Bwoy mi a hear so much hip strings, melody and beat inna

[Assasin]

the dancehall music them, it make me wonder why people should want to buy hip hop out a Jamaica.

Our musicians innovation has been one of the thing that kept reggae afloat so now you can't tell the beat different from a Beyonce and Jay Zee beat, what's the use?

[Bricktop]

Yuh can't fight it. Every puss dawg and rat can now mek a riddim suh yuh jus haffi sift through the garbage

[Assasin]

You right but some a the "top producer" them a flood the market with it.
I can understand one or two bars and one and two strings but .....

[Historian]

Not Surprising

the dancehall music them, it make me wonder why people should want to buy hip hop out a Jamaica.

Our musicians innovation has been one of the thing that kept reggae afloat so now you can't tell the beat different from a Beyonce and Jay Zee beat, what's the use?

Assasin, the answer is obvious, and you in fact suggested it in your on-target statement, “Our musician (sic) innovation has been one of the thing (sic) that kept reggae afloat.” Baddaz is also very correct in his reply to your post above (in fact, I like how Baddaz stated it ).

By the way, there is nothing wrong with replicating the sweet sounds of the violin family (strings) on recordings, and I’ve always felt that too many unimaginative reggae arrangers and musicians stagnated the music with their single-minded focus on the rhythm section, as if bass and drums are the only instruments of importance ! I can only recall very few reggae recordings in the early days that attempted any imaginative use of strings. If my memory is correct, people like Bob & Marcia (“Young, Gifted and Black”), John Holt and one or two others were the only artists on whose recordings the sound of violins (synthesizer strings usually) could be heard.

But back to your comment. Today, musicians’ roles tend to be limited, in far too many instances, to reproducing on stage the creations of record producers and their engineers as they provide backing for individual singers and groups (whose in-studio, “one-man” arrangements have already been recorded and so need to be reproduced in like fashion at live concerts). A similar thing takes place in hip hop. So, in both genres, we find that every Tom, Dick and Harry who fancies himself as a producer, and who can afford expensive recording gadgets, turns out new records with arrangements emanating from inside their heads.

The bottom line, and this takes us back to your correct statement, Assasin, is that a producer will most likely NOT be able to create the type of interesting keyboard lines that a virtuoso keyboard player can. The same applies for the other instruments (drums, horns, etc.) and their specialist players. At least in the old days producers like our Clement “Coxone” Dodd, King Tubby and others used to sit back and let the musicians and studio arrangers make music decisions.

I was fascinated by a series on MTV and MTV2 during this summer which featured Sean “P Diddy” Combs trying to create his perfect backup band through a series of auditions. The young musicians auditioned were very talented, and technically and tastefully outstanding. Yet, I suspect that the final band will be called on to back Diddy on stage through playing stuff that Diddy’s producers and engineers had cooked up .

[Gamma]

i thought that chalice ad third world were imaginative in their use of strings...well moreso third world...i guess because if cat coore's formal musical training

[Historian]

Re: Chalice and Third World

i thought that chalice ad third world were imaginative in their use of strings...well moreso third world...i guess because if cat coore's formal musical training

Very good point, Gamma, and thanks for the reminder about Third World and Chalice, both of whom really used strings in imaginative ways .

In the case of Third World, in addition to Stephen “Cat” Coore’s formal musical training, like you mentioned, there was also keyboard player Michael “Ibo” Cooper’s formal musical training as well (I always saw Ibo Cooper as the most outstanding of the musicians in Third World). Today, Cooper is still, I believe, a teacher at the Jamaica School of Music, a post he took up several years ago.

In fact, Gamma, if I’m asked to select an all-time favorite reggae band, it would come down to a tie between Third World and Dean Fraser’s 809 Band! These two aggregations featured some of the most technically outstanding musicians one could find anywhere, and their music displayed this!

Looking a bit closer at both bands, while one might not always highly rate Third World’s bass player Richard Daley, for example, there was absolutely no weak link in the 809 Band!! I’ll always remember ahead-of-their-time musicians in 809 Band, such as bass player Mikey Fletcher (who later became Sean Paul’s bass player), lead guitarist Leroy “Gibby” Morrison (probably the best rock guitarist anywhere in Jamaica during the 1980s and 1990s, and who has worked with people like Jimmy Cliff, Ernie Ranglin, Mutabaruka, Fahrenheit, and so on).

In the case of Chalice, the late Michael Wallace contributed a lot to the keyboard innovations on their recordings. Interestingly (in the context of this conversation), at the time Wallace was killed, he had left Chalice and was a member of Third World, having replaced Ibo Cooper who had gone on to do solo projects.

[Assasin]

Lloyd Parkes and We the people was also a very good band although Lloyd end up giving up singing to back Dennis Brown and others.

But the quality can't be denied. Dean also played with them.

[Hortical]

True, most of what I hear is garbage and yuh haffi be patient fi find sumtin with a likkle creativity.

[Historian]

Re: Lloyd Parkes

Lloyd Parkes and We the people was also a very good band although Lloyd end up giving up singing to back Dennis Brown and others.

But the quality can't be denied. Dean also played with them.

For me, Lloyd Parkes and We the People was a very good, solid, tight reggae band, just like the Sagittarius Band, the Soul Syndicate Band (featuring Earl “Chinna” Smith), Errol Lee and the Bare Essentials, the Boris Gardiner Happening, and other top-calibre reggae bands were.

However, the difference between those bands on the one hand, and on the other an aggregation like Dean Fraser’s 809 Band or Third World is the level of creativeness; or if you prefer, taking the music to another level. In fact, from the release of their very first album in the Prilly Hamilton days (listen to, for example, their version of the classic “Satta Amassagana”), Third World was obviously a “different” type of group!

The same applies to Fraser’s 809 Band, where we had slapping bass and rock-influenced searing guitar solos when other groups were bogged down with the I-II-V simplistic groove, and little else. Listen to the 809 Band’s version of Ken Boothe’s “Moving Away”, for example, and see the potential that reggae possesses, but has rarely been exploited.

[Gamma]

chalice had a very good version of moving away too. i have not heard 809's rendition however.

[Assasin]

as you say a solid band but they like many of our good musician got lazy and was justify with backing a showman since it gave them a good living. the Barrett brothers are another example, but listening to them live you know what could have been in the studio.

[Historian]

Correction

I’ll always remember ahead-of-their-time musicians in 809 Band, such as bass player Mikey Fletcher (who later became Sean Paul’s bass player)

I mistakenly stated that Mikey Fletcher is the bass player for Sean Paul. That was an error made while typing too fast. Fletcher is actually the bass player for Shaggy.

[Historian]

Damn, Another Correction!!

Baddaz is also very correct in his reply to your post above (in fact, I like how Baddaz stated it ).

I guess no one bothers to read my posts! How else could a major error I made early this morning stand all day with no comment?!!

I was just catching up on comments posted since I last checked earlier today when I realized that I had mistakenly referred to Bricktop as “Baddaz”!! Did nobody realize this error? Anyway, I hope you accept my apology for the error, Bricktop!

[Assasin]

I saw it but sometimes we can get pass mistakes and get to the meat. I am sure bricky nuh mind.

[Historian]

Bing....

Up to the top we go (and round ‘n’ round).