HEAVY ROTATION: THE BLACK ARK

The Congos - Fisherman



A friend once told me why reggae is his favorite music. He said reggae is like a Noah's Ark of musical genres - soul, gospel, blues, hip hop, electronic, experimental, psychedelic. Everything good goes into reggae's pot. Reggae is omnivorous.

Classic reggae producers, however, were often vegetarian. Vegetarianism was one of the tenets of the Rastafari movement. Classic reggae is loaded with references to rastafari such as Haile Selassie, Marcus Garvey, Jah, Babylon, and Zion. Such religious references and many dense, glorious sounds could be heard emanating from Lee "Scratch" Perry's Black Ark Studio in the 1970s.

Perry's Black Ark is responsible for some of the most innovative classic reggae recordings ever. Perry was able to overdub layers of weird effects with excellent precision on a dated, basic 4 track; surpassing competing producers using the very latest 16 track mixers. He produced several of his own records, along with favorites from Junior Murvin and The Congos. The music was personal, political, spiritual, avant-garde, and always compelling. It seemed Lee Perry could do no wrong behind the decks.



Black Ark studios burned to the ground in 1979. After some bizarre behavior (see this video), Lee Perry supposedly destroyed the studio himself to purge it of unclean spirits.

You can watch Perry and friends at work in the studio in this video, and here are a few select albums from Black Ark. And if you get the chance, definitely read this great article from the consistently brilliant Perfect Sound Forever. Quote from PSF - "Lee 'Scratch' Perry is one of a kind- we're talking about a (literally) insanely inspried producer/musician/singer/shaman who goes back to early sessions with Bob Marley to producing the Clash and putting out dozens of albums in as many guises- a self-professed lunatic from Jamaica who drops his draws at a press conference, brings a loaded gun on stage and burns down and floods his own studio. His madness premeates not just his public antics but the flood of LP's and CD's he's unleashed." Praise Jah.