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| Garfield Blackman (Photo Winston Peters) |
What he did not know at the time was that it would be his next musical step.
Going down by “the line” in Marabella for a sea bath, sometimes three times day, was the meditation that brought Jamoo the musical upgrade to Sokah which he invented and for which he lost many friends along the way. Africans and Indians alike chastised him for blending their rhythms.
And while he seeded 14 children with Claudette time has proven the late Garfield Blackman, Ras Shorty I, gave an entire nation a formula for love and unity which was largely ignored.
“What they condemn me for is what they are using now,” he said, three years before he died.
With a grieving heart, just a few years after Sokah descended, by and large, into vulgarity he admitted that he felt like he was a voice in the wilderness when he changed the formula, again.
“The hardest part of my life was the transition and the way people dealt with me and I had to maintain my integrity. But I am doing something, regardless of what anybody says about me I am pressing on because I am guided,” he said in an interview which I recorded on a cassette in 1997 and which I have transcribed simply to bring the truth.
Herein lies the unedited transcript in which Blackman, who died three years later on July 12th 2000, gives in details the raw truth about that woman Indrani, how he beat a charge of indecency for The Art of Making Love, how he was forced to deceive the status quo to make the Dougla rhythms to create a sound for a people for all time.
In between there is the story of how Trinidad and Tobago’s iconic songbirds Ella Andall and Carol Addison came into the spotlight and the subtle changes from Dholak to Tabla that made the Jamoo music.
And he speaks about what grieves his heart.
Making a Dougla in the 70's.
It was early in the 70’s in Trinidad and Tobago when there was an undercurrent of uniting the two major races politically. A Trinidadian of African descent growing up in Lengua, Barrackpore, Garfield Blackman was witness to the real deal in his daily life. It became his musical mission and he was pushed forward when it seemed, in those days that calypso was dying and reggae music was on the rise.
“Someone told me “people like you and Joey Lewis should be able to bring something together to touch people. To make calypso come alive.
“I was angry and I left there with that anger and I went home in search of something and then I started to put things together and this is how I came up with the Indian and the African rhythms, with Indrani in 1972.
“The idea is to unite Indians and Africans. It was first an idea. How could I do that?
“Let me put Indian music and African music together, make a Dougla rhythm.
“I start with the Dholak and the calypso rhythm. “The Dholak has a kind of downbeat.
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| The Dholak |
Calypso in those days was not so much down.“ Calypso in those days wasn’t the kind of music that you could sing a love song. And I, in my youth had a desire to be able to sing a love song that the young people could be a part of. So it was the combination of both.Unite the Indians and the Africans with the music, make a Dougla rhythm and make a rhythm that the youths could be a part of.
“Like now, in those days it was still a situation with the radio stations propagating American music and the young people would go for whatever was the music played at that time.
“I am a stickler for my own and I feel that we ought to have a music that our young people could be a part of.
“That is where the whole thought began. Now I need a song to sing and then the idea of Indrani came into being.
“Her name wasn’t Indrani. Meh brother had a woman and we used to call she Bhowgee. "And when he and she come from the garden and drink their Puncheon rum, she used to sing like tingy tingy (high pitched voice) and dance around him and thing and everybody know that they going inside and have sex in a few moments.
“So I take the thought from that and made as though this Indian woman is my woman.describing her “she skinny and bony like a whip”, the exact description. But she wasn’t sixty years old.
“When I went into the studio to do that song it was actually my own first production because I used to work with other production companies in those days, I went to Mac Serrao studio in Woodbrook. "The label was Shorty Records.
“In those days it was only four tracks they had -no overdubs and things like that. Everybody sing and do their thing one time.
“Robin Dindial played the Dholak, Tatsil played the mandolin. They were both from the ACME Dil E Nadan Orchestra.
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| Shorty(left) with guitar working on Indrani (Photo Winston Peters) |
“I used the Dholak, Mandolin and the Dhantal. what I did was first I put down the calypso with Ed Watson and his band. He was totally against what I was doing. When he finished do his work and they get paid I bring in the Indian musicians and I used two tracks for the band, one for the Indian musicians and one for me and the choruses.
“That kind of work was unheard of in that time. Nobody was doing that. Max Serrao said you could do that if you want and I said yes, I am going for that because I have options and I want to try it.
“The combination of the Indian rhythm and the African rhythm, which was calypso blended so nicely in Indrani, it was a big hit for me. It buy meh house, car everything for the first time.
“Previous to that I could not even buy a bicycle.
“Sat Maharaj started to complain right away that I was degrading Indian women and all that. "I fought them in the sense that I find that was ridiculous because Indian women were like anybody else.
“In those days all things about the Indian woman and their culture was a hidden thing only for Indians. And here I was as an African, breaking into something that was totally traditional East Indian and Sat Maharaj was one of the first fellas to start talking.
Outsmarting Dr Eric Williams
“ That very year I had Art of Making Love and the Prime Minister (Dr Eric Williams) had me charged with indecency.
