Contents - Beth Lesser

Chat one!’ The first slackness me chat, gate tear down! Bouncer, the gateman,
pops down the gate - the dance ram! I was in the west now, which was Echo’s
area, so in order to come in his place and be accepted, I started writing and
building the slack lyrics.”
Ranking Joe (then known as Little Joe) was one of the top ranking deejays
and the one who introduced many people to slackness. Welton Irie remembers
first hearing rude lyrics in the dance with Ranking Joe deejaying on Ray
Symbolic. “That was very mild compared to what is going on now. That was
[considered] slackness because everybody else was culture. You had Big Youth,
U Roy, U Brown - all culture. [Ranking Joe was saying] the tamest things,
but at that time but he was the only one saying those things, so it was a big
deal. Echo took it from him and took it to a slacker level.”
Whereas Ranking Joe was talking some rude lyrics here and there, he never
devoted himself to it the way Echo did. Welton Irie, also a deejay known for
slackness, gives Echo full credit for promoting the style. “Echo really exploded
and bust slackness big time! He was the best at it, regardless of who else was
saying it. Cause he actually made up lyrics about those things and other guys
copy cat. He was the best at it and his following kinda proved that. Cause all
the little girls – teenagers and in their twenties – couldn’t get enough!”
The unquestionable appeal of slackness to women was puzzling and disturbing
to many on the outside. “Much to the chagrin of many middle class
feminists and religious leaders,” commented bandleader, Frankie Campbell,
“it was the women who screamed loudest and danced longest to the slackest
artistes.” According to Welton Irie, “[Echo] had this big girl following. In the
west, there were much more girls than men because a lot of the guys either
died in political war or they were in prison. So, there were women, an excess
amount. So, the funniest thing, the women usually love to hear the slackness,
the most outrageous things. They’re the one making noise and, them
time there, they used to wear some shorts – long before we hear about ‘batty
rider’. * In 1978, girls had some shorts exposing them butt cheeks and they
used have the shoes named ‘ballerina’, the Chinese ‘ballet’ shoes, the kung fu
shoes that the Chinese wear. That was the order of the day. And all the girls in
the Echotone dance would be dressed like that.”
Yet, far from coming across as boorish and uncouth, Echo was able to pull
it all off because he executed his lyrics with a certain good humor, self effacement
and charm. Even his non X-rated lyrics contained his particular brand
of comedy ** . In the Big Youth tradition, Echo sang more than most other
deejays at the time. He combined the skills of comic, impersonator and raconteur,
and came up with a very different style of toasting. Maddo comments,
* Shorts that ride high up on the posterior, exposing several extra inches of skin
** In fact, the LP containing that song, Echo’s Rocking and Swing, produced by Manzie (Dudley
Swaby) and released in 1980, contained no slackness at all, but is still marked with his particular
brand of humour.
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