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Lloyd Knibb
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lloyd Knibb
Born 8 March 1931
Origin Kingston, Jamaica
Died 12 May 2011 (aged 80)
Genres Ska, reggae, rocksteady
Instruments Drums
Years active -2011
Labels Studio One, Treasure Isle, Top Hat
Associated acts The Skatalites
Lloyd Knibb (8 March 1931 – 12 May 2011) was a Jamaican drummer who is primarily known for his contribution to the development of the rhythm of the Ska era. He played for The Skatalites[1] (in the 1960s up to his death), and for Tommy McCook & The Supersonics. Knibb recorded for the producers Lloyd "Matador" Daley and Duke Reid.
[edit]Biography
Born in Kingston, Jamaica,[2] Knibb, like a lot of musicians in the 1940s, honed his craft in jazz bands. His first professional engagement was with the Val Bennett band, but it was with Eric Dean's band where he gained the technical skills to play many styles. Dean's set list included the big band music of Glen Miller as well as the popular dances of the day: rumba, Cha-cha and bolero. Knibb's technical proficiency and wide knowledge of styles soon led to him being featured on the recordings of Coxsone Dodd, Prince Buster, Sonia Pottinger and Duke Reid.[3]
Knibb gained his widest audience, however, as the drummer for The Skatalites. They recorded for the Treasure Isle (Duke Reid), Studio One (Clement Dodd) and Top Hat (Phillip Yap) labels, releasing ska music in the 1960s to an audience that responded to a rhythm that was uniquely Jamaican.[4] Knibb, along with the other original Skatalites members, reformed to play the Reggae Sunsplash concert in Montego Bay, Jamaica in July 1983. The success of the reunion led to the reformation of The Skatalites as a full-time touring band, of which Knibb remained until his death in 2011. He played his last show in Peru in April 2011.[citation needed]
In his later years, Knibb resided in Hull, Massachusetts with his long time friend and fellow musician, John, and his wife, Adele.[citation needed] His son Dion plays in the Boston-based ska band Dion Knibb & The Agitators.
On 12 May, 2011, after being ill for some time with liver cancer and receiving treatment in the USA, Knibb traveled back to his hometown of Kingston, Jamaica to be among his family and friends.[5] Later that day, Knibb died aged 80.[6]
[edit]THERE IS ONLY ONE ONANDI LOWE!
"Good things come out of the garrisons" after his daughter won the 100m Gold For Jamaica.
"It therefore is useless and pointless, unless it is for share malice and victimisation to arrest and charge a 92-year-old man for such a simple offence. There is nothing morally wrong with this man smoking a spliff; the only thing wrong is that it is still on the law books," said Chevannes. -
THERE IS ONLY ONE ONANDI LOWE!
"Good things come out of the garrisons" after his daughter won the 100m Gold For Jamaica.
"It therefore is useless and pointless, unless it is for share malice and victimisation to arrest and charge a 92-year-old man for such a simple offence. There is nothing morally wrong with this man smoking a spliff; the only thing wrong is that it is still on the law books," said Chevannes.Comment
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Rip Lloyd Knibbs- Don't let negative things break you, instead let it be your strength, your reason for growth. Life is for living and I won't spend my life feeling cheated and downtrodden.
Comment
- Don't let negative things break you, instead let it be your strength, your reason for growth. Life is for living and I won't spend my life feeling cheated and downtrodden.
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Lloydie the greatest of them all. Rest in peace brother Knibbs.Comment
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RIP. He has left us with good music.Comment
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THERE IS ONLY ONE ONANDI LOWE!
"Good things come out of the garrisons" after his daughter won the 100m Gold For Jamaica.
"It therefore is useless and pointless, unless it is for share malice and victimisation to arrest and charge a 92-year-old man for such a simple offence. There is nothing morally wrong with this man smoking a spliff; the only thing wrong is that it is still on the law books," said Chevannes.Comment
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During this era, there was a Dance called the "Shuffle", where and who develop this dance? I can't find any information on the Shuffle.
