Steely & Clevie

Monk One

Welcome, everybody, direct from Kingston, Jamaica, Steely and Clevie. [applause] Legends, legends. You gentlemen have known each other for a long time, I understand.

Clevie

Yeah, our friendship goes back to the early ’70s. He had just started playing keyboards at that time, I was just learning drums. We found out we had similar tastes in music. The songs he liked, I liked. We just started jamming together. Every day we’d go into this room where I had my old battered drum kit and a little keyboard. We just jammed together but we didn’t know then we would have a production team. We were invited to play on a recording, our first ever, by Augustus Pablo, to play on a Hugh Mundell session and some songs with a singer called Earl 16. So we played on our very first recording together with other musicians. As time went on we branched off. Steely was invited to work with Gregory Isaacs and Roots Radics band, I became a member of the In Crowd. We sort of split then, and went our various ways.

Monk One

So you actually started working when you were maybe 10, 12 years old. During the Hugh Mundell session with Augustus Pablo. What age were you at the time, if I may ask?

Clevie

I was 14.

Steely

I was 11.

Monk One

11 and 14. Hugh Mundell, legendary singer, was only a youth himself.

Clevie

Yes, he was. Not sure how old, but he was very young.

Monk One

And those sessions went onto become one of the most legendary roots albums, Africa Must Be Free By 1983, Hugh Mundell with Augustus Pablo producing most of it. So Steely then went onto work with the Roots Radics and they are absolutely one of the fundamental bands.

Steely

I actually have the track here, the Hugh Mundell.

(music: Hugh Mundell – “Africa Must Be Free By 1983” Dub)

Steely

This was when I was 11 and he was 14. Playing drums. I was playing keyboards.

Monk One

Wow, 11 and 14, making history. I understand that you started out playing the tuba.

Clevie

Where did you hear that? Yes, I learnt bass clef. I had a liking for bass, so sometimes we exchange ideas for a bassline and so on. But Steely plays most of the bass, bass synthesizers.

Monk One

But as you got into drums…

Clevie

I realized that was what I really liked. But tuba, I went on to do music formally from playing the tuba. I did other music forms, choral music, jazz, everything. Jamaica is a melting pot of vibes from different parts of the world. You get a bit of everything. It’s a multi-racial country, you have Indians from India, Chinese people, so there’s a lot of influence in the music. There’s a traditional residue of African music, like we are also influenced by etu and kumina.

Monk One

What was the progression from mento to ska, rocksteady into reggae? What years... what time period are we talking about, from when mento progressed to what we know as reggae?

Steely

Mento went from ‘50s into early ‘60s and fade away, because ska came in ‘63-’64.

Clevie

From ska to rocksteady, rocksteady to reggae, reggae to dancehall.

Steely

It’s a theme for the music that it just evolved into something else.

Clevie

I have some regrets that some of the styles we have progressed through over the years could be a style on its own. Ska could still evolve as a separate identity. But it evolved into reggae and they did away with ska in Jamaica. I see it still as a strong music force. Reggae into dancehall, we still have reggae and dancehall, all the different forms we have gone through, we could have still progressed them on their own.

Monk One

It’s been a theme of your work that the two of you have done, respect for the older songs. Is it something you explicitly tried to do, bring back some of the older rhythms?

Steely

As history grows, things change. The younger generation will always move so fast that you lose what was there before, so you always try to keep that. At times, we want to go back and make things that were there into modern times, just remind them of what they have before. Otherwise, you can keep evolving and evolving until you’ve lost everything.

Clevie

I find a problem in Jamaica with archiving, for instance. Many of the great songs weren’t preserved and they were great songs. So we make an effort to re-record them and present them to a new generation. We plan to preserve those songs, not just with music, but with television clips and so on. I think mainly due to budgetary constraints, the television stations… Miss Lou, Louise Bennett, had a programme, but many of the tapes were re-used, they recorded over the tapes. That’s history lost that won’t come back. We really believe that we should make the music available and history be kept alive. There was one song we re-recorded that’s one of our favorite songs, by Studio One, produced by Coxsone Dodd, called “No, No, No”.

(music: Dawn Penn – “No, No, No”/ Steely adds keyboards)

Monk One

With a sample of U-Roy in there.

Clevie

He was the first DJ in Jamaica. Many of our current DJs don’t know the history. We present these artists on our records, and they say to us, “Who’s that? How come you never use us?” So we tell them who U-Roy was, keeping history alive.

Monk One

Some people might not be familiar with the terminology of Jamaican DJs. A DJ in Jamaica is the person who holds the microphone and speaks. The DJs influenced American rap music in the early days, people like U-Roy. But back to the record “No, No, No” by Dawn Penn, that came from an album, Steely & Clevie Present Studio One. Studio One, for those who don't know, was a legendary recording studio in Jamaica which originated, or maybe they didn’t originate, I’m learning from Steely today, some of the classic rhythms still used today. Treasure Isle?

