The Best of Lee “Scratch Perry” at the Black Ark

The Best of Lee “Scratch Perry” at the Black Ark

This post is part of our Psych 101 program, an in-depth, 14-part series that looks at the impact of psychedelia on modern music. Want to sign up to receive the other installments in your inbox? Go here. Already signed up and enjoying it? Help us get the word out by sharing it on Facebook, Twitter or just sending your friends this link. Theyll thank you. We thank you.It’s been said that Jamaica has produced more records per capita than any other nation. And of all of the recording facilities that have served the island nation’s massive music industry, none is more steeped in legend than Lee “Scratch” Perry’s Black Ark.Operational for just under six years, from 1973 to 1979, the Black Ark was crudely fashioned in the backyard of the legendary dub/reggae producer’s family home in Washington Gardens, Kingston. It was as much an anachronism for its time as it is now a template for today’s DIY home studios. Where other Kingston facilities like Coxsone Dodd’s Studio One and Duke Reid’s Treasure Isle were places of efficient commerce, run by businessmen-producers, The Black Ark was one of unfettered creativity. Unconstrained by time, logistics, and restrictions on marijuana smoke, this was a place where Perry could unlock new levels of bass by thumping microphones buried under the base of palm trees, and where mooing cows could be summoned by applying tin foil to cardboard tubes.Perry has been the subject of a meaty biography (2006’s People Funny Boy by David Katz), two feature-length documentaries (Ethan Higbee and Adam Bhala Lough’s The Upsetter and Volker Shaner’s Vision of Paradise), and a 1994 issue of the Beastie Boys Grand Royal magazine. All grant his Black Ark years their just due as Perry’s peak period of creativity. Yet the mystique of the Black Ark— which Perry is said to have burned down to ward off the presence of evil spirits — seems to grow greater with each retelling.From the outset of his career, Perry was committed to experimentation. His use of a crying baby on 1968’s “People Funny Boy” is widely regarded as the earliest use of a sample (to say nothing of its status as one of the first reggae songs and earliest diss tracks). With the launch of his Upsetter label in the late ‘60s, he revolutionized the role of the producer, beginning his first experiments with dub and making himself the featured act from behind the boards.The opening of the Black Ark in 1973 coincides with Perry’s estrangement from Bob Marley and the Wailers, whom he had molded from a marginal, suit-and-tie-wearing vocal trio into the fierce, defiant soul rebels first announced on the group’s 1970 debut LP. Perry was the first producer in Jamaica to use drum machine, which he first employed on Marley’s raw, unfinished “Rainbow Country,” and an early version of “Natural Mystic.” (A rhythm, known as Chim Cherie and credited to Perry’s band The Upsetters—and recycled over the years by other producers for tracks like Shinehead’s “Billie Jean”—also dates from this time). In 1973, Perry also released his landmark Blackboard JungleDub album, which featured Perry’s mix in one channel and engineer King Tubby’s in the other (though it should be noted that the rhythm tracks from this release pre-date the Black Ark).Other early Black Ark recordings include Junior Byles’ “Curly Locks,” (1973), Susan Cadogan’s “Hurt so Good” and Dr. Alimantado’s “Best Dressed Chicken In Town” (1974). The latter would form the nucleus of a 1978 album that launched Greensleeves Records’ London-based reggae empire, while “Hurt so Good,” one of the more straightforward songs to ever emerge from the studio, enjoyed great success on the U.K. charts.The Black Ark era peaks in 1976-77, a period in which Perry produced The Heptones’ Party Time, Max Romeo’s War Ina Babylon and