Nyahbingi also influenced some of the most distinctive hits of the late 1960s. The Royals’ “Pick Up The Pieces,” Carlton & His Shoes’ “Happy Land,” the Abyssinians’ “Satta Amasa Ganna” and Burning Spear’s “Door Peep” all utilized minor chord melodies, slow rhythms and chants drawn directly from cultural traditions.(Affirmation of the music’s eternal effectiveness, too, emerged in DJ Determine’s 1995 “Kette Drum,” a Bobby Digital production which swiftly spawned a host of versions, including Garnett Silk’s “Silk Chant,” Bounty Killer’s “Seek God” and Cocoa Tea/Shabba Ranks’ “Flag Flown High.”)
In more general terms, however, nyahbingi itself remained largely unknown (and certainly unheralded) until the early 1970s. Then, in 1973, Count Ossie led his grandiosely named Mystic Revelation of Rastafari through Grounation, historically recalled as the first triple album ever recorded and released in Jamaica. It did not sell especially well, but in a land where Rastafarianism itself was still regarded with more than a little suspicion and distrust, its very existence was a triumph.
Count Ossie recorded one further album, 1975’s Tales Of Mozambique, before his death, aged 56 (he also recorded a remarkable session with the band Culture, released 20 years later on their Trod On archive album). Already, however, other nyahbingi ensembles were emerging from the shadows, led by the long-running and vastly influential Ras Michael & The Sons Of Negus, fronted by Ras Michael (born Michael George Henry.)
Again, the band was launched far from the hub of the Jamaican music industry, although – like Count Ossie’s ensemble – their very existence proved a magnet of sorts to the Kingston cognoscenti. During the early-mid 1960s, the Wailers were regular guests at the Sons’ meetings, while Ras Michael himself broke considerable ground when he was appointed host of Jamaican radio’s first ever program dedicated to Rastafarianism, the spiritually inclined The Lion Of Judah Time, in the wake of Haile Selassie’s 1966 state visit.
In 1967, the group cut their first single, also titled “The Lion Of Judah,” for release on their own Zion Disc label. Several further 45s followed, before they scored a proxy hit when U-Roy and Peter Tosh utilized their “Ethiopian National Anthem” for the intro to their “(Earth’s) Rightful Ruler” single. Further boundaries shattered when Radio Jamaica DJ Philip Jackson, one of the few other Rastafarians on the “inside” of 1970s establishment Jamaica, took to airing both Count Ossie and Ras Michael – and beyond – on his own, strictly secular, show.
Working now with some of Jamaica’s leading session musicians, RasMichael scored a hit of their own with “None A Jah Jah Children No Cry.” Success begat success; soon demand for the music was so great that a new band, the Daughters Of Negus, was launched alongside the Sons – future Black Uhuru vocalist Puma Jones was a member for a time, appearing on Ras Michael’s Movements album in 1978.
The group’s most notable feat, of course, was their ability to advance nyahbingi far beyond its own roots, and into the commercial arena. For all the respect he eventually earned, Count Ossie was best remembered in Jamaica for performing for Haile Selassie in 1966. His actual recordings passed utterly beneath the commercial radar. Ras Michael’s albums toyed with the best-seller lists.
― j., Sunday, 14 September 2014 23:41 (nine years ago) link