Steely

There was another producer in Jamaica named Duke Reid. He was the first, Coxsone was the one who was always in your face, but originally it came from Duke Reid. We have another track there from him that we did over and all of these were done with computers and drum machines, not live. We tried to get the computer to sound as live as possible, so there was a lot of swotting, copying.

(music: Alton Ellis – “Ain’t That Loving You”)

Monk One

Yeah, Mr. DC rhythm, that was a rhythm I first heard on Sugar Minott, Mr. DC on Studio One. Do you think Duke Reid did that originally?

Steely

It was originally a song from America by a singer called Johnnie Taylor. It was a cover version of an American song.

Monk One

We were talking earlier about the influence of some American R&B/soul groups on Jamaican music, like the Impressions and many of the vocal trio groups. They influenced The Wailers, amongst others.

Clevie

I think that’s a classic example of the influence on our music. The location of Jamaica, we get music from the US more than any other country. But just the classic songs, so we don’t have to sieve through. And those artists did influence groups like The Wailers. You find groups being formed where even their vocal styles are influenced by American artists.

Monk One

One thing that’s unique about Jamaican music is that you get rhythms being used again and again. A musical backing track can be made and be voiced over using dozens of different vocalists. You’ve obviously played the music for so many of these rhythm tracks. Do you have anything to do with the voicing of those tracks, or do you just make they rhythm and then you don’t know who’s going to be singing over it?

Steely

Well, it started long before our time, back in the ‘50s and ‘60s. DJs like U-Roy, I-Roy, Big Youth all used to go on the same rhythm track.

Clevie

It’s a result of demand from the public too. Soundsystems used to mix from one song to the other, they all wanted the same rhythm. There was a song called “Satta Massa Gana” that had about 20 different versions. It goes back to the ‘60s. Stalag.

(music: Big Youth – “I Pray Thee”)

Steely

So it all started from dancehall. In the early days, soundsystems, what we call clash, it’s about a competition to see who is the champion. Which sound can play a different version of the same rhythm. Usually, they’ll come with different vocal, more than one artist on the same track. Like starting a competition.

Monk One

And the soundsystems were related to the record labels at that time?

Steely

Yes, Sir Coxsone was one, Duke Reid the other one.

Monk One

So maybe if Treasure Isle, Duke Reid’s sound, came with one song that was popular, would Coxsone go into the studio next week and cut his version?

Clevie

Yes, same time.

Monk One

He would try to cut his version so when the dance came they would try to have a hotter version of the same rhythm.

Clevie

The whole culture was born out of competition, a healthy competition. It’s the same today with the music.

Steely

The reggae music goes far, very deep. It’s not only a music, it’s a vibe, a spirit. Lee “Scratch” Perry is one of the great producers. We remember as kids playing inside the studio, he came in with a dove and released it in the studio. Crazy thing.

Clevie

It was bumping into the mics, cymbals, that was quite interesting. We consider him a genius, what he did with that sound was quite phenomenal. You couldn’t tell from listening to the record what made the sound, like he would sample a cow on one track there. He took a cow into the studio.

Monk One

A cow in the studio?

Clevie

They didn’t have samplers in those days, so if you needed a bike on the record you’d have to take one into the studio.

Monk One

Yeah, a big Dillinger record with Big Youth starts with the bike. So “Scratch” was bringing cows, doves, all sorts of animals. A menagerie.

Clevie

I worked on an album with him, one day the drum kit was okay. The following day there was yellow paint all over the drum kit, the cymbals were painted with paint, the keyboards, everything was yellow, the whole place. But what he did with the sound... He processed the sound. He knew what he wanted.

Steely

This is the song with the cow.

(music: Congos – “Ark of the Covenant” dub / laughter)

Jamaica is a small country, a little island, and we have to be creative there, create our own sample.

Clevie

One of the major advantages we had is that we started quite young. We were there on a lot of those sessions. So to remake the music, it’s difficult to remake it without capturing the spirit of the times. You have to understand what Jamaica went through at different times in its history. And we can go back and recapture the spirit of those times. There were times when Jamaica had violence, serious times, when the music was hard and serious. There were happy times in our history and we can see the time period, just listening to the music, we can feel the time.

Steely

There’s a Bob Marley song and I think it’s from a time when he was very sad. This is one of the first recordings.

(music: The Wailers – “Thank You Lord”)

That was from the early days of Bob Marley. Sad days.

Monk One

When you speak about recreating the feeling and how important that is for making authentic music, how do you go about doing it when you’re in this time of people using computers, not bringing cows into the studio and painting the whole place yellow?

Steely

Technology is there, but there is certain information that’s still within one that doesn’t go away, it stays there. It doesn’t matter where I go, I will always be a Jamaican. The spirit is still there. I could play something now, just anything, like playing a reggae ska, the feeling is the same.

[plays keyboards]

Technology cannot change that. It’s always there. It’s easy to bring it back. The important thing is to have been there and know what it was like.

Clevie

We have also experienced analog. We have experienced old microphones. We know now what exists, and sometimes you can’t get it right if you can’t get the old equipment, but you know the sound. It’s in your head, you feel the beat. It might take bit of searching, but you can get close.

