Distant Drums: The Unsung Contribution of African-Jamaican Percussion to Popular Music at Home and Abroad

Abstract

OVER THE LAST FEW YEARS, have been seeking out and interviewing as many of Jamaica's professional session drummers and percussionists as could find.1 In 2005, finally succeeded in tracking down Alvin Patterson, better known as Seeco. During the years when Bob Marley took reggae music to the international stage, Seeco was main percussionist. While we were discussing the foundations of Jamaican popular music, Seeco made a comment that was particularly interesting to me. is the whole build-up of the reggae, he told me. I know long time it is coming from the drum. The whole music come from the drum. Drum come like the first music. Drum is the first music, you know. So think produced the reggae. It's a sound.2If this is so - if reggae is a drum sound, as Seeco insists - then why is it that we come across so little about drumming and drummers when we read about the history of Jamaican popular music? More specifically, why do we hear so little about hand drummers and percussionists and their role in the creation of Jamaica's phenomenal soundscape? True, the fundamental role of and bass in reggae is widely recognised. And aficionados of Jamaican music can certainly name some of the key studio drummers in the history of recorded Jamaican music. Many will know, for instance, of Lloyd Knibb, Carlton Barrett, Leroy Horsemouth Wallace, or Lowell Sly Dunbar. Those who have dug deeper may also be able to cite other important players such as Drumbago (Arkland Parks), Winston Grennan, Joe Isaacs, Hector Bunny Williams, Hugh Malcolm, Fil Callender, Lloyd Tinleg Adams, Paul Douglas, Michael Mikey Boo Richards, Carlton Santa Davis, or Lincoln Style Scott. AU of these session drummers - and others have not named here - deserve much more credit than they have yet to receive for the tremendous role they have played in shaping Jamaican popular music.Yet, as important as they are, do not intend to focus in this article on such noteworthy set players. would like to direct attention, rather, to some of Jamaica's rhythm specialists who have received even less credit - namely, the hand drummers and percussionists who bridge the country's older African-Jamaican musical heritage and the newer urban sounds for which Jamaica has become famous.If one figure stands out among this latter group, it is undoubtedly Oswald Williams, better known as Count Ossie. Count Ossie deservedly achieved fame during lifetime as one of the earliest players and certainly the leading promoter of the Rastafarian genre of drumming that came to be known as Nyabinghi.3 By the time of tragic death in a road accident in 1976, Count Ossie was so revered in Jamaica that he was almost immediately memorialised in a reggae song by the Trinidadian-Jamaican calypsonian Lord Laro. Though he is gone, Laro reminded mourners, his music still lingers on . . . Count Ossie lives in every beat of the Congo drum.4 There is indeed little doubt that Count Ossie's name will live on. But Count Ossie is not the only important or talented hand drummer or percussionist in the history of Jamaican music.How many students of Jamaican music have heard of Babu Bryan? Very few, would venture to guess. Yet, according to some, Babu Bryan is the greatest Jamaican drummer who ever lived. Unfortunately, playing was never recorded, and very few details are known about life. Babu, also known as Matthias, was born in the nineteenth century and lived into the mid-twentieth century. He spent a good portion of life in the small community of Leith Hall, near Morant Bay in St Thomas parish. Although few Jamaicans have heard of this great drummer, name lives on among Kumina practitioners in St Thomas even today. Not only skill as a drummer but also tremendous spiritual power remain legendary. Babu, it is said, could play the Kumina drums with such force and beauty that he could draw the spirits of deceased drummers to the world of the living, where they could be heard, but not seen, playing the drums alongside him. …