. My voice carries and cuts like a trumpet, in an almost supernatural way. As if I was the only one with a microphone, Jah T was starring at me with surprise as I helped Joseph with the trick of erasing the 4th wall between the talent and the bourgeois.
Jah T told me on a few occasions that weekend that, “I got IT”, and to hear that from a Jolly Boy is another plate of armor I need to tough this all out and deflect the mutual destruction pact of self doubt, other humans project upon us in their static panic between fear and flight. The paralysis that freezes men and women in the headlights through most of their days, furiously resentful of those that not afraid to die. Or at least die trying.
When I told Jah T my plan to put Mento back in the Jamaican charts based on his aside that kids no longer dig Mento, his flash of self doubt cut me deep. He of all people might know. But it was the spark that I needed to hatch such a plan. You gotta find inspiration where you can. I told him what happened when I played, ‘Go Tell It To The Mystics’ with the kids in Trench Town.
He looked at me and smiled that “might I be the one to do it.” I replied,
“Not without you.”
This next year Joseph & Bull are going polish their debut album with help from cats like Karl Olson and Kyle Ledford. Lenni I and Enriek Thomas are going to be planning possibly the coolest music video for ‘Go Tell it To The Mystics’ that anybody has seen in quite a long time.
I don’t have much money but I have friends like Ryan Cory, Anthony Red Rose, and BJ DjSticky (Bluejay aka Dj Sticky ), and their friendship is morw worth the weight than any pirate ship so full of gold it falls to the bottom of the sea.
But I must understand the scene of the crime, where the Jamaican Grandson of a Dutch Jew chasing diamonds and gold, Harry Belafonte started a worldwide Calypso craze with an album that spent 99 weeks in the charts starting in 1956. This album was so big the marketing department at RCA neglected to articulate the nuance that half this album including the Banana Boat song was actually the Mento of his own island of heritage.
When Joseph and Bull’s Mento album is done, I am going to get it to Belafonte anyway I can.
Back to Mento, listening attentively and sweeping the floors of Leer Castle by the strike of midnight, not so well.
Tonight I studied the 1956 Pop classic, Calypso. Harry Belafonte explores the roots music of his parent’s island of Jamaica and takes the sounds of Mento & Calypso to the top of the charts.
This album stayed in the pop charts for 99 weeks and set the stage for every Jamaican craze that followed, and the international stardom of Bob Marley and Bob Dylan. But Marley never got as big in his lifetime in the USA as Harry Belafonte. Dylan never ruled the charts like Calypso did. Belafonte man was a triple threat, a great mind, and a civil rights leader. He still is.
Davin’s new song has been released and is fast becoming a dancehall hit. Listen here on Reggaeville: DAVIN MICHAEL STEDMAN & ANTHONY RED ROSE – FREE YOUR MIND FEAT. SLY & ROBBIE WITH LENKY MARSDEN
– Musician and writer Davin Michael Stedman has many musical ventures and is one of the driving forces behind the Staxx Brothers. He has just returned from three weeks of networking and reporting from Kingston, Jamaica. Next stop, Lagos, Nigeria.
