Jamaica Night

From Cyberlaw

On Saturday, January 7th, a group of about 50 gathered in Langdell South to watch The Harder They Come, after which there was a discussion with Wayne Marshall and Colin Channer about Jamaica, music, and a potential sequel to the film. The following are notes from the discussion.

What is this movie about?

• This was the first and best feature to come out of Jamaica. For the first time, the Jamaican voice was heard in a feature film.
• There was symbolic power in having a Jamaican curse word. Also having the life of the Jamaican working class on screen, but all in the context of entertainment.
• It was through this film that many non-Jamaicans heard Reggae.

Who is Rudy?

• In the 1930s and 40s, there started to be a migration of people from the country to the urban areas. They were rude boys, not following the rules of police society – Rudy. So then there were all songs about what a good Rudy should do.
• A Rudy is not just about being a thug; it’s a whole subculture of manliness that’s surprisingly effeminate. Boys who grew up with grandmothers, mothers and aunties. You see in dancehall culture, men with blond hair and painted nails singing anti-gay songs.
• In newspaper columns from the 60s, you see a lot of columns about the scourge of the Rudy.

What was the trajectory of Jimmy Cliff’s career after The Harder They Come?

• After this, he got really huge. Something interesting about the Jamaican music industry is that it was vertically integrated, where everyone from the singers to the producers was Jamaican. When the film came out in 1972, there were a lot of film stars that were huge. (?)
• One of the reasons Jimmy didn’t get as huge as Bob Marley, is that he became a Muslim, not a Rasta.
• Jimmy had many more hits than Bob, but he never became the icon.
• After this, Jimmy was approached by Chris Blackwell of Island Records to be an emissary. But Jimmy thought he had already gone to Hollywood.
• Chris Blackwell is white. He imported Jamaican music. Island Records had a lot of great acts.
• Blackwell decided that he would give a Regge artist resources on the level of a rock artist. He gave Bob Marley and his band 8000 pounds, and everyone said he’d never see it again. But when he went to Jamaica 9 months later, Bob had made an album.
• Bob was a mythapoetic symbol -- Che Guevara, Ghandi, and Jim Morrison in one person.

When the film was produced, how conscious were they of the international audience?

• Perry is a leftist, and he had some definite ideas about class relations in Jamaica, and he wanted it to come out in all his communications.
• So in doing this action film, a lot of those elements came out naturally.
• He wanted a movie that could open at Carib, the huge movie theater in Kingston
• Perry was proud to make the first commercial to use Patois (he made a commercial with English guys and Jamaican guy eating canned peas; before then, no one in Jamaica would eat canned food. After the commercial, sales skyrocketed). When he saw that commercial play on the big screen (most people didn't have TVs, so commericals played in movie theaters), he wanted his movie to play in Kingston.
• Before this, we never saw a Jamaican love scene before. Before this, people used to make love in an American accent.

Where does ska end and reggae music begin culturally and musically?

• The way the story generally goes is that Ska emerged with independence in 1962, embodied the ebulliance of emancipation. Then in 1968 it starts to slow down.
• Regge starts to emerge from rock steady in 1968. strong infusion of rasta.
• Ska was essentially American boogie with a guitar riff.
• When acetate became expensive, people started making their own records. They would just copy what was on the radio. But as time went on, producers started putting more of themselves into it. with the emergence of bass and the emergence of a Jamaican vocabulary, the walking bass of Ska started changing. The dynamic pitch got lower.
• Reggae was really the music of the 1970’s.
• As a lot of musicians start turning to rasta, regga and rasta started coming together.
• If you didn’t become a rasta, you became an oldie. That made it hard for Jimmy to keep making it Jamaica.
• This movie demonstates a full range of music happening in Jamaica at the time.
• A lot of the early dj practices in Kingston picked it up from listening to the radio.
• Reimporting black power into Jamaica.

The sound track for the harder they come was so groundbreaking. Wayne Marshal and Colin Channer will be making a follow up movie to the Harder they Come, and are thinking now about how to put the soundtrack together. They have been workshopping a lot of the music in the prisons of Jamaica.

• Nesson: some backstory -- the first thing we did in Jamaica were digital music workshops
• The Harder They Come was the rhetorical seed of almost everything that follows in Jamaica.
• There is a long tradition in Regge of using previous rhythms.
• It would be great to get reggae artists from here down to the prisons in Jamaica
  • Like Special Ed from Brooklyn, who is the first in his family to be born in this county
  • the magnificent (hip hop)
  • in general, the Jamaican diaspora
• Colin is going for a Mashup aesthetic -- Bringing together all the different musical roots
  • Starting with tracks from the harder they come, adding effects, break beats, echoes.
• Jimmy was supposed to write the score for the movie but he didn’t do it. Perry just sat down and picked out all his favorite tracks, and sent it to Chris Blackwell, and that was the soundtrack

What are your plans Chris?

• A lot of things have changed musically in Jamaica. When you look at the producers in the film, they were an asian man, a high brow creole man, and the talent was black. These days, the music industry is much more diverse, and artists have a lot more information.
• But some things remain the same; it’s still hard to get an audition in Jamaica. Hard to get success without making extreme compromises. I am interested in looking at another singer perhaps related to Ivan, and looking at the source for the inspiraction for this film; looking at the prison music program.
• Looking for a life story to do a mashup with the Harder They Come
  • A mashup of the music system in Jamaica, the penal system in Jamaica, combined with a mythical quest.
• Something I'd like to do differently from the original is that in the Harder They Come, the love interest stops at some point, and it becomes a guy movie. I’m interested in having a movie where there is a love story.
• Jamaican culture is so influential around the world. There’s no kid in Argentina who wants to act Polish, and no kid in Germany that wants to hang out in Japan. What is pop music in Germany that’s not American or Jamaican derived? Spiffle?
• I don’t think that people understand what the opportunities for working people are in Jamaica, what prisons are like.
• It would be good if the star of this movie could be a real inmate.
• A lot of the actors in the original were real people. The few trained actors in the film were the drunk guy, the guy who did the press shots… but most were untrained, because Perry had the notion that some people just have star quality
• Something else to carry over would be finding an actual musician with a compelling life. The Harder They Come really was Jimmy Cliff’s life. It was easy for him to relate to it.
• One possibility would be Jah Cure, who is making hit songs out of the prison. He has found his path as a singer.
  • One question the movie could ask is, what would happen to someone like that when they leave? How much is the world of the Harder They Come similar?
• are you planning to use subtitles this time? No, Jamaican language has become more familiar throughout the world now, so it won't be necessary.