Steely

I might go into the bathroom and take a toilet tissue and [blows hard into microphone] and make a snare or a kick drum or something. It’s there, it’s music, and music speaks one language. A ‘C’ will always be a ‘C,’ no matter what language you speak you will always hear that melody as a melody.

Clevie

You can only get out of a computer what you put in and hope you get it back.

Monk One

It was very interesting for me to learn you were one of the first users of Pro Tools, before most people even knew what it was, surprisingly, back in the late ’80s.

Steely

It was 8.6 the system, the Mac operating system. Before it went to 9 it was 8.6.

Clevie

When we started using drum machines and computers, we got a lot of bad reviews. Nobody in Jamaica ever thought it could work with reggae music, but we proved them wrong. It was so new to the kids that could only just afford to buy records, we found out that at the end of the year when we started out we amassed a total of about 75% of the top songs on the top 100 charts in Jamaica. It was a massive transition, people were waiting for something new and we delivered that to them.

Monk One

So you were there for a most important landmark for Jamaican music and, to me, music in general. You can tell us more exactly, but you were there around ‘85 or so when the digital rhythms replaced the band rhythms and people you were working with, like Bobby Dixon, who goes by the name Bobby Digital at King Jammy‘s studio. What can you tell us about that time, and how...

Steely

It was a little studio and we had an eight-track machine, no, four-track. And we had to play live because there was no sequencer. Might take the drums and the bass together but everything was played live, so it would be [plays keyboards]. We’d play that for four minutes straight, whole sequence. We had to play live, live, live because there was no sequencer, no MIDI.

Clevie

Coming out of the old school where you had to play instruments it wasn’t that difficult. Today, you’ll find musicians or producers who didn’t go through the formal thing. We played a lot of shows, being on stage for two hours, and that strengthened us and prepared us for doing that until sequencers came in and that helped. But for economic reasons, a lot of producers gravitated towards drum machines on the live sessions. I would sit at Channel One for an hour kicking the bass drum trying to get the sound, another hour on the snare. We were so meticulous about the sound. So many producers were using the studio that everything was pulled back down. It was a way of making money for the studio. It was the same drum kit, but everything was pulled back down. You’d go in and spend hours putting it together. So when we brought drum machines to the studio, the producers were happy, took much less time doing the sessions.

Monk One

But originally, as I understand it, the first digital beats were just on a keyboard. Is that true, the Sleng Teng rhythm?

Steely

No, that’s wrong. The first digital song was by Bob Marley. Bob Marley made the first computer music in Jamaica, a song called “So Jah Say”, on a drum machine made by Roland, a rhythm box. Him and “Scratch” first started and “Billie Jean” by Shinehead. The first computers in reggae music started from The Wailers, 1973.

Clevie

And those were the songs that made me aware something new was happening, and I spent a lot of time searching, what was this sound?

Steely

We spend a lot of time with Bob. We spend hours with him, watching him writing, singing, late at night, watching how he created his music. We have a lot of history. We spend time with Sir Coxsone also. Going to school, we used to leave school, run to the studio, look, watch the great musicians playing. I was there. We grew up with the music.

Monk One

Who were some of the musicians that you were watching back then?

Steely

Jackie Mittoo, Roland Alphonso, Tommy McCook, a bass man called Larry Brevett, Jackie Jackson, Lloyd Nibbs, Don Drummond Jr, Johnny Moore, Ernest Ranglin. Just great jazz players.

Clevie

Earl Wire Lindo. The whole Wailers band, before they became The Wailers, used to be in sessions, and we’d sit in and watch. We were allowed to. I’m happy they didn’t throw us out of the studio. But as kids we were always interested and went by the studio.

Steely

I remember one time Lee “Scratch” Perry sat us down on the couch and said, “Look at Scratch on the TV.” I was looking and I was thinking this man’s crazy.

Clevie

There was static on the screen.

Steely

And he took a nail and went like this on the screen, [makes scratching gesture ] “Scratch on the TV.”

Clevie

He was an eccentric character.

Monk One

But somehow that got the vibe.

Steely

Reggae is just a love music. Caribbean sea, the weather, tropics, it’s just a vibe, a free spirit. You just express yourself. It’s all nature, really. It is not a violent music, it is a love music. There’s a lot of hardship, but most of it is really love music.

Monk One

How did you begin to work with King Jammy? And when was that?

Steely

Well, first I used to play with Roots Radics and Gregory Isaacs. Those days I was just a session musician, you go inside and get paid per record, but I used to play with King Tubby‘s, a great producer as well, and Bunny Lee. King Jammy was a young engineer in those times, doing little things on the side. And I played on songs for him, and I’d known him for years, so I went with him and I stumbled into his little studio. And he said, “So, we can start back here, make little music.” At that time Clevie was playing in Freddie McGregor‘s band, so I went to Clevie and asked him to come with me to Jammy’s. We hooked up and started to make music.

Monk One

And you were the house band for Jammy at that time?

Steely

Up till now. Whenever he has work to do he’ll call us and we go in and give him some help.

