See It Ya: Four Jamaican Music Documentaries You Haven’t Seen

Words by Jesse Serwer—

The YouTube gods have been very, very benevolent recently, as we’ve been put on to not one, two or three but four fascinating documentaries on Jamaican music culture which we never knew existed. The best part is that each covers a different city, collectively spanning the four reggae/Caribbean music meccas of Kingston, New York City, London and Toronto.

Sound Business (1981)

“Throughout England an underground network of sound systems operates. They travel in teams.” So begins this little-known film documenting the early early ’80s soundystem culture in London and the surrounds. Narrated by Mikey Dread, the doc centers around one of the UK’s earliest sounds, Sir Coxsone (“I don’t have one foot in sound and one out. I am in sound,” says Lloyd Coxsone), which had already been in existence for 18 years at the time of thefilm), and the rival Young Lion sound. Among the young soundmen featured is a young Levi Roots, better known today in England for his ubiquitous “Reggae Roots Sauce,” and a mustachioed David Rodigan.

Wackies: Bullwackie in New York (1986)

Slip on a sidewalk crack in NYC today, and they’ll be a documentary crew there to film it (and ready to raise funds for the feature on Kickstarter), but the early years of reggae/soundsystem culture in NY went largely undocumented. That’s why it’s so cool that Wackies: Bullwackie in New York exists. The story of Wackies label proprietor Lloyd Barnes, one of the original NY reggae studio operators, and the producer behind Horace Andy’s Dance Hall Style and other little-known but mind-blowing dub and dancehall discs, was directed by a guy called Christopher Coy who, as far as we can tell, never made anything else. That’s too bad because, like Wackies himself, the movie has a lot of style, showing a side of New York even most New Yorkers rarely see, way up in the North Bronx on White Plains Road. Large up the Ego Trip crew for putting us on to this great slice of mid-80s NYC life.

Portraits of Jamaican Music (1998)

[Click the video to watch on YouTube]. Beginning with archival footage of Jamaica’s independence celebrations in 1962, Portraits Of Jamaican Music features appearances and interviews from Jamaican music pioneers including the late Roland Alphonso, Lloyd Brevett and Johnny ‘Dizzy’ Moore of the Skatalites, along with one Sister Ignacius of the Alpha Boys School, home of the Alpha Brass Band (alumni of which includes Tommy McCook and Don Drummond). The cinematography could be a little stronger, but this movie’s clearly had a lasting impact: it led director Pierre-Marc Simonin to form the Jamaica All Stars, a still-active band of pioneering reggae/rocksteady musicians and singers that included the late Justin Hinds. (Spotted at The Malaika).

Summer Sound in Canada

Toronto’s Summer Records and its proprietor Jerry Brown (formerly of vocal group the Jamaicans) is the subject of this short cinema verite piece shot in the late ’70s, and recently issued on DVD as a companion piece to Light in the Attic Records’ The Summer Records Anthology 1974-88 compilation. If you didn’t already knoew, Canada’s biggest city was on its way to becoming a key yard music outpost at the time, as evidenced by appearances from Jackie Mittoo, Willi Williams, and Johnnie Osbourne, each of whom stop by the studio in scenes blended, in Wild Style-type fashion, with re-enacted scenes from Brown’s life.