Klive Walker
Dubwise: Reasoning From The Reggae Underground
Insomniac Press
292 pages $21.95
By Norman (Otis) Richmond

First things first. Klive Walker is a friend and has been for many years.
Walker also mentions me many times in Dubwise: Reasoning From The Reggae
Underground, so read this review with this in mind.

Dubwise: Reasoning From The Reggae Underground is a breakthrough on
several levels. First, it is written from an insider's perspective.
Secondly, Dubwise is the first book to seriously consider women's
contribution to roots reggae. Thirdly, it recognizes the local reggae
scene unapologetically.

The insider perspective will be widely debated. It has always been a
question of European control over African creatively. Duke Ellington
warned many moons ago that we should not allow others to name our
creations. Simply put, dogs and slaves are named by their masters, but
free people name themselves. Walker has taken Ellington to heart. His
approach in Dubwise is Ellingtonian in this regard as he takes on the
euro-American reggae "experts", Timothy White and Roger Steffens heads on
the question of Don Drummond.

Trombonist Drummond, Walker maintains "created a distinct Jamaican jazz
language through his unique trombone playing that was revolutionary in the
way it provided a vehicle for his genius to convey the raw emotion of
injustice poverty and oppression suffered by African-Jamaicans through
bleak brooding trombone notes." Walker rightly points out that the
"experts" have failed to give Drummond his props.

Drummond was one of the greatest trombonists on earth and Jamaica's first
folk hero of the island's popular music. He was a major influence on Bob
Marley and his song titles suggest his support of Pan-Africanism. He was
responsible for pieces like "Addis Ababa", "Reincarnation of Marcus
Garvey" and "The Return of Paul Bogle", which put Drummond in the vanguard
of conscious music. He was also recognized as a giant by leading jazz
lights like Sarah Vaughan, J.J. Johnson and George Shearing.

In this book, Walker takes a serious look at reggae women like Sonia
Pottinger Millie Small, Judy Mowatt, Rita Marley, Marcia Griffiths, and
many others to roots reggae. In the chapter "Reggae Sistas' Stories: The
Women of Roots Reggae", he tells the untold story of the Jamaican woman in
the music. I had no idea that it was Small and not Jimmy Cliff, who was
the first Jamaican to perform in Mama Africa.

The first time I interviewed Cliff he talked about being arrested in
Africa the first time he visited. I always assumed that he performed in
Africa before Bob Marley and the Wailers.

Walker clears the air: "Small's tours of Ghana and Nigeria took her deeper
into pioneer territory, which meant that she performed on the African
continent before Cliff and Marley."
He talks about the I-Three's-Judy Mowatt, Rita Marley and Griffiths -being
more than "Bob Marley's backup singers". The history of Black Music has
not been that kind to Black woman. Despite the fact that African American
woman were allowed to record before African American men, according to
Amiri Baraka(Leroi Jones) in Blues People they were not treated fairly.

"Sonia Pottinger emerged as the Jamaican recording industry's only female
producer and became one of the few producers to establish a nurturing
environment for woman artists. Pottinger was the force behind some of the
early work of Judy Mowatt, and it was she who produced some of Marcia
Griffiths' best recordings."

Mowatt for example is singled out by Walker as a ground breaker.  "When
Judy Mowatt's Black Woman was released in 1979, the album created reggae
history, he writes. "The very existence of Mowatt's ten song album was
revolutionary because it was produced, written, and mixed by woman whose
urgent searing tone breaths the consciousness of an independent Rasta
woman into every song."

Jamaican woman have proven time and again that they are capable of rising
to the top. One look at the role of woman in Marcus Garvey's Universal
Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA) proves
this. It was Garvey's second wife Amy Jacques Garvey who published The
Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey and her own Garvey and Garveyism.
There were always woman writers in the UNIA's newspaper The Negro World.
Tony Martin has done a fine job documenting this in many of his books on
Garvey. Dubwise should be viewed as building on the tradition of more
proof from an insider.

"One-Drop Dubs the Maple Leaf: The Story of Reggae in Canada "tells the
story of the local reggae and dub poetry scene. Walker documents the fact
that Jamaican pioneers like Jackie Mitto, Stranger Cole and Leroy Sibbles
lived and worked here for many years. He also records that the first
reggae band signed to a major Canadian label were the Ishan People which
included an old school mate of his guitarist Michael Murray. He doesn't
fail to mention the contribution of Truths and Rights, Ato Seitu and
Isobel Harry. He reminds us that, "Truths and Rights' 1980 single "Acid
Rain", tackles a Canadian environmental issue at a time when the
environment was not a theme discussed in reggae."

African Canadian dub poets like Afua Cooper, Clifton Joseph, I Shaka,
Devon Haughton, ahdri zihina mandiela, and Lillian Allen are "bigged up"
by Walker.

While there are those who will argue that community newspapers and
community radios like CKLN-FM, CHRY-FM and CIUT-FM have also always kept
Black Canadian Music alive, I would say Walker must be credited with
putting it in book form. African people music deal with both the Nommo
(the spoken word) and the printed word.

Still, there is one bone I have to pick with Walker.  He fails to document
artists like Jay Douglas and Terry Lewis from Jamaica and Antigua
respectively. Douglas came from Montego Bay, Jamaica and attended Central
Tech High School.  At that time, you could not get arrested performing
reggae music. While he could do Jamaican music in the mid-60s, he probably
could not work steady performing any form of Caribbean music. This is
another chapter for Walker or others to do.

However, at the risk of putting my foot in my mouth, it would be great for
this chapter to be written by an insider.

It will be interesting to see if Walker's "insider perspective" will help
or hinder the promotion of Dubwise, which looks at Jamaican music in a
holistic fashion. It takes you from the beginnings of the music until
today.

Dubwise features a great preface by Herbie Miller who once managed Peter
Tosh, The Skatalites, and operated the Blue Monk Jazz Gallery for a time
in Kingston Jamaica.
The volume includes great photos by Toronto based Isobel Harry.

Toronto-based journalist and radio producer Norman (Otis) Richmond can be
heard on Diasporic Music, Thursdays, 8 p.m.-10 p.m., Saturday Morning
Live, Saturdays, 10 a.m.-1 p. m. and From a Different Perspective,
Sundays, 6-6:30 p.m. on CKLN-FM 88.1 and on the internet at www.ckln.fm.
He can be reached by e-mail norman@ckln.fm.