Monk One

During the mid- to late ‘80s, that was the heyday of when the dancehall sound really took off. I’ve got a statistic here that’s incredible, which says that between 1985 and ‘87, you guys played every year on an average of 60 of the top ten songs. That’s an astounding figure, so many songs. Were you getting paid per session, if I may ask?

Steely

I think I personally played on the most hit songs out of Jamaica, the most hit songs in the history as an individual musician.

Clevie

I can endorse that.

Steely

Most of the songs that you hear, I played from when I was a kid coming up. On the pay side, it wasn’t money for us, it was just playing music. We wanted to play music. In Jamaica, a man doesn’t concentrate on paying, just play. So just play, play, play. But by doing that over the years I found out something, it is like a school, a college, you keep learning. Music can never stop learning. Maybe there’s no pay, but you’re sitting and learning with greats like Tommy McCook, Sly & Robbie. That was the pay, you play with great people, and you learn a lot. So it wasn't really money, it was just music.

Clevie

While making music, too, we never focus on the money. We think about making great music first, the money will come after.

Monk One

So of course, you guys have worked with just about every vocalist who’s come along. Do you have any favorites, ones you particularly like working with? Were you there when the tracks were voiced or did you just lay down the rhythm tracks and then not know what happened to them?

Steely

In Jamaica you do everything, it’s really the musicians and engineers who are the producers. When you go into the studio you create the track, get the artist and write the song, then the producer comes in and says, “I produced this song.” It’s not really true, it’s just the musicians and engineers produce the song. From Sir Coxsone on, there’s always a band doing all the work.

Clevie

We had to have a change in the culture, because in composing the music, many times the credit comes out wrong. You might see the producer’s name as the writer. I think the producers hated us when we started demanding a change to that culture and that pushed us to start producing ourselves, giving the right credits, giving the credits to the authors. And if there’s an additional musician who composed the tracks with us, giving them a credit. They were happy with us for that because many producers before didn’t give them credit.

Monk One

That must have been a very unusual situation when you started doing it. If you look at the old recordings, to use Studio One as an example again, you’ll see Coxsone Dodd credited as writer and as far as I know he wasn’t a musician. Maybe Jackie Mittoo or someone might have written them.

Steely

And most of the time they’re not there. Might be the keyboard player at the session that day, the bass man that day.

Clevie

But they own the master. That’s it.

Steely

The rightful title of that is really, what do you call it... executive producer. But really, it’s the musician and the artist who create the music in Jamaica.

Clevie

But we see brighter days now.

Monk One

Thanks to you guys who have been changing things. During that time in the mid- to late ‘80s, what was the vibes like in Jammy‘s? Because it was hit after hit after hit, everything from Foxy Brown, “Sorry” onwards.

Steely

Jamaica is a tropical country, sunny and nice, not very cold. I get up at five in the morning and I call Clevie and say, “I have an idea, let’s go to the studio.” Get to Jammy’s studio by 7:30, knocking on Jammy’s door, turn on the machines, start to make music. By mid-day all the artists will come inside and they start to write, and it was free-spirited. Music is something that creates a bond, you have to be free to make music.

Clevie

At the time we saw the making of many of the artists you know today. We had no way of knowing what would have become of those songs and artists, dancehall being a new music. Shabba Ranks, Lt Stitchie, Supercat, all the artists that have made a name for themselves. It was a period where we saw the making of the artists and we worked along with them.

Monk One

When you talk about the singers who’d come in and pen lyrics, how does one singer get a chance to stand up and voice song? How do you choose? Does someone stand up and say, “I got a song?”

Steely

As I said, it’s all vibes. You’re there, you play the idea to the room full of artists, and one might say, “I think I’ve got a song.” He comes out, starts to sing or DJ. You listen, you have to have an ear for it.

Clevie

That era was the beginning of the downsizing of studios. We’d start to make the tracks, we could just open the door, it was one room, we’d open the door and turn up the track.

Monk One

There was no vocal booth.

Clevie

No booth. You’d have to use your earphones.

Steely

In Jamaica we try to use the best equipment, the most expensive equipment, to make up for that loss. We don’t have a booth so we use a Neumann mic. Jamaica is a place where, in those days, you had to be very inventive, be creative, and find ways to get around these things.

Clevie

That was Jammy’s home where the studio was.

Monk One

So Jammy was there most of the time...

Steely

No.

Clevie

He’d just bring in the tapes and say, “Make five rhythms today.” Then he left and came back later and say, “Let me hear those five rhythms.”

Steely

I used to make 60 tracks a night. 60! Playing, playing, playing [plays keyboards]. I’d say, “Come quick, come quick.” I’d found a groove, that’s what it was. 60 rhythms a night, keep playing and grooving. When you are sleeping we are up playing, playing, playing.

(music: Dawn Penn - “No, No, No”)

Clevie

Many of the hit songs from Jamaica were recorded that way, where the first cut is the best. Sometimes even in the Jammy’s studio the vocalist is standing right before you, it gives you a different feel. When you go into a booth it changes. We worked with it and it worked.