“It was a whole big publicity thing. It was two 45’s. One was Indrani and the flip side was Calypso is Ours and then there was Art of Making Love Parts One and Two.
“I had two hit songs and I really sold out.
“The Attorney General Karl Hudson Phillips dropped the charges eventually because I was making too much of a big thing out of it.
“ You ever see anybody go to look for a Summons?
“I take my lawyer and said allyuh have a summons for me, I want it.
I carried a photographer and made a big splash of it.
“Every day my picture on the papers and people was buying records.
Before Indrani
My first album was recorded in 1963, Cloak and Dagger and then there was The Follower, Fish is Fish and Female Opposition where I decided to take all the prostitutes and make a political party and then "Indian Singers" before Indrani. I was speaking about the Indian singers coming into nice melodies and lively music. The song started by saying
“Them Indian singers bound to hire/ day by day they getting better/ long time when ah Indian come to sing/ he use to start off as if he groaning. But now that change entirely/ if you hear them with a sweet sweet melody.
“I Sang it on calypso rhythm, but the whole mood of the song was that. That was in 1966
“In 1970, Don't Chook Yuh Mouth in Woman Business, that was a big one.
“And then in 1971, the big song as not one that I sang but it was a song that I wrote and gave to Baron Severe Licking, they used to call it Ah Lick She.
Deceiving the status quo
“I decided that I would make my first album. In those days nobody made albums but Kitchener and Sparrow. Another artist with an album was unheard of.
“It was a great challenge because people would say you playing Sparrow, yuh playing Kitchener. And I was financing it. I produced an album called The Love Man with ten tracks. I used the dholak in every track, the mandolin and the dhantal.
“I was condemned for it. Everybody say I was playing Indian, spoiling the music.
“ All that time everybody was doing their traditional thing. Nobody was doing anything different. And I was sure I had something.
“So what I did in my next recording which was Endless Vibration , I transferred the Dholak rhythm to the drum set so nobody could say ah playing Indian anymore.
“That is how the drum rhythm changed from what it used to be to what it is now. And then I gave it a name SOKAH. That is to represent the soul of calypso. Kah was the East Indian influence (the first letter in the Sanskrit alphabet).
“Endless Vibration was recorded in 1974 and released in 1975. It was the turning point of the music., “Everybody accepted it because it didn’t have any Indian drum on it. They didn’t understand what was happening there was the same thing they were listening to, but it was a different format.
“What it did was that it allowed the music to flow more. it was a freer flowing song. I was able to use shorter lines, sweeter melody patterns,]. I was able to swing my voice in a totally different way.
“ I expressed what I meant by that in 1975 when I made another album called Shorty and Friends, Love in the Caribbean and I presented Ella Andall, Ricky Gibson and the Grooving Millers. We did basically songs with the Sokah rhythm
“Second Fiddle, Love in the Caribbean and Who is she, which I sang were the most successful of the ten tracks. When you make an album is ten tracks in those days.
“In 1976 with Sweet Music I was able to go in deeper into what I was experiencing, what was the movement.I began to hear now and what it enabled me to do.
“I wanted a different sound and I also did something that nobody else did. I used females in my chorus for the first time.
The chorus group in those days was the Sparks, that eventually became Wildfire. I took Carol Addison and her sisters. She had two sisters who used to work with her and I hired them.
Carol and her sisters had an American attitude about them and changed the color of the whole musical thing.
On that sweet music I had Angus Nunes on bass, On keyboard was Junior Brown, Toby Tobias was on the drums. I transferred everything into the drums, it’s still the same thing they are playing up to this day and nobody wants to recognize that is where it came from.
They calling it crossover chutney and all kinds of things but it’s Sokah music.
“I had my band called Vibrations International and I run my first calypso tent, the Professionals. Upper Frederick Street, we only did one season. We had The Mighty Duke and a lot of new fellas like Mba who started and got their break there.
Sokah runs into Jamoo barely six years later
“ By 1978 I was in the sea bathing. I used to go by the sea everyday-sometimes three times a day- on the line by the wharf. I used to walk from Vistabella and go down on the line to bathe by a place called Iron.
“And while I was in the sea I began hearing Jamoo and I knew that God was giving me a different concept of music. Because I was hearing calypso but of a different nature.
“I actually felt like I was going mad in the sense that so much things was going on in my mind I could not capture it. I tried putting three tape recorders together to capture the bass, the drums, to sing them out.
“ And then I said to myself your mind is the greatest computer man
“I then began to develop my mind to maintain all those sorts of things. And in a short space of time, for the first time, I was able to write a song without even using a paper and pen.
“I never did that before. That song was Jamoo. It was released in 1984 along with songs that were written between 1977 and 1984.
How is Jamoo different?
“It remains with the East Indian side. more classical. but I have adopted the Tabla rhythm rather than the Dholak.
“Jamoo is the next stage in the development of Sokah, what I see with Jamoo is what I was seeing with Sokah. I wanted a music that young people could relate to. Jamoo is still that.
“As a matter of fact, most of my fans right now are young people, they appreciate what I am doing. The music has changed from the carnal to the spiritual.
