Horace Andy
Horace Andy (born Horace Hinds, 19 February 1951 in Kingston, Jamaica), is a legendary roots reggae singer, notable for such classic tracks as Mr. Bassie, You Are My Angel, Skylarking and his awesome version of Ain’t No Sunshine. The singer made his earliest recordings in the late 1960s, at Coxsone Dodd’s Studio One. Known for his distinctive falsetto vocal style, he sang on many classic productions for reggae producers, including Phil Pratt, King Tubby, Bullwackie, Bunny ‘Striker’ Lee and Prince Jammy. The 1970s was his most prolific period. He found a new generation of fans in the 1990s, thanks to his work with trip hop pioneers Massive Attack, and continued to record new music in the late 1990s and at the beginning of the new millennium. He’s still active, recording and touring around the world.
Horace Andy
Horace Andy (born Horace Hinds, 19 February 1951 in Kingston, Jamaica), is a legendary roots reggae singer, notable for such classic tracks as Mr. Bassie, You Are My Angel, Skylarking and his awesome version of Ain’t No Sunshine. The singer made his earliest recordings in the late 1960s, at Coxsone Dodd’s Studio One. Known for his distinctive falsetto vocal style, he sang on many classic productions for reggae producers, including Phil Pratt, King Tubby, Bullwackie, Bunny ‘Striker’ Lee and Prince Jammy. The 1970s was his most prolific period. He found a new generation of fans in the 1990s, thanks to his work with trip hop pioneers Massive Attack, and continued to record new music in the late 1990s and at the beginning of the new millennium. He’s still active, recording and touring around the world.
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.
All images © 1982-1988 Beth Lesser
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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