The playlist: reggae – Wayne Smith, Super Cat and Shabba Ranks

Last week the Jamaican novelist Marlon James unleashed his 600-page-plus blockbuster of a book A Brief History of Seven Killings. It’s a story that starts with the attempt on Bob Marley’s life in Kingston in 1976, and then reaches outwards to Miami and New York and forwards to the 1990s. Music looms large over Jamaican life, culture and history, so James has chosen five key tunes that take in the whole of the era covered by his novel.

However, there’s no Bob Marley. “I could have easily included on. Even though the story starts with the whole attempt on Marley, it goes on a good 15 years. It’s about people involved with him, but it’s not a Bob Marley novel. And at the same time, the people in the book, what they would have been listening too – it probably wouldn’t have been him. This is what the characters would be into – and not me. Not what I would like or what is cool, but what would have soundtracked the people in those places.”

General Echo – Arleen

“From the early 70 – it’s the first song that makes mention of the home guard: ‘Whether home guard or a whether bodyguard, a one general inna de yard,’” James says, referring to the controversial, politically affiliated and community-based home guard security scheme of 1970s Kingston. “It was also a popular song when I was growing up, but you couldn’t sing it in my house because my parents hated reggae.”

Wayne Smith – Sleng Teng

“In the early 80s, post-Marley death and so on, there’s definitely Tenor Saw’s Ring the Alarm, Anthony Red Rose’s Tempo or Sister Nancy’s Bam Bam. But the early 80s is also the big paradigm shift with dancehall, so I would think of something like Sleng Teng. For one, the idea that anybody could come up with something on a Casio keyboard in their bedroom suddenly made a room full of studio musicians irrelevant. That never totally happened. This is Jamaica. It wasn’t the death knell that people thought it would be, but it did bring a DIY movement to dancehall. The 85-86 period when roots reggae was sliding into total irrelevance, Black Uhuru had broken up – dancehall was really starting to become the soundtrack of young people. I was a teenager around the time. Roots reggae at the time wasn’t saying anything new and I still don’t think it is. People want things that reflect their reality or their fantasy.”

Boogie Down Productions – The Bridge is Over

“This excitement of the digital riddim, you are hearing it in new wave, you are hearing it on TV, you are hearing it on Superstation TBS Friday Night videos, you are hearing it in rap music—because The Message just came out. This unbroken dialogue between Jamaica and the US for one and hip-hop and dancehall for the other. It had started even though no one was writing about it yet. It was a big moment—a big turning point. So mid-80s, certainly since we’re now in New York in the book, I’d probably think of something hip-hop with a Jamaican connection. Something like KRS One, The Bridge is Over.”

Shabba Ranks – Mr Loverman

“Dancehall provided the first fissure between UK and Jamaica as the dialogue became increasingly with New York and Miami. This is not to say that people weren’t crossing over – Aswad had a big 80s, Maxi Priest had a big 80s. Shabba was the biggest shift in dancehall since Sleng Teng. Dancehall was writing its way into oblivion until Shabba showed up. It was just sliding in to this violent, almost cartoonish misogyny. And nobody had anything left to say. Musically it wasn’t going anywhere either. It’s not that Shabba was doing anything new; he was just praising girls’ sexual skills. There was a level of humour that [superseded] the absolute mean spiritedness that was taking over dancehall. He was probably the first real crossover star in years – he was the first dancehall star who made women feel welcome. Sure, it was just praising sex, but still.”

Super Cat – Ghetto Red Hot remix

“Every now and then you need a reminder of just how brutal and tough it is out there and that the ghetto isn’t getting better. In a lot of ways it had just gotten worse. My take on Super Cat is that he was always the smartest of the DJs. And this song is some of the most hardcore lyrics and some of the smartest. It is just so well written: ‘Yuh full a big chat and cyan defend that/ If a jailhouse ya come from we send in you go back.’ There’s no sentimentality or remorse, but there is a lot of wit. The remix is more important than the original. It was a pretty interesting remix. Usually when dancehall gets a remix it gets the most generic pop and R&B beats. This was as hard as a hardcore hip-hop song. That year it was probably the only dancehall song on just about every hip-hop mixtape between, say, a Cypress Hill and a Brand Nubian. It wasn’t the first of the hip-hop/dancehall hybrids, but was the most impressive.”

Honorable mentions

James insists on a couple of extras – non reggae, non hip-hop – that figure significantly in the book. “There are two that have pretty big scenes,” he says, “The Velvet Underground’s I Found a Reason is one. One of the characters who leaves Jamaica sings, over and over the line ‘I do believe if you don’t like things you leave’ – she sings that because her American boyfriend used to play it. And there is a funny scene with a Jamaican nursemaid and this in-his-60s white man dancing dancing and air-guitaring to Prince’s Let’s Go Crazy in her Bronx apartment. And, of course, Andy Gibb’s Shadow Dancing. These two tunes demonstrate that music in Jamaica is more than reggae.”