Monk One

So that was the scratch vocal track.

Steely

Yes, it wasn’t properly voiced. She was singing while we were playing.

Clevie

While the track is going down and you have a vocal, you can get some great cuts that way.

Monk One

And yet a lot of the tracks were also re-voiced. Not that one, but you guys brought back the Taxi rhythm, which became very popular again.

Steely

We use voicing the proper way. But what we’re saying is sometimes, you get the right moment, you’ll never get it again. It’s got to be there and then. No other time, you have to capture it there.

Clevie

Sometimes you might fix it a little bit, but sometimes you keep it. Don’t get rid of it. If it’s really bad, get rid of it.

Steely

Sometimes the song comes in a special way, a way you didn’t expect, like that one. I was walking outside the studio, I stopped and said, “Dawn, I’ve been looking for you for many years, my name is Steely.” I told her that was the first song I ever played on keyboards, I always wanted to play it back, I always tell Clevie. But it was a funny chord to play. [ plays the intro on keyboard] I said to Clevie, “I need to record that song.” So I saw her passing by and said, “Let me record that song with you for modern times,” and she agreed. That’s the same vibes, give her the mic, that’s it.

Monk One

I’d like to talk to Clevie about the drum programming because it’s very easy to make stiff rhythm with a drum machine, but it’s very difficult to make a swinging rhythm the way this man does. Maybe we can get into the studio in a minute. Is there any advice you can give because there’s a lot of people here who are interested in programming drums here?

Clevie

It really helps if you have some knowledge of the instruments. As a programmer it’s good to understand, what happens when you hit harder, how the skin stretches, the pitch changes and so on. What you put into your programming is what you get out. If you want it to sound real you have to analyse every beat, what is it you want. If you don’t want it to sound live you’re free to program whatever, but if you do want it sounding live you have to analyse every bit of the song. For instance, we’ll stop the hi-hats when you have a fill because I’m not an octopus. It helps to have some knowledge of the real instrument and the music.

Monk One

How about your samples, how do you get the drum sounds?

Clevie

Sometimes I’ll take a drum kit into the studio for different snares and so on. Steely will bring in some EQs and so on. I have a large catalog of sounds, all the old stuff from Studio One, because I also worked for Coxsone for some time, so I discovered how he miced the drum kit, so I did some of that myself. Sometimes the bass mic isn’t in the drum, it’s around the front. Real unorthodox methods, and I tried to recapture that for certain applications. The way you swing, quantize, tracks I might do, I’ll vary the tempo a little bit.

Steely

That song, “No, No, No,” we cannot play it back because the drum machine go fast at times, slow at times.

Clevie

And this record has no time code. We just played the drum machine where we felt it should drift, take it back up, so it’s not too mechanical.

Monk One

So how do you do that?

Steely

Shift the tempo, and I have to play like [plays keyboards]. Go fast, come back slow.

Clevie

It’s the velocity on the way you play. He played the bassline straight through because it’s sequenced. Sometimes for reggae you want to keep a feel in the music. Even for dancehall as well, sometimes, you want that human element, keep some feel in it. We mix up sounds like 808, hi-hat, but we hear the finished product in our heads. Steely and I hear the same sounds in our heads, like we’re connected, we’ll go for the same sounds. Sometimes nothing else will work, there’s a certain sound you have to go for.

Steely

When you make a track you have to choose carefully how it will sound. The dancehall you’re talking about is all computerized, kids will just take a sound, put in a drum kit and make a beat. We don’t do it like that. We choose sounds because not every kick drum works with a snare, not every snare works with a hi-hat. You have to listen carefully and choose carefully, it’s like a puzzle.

Clevie

Even the early Jammy’s recordings, there were some other musicians who copied our style and tried to get samples of our work from producers. But many times the difference was the pitching of the drums, the tuning, take the sounds and make a new song, different sound in a different key. I read music as well and I understood pitch. I would go for the dominant note – for each percussive sound there’s a dominant note. There’s a snare, there’s a kick. I’ll put it in tune with the song. That’s easy with a drum machine.

Steely

He’ll say, “Give me a G,” and I’ll go [plays G on keyboards] and tune the drum to that note.

Clevie

Although it’s for a percussive sound, if you listen you’ll hear there is a dominant pitch, so it sounds like a packaged product. Nobody could figure out how we can get a record in the charts. We don’t believe in payola, to this day we don’t believe in it. It must be a level playing field, let the people decide. If they really like the song, they will go out and buy it.

Monk One

It’s in the little details.

Clevie

Yes, the little details make all the difference. Like tuning the drums. There were some artists, DJs, who came about and the difference between them and rappers is they have to be in a certain key, otherwise the melody isn’t right. But we found there were some who couldn’t find the right key, so we started making music with a more percussive bass, abstract chords and so on. That was a new thing and we allowed those artists to express themselves without it sounding off-key, we still kept it musical. The first song we did like that was with Tiger, a song called “When,” and that won the song of the year in Jamaica at the Jammy awards. And that song took us half an hour to record, one of the fastest songs we ever did. The track went down in half an hour and it won song of the year in 1990.