Junior Murvin’s Police and Thieves albums, as well as his own dub LP, Super Ape, each issued through Island Records. If reggae was becoming known as the sunny sound of the tropics, these albums offered a much darker vision of the genre. War Ina Babylon depicted a biblical battle between good and evil in its lyrics (and cover art), particularly on the classic title track and “Chase the Devil.” That song’s haunting opening line would later color The Prodigy’s “Out of Space” and Jay-Z’s Kanye-produced “Lucifer.”The Heptones’ deceptively titled Party Time contained weighty material including a cover of Bob Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released” and the Perry-penned “Sufferer’s Time.” And the title track from Murvin’s album, “Police and Thieves” would be retroactively remembered as the soundtrack to clashes between Caribbean immigrants and cops at that year’s Notting Hill Carnival in London. Super Ape, meanwhile, remixed pieces of these and other Black Ark recordings, while introducing an alter ego Perry has continued to revisit throughout his career. (His latest release, Super Ape Returns to Conquer, is a wholesale revisiting of that LP, with new versions of each track).The Clash covered “Police and Thieves” on their 1977 debut and tapped Scratch to produce “Complete Control” during the producer’s visit to London that year. Joe Strummer and crew never reached the Black Ark, but they helped it become a magnet for musical tourists. These visitors—or at least their record labels—were generally flummoxed by Perry’s unusual methods. Paul McCartney sought Scratch’s services for his wife Linda’s quickly aborted solo career, travelling to Kingston to record covers of ‘50’s bubblegum hits “Sugartime (by the Maguire Sisters) and “Mister Sandman” (popularized by The Chordettes). The tracks would not emerge until the posthumous Wide Prairie in 1998. Robert Palmer visited in 1978 for a session that yielded only “Love Can Run Faster,” the little-known B-side to classic rock staple “Give Me The News (Doctor Doctor).”Likewise, the record many regard as Perry’s apex as a producer was rejected by Island Records in 1977: Heart of the Congos, by the titular trio of Cedric Myton, Roydel Johnson, and Watty Burnett. The album was instead issued by Perry in a run of several hundred copies, its legend left to grow over subsequent decades and reissues. After reuniting with Perry in London to record 1977’s “Punky Reggae Party,” Bob Marley visited his former mentor’s studio in 1978, recording demos—”Who Colt The Game” and “I Know A Place”—which, too, were only released posthumously.By this time, reports had begun to surface of erratic behavior and a possible descent into madness on the part of Perry. Fortunately, his eclectic nature manifested itself in increasingly odd, but brilliant recordings, the contents of which continue to baffle and inspire. This includes 1977’s Roast Fish, Collie Weed & Cornbread—in which the aforementioned cow noises were achieved by running Watty Burnett’s baritone voice through a tin foil–laced cardboard tube—and 1978’s jazz-inspired Return of the Super Ape.Sometime around 1979, Perry was seen covering the walls of the Black Ark in indecipherable magic-marker scrawlings, crossing out all of the vowels. Recent retellings suggest that this and other acts of seeming insanity were possibly a calculated effort on Perry’s behalf to free himself of the figurative “vampires” who’d set upon his home and studio—mobsters seeking a cut of label profits, or underemployed singers who’d taken to squatting on the premises.In fact, Perry’s legendary act of arson may be a distortion. Family members have been quoted as saying the studio actually burned in an electrical fire in 1983. Perry, now 81 and residing primarily in the Swiss Alps, still owns and keeps a home on the property that formerly housed the Black Ark.

