Contents - Beth Lesser

Barrington Levy & Jah
Thomas
“I t’s hard to pin a musical change down to any one component,” mused
drummer Santa Davis who played on the first Jah Life/Junjo sessions. Yet,
one of those possible components is the influence of the singer. “The singer
would come into the studio and it depends on the kind of song he’s singing,”
Santa continues. “Once the singer start singing now, he has a certain attitude
and you [as a musician] kinda adapt to that – that style, that vibe – cause it’s
a vibration.”
Barrington Levy had a new vibration. The interaction between the adolescent
vocalist and the young but experienced session men, created an electrifying
musical mix that reflected a change in the course of reggae.
In 1979, when Junjo and Jah Life began working with him, Barrington
was still a ragamuffin youth. According to Jah Life, “Barrington, now, him
used to just wild, do all kinda wild stuff, just run up and down, run down
[chase] girls and all them thing there like a little kid – cause he really was a
little kid still.” But he was already blessed with a rich voice and the ability to
make up lyrics on the spot. Wherever he went, whatever he was doing, he accompanied
himself with song. Always performing or joking around, he would
entertain friends with his imitations of well known people in the business,
from Gregory Isaacs on stage, to the Hookims at Channel One.
Barrington’s mother and father strongly objected to his entering the music
business. They wanted him to be an “auto mechanical engineer”. But Barrington
couldn’t stay away, “He [my father] beat me because if he send me to
the shop to pick something up for him and then I go out and I start to hear
certain songs, I get carried away, forget all about what my father send me out
for.” So, to pursue his career, he had to leave home. His family had recently
moved from Kingston to the country where Barrington felt he had no hope
of connecting with music industry. “So, I have to run away and go back to
Kingston.”
Back in Kingston, Barrington joined a group called The Mighty Multitude,
and passed the time hanging out in Backto and in Payneland where he
often performed with Burning Spear Sound and Tapetone. The group cut a
record in 1975, a 45 called ‘Black Girl’. It never came out in Jamaica but sold
a few copies in the U.S. and England, enough to earn them a contract with
Dynamic Records in Kingston. The group stayed together just long enough
to record one more 45, ‘Been a Long Long Time’, before disbanding. That left
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