Monk One

So, Clevie is also the chairman of the Recording Industry Association of Jamaica and I was wondering if you could tell us some of the issues that you’re concerned about. You mentioned something which, I think, is interesting, which is the archiving of Jamaican music. When we were speaking about this earlier you said some of these mastertapes might have been erased, or no one knows where they are.

Clevie

Even Studio One stuff, we’re not quite sure where those are because Sir Coxsone Dodd passed away. But the Recording Industry Association of Jamaica, we discovered that as technology moves into our homes, music sales declined due to piracy for one, and because there are a lot of sites offering our music without being legitimate providers. So we decided to come together and we can lobby for changes. We have some old copyright laws that need amendment and so on. But we are no different from the RIAA, we’re a young association, just two years old and we don’t have to reinvent the wheel. There are so many older associations, like the BPI and the RIAA that we can learn from. In the long run the issues are the same but piracy is the main thing that is affecting us in Jamaica. Music sales have declined tremendously. We are relying on public education because many of the youths that are supporting the pirates are not aware of the effects they’re having on the industry. So we’re starting in schools, because you have many children who are starting a business by providing songs to other students. It’s happening with movies as well, we have movies that aren’t even released on DVD in Jamaica. So we’re all coming together to protect with other interests that have intellectual property to form an anti-piracy alliance, which is a recent development. We’re working to save the music.

Audience Member

Obviously, you guys have played on so many tracks for wicked artists in your country, but I want to know where you get the inspiration for your grooves. I know other writers were there, but can you tell us about the process of collaboration and what artists were there and what inspired you to come up with those melodies and so on?

Clevie

First of all, our level of music appreciation is vast. We listen to everything, I listen to classical, everything. Jamaica as well is multi-racial, our music comes from all over the world. We just try to tap into everything. If I was to produce a classical act, I could do it, I’d give a try. Sometimes we fuse things as well. Influences come from all around.

(music: Frank Sinatra – “Too Marvelous for Words”)

(music: Frankie Laine – “Theme From Rawhide”)

[puts drum track underneath]

I truly believe our music is a melting pot of influences. Our motto is out of many, one people. I’d say out of many music forms there is one music. Reggae is that melting pot of cultures. It’s the degree of influence you put into it that makes the difference. Some of our dancehall tracks we put strings in, which is not usually something you’d put into in dancehall because it’s so hard. For instance, Street Sweeper rhythm, Garnett Silk, “Love is The Answer”.

(music: Garnett Silk – “Love is The Answer”

Clevie

That’s a message we’ll continue to send, “Love is The Answer.”

Monk One

The great Garnett Silk, by the way, was a singer, I guess, you gave the start to, back in 1990.

Clevie

Yes, Steely actually gave him his name.

Monk One

A very important singer to check out. Anyone else?

Audience Member

I want to know about soundsystems. I think back in the ‘70s soundsystems would be competing every week to break records. Is it still as big now or is it all about the radio?

Clevie

That was another love Steely had that was affecting our production, I took him out of it. Steely is the owner of one of Jamaica’s most popular soundsystems, Silverhawk. It started out as a small soundsystem and blew up to be one of the top ones in Jamaica. Soundsystems played a part in promoting our music as well. You want to take it from there?

Steely

It’s not like it was before. Back in the day, you need to find something new, you’d go by the dances and listen to what is played. Now it’s radio sound, not like it was before. It’s all radio, sometimes club, but it’s not soundsystem any more, those days are long gone.

Clevie

Laws have been passed about noise pollution. Back in the days you could hear them from miles away, they used to put steel horns up in trees to pull crowds from miles around.

Steely

You’d be 20 miles away and hear a song in the air but don’t know where it’s coming from, you could just follow that sound.

Clevie

You can’t do that anymore. Things have changed a bit, but it was all part of the vibe. We’ve lost that, it’s more about clubs now.

Audience Member

But what’s up with the dub, are you still making dub records?

Steely

Occasionally, we make it because different parts of the world ask for different types of reggae. In Japan, we have a market for reggae, it’s more like deep dancehall and a jungle type of reggae. In Europe, most of the guys in England, Germany and France gravitate towards this type of thing.

(music: Augustus Pablo – unknown)

Clevie

Most of the younger producers coming up now making dancehall now, they don’t make dub dancehall.

Steely

I don’t think they know how to do it. The base of the music, the young people now aren’t interested in the base. It’s all computers, drum machines and technology, but like Clevie said before you have to know your base, your live instruments, that will guide you to making proper music.

Clevie

Even in terms of your EQs and so on. You understand the instrument itself. Most of the young producers use samples, they’ve never stood beside a saxophonist and understood the timbre or the sound and so you don’t really know how to EQ.

Audience Member

I have a question regarding what we were talking about just there. It’s about the feel of the music and how important love is to reggae. Are there days when you’re in the studio when the vibe isn’t there and you’re not feeling it? Maybe the engineers and musicians are all there but the feeling isn’t. What do you do to get it back?