Western Music Goes Global, ‘76-’82

Western Music Goes Global, ‘76-’82

In terms of Western music opening itself up to global influences, the years 1976 to ’82 represent a major paradigm shift. Radical invention was everywhere, both at pop’s fringes and its center. While world renowned visionaries Talking Heads and Joni Mitchell drew African-informed polyrhythms deep into their singular visions, underground mavericks Throbbing Gristle and The Pop Group grafted clanging atonalism to tribal percussion and reverb-encrusted dub, respectively. Jazz, too, boasted its fair share of explorers. Frenetic Afro-Caribbean percussion, mesmerizing Sufi music from Morocco, exotically droning woodwinds—nothing was off limits for the likes of Ornette Coleman or Miles Davis. Not surprisingly, this playlist casts a wide net. Some cuts are as hot and humid as a rainforest; others evoke the cold, dank isolation of abandoned warehouses. Yet they’re united in their bold, ethnological innovation.

Indigenous Pride: Native  Repping Their Tribe

Indigenous Pride: Native Repping Their Tribe

When I asked my hipster neighbors about the first things that come to mind when they think about indigenous cultures, they said the following: feathered headpieces, teepees, dream catchers, tobacco, ritualistic ceremonies, genocide, and the worship of mother nature. Not all these terms are positive, to say the least, and it’s important to recognize the centuries of historical oppression the native population has endured here in the U.S., as well as in other regions of the Americas. It is also utterly important to celebrate their rich, beautiful traditions -- traditions that respect life in all its forms. With the rise of social media, more and more indigenous artists are stepping into the spotlight, recounting their stories via songs with a modern spin, which is in itself an act of resistance. Ottawa Canada DJs A Tribe Called Red incorporate powerful powwow drum and chants into hard-hitting EDM, while Ecuadorian beatmaker Nicolá Cruz blends hypnotic Andes Step into his mix. Dakota rapper Frank Waln ferociously spits eye-opening tales that take place at the “rez” (or reservations), and Bolivian Quechua singer gets the ZZK treatment in her charango and zampoña-driven hymn. The artists, featured on this playlist, are multifaceted, inspiring, and sincere. Ultimately, the music empowers their tribes, their communities and the listener.

Alternative Sounds of the Middle East

Alternative Sounds of the Middle East

Khyam Allami, Ola Saad, and 47Soul are just some of the names associated with a rising generation of rockers, singer-songwriters, and electronic producers creating alternative music in the Middle East and North Africa. While Western news headlines tend to focus on the struggles of Syrian refugees and the protracted fight against ISIS, the past decade in the region has seen a paradigm shift in the fields of art and music. From Cairo to Tehran, artists have looked beyond borders and mass-market media sources, adopting wifi, social media and home production programs like Pro Tools to establish new networks of collaboration and distribution.Among the talents are the band 47Soul, who capture the spirit of Arab youth culture and speak to their Palestinian roots with their analog synthesizers, political lyrics, and Levantine dabke rhythms. There’s Khyam Allami, an artist of Iraqi descent who runs the influential label Nawa Recordings, who made avant-garde punk on the soundtrack for the 2015 Tunisian indie film As I Open My Eyes/À peine jouvre les yeux and explores the boundaries of Arabic oud with the avant-garde group Alif (which features members from Egypt and Lebanon). And there’s producers like Ola Saad, who engages with her surroundings through provocative ambient electronic music and sound art.There’s a long tradition of cross-cultural collaboration and avant-garde exploration in the Middle East and North Africa, but this music today is fundamentally unique — reflecting a time of conflict and global division but also of trans-national enrichment and creative possibility.

Love and Attitude: Raï Music in Algeria

Love and Attitude: Raï Music in Algeria

Subscribe to the Spotify playlist here.Don’t be misled by the megawatt smile of Algerian singer-songwriter Khaled. Known as the king of raï, his songs are as provocative as they are joyful. Raï (which means “opinion” or “point of view” in Arabic) first blossomed in the 1970s and ’80s in the rowdy cabarets of Oran, a port city on the coast of the Mediterranean. As the music gained in popularity, a pioneering record producer named Rachid Baba-Ahmed started bringing local stars to his studio in the northwestern city of Tlemcen to record pop-oriented tracks featuring synthesizers, guitars, and drum machines. This “pop raï” sound was documented on the iconic 1988 compilation Rai Rebels, which put raï on the map and helped lay a foundation for international superstars like Khaled — then known as Cheb Khaled, an honorary title meaning “Young Man.” As he gained in popularity, Khaled dropped the “Cheb” from his name and toured the globe. In 1999, the genre’s renown was fully cemented as singer Cheb Mami teamed up with Sting to record the hit “Desert Rose” — which made it into the Top 20 on the U.S. Billboard charts — while Khaled paired with fellow raï stars Rachid Taha and Faudel for the much-celebrated live album 1, 2, 3 Soleils. By now raï hits were fully globalized affairs featuring Western-style song structures, universal themes, and some of the most sentimental pop hooks known to man. But the genre remained controversial back home, where a civil war was consuming Algeria whole. The singer Cheb Hasni and the producer Baba-Ahmed were both assassinated by Islamist militants in 1994 and 1995, and many artists had to flee, no longer able to safely sing music that dealt with controversial matters like drinking and forbidden love. The war in Algeria ended in 2002 and today raï continues to evolve, with younger artists fusing it together with genres like R&B. And of course, Khaled scored another hit in 2012 with his club banger “C’est la vie.” It just goes to show how powerful the genre is, encapsulating the drastic extremes of life itself.

