Naturally: The Crucial Contributions of Sonia Pottinger

Abstract

Sonia Pottinger and the documented history of reggaeSONIA POTTINGER IS NOT AN easily recognisable name in the history of Jamaican popular music. This is probably true of many iconic figures other than Bob Marley. Sonia Pottinger 's profile, however, is tiny when compared even to that of Count Ossie or Don Drummond or Lee Perry, none of whom the written history treats with adequate attention.1 Reggae fans, even analysts and researchers of the dancehall generation, can be forgiven for not knowing the important contributions Pottinger made as a producer during the music's rocksteady, early reggae and roots periods. They can be forgiven because the written and, to an extent, oral historical accounts of reggae tend to nurture the idea that performance in studio or on stage, and in particular the role of the record producer, were strictly male activities. Despite the fact that reggae's current dancehall incarnation is currently sliding into its third decade, young fans and analysts who are serious about reggae probably know only about foundation producers Clement Coxsone Dodd and Arthur Duke Reid. The history tells us that Dodd and Reid were two of the best producers during Jamaican popular music's gestation, birth and adolescence. If mentioned at all, Sonia Pottinger is treated as secondary to those primary producers. Very often, she is only discussed as a footnote to the stories of the pivotal recordings she produced for Marcia Griffiths, Judy Mowatt, Bob Andy and harmony trio Culture. In an ironic way, the reggae history is just as guilty of marginalising reggae women as the reggae industry.2The first documentation of the music's history surfaced between the late 1960s and the early 1970s. Most of the authors were Jamaican men, and most of them wrote groundbreaking articles that were about the male personalities of the music. Jamaican music historian Garth White's seminal 1966 essay, among other things, introduces the Wailers in the context of the ska/rude boy era which was in full swing at the time.3 Guyanese scholar Gordon Rohlehr's 1971 essay about contemporary Caribbean culture highlights the iconography of ska trombonist Don Drummond, who had died two years before.4 Jamaican poet Robin Bongo Jerry Small wrote verse in tribute to Drummond in 1969. 5 Jamaican Anthony McNeill's Drummond poem was published in 1972.6Though women researchers - such as Pamela O'Gorman, an Australian who was then the principal of Jamaica's School of - assessed the music during that period, they only discussed the work of male recording artists.7 It appears that Verena Reckord in her 1977 essay Rastafarian Music may have been the only analyst who wrote about women's involvement in Jamaican music during that initial period. The focus of Reckord's essay is really another male icon, Count Ossie, but she does manage to supply vital information about Anita Margarita Mahfood as a performing artist in her own right, in addition to discussing how Mahfood brokered Count Ossie's introduction to a Jamaican mainstream audience.9The second phase of documenting reggae's history began in 1977, when Bob Marley and Peter Tosh pushed roots reggae into the international mainstream. From that time until 1993, the documentation of the history of Jamaican popular music seemed to become the preserve of writers living outside the Caribbean. The significance of this second phase is that reggae history graduated from essays and articles to books. The vast majority of these books were Bob Marley biographies.10 A notable exception to the Marley biography 'rule' was Jah (1980), written by Sebastian Clarke (now Amon Saba Saakana), a Trinidadian who lived in the UK for many years.11 Clarke's Caribbean perspective was very different in that his publication, while featuring a prominent chapter on the Wailers, provided a more complete history of Jamaican reggae and an engaging assessment of reggae in the Caribbean diaspora locations of the UK. …