Contents - Beth Lesser

Chim Cherie
The startlingly new sound, along with Jammy’s solid connections in the
business at home and abroad, ensured that ‘Sleng Teng’ would rapidly circle
the globe, moving much farther and faster than previous musical pieces that
may have used pre-programmed instruments. But, the idea of the pre-programmed
instrument had already reached Jamaica and taken root firmly.
The original link to the early activity was Bob Marley’s bass player, Aston
‘Family Man’ Barrett. “It was in the ‘70s when I and Bob was coming through
California. We were in a music store and we run into this Latin American
machine drum called Rhythm King. So, we listen to it and we like it and so I
say, ‘Yes, that’s nice to accompany [me] when the drummer not around’ - [to]
get a vibes, cause you can speed it up and down and thing. And we bought it
and bring it to Jamaica and put it in our music room. It wasn’t so modern, like
the modern ones, but it was the first.”
With the steady beat provided by the little box, Family Man could sketch
out instrumental backing tracks that might be fleshed out and voiced over at
a later date. “I use it to set the tempo for ‘No Woman No Cry’. Also ‘Revelation’,
also ‘So Jah Say’. I make some machine drum rhythm, but I was only
playing it in 56 Hope Road, in our music room.”
‘Rainbow Country’ was created in the same legendary ‘music room’ at Tuff
Gong, where Bob was living. “We did a lot of demo. I set up the music room
like a demo studio from 1974, two reel to reel machines – one spinning at 71/2,
which is slower than studio speed, and the next one was slower. It was 333/4, a
cassette machine. Those days, we didn’t have any Radio Shack around where
we could buy adapters and thing like that. I was buying wire, cutting it, putting
them together, soldering them, painting it. I was building my own studio.
I would wire the whole thing up so the two tapes can play back, and also
the cassette. Put the rhythm, the drum on one track, leave the other track.
Then put in the piano on the track, other instruments. I would mix it down
to one track, now, and voice it.” Peter Tosh’s 1970 recording, ‘Field Marshal’ *
and its version, ‘No Partial’, was also built around the same the Rhythm King
drum machine.
Bunny Wailer was also attracted by the new sound. “I also did a rhythm
which Bunny Wailer loved,” Family Man recalls, “and he say he want to write
some lyrics for it. It was called ‘Armegedeon’. ** What I do, I vary the speed, I
get it to the tempo which I like and put the percussion on it. There is a button,
when you touch it, it roll like a snare, it you don’t ease your finger off it,
it keep rolling. I just touch it – Tap, rrrrap, rrrrrap tap, then let it go, let the
rhythm play.”
Apart from his work with The Waliers, Family Man continued experimenting
on his own, but found that, at the time, record distributors in Jamai-
* While it had been recorded in 1970, it wasn’t released until five years later
** Appears on the LP Blackheart Man 1976, Solomonic/ Island
294 | RUB A DUB STYLE – The Roots of Modern Dancehall