Best Latin Alternative Songs of 2016

Best Latin Alternative Songs of 2016

Subscribe to the Spotify playlist right here.Within the ever-evolving world of Latin music, we’ve seen some sensational moments and headline-grabbing spectacles in 2016. Colombian urban powerhouse J Balvin solidified himself as the reigning king of the new reggaetón movement via the skyrocketing Energía; Marc Anthony and J.Lo stunned global audiences with their surprise reunion at this year’s Latin GRAMMYS with a tropical rendition of Pimpinela’s “Olvídame y pega la vuelta” (and their now-infamous kiss!); our beloved Mexican legend Juan Gabriel passed away too soon yet left behind a charming duets document, Los Dúo 2, starring everyone in Latin music and their mothers (well, not really, but you get the point). Because these buzzed-about folks and their 2016 material are doing so well without our help, having a spot secured in nearly every big publication out there, we’ve decided to spotlight some sparkly hidden gems, exciting artists worthy of your discovery, and killer songs you might have missed by respectable acts. And boy, do these 50 Best Tracks resonate loudly in our hearts.Spunky electro-pop wunderkinds Alex Anwandter, Cineplexx, and Selma Oxor kept things intriguingly hyperactive through iridescent synths and a dash of mystery. Hypnotic electro-tropical masterminds Systema Solar, Compass, and Orkesta Mendoza continued to bend the boundaries of cumbia and folkloric sounds via their dashing experimentalism and love of tradition. Alt-norteño took the throne in unconventionalism in the good hands of regional Mexican iconoclasts Juan Cirerol and Helen Ochoa while staying true to form. Debaucherous punk made waves across borders through the awesomely cacophonic powerchords of daredevils AJ Davila, Sexy Zebras, and Los Nastys. For our utter excitement, we also saw the return of alternative rock royalty Café Tacvba, Los Fabulosos Cadillacs, and Andrés Calamaro. Oh, and not to mention 2016 also brought us surprisingly killer renditions delivered by the likes of Mexrrissey and Vanessa Zamora. Here are the 50 most riveting tracks hailing from indie and non-conformist Latinx acts. Happy listening!

Saharan Guitar Music
December 22, 2016

Saharan Guitar Music

The vast swathes of the Sahel and Sahara regions in West Africa may not look like much from a map, but for centuries they’ve been criss-crossed by trading caravans and pilgrims, creating unique migration patterns and allowing for the exchange of food, language, and ideas. So it’s no surprise that today this sandy and arid region is home to multiple generations of musicians who’ve embraced the key instrument of American and European rock ’n’ roll.From Timbuktu to Agadez, singers and songwriters have embraced the guitar as a mode of expression and musical reinvention. The instrument is believed to have distant roots in the Sahara region, as West Africans taken to North America during the transatlantic slave trade brought with them songs and dances that went onto inform the music of future bluesmen like Robert Johnson. The blues were reinvented again by Ali Farka Touré, the Malian singer and songwriter famed for his mesmerizing guitar style. But there’s also Tuareg bands like Tinariwen, who first picked up guitars in the 1980s as a way to articulate the struggles and sadness of their generation, as the Tuareg people were beset by displacement, drought and later took up arms in rebellions against the governments of Niger and Mali.Today, the recording industry and international festival circuit is packed with now-familiar names from the Sahara region, including younger generations of artists like the Sahrawi singer/songwriter Aziza Brahim and the electric guitar virtuoso Mdou “Bombino” Moctar from the frontier city of Agadez in Niger. This playlist reflects the many talents who come from this rich modern tradition.

