Studio One was the university
Almost everybody who mattered in Jamaican music passed through one building on Brentford Road. What came out of it is still the common language the whole music speaks.
Burning Spear
Singer and songwriter
- Saint Ann's Bay, Jamaica
- 1969 onwards
Winston Rodney took his name from a title given to Jomo Kenyatta, and the choice tells you most of what you need to know about the project. Burning Spear’s records are history lessons: patient, repetitive, built on chant rather than chorus, and concerned above all with memory.
Marcus Garvey, released in 1975, put Garvey’s name in front of an audience that had been taught to forget it. The music underneath is spare and hypnotic, closer in feel to a Nyabinghi grounation than to anything on the pop charts of the time.
Rodney came from Saint Ann’s Bay, the same parish as Garvey. He has said the connection was the point.
On Natty Dub
Nyabinghi, the drums underneath everything
Before the bass line there was a hand drum, a chant and a fire that burned for days. The oldest layer of this music is also the one most listeners never hear.
Ten records to start with
Not the ten best, and not the ten rarest. Ten that will teach you the most about how roots and dub work, in an order that makes sense.