Contents - Beth Lesser

club and a guy ask you what you drinking – a Babycham, a pop or whatever
you like to drink, and there would be a saucer, or maybe a $100 bill with some
blow for you to nice up your nose.” Burro witnessed the same scene developing
in the ‘80s. “You see, when you really go to New York now and see the
settings, the music surround a lot of drugs people. A man put on a party, a
lot of drugs man comes, and you get sucked into the thing. And if you don’t
really make a good step, the drugs thing gonna take away you career. Cause
money you looking, and bad things carry money. Some people gone a prison,
some poor, some coked out. It just kill your career.”
New York and Miami were the dual epicenters of the fast money phenomenon,
and too many of the early ‘80s dancehall artists ended up in either
city, drawn in to the glamorous high life. Deejay Burro Banton, who made it
through successfully, spent several years in the big apple observing the scene.
He speaks of the fascination living abroad held for so many. “When you come
to New York and you don’t know about it, it coming so lovely that you’re not
even checking that no Jamaican artist nah really bust a New York. After, you
start to think these things. But you get so caught up, it seems like you can’t go
back. People grabbing after the money, they get caught in a corruption thing.
You push [open] doors whe’ you never supposed to push.”
New York was like a black hole in the ‘80s. Artists could easily be sucked
in and swallowed up. Sound after sound left Jamaica and never returned. And
those left at home longed to go abroad where they imagined streets paved with
miles of gold rope chains. Little John had a song, “Foreign Mind and local
body,” warning artists that foreign was for foreigners, not Jamaicans. But as
Burro says, “The musicians ina my time was searching to eat some food.”
Black Star was one of those sounds that languished after touring New York
and getting stuck abroad. Only Malvo made it back to Jamaica to launch
a fruitful career in the new digital world. “Mostly in the ‘80s, a lot of guy
who came to America didn’t go home and their career died. It never work
out cause, after a time, everything changed,” Malvo explains. “The ‘party’
man pay you more than whe’ the [ordinary] promoter pay you. So, when you
come, if you’re not strong, you would stay – because they are buying you gifts.
I remember, one day I went to the store, and the man say, ‘A whe’ you name
– Malvo? You are my singer. Pick up anything you want!’ And I pick up two
shirt and two pants and the man say, ‘A whe’ you doing, you embarrassing
me? I said, pick up anything.’ So, I pick up eight pair of shoes, eight pants,
eight shirts. It was Bally. Bally is an expensive shoes. So, if you weren’t strong,
you would never leave, you would never go back to Jamaica. They start to take
cocaine, get messed up and loose them life and some of them go to jail. A
couple of them in the U.S. right now, they can’t go back home. They’re stuck
and their career just die out.”
Throughout the ‘80s, as Jamaicans continued to migrate northwards, they
carried their music with them. The sound system scene was booming. The
top venue, the Galaxy Ballroom, featured local sounds like Papa Moke with
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