Can you do the Shuffle?Comment
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"Greatest Of Them All"??
RIP Lloyd. You contributed immensely to the development of Jamaican music, in particular ska.
Reggaedoc, boss: With referrence to all the posts above, by what criteria do we measure Lloyd Knibb to claim that he is “the greatest of them all”?!! Is there anything in ska’s rhythm and arrangement that makes it easy for us to access rhythm section – that is, drummers, bass players, keyboardists, guitarists??Originally posted by Reggaedoc View Post
This weakness of ska is one major problem I have with evaluating the ska genre against jazz (and even against reggae), and poster X still fails to realize it! Ska, quite simply, provides a backdrop for talented horn men. Nothing less, nothing more!
Do you note the above sentence? Do you also recall the misleading notion you propagated on this forum that jazz bands obtained some of their players from ska bands. Nothing of the sort! The fact is that the outstanding ska horn men like Tommy McCook, Roland Alphonso and so on went to ska FROM jazz.Originally posted by XComment
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You are truly lost, and it kills you, all what you have said about the foundation of ska coming out of jazz is nothing new,i have said this from my schooling the forumites to ska, what you cannot debate on is the current influence of ska on jazz,its popularity and influence grows.
The rhythmic drum beat is so simple that it provides versatility for other instruements to flow over it not just horns,unlike you i wouldnt say one is greater or lesser in a composition sense but ska influence is undeniable and it grows.
Again i ask that you stay focused never have i said that jazz bands recruit from ska bands,its the latter and i gave you a new york times article to support said claim?ska bands recruit from jazz bands!
Your opinion leaves you grasping for straws in trying to justify jazz as something superior to ska,jazz structure of 4/4 some might argue is limited in range.You trying to put me in a corner stating jazz isnt ska or reggae is bigger than ska now its ska bands recruit into jazz bands? When will you stop?
The 1st thing you need to do is justify to yourself why jazz is a better form of music than ska,when you have done that realise that you might only be convincing yourself.I have an article from all jazz.com and basically it gives a historical description of the westindian influence on jazz.THERE IS ONLY ONE ONANDI LOWE!
"Good things come out of the garrisons" after his daughter won the 100m Gold For Jamaica.
"It therefore is useless and pointless, unless it is for share malice and victimisation to arrest and charge a 92-year-old man for such a simple offence. There is nothing morally wrong with this man smoking a spliff; the only thing wrong is that it is still on the law books," said Chevannes.Comment
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Lords of the West Indies: The Cultural Intersections of Jazz and the English-Speaking Caribbean
SOURCE: ALL ABOUT JAZZ PUBLICITY,
Published: 2008-03-01
By Carter Van Pelt
On March 7 and 8, Jamaican-born pianist Monty Alexander brings a uniquely themed concert to Jazz at Lincoln Center, celebrating both his roots as a Jamaican and the cultural intersections of jazz and the West Indies. Alexander is a celebrated musician whose recording and performance history with Milt Jackson and Ray Brown alone places him squarely in the pedigree of jazz, but he has long embraced his roots in Jamaica and the islands of the English-speaking Caribbean*.
“Throughout my career, the music of Jamaica and Trinidad has remained very dear to me because of my fond memories of hearing Lord Kitchener, Harry Belafonte, the Mighty Sparrow, Lord Flea, Lord Melody, Alerth Bedasse, and scores of others as I grew up in Kingston," explains Alexander. “These two styles of music, calypso and mento, express a joy and love of life that I hope to recapture during the performances at Jazz at Lincoln Center."
Alexander says that the concerts will be presented in two halves with different ensembles for each style of music augmented by Alexander's jazz trio with Herlin Riley and drums and Hassan Shakur on bass. For the calypso ensemble, David “Happy" Williams (known for his work with Cedar Walton) will be on vocals and bass, along the young trumpeter Etienne Charles, trombonist Clifton Anderson (of Sonny Rollins' band), tenor saxophonist Charles Dougherty, and singer Keith Prescott, a.k.a. Designer. For the mento group, alto saxophonist Dean Fraser and tenor saxophonist Cedric IM Brooks will complement a rhythm section of Carlton James on banjo, Joseph Bennett on shakers, and Albert Morgan on the rhumba box. Drummer Desi Jones will also be part of the group, and Pluto Shervington, a Jamaican singer and guitarist versed in both styles, will join each ensemble.