“Sokah make you feel to wine, whereas Jamoo does not. It moves your whole body. It moves your mind even when we play it uptempo, because Jamoo had two aspects male and female.
“The male is the aggressive, dominant and authoritative. The female is the more passive ,mellow and smoother reflection of the music. The male resembles Sokah more because the music comes out of Sokah
“It is still calypso music. I call it born again Sokah or Caribbean Gospel Music.
“It is not the kind of classical music like what you hear in Black American churches. This is the kind of music that relates to the rich and poor alike. Not something that you could run from because it relates directly to your spirit.
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| Shorty I , Claudette Blackman and the Love Circle. Photo Discogs |
“I have been doing it since 1977, 18 years ago. People now begin to understand Sokah and probably appreciate the crossover of the East Indian and the African rhythms.
“What they condemn me for is what they are using now.
Quest for Indian and African Unity revived in the 90’s
“My mind is working in the same direction with (Basdeo) Panday’s call for national unity and I had been fighting for national unity for years. There has always been this deep-rooted thing between the African and the Indian. When you and an Indian fella is good,good partner and you want to become his enemy, mess with his woman.
“I had a partner and the only time we became enemies was when he heard I was going to meet his sister. Trouble start! I found that ought not to be.
“From as a little boy I would lime by my neighbor Narine, who was a musician and every morning I would find myself by Narine in Lengua. Sometimes I used to try my hand on the Dholak. He used to get up every morning and play his music. It was a religion to him. He used to play his Ramayan.
“The division in the races and the desire to bring them together because they come from basically the same area, and came to Trinidad basically on the same attitude.
“Why then do we have this big difference? My desire was to help to make that contribution towards uniting the thing
“I had no problem as a child with neighbors. Yes, it was natural in the sense that I had it in me from a child. “Living in Barrackpore and I went to see an Indian movie and one stayed in my mind until this day. I used some of the effects from Nagin in this song. The oboe flute.
“The national unity thing is so big now. this is why I decided to lift my voice I have always been fighting for that.
“This is what I chose now to make a statement musically. I chose her(Ramraji Prabhoo) because she is a full woman, beta, son and big brother bhayia. I wrote it and the Hindi was translated by a woman in Williamsville.
“This is what I chose now to make a statement musically. I chose her(Ramraji Prabhoo) because she is a full woman, beta, son and big brother bhayia. I wrote it and the Hindi was translated by a woman in Williamsville.
"The song does not say anything about national unity but the idea that I am using a woman as a duet shows the unity on all front.
“Most of the East Indian and the crossover music that is used now there is very little or no East Indian musicians playing in it. Africans are interpreting the Indian music.
“In this song, Respect Woman, most of the rhythm is used from the Tassa.“I desire to use the classical influence of the East Indian music. so I used the Timtal.. at the beginning of the song Rajkumar Krishnapersad is the voicing .
What grieves my heart
“What grieves my heart about the music now is the whole vulgarity of the thing as though nobody or little or no one at all is writing anything to uplift this society but only to help the society go further down into degradation by one mental thought, just party wine jam on both sides of the Africans and the Indians.
“There was a time you would never see an Indian woman wine at the side of the road.
“That was something if you see that you know she is a prostitute. Now in every little inn, all over the place, you see these Indian women just letting go they self.
“But Ramraji once said in an interview they used to do it in the bedroom well now they coming into the bedroom.
"The desire to do these things was always there but because of their religious beliefs,it was held back. "So now religion has gone to the wind and they are allowing themselves to be just drawn into this whole syndrome of immorality and vulgarity.
The future foretold for Trinidad and Tobago, sadly.
“My question is where is the nation going ? Where are we going with this kind of attitude?
“What is going to happen to the children tomorrow?
“They are going to be worse than us, you know.
“And somehow the people who are voices in this society have to make their voices heard- you with your pen and me with my music.
“Sometimes it seems like you are the voice of one crying in the wilderness. But that voice of one crying in the wilderness made its presence felt.
“Elijah in the days of Jezebel thought he was the only prophet available. He said Lord they kill all your prophets, I am the only one remaining and they want to kill me too.
“Then God told him don't worry I have seven thoughts prophets who have not bowed to the God of Jezebel.
“God is using them to put things in place because he would leave himself without witness.
“If the religious people fail to do the work God will appoint people who may not even be considered religious and Godly.
“I have been doing it since 1977, 18 years ago. People now begin to understand Sokah and probably appreciate the crossover of the East Indian and the African rhythms.
“What they condemn me for is what they are using now.
“What is the worst thing you do through as a result of fusing.
“The hardest part of my life was the transition and the way people dealt with me and I had to maintain my integrity.
“But I am doing something. This is where I am going. I am doing something. Regardless of what anybody says about me, this is the direction I am going.
“I ain’t turning back for nobody. I conducted myself as though I saw he that is invisible. I saw Jesus, even though I did not see him. I am sure that He is guiding me. So regardless of what anybody says I am pressing on because I am guided. I know the lord is with me and He is telling me go in this direction. If God speaks then who is man?