Steely

What we usually do, we walk away, go to the beach, wash away the bad vibes, drink a water jelly and come back. If it’s not there, we go to the river [mimics swimming motion] until it comes back. It will eventually come back and correct itself. Some days you have bad vibes, some days you have good vibes, when it’s not there it’s how you as an individual respond to that mindset. You tell yourself you have to do this, or you don’t have to. But that will pass and it will come back to you.

Clevie

As a producer, working with other musicians you have to be selectiv as well, choose who’s right for the job. We know in Jamaica a lot of musicians smoke weed, some drink alcohol. There is a difference. You can play a song and know who is the weed man and who is the wine man.

Steely

I’m going to play the wine man.

participant

Is there any sad reggae music?

Clevie

Yes, yes.

Steely

This is the wine man. Classic.

(music: Alton Ellis – “Born a Loser”)

Clevie

Yes, weed.

[applause]

Steely

We have very, very deep weed songs. Deep. Very deep [laughs]. It’s a behaviour. When you drink and you feel wine-ish you play happy music. When you smoke you play high music, different level, you’re in space. We can tell from the musician.

Clevie

The final feel you want from a song is what makes the selection. In the early days there were some sessions, you’d walk into the session, you don’t see anybody. Just smoke. All those who are just wine musicians become weed musicians, they have no choice. Things have changed, though, we’ve brought in professionals to build studios and they recommend no smoking in the rooms. Things have changed where there’s no smoking in the rooms anymore or you’ll damage the equipment [both laugh].

Steely

This is another weed song, this is a Peter Tosh.

(music: Peter Tosh - unknown)

Clevie

We’re trying to find a weed and wine combination.

Steely

Weed and wine combination... I think so. [laughs]

Monk One

That might be later in the studio session. Can we get another question while you’re looking for the weed and wine tune?

Benji B

I wanted to go back to a question that was asked before. It might sound a bit vague, how does it sound so good? But if we go back, some of those records you were playing are 25-30 years old. If you play them on a set now next to some tune made in a multi-million pound studio, it blows it out the water. I just want to ask you as a producer, when it comes to bass and frequency, is it a science? What is the secret?

Clevie

Many times things in Jamaica, as Steely said earlier, don’t work the right way. You might fix a piece of equipment and just the error creates something new. We also have some self-taught brilliant engineers, engineers who are just great.

Steely

There’s one track. I’m going to play a track which might explain. This is in a live session with Sly & Robbie, while playing the hi-hat, the mic went out so the tambourine man had to take the lead. This is it.

(music: Wailing Souls – “War”)

The hi-hat mic went. So the man playing the tambourine... it’s frequencies. I know where you’re coming from but to get it this way you have to know the dynamic range of the instrument. If you play a piano [plays note on keyboard] you have to know what it sounds like to the ear and you have to get it as close as possible to a mic. If you play a bass you have to know what a bass sounds like within the ears. You have to do the same. If you’re an engineer, you have to have a good ear for music, you have to know the pitch of an instrument, what it sounds like being real. There’s a creative part of that where you have to invent your own character of sound, created where you want to hear it, but you put it much too far away from the origin. It’s a kind of frequency where you have to know what sounds real. It’s like your eyes. If you were to see someone with your eyes and you buy a camera to take that picture, it looks like that person you see with your eyes, so as you go closer, in technology maybe it gets close to what the eyes see, but not really. You have to get it as real as what the eyes see. When they come with a camera that will show you what the eyes see that will be a camera, really. Everything has a state of what it is, you cannot change it. It has to stay in its own form for it to sound good. You can get an expensive studio now and all this expensive equipment, but if you get a different sound from what it is, then it doesn’t matter how much you spend, you have to capture what is there for it to be real.

Clevie

The bass players use tube amplifiers. A lot of the music, we’d use tube, they have that certain sound. Each bass player will create his own sound and often they’ll mic the amplifier, mic the speaker, instead of having a direct feed. Partially, it’s a sound created by the individual bass player. I can’t tell you the frequencies they use but the engineer must reproduce that.

Steely

I think most of the studios in Jamaica back in the days… as I said, most things don’t work, but when I think and go back in time I realize that they used very expensive equipment such as Neve. Most of the studios in Jamaica use a Neve board in those days. It’s all expensive equipment if you try to buy it now. It’s good equipment, that’s it, just good equipment. Most of the equipment now is not as good as it was in those days, when it was big huge rooms and a lot of mics.

Clevie

It was the real thing, not plug-ins. The real thing.

[inaudible comment from participant]

Steely

Yeah, keep it real, that’s it. Like I said with a camera, if it’s what the eye see, that’s a camera. It’s the same in sound, you project what you hear. If the guitar player [mimics sound of a guitar note], that’s what you record, you don’t try to make it sound like another guitar. You have to make it sound like that guitar. That’s its origin, its dynamic sound, that’s why the reggae bassist are always real. They’re playing [plays on keyboard], and while they’re playing someone’s talking to you and you’re [leans over to take drink]. You understand? It’s real. It’s not something you plan and go [plays keyboard]. It’s real music. In most reggae songs you might play a wrong note. What’s it called? [Clevie says something inaudible]. Incidental, a wrong note. Like a man playing this [plays keyboard] and another playing this [plays keyboard], just real, just playing music. ong note, but it’s left like that, because you capture the moment. It’s something that happens once, a sequence, so you capture the moment.

