PURE MAD PEOPLE
When Bob Marley died, there was some loose talk going around about Michael Rose, Black Uhuru’s lead singer and songwriter, being groomed to be “the next Marley.” Such talk is foolish—Marley’s background and talent were unique, and combined to create a phenomena that is unrepeatable.
The CREEM Archive presents the magazine as originally created. Digital text has been scanned from its original print format and may contain formatting quirks and inconsistencies.
PURE MAD PEOPLE
FEATURES
LIVE A THIS PLACE
by Richard Grabel
When Bob Marley died, there was some loose talk going around about Michael Rose, Black Uhuru’s lead singer and songwriter, being groomed to be “the next Marley.” Such talk is foolish—Marley’s background and talent were unique, and combined to create a phenomena that is unrepeatable. But the fact that such talk was going around gives an idea of the importance of Black Uhuru.
Their tours are .always sell-outs. They recently were the opening act on arena dates with the Police in America and the Rolling Stones in England. Their records are some of the best examples of reggae to get released and distributed outside Jamaica, and the band of musicians that backs the three Black Uhuru \/ocalists on tour and on record, led by the rhythm section/ production team of drummer Sly Dunbar and bassist Robbie Shakespeare, is arguably the tightest, most inventive reggae band in the world. Black Uhuru are doing more than anyone else at the moment to take the culture of Jamaica—that beautiful and sad island of sun, sea, weed, poverty and music—and bring it to the rest of the world.
Black Uhuru was formed as a vocal group in the mid-70’s by Derrick “Duckie” Simpson and Michael Rose. Duckie is a tall, extremely “dread”-looking Rasta, a term that in Jamaica connotes seriousness, authority, a sense of purpose and dedication to the Rastafari cause. Rose is short, wiry, and equally intense,; a man whose conversation escapes in quick staccato bursts, usually filled with invective against all things Babylonian.
In 1978 two things happened that prepared the way for Black Uhuru’s rise to the top of the international reggae hierarchy. First they found the permanent third voice they needed in Puma Jones, an American woman from South Carolina and Harlem who was living in Kingston. Second, they were taken on as a production project by Dunbar and Shakespeare, recording and releasing in quick succession a series of singles with a gripping, distinctive sound that were instant hits in Jamaica.
Puma had gone from attaining * a master’s degree in Social Work at Columbia to travelling the world in search of her cultural roots. “I had travelled" to Africa to seek out my own traditions” she says now. “But it is hard still to live in Africa now, and I did not yet. wish to return to America. And Jamaica became like a midway point* which it still is for I.”
Black Uhuru, It means Black Sounds of Freedom. —Rose
I first saw Black Uhuru in Kingston in 1979, at a benefit concert for the International Year of thg Rasta Child. The bill included almost every Jamaican star you could think of at the time, including Bob Marley/ Burning Spear, the Mighty Diamonds, Third World, Trinity, and on and on: But Black Uhuru stole the show.
Rose and Duckie strode on wearing razor-sharp pinstripe suits. Duckie did a slow, controlled dance, adding a bit of harmony and fixing the audience with a gaze of penetrating menace. Rose jumped around the stage like a man possessed, singing flowing lines of poetry and scat-singing nonsense syllables in quick, choppy rhythms, all in a beautifully rich and cutting voice. Between the two men, Puma wore African Princess robes and danced with a perfect, flowing grace, inbetween adding to her sweet, floating harmonies.
Thp crowd went wild, as every crowd jl’ve seen Black Uhuru play to since has done. The singing, the stepping, the look and feel of these three vocalists has an instant communicative magic.
When I spoke to Black Uhuru after that first show, they were confident they could find a wide audience outside Jamaica. The problem was to get there. I was rooting for them.
Things happened faster than I think any of us imagined. In December of that year Black Uhuru were flown to New York by a promoter to play two concerts, which were attended by what seemed like the entire Dread/Rasta population of New York’s Jamaican neighborhoods. Soon after, they were signed by Island Records. They’ve since released three studio and one live album, the greatest being 1981’s Red, an entire album that sustains a united mood and groove and deals with a range of serious subjects, from urban poverty and armed insurrection to the Rasta religious search for personal fulfillment.
Rose’s lyrics share in the apocalyptic, mystical world view common to Rastafari. But he has brought his experiences of the world outside Jamaica into his music, arid this makes it more universally appealing than a lot of other reggae. He has a sharp eye for detail and a fine sense of word play.
TURN TO PAGE 59
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 21
To interview Black Uhuru you have to get over a language barrier. Puma’s Jamaican patois isn’t so strong because it was adopted later in life. But Rose and Duckie lay it on thick—speaking Rastaspeak is a matter of honor.
I ask Rose how he feels about Brooklyn, where he sometimes lives.
“Is a thing they’re sodist people, pure mad people live a this place. Full of maggot so I and I have to trod it with care. Everyday life the youth naw know a heap of things. So I and I publish certairi things, make the youth know, like “save it for the good fight, ” ’cause enough youth just die for a worthless cause, seen? And no say we have a yoyt’ a come them have fe go a school and if you pass out and leff all the yout’ them a suffer too.”
You mean black youths shouldn’t get an education in white school systems?
Duckie: “Education? Education only brainwashing.”
Puma: “Alright, practically, them go through, because we know this is how them fight, still.”
Rose: “Them a teach you the biased thing, them naw tell you the right thing. Them come half way, and you have to reap the other half yourself.”
Talking to Black Uhuru is an Experience fraught with surprises and ideological arguments. Their logic takes unexpected turns. In a song called “Youth of Eglington” they prophesized the riots that took place in the slums of Britain, but when I asked the group about that they said they were against both riots and political action in white countries, believing instead in the Rasta ideal of repatriation of black people to Africa.
Duckie: “Me ne see it right, ’cause me say you can’t come look dominion in a man’s yard. A man’s yard a fe him yard. Wa dem have fe do is praise Rastafari, and lick out de boy dem out of Africa, and free dem so.”
Whew! Obviously there is a lot in the philosophy of Rasta that your average white middle class music lover is going to have a hard time swallowing. Luckily for both the group and the average white etc., the philosophy in Black Uhuru’s music comes not in hard-to-swallow chunks as it does in their interview but in delectable bite-sized morsels. Rose’s poetry plants his beliefs in a garden of words you’ll want to go digging through just because of the way they feel on the tongue. And with the sauce of Dunbar and Shakespeare’s rockhard production and the backing of Jamaica’s best musicians all over it, the meal is delicious.
AA
