Contents - Beth Lesser

King Jammy & Sleng
Teng
“Once Sleng Teng came out, it changed everything”
– CARLTON LIVINGSTON
When Wayne’s Smith’s hit 45, ‘Sleng Teng’ made its debut in early 1985,
reggae music was transformed. Jamaicans were instantly captivated by
the quirky rhythm track built using a simple electronic keyboard. ‘Sleng Teng’
was the first fully ‘computerized’ rhythm to have such a big impact. That one
hit rendered obsolete everything that had come before and set reggae on a
course that it is still following today, utilizing almost exclusively computerized,
programmable instruments.
SlenG TenG
The story of ‘Sleng Teng’ began in Waterhouse, Kingston 11, with a Casio
keyboard and two young men with time on their hands, Wayne Smith and his
friend Noel Dailey * . Wayne and Noel found something they liked among the
pre-set programs and made up a little ditty to sing over it. The rhythm was a
rock setting on the Casio designed to emulate Eddie Cochrane’s ‘Come On
Everybody’. But, just when they had the little machine rocking, the battery
went dead and Noel took his Casio home to check it out. Wayne was at home
waiting, when his friends came by and told him that Noel was on the corner
playing the new rhythm they had created.
Fearing that someone might steal the idea, Wayne rushed to the corner
where Noel was serenading his friends, and insisted that the two of them take
their find directly to the studio of the legendary Waterhouse producer and
engineer, King Jammy.
“When we go up to Jammys, Noel put on the thing. We put on the speed
to my speed and my key that I sing in. And then when he [Jammy] hear it he
says, ‘Wha’? Alright!’”
“Jammys was like a kid,” remembers singer Anthony Redrose. “Anything
that you tell Jammys to do, like if you come to him and say, ‘King, if you play
this, or you play that, it’s gonnna be good’, [he would say], ‘Ok, let’s go in the
* Wayne mistakenly referred to him, previously, as ‘ Noel Davy’, as quoted in Reggae Quarterly and
King Jammys
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