- FILE
General Trees
Germaine Smith, Staff Reporter
THEY SAY life goes around in circles and in the music business, things seem to be no different.
In the early sound system days, the names Downbeat, Sturgav, Trojan, Tom The Great Sebastian and others were brand names which were as familiar to the dance fans then, as the names Stone Love, Rennaissance, Code Red, Cash Money and others now are.
As the sound system business blossomed in the '60s, competition among their ranks pushed many of these selectors, who usually were the sound owners, to find tunes which they alone could play. This sent selectors to become producers of songs which they recorded for their use only.
Clement 'Sir Coxone' Dodd and Duke Reid were two of the earlier sound system owners who started producing tunes for themselves and the first selectors/ sound owners to build studios in which to produce these tracks. Although they originally produced the tracks for use on their sound systems, they eventually began to open them up to public distribution, thus giving birth to the early tentacles of today's music industry.
THE SWITCH
Flip the script to post 2000 and the cards are beginning to look familiar. A host of our modern selectors who have made their names behind the turntables have slipped on the coat of record producing and are holding down both jobs at the same time.
Their motives, however, are not necessarily to be known only as the men behind that one tune which no one else can play, but as the men behind a string of tunes with the biggest artistes. With two giant overseas record labels eagerly waiting to buy rhythms for distribution outside of Jamaica, today's producers have even more incentive to sit in their musical labs and attempt to concoct the next big rhythm for local bragging rights, plus lucrative export possibilities.
THE ELDERS' STORY
The names of selectors-turned-producers today come easily. Firelinks, Jazzy T, Dr. Dre, Delano, radio jocks Arif Cooper and DJ Liquid and Don Carleone, among others, all toiled on the turntables before they landed in producing.
The 'elders' in the business have been watching the trend, but their views on the practice vary. Jack Scorpio is one such. He worked as selector on his Black Scorpio sound system and later built his own studio to record his own tracks, as well provide a facility for others to use.
In an interview recently, he told The Sunday Gleaner that he started producing music out of necessity and not necessarily for commercial reasons.
"I had a sound system before I was a producer," he stated. "But I had General Trees as my deejay and no one out there wanted to voice him, so I went and produced him for myself."
As Scorpio noted, in the 1970s the business operated in that way so he only complied like a loyal soldier. "That was just the trend in the business; you had your deejay for your system and others had theirs so no one really wanted to voice your deejay. You ended up having to be a producer yourself, because you need the tunes. It paid off for me in the long run," he said.
According to Scorpio, nothing is wrong with selectors going further into the business as producers, but they only need to ensure that quality leaves their studios before it reaches their turntables.
"It looks similar to that what used to happen in our time, but it is something that is really needed at this time," Scorpio contends. "They need to produce good tunes so people can remember them."
SASSAFRAS' VIEW
Another 'elder' in the business disagrees slightly. Entertainment consultant and businessman Denzil Naar is known in the music world as Sassafras. Over the years, he has had some form of business relationship with nearly all of the dancehall artistes, soundmen and promoters. He has noted the selector-turned-producer trend as well, but is not as enthusiastic as Scorpio.
"Many of them are a lot of opportunists and are doing it for greed," he stated generally. "What it (the music business) lacks now is administration, ability, and responsible people."
Sassafras has no problem with the juggling of the jobs, but he has no flattering words for today's crop who have switched from turntables to studios. He broadly places them into the modern clique who are not making good music.
LACKING SHELF VALUE
"It is not a bad thing, as long as you are producing music of calibre, because everybody is at least getting a piece of the pie," he noted. "Nothing is wrong with it, but it is just what is going out to the public, because when they become older I would like their daughters and sons to hear the tunes that they were producing.
"What is happening now in the music business is that the music that is being produced now lacks shelf value. Our music now is not going anywhere, because it lacks value."
Although Sassafras's views vary from Scorpios, it is only fair to explain that today's selectors who have turned producers, are operating in a dancehall climate where the rate at which rhythms are produced daily and the rate at which new producers are getting into the business is astonishing, if not alarming. Each week, hundreds of new rhythms get pumped into the system by newcomers seeking their share of the cake, so perhaps these selectors are only responding to the business climate.
Although the views about which time period was or was not better than another may not end for years, perhaps the best take on the situation was given by someone who has traversed eras to be still among the hot modern selectors, Sky Juice of Metro-media, when he was interviewed by The Sunday Gleaner.
He was addressing the issue of the changing roles of selectors in a story which was published on August 14. In the story, he stated that the times were changing and that selectors were only changing with the times.
"Back in those days it did different from now. Yuh can't really compare them and seh
one better or one worse," he contended. "It is just that the time change and we change with it, cause we a trendsetter. It's like the days when yuh never have computer; man set up dem business differently. Now that we have dem, they set it up to use them. With the music, we just change with the times."