Alexander continues, “We chose the title 'Lords of the West Indies' because many of the music's stars used that particular honorific, and all of them can be seen as West Indian cultural royalty, having first introduced the English-speaking islands to people around the world."
Both Trinidad and Jamaica, two of the major islands of the West Indies, have distinct musical heritages and cultural influence seemingly out of proportion with their small populations. Trinidadian calypso and soca, as well as Jamaican mento, ska, and reggae, each had significant phases of international exposure and each continues to have its own resonance around the globe.
“In Trinidad, calypso can be traced to the Carnival celebrations dating back to the 19th century," says Alexander. “Although American record companies often used term calypso to sell all Caribbean folk music, including mento, calypso is a Trinidadian music in the strict sense. Mento on the other hand is a deep country Jamaican thing. 'Deep inna de bush' as we say. It uses a banjo and a beautiful bass instrument called a rhumba box, which is like a bass kalimba, straight out of Africa."
As Alexander explains, Jamaican mento evolved from the French Quadrille dance music that was fashionable among the English colonists in the 19th century. Even though Trinidad and Jamaica were both English (and Protestant) colonies before independence in the 1960s, Trinidad was in Spanish (Catholic) hands more than 100 years longer than Jamaica and also had a French presence, which likely accounts for the greater significance of a pre-Lenten celebration like Carnival. Both calypso and mento emerged from the same sets of circumstances and a similar cultural process that produced jazz in New Orleans at the turn of the 19th century.
Even before jazz's introduction to Trinidad, improvisation was part of a calypso tradition called Sans Humanit where singers devised lyrics of social comment or competitive insult on the melody. In Trinidad and Jamaica, jazz played a role in the development of each country's popular music and early recording industries, as soldiers at American military bases and radio broadcasts from Miami and New Orleans spread the sounds of swing. The jazz influence is evident in the pre-war recordings of Trinidadians Lionel Belasco and Sam Manning, but many straight-ahead calypsonians in the 1950s were enamored of jazz. For example, among Lord Kitchener's considerable repertoire was “Kitch's Be Bop Calypso." Jamaica's Lord Flea performed and popularized the same song as “Calypso Be Bop" in the 1957 film Bop Girl Goes Calypso.
“In Jamaica, a lot of the musicians who were involved with the birth of the recording industry in the late 1950s saw themselves as jazz men. They really wanted to swing, and they did, but the development of ska was just natural because they couldn't help but put their Jamaican identity into it," says Alexander. These gifted musicians included the guitarist Ernest Ranglin, trombonists Don Drummond and Rico Rodriguez, and saxophonists Cedric Brooks, Val Bennett, Roland Alphonso, and Tommy McCook. Several of these horn players were members of local big bands for years before forming the internationally acclaimed Skatalites, the first band to back Bob Marley and the first band to give Jamaican music a truly national identity after its 1962 independence. Cedric Brooks, a performer on the Lords of the West Indies concerts, was also a co-founder of The Mystic Revelation of Rastafari along with the drummer Count Ossie.
Jazz, of course, has long flourished at New York City's enormous cultural crossroads, benefiting from the unending influx of new sounds and ideas that are the hallmark of an international environment. Among its profound ingredients, jazz's embrace of the music of the Spanish-speaking Caribbean accounts for what Jelly Roll Morton once called the “Spanish tinge." Dizzy Gillespie's forays into Cuban music are well documented, but influence of New York City's West Indian immigrants is less often considered.