The Indomitable Papa Wemba

The Indomitable Papa Wemba

Click here to subscribe to the Spotify playlist.When Papa Wemba collapsed onstage at a concert in Côte d’Ivoire last April, the world lost another one of its musical giants. A bandleader, singer, and fashion icon from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Papa Wemba — who was 66 when he died — was as bold and eccentric as they come, beloved across Africa and the West for his piercing vocal style, outrageous outfits, and countless albums of infectious music, which mixed traditional Congolese and Cuban-style rhythms with intertwining electric guitars, intricate multi-part harmonies, and global influences.Born Jules Shungu Wembadio Pene Kikumba in 1949 in what was then the Belgian Congo, Papa Wemba first made a name for himself as one of the founding singers of the legendary Kinshasa soukous band Zaiko Langa Langa — sometimes referred to as the Rolling Stones of the Congo for their rebellious sensibilities and amped-up take on the rumba-inspired guitar and vocal music of previous innovators like Franco Luambo Makiadi and Sam Mangwana. After releasing numerous hit records and helping invent a dance called the cavacha, Papa Wemba broke off and started his own group, Viva La Musica. Later he relocated to Paris and teamed up with an international cast of collaborators (including “world music” champion Peter Gabriel) to explore everything from Latin music to soul/R&B to some astonishingly eccentric synth and drum machine sounds.Papa Wemba also starred in the hit 1987 Congolese film La Vie est belle, and he pioneered the dandy-ish “sapeur” style, inspiring generations of Congolese youth to stroll the streets while sporting rainbow-colored three-piece suits, furry hats, bowler caps and old-timey tobacco pipes. The songs on this playlist take in his distinct legacy — spanning his career from the early ‘70s up to some of his latest releases, like his well-received album from 2010, Notre Pere Rumba.

Dub Realigned: Inside Adrian Sherwood’s On-U Sound
March 15, 2017

Dub Realigned: Inside Adrian Sherwood’s On-U Sound

Click here to add to Spotify playlist!There is but a single label that’s played a key role in the evolution of reggae, post-punk, dance, industrial, and experimental music alike, and that’s On-U Sound. Founded by English producer, remixer, and bandleader Adrian Sherwood in 1979, the label’s been in the throes of a massive reissue campaign since 2016. In addition to dusting off long out-of-print titles from the likes of African Head Charge and the Singers & Players collective, Sherwood has given the green light for a slew of anthologies, including Trevor Jackson’s brilliant Science Fiction Dancehall Classics and two volumes of Sherwood At The Controls that have helped contextualize the label’s sweeping legacy.About that legacy: On U-Sound initially made a name for itself with a slew of titles that opened up the stylistic parameters of dub while at the same time remaining loyal to the movement’s spiritual core. Where albums like Creation Rebel’s Starship Africa and African Head Charge’s My Life in a Hole in the Ground—yes, that’s a cheeky Eno/Byrne reference—sound like echo-drenched alien transmissions smothered in futuristic electronics, Congo Ashanti Roy’s African Blood and Bim Sherman’s Across the Red Sea are moving meditations that ease ’70s roots music into ‘80s New Wave.But Sherwood and U-Sound were never content with remaining tethered to dub. Indeed, what made the label so innovative throughout its peak years in the ’80s was an ability to fold dub’s trademark qualities—shuddering reverb, hulking bass, tape delay, and shuffling rhythms turned inside out and upside down—into a wide range of cutting-edge genres. The Sherwood-produced collision of world grooves, tape manipulation, and punk politics heard on Mark Stewart & The Maffia’s Learning To Cope With Cowardice opened up entire vistas of avant-garde expression that 21st-century explorers such as Gang Gang Dance and Sun Araw have since colonized. Similarly radical is Tackhead’s Whats My Mission Now? 12-inch, a speaker-shredding collage of hip-hop drum machines, fidgety electro syncopation, and aggressive industrial samples that hasn’t lost any of its radical bite.While the bulk of these tracks are drawn from the On U-Sound catalog, listeners will also encounter a handful of relevant Sherwood projects that weren’t released by the label. For example, The Slits’ “Man Next Door,” co-mixed by Sherwood, is an early example of the cross-pollination between dub and post-punk. Then there’s the long-forgotten Sherwood production “Dead Come Alive,” which didn’t see the light of day until Science Fiction Dancehall Classics. This hybrid of hip-hop and ’80s club music features a young Neneh Cherry rhyming over bubbling, pointillist electronics that are so prescient, they could’ve been created just last week—something that holds true for just about every cut on this playlist.

