Contents - Beth Lesser

All the nostalgia for the ‘good old days’ is understandable, but exactly
who is benefitting from it? Right now, the retro trend is becoming a big business
for collectors with the advent of eBay and other auction websites. Deejay
turned selector Welton Irie complains that he is no longer able play only vinyl
in his retro sessions. The original records, now considered ‘oldies’, are highly
desirable, highly priced commodities. The 45s go for $40 or $50, and the
original artists, many of whom are still living in poverty, don’t see a cent.
The advent of CDs presented its own set of problems. U Brown has noticed
that the older companies he licensed his music to back in the ‘70s and ‘80s
have turned around now and re-issued the material in CD form, all without
any acknowledgement of royalties owing. “I produce my album and I license
it to them. They didn’t give me some money and say, ‘Sign this agreement and
I’ll give you 2,000 pounds and you go down and make us an album’.”
Raking Trevor noticed the same thing, “If you check the internet, they
have the songs still selling. They don’t even tell me seh they are going to get
reissued. They supposed to tell me. They supposed to give me an advance and
I don’t get all those things.”
Likewise, the lack of written contracts still haunts many of the foundation
artists. Welton Irie reports, “I just come back [from a tour] and learn that Joe
Gibbs is dead and buried. I did some songs and an album for him back in the
early ‘80s, It Feels so Good. Then I hear that Clive Jarrett has now died, that’s
the Dynamite label. Cause he was releasing some songs for me and I was getting
some royalties.” The death of the studio boss means the end of the line for
an agreement that was made on a word and a handshake.
“It’s not so easy to fix the mistakes of the past,” Veteran musician Clevie
muses. “I worked with one of the artists who worked at Studio One in the
‘70s. I remade one of his songs, and he told me, then, that he had his own
publishing house and was credited accordingly, and so on. I decided to call
Coxsone himself at that time, When I called him, he said, he had a contract
where that artist had signed his publishing to him and he faxed me a copy of
it. And when I showed it to the artists, he said, ‘Ohhhhh. I forgot’.”
Jamaicans are now trying to learn from the past to build a better future
for the artists of today. Still the mistakes of the past can’t be erased so easily.
Vintage artists are still struggling to live in Jamaica today. As they age, with
no savings and no insurance, they are often finding that the health care they
need way beyond their means.
Foundation artists are still, in this day and age, being denied royalties
and performance rights payments because of age old copyright issues. The
problem is that nobody back then ever dreamed their music would amount to
anything outside of Jamaica. They made music for the sake of making music
and hoped for the best.
“Nobody used to get paid then,” Lady Ann recalls. “Nobody used to pay
you. Music then for me was just fun and love. It wasn’t a money thing. We
didn’t know seh people coulda get rich outa music. We just do it cause we love
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