Throughout the 20th century, West Indian immigrants faced unique challenges in their process of assimilation in African American communities of New York City, often compelled to de-emphasize their heritage to avoid prevalent stereotypes. In the jazz community, the phenomenon was similar, as Alexander recalls: “I was happy to fit in for the most part, but something inside made me made me realize that I can tap into something really important in my own culture, from the deep in the country to the cities and everywhere in between."
Through the years, Alexander and myriad jazz artists with West Indian roots made key contributions to jazz, bringing both subtle and explicit West Indian musical expressions. Among West Indian musicians whose careers included jazz was Trinidadian alto saxophonist Rupert Cole, who worked with Sam Manning before joining Don Redman in the 1930s and Louis Armstrong in the 1940s. Other Jazz musicians who were from the West Indies or whose families were from the West Indies include Blue Mitchell (Bahamas), Fats Navarro (Bahamas), Wynton Kelly (Jamaica), Kenny Drew (Jamaica), Oscar Peterson (St. Croix and St. Kitts), Carmen McRae (Jamaica), Art Taylor (Jamaica), Connie Kay (Montserrat), Randy Weston (Jamaica), Roy Haynes (Barbados), Dizzy Reece (Jamaica), and Sonny Rollins (Virgin Islands).
Sonny Rollins provides the most salient example of how a West Indian family heritage informed the life of an American jazz musician. As he once recalled, “My grandmother . . . was involved with Marcus Garvey . . . she was a black nationalist . . . I became a devotee of Paul Robeson, because my grandmother used to take me to a lot of his rallies." Rollins' embrace of his Anglo-Caribbean roots is most famously expressed in his recording of “St. Thomas," his signature adaptation of “Fire Down There," a folk song with West Indian origins that his mother used to sing to him. Rollins also recorded and performed the West Indian folk song “Brown Skin Girl" and the Trinidadian folk song “Hold Em Joe."
Duke Ellington noted the influence and originality of West Indian musicians in his autobiographyMistress Is My Music as he spoke of trombonist Joe “Tricky Sam" Nanton, who played with the Duke Ellington Orchestra from 1926 to 1946. Nanton is recognized as a pioneer in the plunger/muting techniques associated with the orchestra's 'jungle' sound. “What he was actually doing was playing a very highly personalized form of his West Indian heritage," recalled Ellington. “When a guy comes from the West Indies and is asked to play some jazz, he plays what he thinks it is, or what comes from his applying himself to the idiom. Tricky and his people were deep in the West Indian legacy and the Marcus Garvey movement. A whole strain of West Indian musicians came up who made contributions to the so-called jazz scene, and they were all virtually descended from the true African scene . . . Bop, I once said, is the Marcus Garvey extension (into contemporary music)."
From the age of four in 1921, Thelonious Monk grew up on Manhattan's Upper West Side in a largely Barbadian neighborhood known as San Juan Hill. The Bajan influence on Monk is reflected in compositions such as “Monk's Dream" and “Bye-Ya." (And notably, “Bemsha Swing," co-written by drummer Denzil Best, is in reference to “Bimsha," a term used by Bajans to refer to their island). Similarly, Charlie Parker connected with the sounds of the West Indies, expressed in his composition “My Little Suede Shoes" and his performances of the Jamaican mento “Slide Mongoose" and the aforementioned “Brown Skin Girl."
All told, the cross-pollination between West Indian music and American jazz has affected each in profoundly positive, if not obvious ways, contributing to the variegated beauty of several of the 20th century's most significant popular music forms. To this day, Monty Alexander is an ambassador of that essential blend, and his concerts at Jazz at Lincoln Center will bring the various traditions into focus for the first time on one of the world's most important stages.
* The West Indies, more formally defined, includes as many as 28 Caribbean territories but is also a common term of self-definition used by residents of former British colonies including Trinidad, Jamaica, Barbados, The Bahamas, etc.
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/news.php?id=17399
THERE IS ONLY ONE ONANDI LOWE!
"Good things come out of the garrisons" after his daughter won the 100m Gold For Jamaica.