Steely

This is another song they were doing. Don’t take it for a joke, it’s not a joke. Listen to this.

(music: Scotty – “Skank In Bed”)

That was a live event, someone walks into the studio and he shouted, “Cut!”

participant

What’s that called?

Steely

“Draw Your Brakes” by Scotty. (editor’s note: wrong title – “Draw Your Brakes” is the tune he did over Stop That Train) The original went in the British chart, the single.

Clevie

Lorna Bennett – “Breakfast in Bed”.

Steely

That is Jamaica. I went to a Bob Marley & the Wailers session, it took me 15 minutes to find the room, it was all smoke. Chalice. Dark, it was like fog. It was [gasps], just musicians playing. So reggae music has a deep thing about it. It’s not about great things and overdoing things, it’s about keeping it real. Anyone. I can make you play it right now and you can play it as well as me. It’s simple, about being yourself. That’s how it sounds great, being yourself.

Monk One

Anyone else?

Audience Member

You said this thing earlier about if it’s real music, no machine in the world can take anything away from it. Yet you had a role in introducing digital machines. Which were the ones that gave you a sound that was human?

Steely

Well, it’s anything. Once we know how to program a drum machine we can use it. But usually it was a DX.

Clevie

We started out using an Oberheim, but we had to remove the chips.

Steely

We used to get our chips burned in England, with special slots that you put in. And we used a SPX 1200 and later on an AKAI 3000 MPC. But we like the DX and the SPX 1200, those two sounded the best.

Clevie

As I said earlier, during the transitional period we found that the producers coming up, for economic reasons they couldn’t afford the big studios and it was easier using the drum machines, more economical. As I said earlier, I used to spend one hour kicking the bass drum, the drum machine takes much less time. For those reasons I think producers could afford to record those sounds.

Audience Member

And who out of the new kids currently ruling Jamaican sounds do you rate?

[talk to each other]

Clevie

Don Corleone.

Steely

There’s a few. We are from the old school and you have to come from the traditional school to really impress us, and the only ones we see now is Dave Kelly, Danny Brownie, Fatta, Fat Eyes, Baldread. There’s a few, not a lot. The new kids are into machine, only machine, not music.

Clevie

They are specialists in that area.

Steely

You have to analyse from that aspect. But the ones that we see are Dave Kelly, Colin Fat, Don Corleone, Danny Brownie. Few, not much.

Audience Member

How do you feel about more traditional-sounding rhythms coming back now and being very prominent?

[talk to each other]

Steely

Yes, it is good, but the difference is it’s a traditional form of playing but not the sound. It’s still young kids trying to play the music and most of the kids have no experience. If I was to say to a young engineer, “I need you to record a live kick drum for me,” we would have a big problem.

Clevie

They are accustomed to just plug in to a drum machine or a module. So if you were to mic a drum kit now, they are lost. A lot of the young engineers aren’t sure how to EQ the mics, where to place the mics, the right choice of mics. You hear the difference when you make the comparison. If you’re going back to that old sound, you have to understand the spirit of the time to really capture that feel. But they are making songs that are working and the generation that don’t know where it’s coming from accept it for what it is. Because we are from the old school we know what it’s supposed to be and it doesn’t really hit the mark.

Audience Member

Do you have kids working with you who you try to bring in on it?

Steely

Yes, it depends on the individual. When we were kids we used to go by the studios, nothing to eat, no sleep. We wanted to learn, watch other experienced players playing, engineer. Look, listen, eat, sleep, in the studio in the morning, watching. I can remember one day I passed a studio with lights and when I went in there it was Chris Blackwell and Jimmy Cliff making a song and I stopped there for three days, no food. You find a few kids like that now in Jamaica that have the same drive, a few, and when we see them we always encourage them to come aboard. But many of the kids, after you teach them and they think they’ve learned a lot, they go on their own. Leave the nest. There’s a few that stay within the range and keep learning.

Clevie

You have to spend time learning the instrument and learning the business as well. It doesn’t make sense to be in music and not know the business so we try to encourage them to learn that as well.

Steely

Time has changed. I remember when me and Clevie was kids going to Sir Coxsone’s studio and playing 200 songs and we saw a cheque for 20 dollars. We said, “Coxsone, what is this?” He said, “You get paid to learn. You’re in a school.” “OK, boss.” Just keep going in. Kids nowadays are not interested. It’s a growing process where you take it day by day, step by step. You need to be calm, and just follow the music, follow the music. It will work. You must learn that principle within yourself. Follow the music and it will guide you.

Monk One

Thanks very much for coming and sharing this information and your knowledge with us. We hope you’ll stay around for a few minutes if anyone has anything else they’d like to talk about. Steely and Clevie, everybody.

[applause]