Mel Cooke, Freelance Writer
Mad Cobra performing at last year's Summer Sizzle 2005, held at the Jamalco Sports Club in Halse Hall Clarendon, in August. - FILE
This is the second part of an interview with deejay Mad Cobra about himself and his new 'Snypa Way', 30-track album, which began in The Sunday Gleaner yesterday. Today we look at how Ewart Brown got the name Cobra - from a teacher - and his going back to school.
COBRA MAY be an excellent stage name for a deejay, depicting speed, strength and venomous lyrics, but Ewart Brown did not get his alias by either of the traditional ways - choosing it himself or getting it from an enthusiastic (but often misguided) deejay, producer or studio engineer.
He got it from a teacher at Tivoli High, as he expressed his enthusiasm for the GI Joe character on his book covers. "A teacher said: 'Why you always drawing this character?' It stick," Cobra said. "At the time coming up it was always the Ranks, the Lieutenant, the Admiral."
BODY BUILDING
And he came up the hard way. Before the muscles bulged with gym work, Cobra was building his biceps carrying the devices that he hoped would one day carry his voice - and his body - far and wide.
He was lifting boxes for Black Shadow and Injection sound systems, sometimes getting the chance to rhyme over the microphone for $20.
"When dance over, boxman used to be selector and artiste and build cassette," Cobra said, naming Capleton, Bounty Killer, Beenie Man and Beetle Bailey among those who also came up that hard way.
He knows, though, that education, the speaker and amplifier lifting way, is not enough and two years ago Cobra headed back to school, first attending the Institute of Academic Excellence (IAE) on Half-Way Tree Road, St. Andrew, then studying on his own. He did three GCE subjects, getting an 'A' in English (which shows throughout the album; in Gun Maths he says "psychopathic wit pure chromatic;" 'B' in maths (again, Gun Maths does the addition, subtraction and other calculations very well; and a 'C' in economics ("dis a one deejay no pay tax," Cobra hisses in Extortionist).
MANAGEMENT COURSE
"The reason I did that was to do a management course. I won't be on stage forever. Generations change. I will manage new talent," Cobra said. He identified the lack of managerial skills as an empty track on the album of the Jamaican music industry. "That is the shortcoming, how qualified you are to manage people life. Most short of direction and marketing," he said.
"How the music going, government gwine come down. This thing bigger than we think. They going to ask what qualification you have. The thing is to show that Ewart Brown has achieved 1,000 hours in such and such ... Your track record speaks for itself," he said.
A few years ago, while in the preparation stage for the just released Snypa Way album, Cobra's laptop computer was stolen. He got it back, but the hard drive had been erased, only a few songs and parts thereof making it from the CPU of human memory onto CD.
HIS INFLUENCE
"A me children mek me go learn computer. When I leave school I was not computer literate, but them was coming with homework and you need answers. Them gwine bring up things and see things," he said.
The click of the mouse is also the way to go in what was Cobra's initial career choice. "Architectural drawing was first. That change to computer now; everybody a draw pon computer," he said. He uses the Internet to keep up with the news from home while he is away on tour.
Having ventured back to school recently, Cobra has a fresher store of memories from which to give advice. The night before the interview he calmed his son ahead of the GSAT exams, telling him to "do it like in class, not thinking about going to Campion or whatever."
STUDY OF A DIFFERENT KIND
When he was just starting to deejay Cobra did some studying of a different kind, looking to his elders for direction. "When it come to writing lyrics, Professor Nuts is the man. As a young deejay me use the aggression from Ninja Man, but the writing was from Nuts, to tell a story effectively," Cobra said.
When it comes to clashing with another deejay: "I have to take off my hat to Ninja Man ... I learn my stagecraft from Ninja Man and Shabba. Ninja Man could be a politician. Him know what to say."
Tomorrow: Part III, 'The Snake on the Road.'
