Witness To Reggae
Beth Lesser - Writings

WITNESS TO REGGAE (2020)

My husband, Dave, and I had been putting together a photocopied Fanzine for reggae musician and producer Augustus Pablo. We had come to admire him for his recorded work at King Tubby’s studio in Kingston, Jamaica. But a Zine comprised of news clippings and press releases hardly did justice to the dramatic, always changing story of reggae music. Only a true magazine had a chance, with in-depth articles, photos, interviews, news and a glossy full-color cover… So we went to Kingston to try our luck. We sought out singers and deejays, producers, musicians – we even became close friends with one of the pressing plant employees who invited us back into the factory to watch the hot vinyl placed on the mold and stamped into shape as a brand new 45.

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Witness To Reggae
Beth Lesser - Writings

WITNESS TO REGGAE (2020)

My husband, Dave, and I had been putting together a photocopied Fanzine for reggae musician and producer Augustus Pablo. We had come to admire him for his recorded work at King Tubby’s studio in Kingston, Jamaica. But a Zine comprised of news clippings and press releases hardly did justice to the dramatic, always changing story of reggae music. Only a true magazine had a chance, with in-depth articles, photos, interviews, news and a glossy full-color cover. So we went to Kingston to try our luck. We sought out singers and deejays, producers, musicians – we even became close friends with one of the pressing plant employees who invited us back into the factory to watch the hot vinyl placed on the mold and stamped into shape as a brand new 45.

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“Jamaica is one of the most rebellious places on earth. Cause when the black people start rebelling, them rebel until them make them owna god. They just get up and say His Imp Maj, Emp Haile Sel, is God. When Jamaicans do things, it different from everybody. The Jamaicans are a unique kinda people Out of reality, them work out them own reality.”   – Ossie Thomas, dance hall producer.

WITNESS TO REGGAE

In Kingston, the air always felt damp – moist and hot and sticky. Trucks filled the downtown streets with diesel exhaust that mixed with the constant smell of burning trash. Trucks and buses zipped past with people hanging out the back and limbs dangling from every open space. The bus fumes were black and so thick they stuck to your eyelashes. Music blared. Every minibus had its own ghetto blaster, every car had its radio and stores put speakers out on the street to attract business. Twice a year, while others headed off to beach vacations on the coast, Dave and I would hop on the Air Jamaica shuttle from Toronto, Canada to Kingston and hang out in the city core for two to three weeks on end, immersing ourselves in reggae. My husband, Dave, and I had been putting together a photocopied Fanzine for reggae musician and producer Augustus Pablo. We had come to admire him for his recorded work at King Tubby’s studio in Kingston, Jamaica. But a Zine comprised of news clippings and press releases hardly did justice to the dramatic, always changing story of reggae music. Only a true magazine had a chance, with in-depth articles, photos, interviews, news and a glossy full-color cover. We were well aware at the time that the current international reggae infrastructure couldn’t support such an endeavor. There just wasn’t enough mainstream interest to sell something relatively cost-intensive. But we were young (and naïve) and didn’t care. Things would take care of themselves. And, anyway, the real purpose was to have an excuse to get closer to the music, to learn more, to experience reggae on a whole new level.

Micko McKenzie, Jah Bull, Augustus Pablo 1983 (Photo: Beth Lesser)

Micko McKenzie, Jah Bull & Augustus Pablo – 1983 (Photo: Beth Lesser)

So we went to Kingston to try our luck. We sought out singers and deejays, producers, musicians- we even became close friends with one of the pressing plant employees who invited us back into the factory to watch the hot vinyl placed on the mold and stamped into shape as a brand new 45. Trying to work on a project (like the magazine) in Jamaica turned out to be challenging – at least to our North American, urbanized, businesslike model of efficiency. Jamaica is thoroughly Caribbean, every aspect of life reflecting the slow pace of a location under siege by constant, unrelenting heat. The passage of time takes on a vague, amorphous quality in a place untouched by changes in seasons. Instead of, “I’ll see you tomorrow at 2”, Jamaican’s singed off with “Later” or “Little more”. And the ubiquitous, “Soon come” was seemed to us to exist only as a frustratingly useless substitute for concrete information. Arranging interviews was a daily challenge.  You might arrange with Michael Prophet to be at Youth Promotion on Saturday. When Saturday came, you would go down only to be told, “Oh he just left. But he said he would be here tomorrow.” That always left us with a dilemma. Generally, we solved the problem by interviewing anyone who was actually right there at the time – and leaving the rest up to fate. If Michael Prophet were in town, he would most likely show up at a record shop or studio before long and we would run into him. If not, we would run into other people and talk to them.​
Reggae Quarterly
Alternatively, we often had people approach us and say, “Norris is looking for you”, or something to that effect, which left it up to us to guess where this person was so we could find out why we were being summoned. So Reggae Quarterly magazine was built on both purpose and serendipity, always allowing for the natural flow of events in time in the true Jamaican style. The sheer density of artists living and working in the downtown core stacked the odds well in our favor of running into someone we were interested in talking to. And the pervasiveness of the music business meant it was impossible to step into any record store or even sit down in a corner restaurant downtown without running into someone involved in the reggae scene. Starting with the photocopied fanzine in 1981, Dave and I spent the next ten years plus exploring every part of the reggae world. So far, I have written four books about the music but never mentioned our personal experiences abroad. To have a bit of fun, I decided to include a taste of what it was like to be in Jamaica collecting photos, interviews and records during the early 80s and the period of transition from the roots to the digital era.
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Beth Lesser

During the 1980s, my husband and I traveled frequently to Kingston, Jamaica and Brooklyn, NY from our home in Toronto, Canada to follow the changing reggae scene. In that period reggae was changing fast, moving from the heavy roots sound of suffering and redemption to the lighter, faster, digitized sound of modern dancehall. My husband and I saw it happen. We saw Junjo’s Volcano empire rise meteorically and them crash as his young artists emigrated or met untimely deaths. We witnessed Jah Love’s Brigadier Jerry take over the dancehall scene without ever having recorded a 45 – powered by the new popularity of dance hall cassettes. We were in Waterhouse when King Jammy unleashed his Sleng Teng rhythm to an analog world and, one by one, producers dropped their previously recorded rhythms and started building again from scratch using programmable keyboards and drum machines. We were in Jammy’s yard while he cut the dubplates for the Clash of the Century, the event that brought dancehall culture to the larger Jamaican audience. Over those years, I collected an archive of material that I would like to make available to the public – to present and future reggae scholars and fans. Photo right: Beth Lesser and David Kingston get married at Youth Promotion. All images & text © Beth Lesser

Beth Lesser and David Kingston get married at Youth Promotion