"It therefore is useless and pointless, unless it is for share malice and victimisation to arrest and charge a 92-year-old man for such a simple offence. There is nothing morally wrong with this man smoking a spliff; the only thing wrong is that it is still on the law books," said Chevannes.Comment
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I have asked you for references to explain your positions and all you have spouted are your positions as fact, going further to make declarations on my part of my positions being SKA isnt Jazz to insinuations Ska is bigger than reggae ( Reggae is bigger than ska) to the present of Jazz bands recruit from Ska band.Well since you have thrown out nonsense , I will take the high road and reply in a mature factual way with references.
NONESENSE ! I took pleasure in watching you twist and squirm , knowing full well you know nothing about what you speak or little.Truth is your title should be Miss- torian , all your propositions have missed the mark.
1st I hope you understand where I stand on the issue of SKA, again I will repeat it is on par with JAZZ,
2nd I have always said that the founding fathers saw themselves as such
3rd it might strike you and H.L as absurb and shocking but even some Jazz musicains see Ska as a genre of JAZZ.
See article above and below and the link
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/musician.php?id=18477
Ska is the marcus garvey in JAZZ !
AAJ: A lot of people don't know ska's context. In fact, it was heavily influenced by African-American music.
KS: Basically, the musicians in Jamaica, most of their exposure to music was purely radio. They didn't have access to even stereo players to play a record. In the beginning it was radio stations from Miami and New Orleans playing early rock and roll, boogie woogie blues. [Saxophonist] Lester [Sterling] told me that Roots Randolph was one of the biggest influences. It's that boogie woogie shuffle and it's that accent on the off beat that started getting popular. Most of these Skatalites guys were playing big band stock arrangements. So the format for the Skatalites tunes was very much jazz. You can have a theme at the beginning that was recognizable, then you break into the soloing, then you return back to the themes.
AAJ: Just like some call salsa Latin American jazz, ska is Jamaican jazz.
KS: A lot of people call it Jamaican jazz.
A short interview with original Skatalites drummer Lloyd Knibb
All About Jazz: What was the Jamaican music scene like in the '60s?
Lloyd Knibb: When the music started, I was in Montego Bay. I came to Kingston. Coxsone asked to change the beat. I changed the beat to second and fourth - ska beat.
AAJ: It was an amazing moment in music history. How did it come about?
LK: When we just started out, I was doing it for sound system, playing American music. Coxsone generally went to Miami or New York and would bring back these tunes. That's how it started, listening to different bands, and trying to sing that way until it changes.
AAJ: What was it like playing with legends like Bob Marley and Desmond Decker?
LK: It was just the same thing. Everyone had to learn from us. When the solo is finished, you must know where to come in. They couldn't get that.
AAJ: Why was that? Why didn't they know when to come in?
LK: They didn't understand about timing, eight-bar, twelve-bar, four-bar. We'd been playing jazz music at hotels before this thing started. Latin bands, swing, waltz, boleros.
AAJ: With dancehall and hip hop so big in Jamaica, how is ska seen?
LK: On weekends, some stations play Skatalites music. But the younger generation doesn't know anything about the Skatalites. Because if you listen to Bob Marley and Toots, we recorded that.
AAJ: They might know your music, but not know it's you.
LK: That's why we got the name Skatalites. People hearing the music over the radio didn't know who was playing it.
Visit the Skatalites on the web.
PAGES: View All 1 2
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/arti...?id=17919&pg=2THERE IS ONLY ONE ONANDI LOWE!
"Good things come out of the garrisons" after his daughter won the 100m Gold For Jamaica.
"It therefore is useless and pointless, unless it is for share malice and victimisation to arrest and charge a 92-year-old man for such a simple offence. There is nothing morally wrong with this man smoking a spliff; the only thing wrong is that it is still on the law books," said Chevannes.Comment
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Boots not Root Randolph.
I grew up dancing to Louis Jordon, and that was what the local band of Kito was playing in Lucea in the early 50's, who I recall the the sax men were emulating.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCWUv...eature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzOh1...eature=related
Check this out - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HlK9...eature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnyB0...eature=relatedComment
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