firecorner.com: Jah Jah Jah Wah Wah Wah

Jah Jah Jah Wah Wah Wah

2006.02.07 |

As the man Yoni Ranking says, Attention music lovers! The great Big Youth is in Sydney and Melbourne this week – first time in Australia.

Fire On The Wire runs a Big Youth music special on Wed 8 February (2SER 107.3FM 1-3pm, or download here) and The Professor has the man himself in the studio on Thursday (Lawless Street, 2RRR 88.5FM 4-6pm).

‘Back in those days people used to talk like ‘Hit me back’ and ‘Baby baby’ and that stuff. There and then I saw, well them things, they’re really tellin’ people nothin’. So Big Youth always sit by and amongst friends and bredrins and make certain chant, and I would chant of God who is Jah. Seen? I tell people to make love and not war, ‘cause war is ugly and love is lovely. (…) We’re not going back, we’re going forward. We wanna go up front, instead of ‘Hit me back’. I say do it with Jah.’

[H]e was really the first artist to express ‘roots’ philosophy so coherently and thus, persuasively, both in his music and in his life, and he meant it – “Cause if it’s not love this day, then it’s death as I would say” (‘Reggae Phenomenon’). He was also the first to come up with phrases that were picked up by so many subsequently – even Bob Marley: ‘Remember when me sing ‘Natty Dread in a Babylon’? Big Youth sing ‘Natty Dread’ before Bob Marley. Bob Marley was still a soul rebel singing ‘Bend down low’ and ‘Knock on the gate at a quarter to eight’. I sing ‘Jah Jah Jah Wah Wah Wah, live it up Jah’. ¹

It was ‘S 90 Skank’ that really drew the best of Big Youth’s abilities on record… Youth says it was personal experience he spoke of on the record, warning about the consequences of excessive speed. ‘Me was riding a bike and crash at 12.20 in the afternoon, wake up at about 7.30 in the night.’ He pauses momentarily to point out some cranial scarring. ‘While they pronounce me dead, I was there visioning how I’m singing and Jah tell me me must go round the world and sing “Jah”. So I say, “If you ride like lightning, you will crash like thunder” – I get some bad crash. I used to ride wild, you know.’ ²

‘Well, one Friday morning (…) somebody came to my yard and call at my door and it was Keith Hudson. I didn’t even have anything to eat then, but he insisted that we go straight down to the studio and make a record. And the idea of it was to take a bike in the studio – Hudson gets these ideas – and there we cut ‘S 90 Skank’, That was my first number one.’ ¹

The success of that disc in particular, and of the Prince Buster-produced ‘Chi Chi Run’, made Big Youth in high demand on the Kingston scene. ‘Everybody hearing this “Jah Jah Jah, Jah wah wah rock”, so everybody want a piece, ‘cause it’s the science [magic or sorcery] that – is that open the key to reggae music. Then Joe Gibbs want me, Miss Pottinger and Derrick Harriott, and I had seven tunes in the chart at the same time, with five in the two top tens.’ …

It was inevitable that such an individually minded artist would go into self-production to acquire greater financial reward and artistic control… In 1974 he issued the double album Reggae Phenomenon on a portion of which the toaster controversially branched out into the singing arena. ‘That is when me get good,’ he recounts, ‘get conscious and start defend the African daughter them. Me take War’s “The World Is A Ghetto” and turn it round and call it “Streets In Africa” with D. Brown – it give me much strength. Me do “Love Me Forever”, “Hot Stock”, “Downtown Kingston Pollution”, “Hell Is For Heroes”, “African Daughter” and [the Temptations’] “Papa Was A Rolling Stone”, so that is when I start get versatile, but some of the fool them say me can’t sing. That was the better part where I was achieving and seeing my career looking progressive.’ And why, exactly, was Big Youth inspired to sing? ‘Because in a lot of audiences, it’s not everyone could understand the “dee dee dah dah dee dee dey”, so you have to show them that Big Youth have something inna him – me can sing, so me a go touch some big song all of them know. When me come with [Dionne Warwick’s] “Touch Me In The Morning”, God cry. Seeing the women them love me more, me have to start hide from girl. Me show them me versatility because me creative, me have a force to generate.’ ²

¹ Big Youth ‘Natty Universal Dread’ sleevenotes by Steve Barrow, Blood and Fire
² Solid Foundation: an oral history of reggae by David Katz