Ethnological Forgeries and Fourth World Fusions

Ethnological Forgeries and Fourth World Fusions

Click here to add to Spotify playlist!A café opened in my neighborhood a few years ago that I just couldn’t figure out. The trouble wasn’t the menu, but the decor: The interior was a gaily colored hodgepodge of Buddha busts, paper lanterns, pretty vases, and posters of mighty waves and long-tongued dragons; the place was a kitschy riot of Chinese and East Asian motifs. Yet I didn’t see a single Asian employee. It took me several visits to realize that the design aesthetic wasn’t just some egregious example of cultural appropriation—though it probably was that, too—but a new manifestation of a phenomenon with much deeper roots.Derived from the French word for Chinese, “Chinoiserie” is the name for a style of European decorative arts that brandish an Asian influence, the result of new trade relationships between the East and West in the 17th century. King Louis XV was a fan, as were the architects who decided that no English manor garden was complete without a pagoda. In any case, my neighborhood’s belated example of orientalism-in-action must’ve confused people because the establishment didn’t thrive. The space was eventually reborn as a sushi restaurant, and needless to say, the new proprietors didn’t do much redecorating.I’m also relieved to no longer have to deal with complex questions of white privilege, cross-cultural exchange, and colonial power dynamics every time I want a decent latte. Yet these matters seem inescapable today, what with the Trump administration’s unabashed Islamophobia, the growth of nationalist and nativist movements throughout Europe, and the hardening of attitudes toward immigrants and refugees. Citizens of the so-called First World have never been freer to cast a fearful eye on whichever group they consider the “other.”Meanwhile, in the cultural realm, there’s a renewed urgency to carve out new spaces for previously marginalized or unacknowledged voices and perspectives within a dominant industrial-entertainment-media apparatus that seems forever prone to missteps. In other words, it’s not an overreaction to question the wisdom of casting Scarlett Johansson as a Japanese anime heroine. Every day yields a new Twitter eruption on the topic of who can and can’t represent positions and experiences, especially when the work involves transgressing boundaries of race, gender, culture, and class.All of this makes me feel even more confused and conflicted about a huge body of music that’s always fascinated me. This is music by (mostly) white people who eagerly adopted other modes that were ostensibly foreign, which automatically was a complicated move given the stew of African, Caribbean, and Latin influences in American popular music in the first place. Nevertheless, they drew and continue to draw from African, Asian, Arabic, East Indian, indigenous, and other traditions to create forgeries and mutations that positively revel in their inauthenticity.I’m not about to defend all of it—I can’t. So much of it reeks of an old colonial mindset, one I continue to grapple with as a suburban kid who grew up in a placid corner of Canada, devoid of the cultural markers I perceived and envied in other lives (an illusion that’s proof of my white privilege, of course). Yet much of it is also the product of an age in which much of the West had a different attitude toward the rest of the globe. Looking back at the world music vogue sparked by Paul Simon, David Byrne, and Peter Gabriel in the ‘80s, it can seem like a wave of cultural appropriation run rampant, a self-congratulatory embrace of cultural otherness that’s as suspect as the exotica craze of the 1950s. But at its best, this music can be seen and heard as an open-hearted effort to dissolve the borders and boundaries that are so important to people right now.Those good intentions and spirit of curiosity connect music as diverse as cheeseball tiki-lounge tunes, the cheeky ethnological forgery series of Holger Czukay and CAN, early American minimalism music—which was steeped in Indian raga, African percussion, and gamelan—and even The Rolling Stones’ dalliance with The Master Musicians of Jajouka. In recent years, newer acts such as Goat, Beirut, Dengue Fever, Vampire Weekend, and Dirty Projectors have incurred charges of appropriation for stepping outside of their own original cultural domains to investigate and play around in others. Such engagement is bound to be problematic on several levels, yet it deserves a reaction other than knee-jerk dismissal. So does the music we get when—to borrow a favorite title for post-grad courses on postcolonial legacies—the empire looks back: when Western pop modes become absorbed and transformed (though that’s another playlist). As confusing as it may be, this music elicits emotions and sensations other than the hate and fear that are otherwise so rife in our moment.

'90S THROWBACKS
Indie Rock Face-Off: Neo vs. ’90s

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Indie Rock Face-Off: Neo vs. ’90s

Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.

Indie Rock Face-Off: Neo vs. ’90s

Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.