He glided by many names. Blackbeard. The Dub Band. African Stone. The 4th Road Orchestra. Dennis Matumbi. In the present day, although, they merely name him Dennis Bovell MBE.
Bovell was one of many central figures within the nice flowering of homegrown UK reggae within the Seventies and ’80s, and absolutely probably the most adaptable. A multi-instrumentalist, bandleader, sound system selector, chart hitmaker, architect of lovers rock, and an in-demand producer for everybody from dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson to post-punk teams like The Pop Group and The Slits – Bovell did all of it, and has the field of dusty dubplates to show it.
Regardless of that silver he picked up within the Queen’s 2021 Birthday Honours, you possibly can convincingly argue that Bovell hasn’t obtained the total recognition he deserves. Blame that rash of pseudonyms, maybe – or that a lot of his productions in all probability received reduce to acetate, performed out at a dance after which filed away, their future having been realised. Effectively, if Bovell has been in any means neglected, Sufferer Sounds is a significant step to redress that steadiness.
This compilation has a backstory. Matthew Jones, proprietor of the Warp Information imprint Disciples, additionally runs the Common Echo Reggae Disco on the Walthamstow Trades Corridor in north London. In 2018, Dennis Bovell graced the decks, and Jones had a fanboy second, quizzing Bovell on the provenance of varied misplaced or forgotten tunes. That chat turned an ongoing dialog, and shortly the concept of Sufferer Sounds took form: a group of early obscurities and deep cuts, centered on and across the fertile interval that Bovell spent with Jah Sufferer Sound System between 1976 and 1980.
Sufferer Sounds isn’t something like a Best Hits. A compilation like that will undoubtedly embody a observe like Janet Kay’s “Foolish Video games”, a sultry reggae manufacturing written and produced by Bovell that hit No.2 in the summertime of 1979 and was just lately revived by director Steve McQueen for Lovers Rock, a movie from his 2020 anthology collection Small Axe. As an alternative, Sufferer Sounds options the observe “Sport Of Dubs”, a remix that pulls again Kay’s vocal, making use of lashings of echo and delay and a few pizzicato violin courtesy of collaborator Johnny T. It’s very a lot an alternate take, however one which reveals Bovell on the peak of his powers.
By the point the music on Sufferer Sounds was made, Bovell already had a very good decade of music-making beneath his belt. Born in Barbados, he moved to London in 1965 on the age of 12. His father ran a sound system taking part in blues events to African diaspora communities throughout south London, and the younger Bovell would attend and take notes. Quickly, he was slicing dubplates on the recording studio at his faculty in Wandsworth, adapting well-known tunes and taking them out as one of many selectors for the Battersea sound system Jah Sufferer Sound, who would conflict rival appears like Jah Shaka and Lion Sound throughout the nation.
In tandem, Bovell was honing his abilities because the bandleader and guitarist in Matumbi – a reside group shaped, partially, to play backing band for visiting Jamaican vocalists like Ken Boothe and Johnny Clarke. However Matumbi additionally began recording authentic materials and stepping out alone, and a few nights Bovell would take to the blending desk because the band performed, remixing them reside. The group developed some formidable chops – Bovell recalled how they blew The Wailers offstage on the Ethiopian famine aid live performance in Edmonton in 1973, and a few of that vitality is obvious on the 2 Matumbi tracks right here, “Dub Planet” and “Fireplace Dub”.
All this early expertise feeds into the music we hear on Sufferer Sounds, a group of tracks that showcase Bovell’s compositional abilities, adventurous dub manufacturing type and can-do, bootstrap perspective. Some tracks right here, like The Dub Band’s “Dub Land” and “Blood Dem” – recorded beneath the identify Dennis Matumbi – are early solo joints which Bovell created alone in his basement studio, layering tracks on a four-track TEAC machine: first drums, then bassline, then guitar and keys. The latter is especially intense – a sepulchral quantity that Bovell says was impressed by his recollections of Enoch Powell’s divisive “Rivers Of Blood” speech, in addition to a watching of Roots, the 1977 American TV miniseries that adopted the lineage of an African household from their enslavement by means of to abolition. Typically Bovell would usher in a visitor vocalist, however he sings this one himself, scrambling his vocals with whooshing edits. Generally, although, a stray line escapes: “You realize I’m going again to Zion sooner or later/Makes no distinction in case you change my identify/In my coronary heart I’ll stay the identical…”
Elsewhere, tracks like “Suffrah Dub” and African Stone’s “Run Rasta Run” discover Bovell in bandleader mode, assembling ensembles that includes hotshot personnel like Matumbi drummer Jah Bunny, guitarist-for-hire John Kpiaye and the Cuba-born horn participant Rico Rodriguez, later of The Specials. Bovell was under no circumstances a dub purist – quite the opposite, on an album like 1981’s Mind Harm, he appeared pushed to precise the concept dub reggae was versatile sufficient to embody different genres – and backed by the correct musicians he might put these concepts into observe. That appears to be the impulse behind a observe like Younger Lions’ “Take Dub” – a kind of reggae reimagining of Dave Brubeck’s “Take 5”, with the unique’s shuffling jazz drums reconfigured right into a tuff dub strut, and the unique’s naggingly acquainted saxophone line reinterpreted by the sessioneer Steve Gregory.
In the event you might rightly say a determine as versatile as Dennis Bovell had a superpower, it was in mixing the tough with the graceful. By the Seventies, London audiences have been tiring of the hellfire and damnation of Rastafarian reggae, and have been prepared for one thing a bit extra candy, cosmopolitan, feminine. Bovell was one of many prime movers behind lovers rock, a homegrown British sound mixing Jamaican rocksteady with American soul music, usually exploring themes of romantic love. Angelique’s “Cry” is a gem of the style, marking the first-ever recorded efficiency by a future Bovell collaborator, Marie Pierre. The loveable “Jah Man”, in the meantime, is vocaled by one other beginner, Errol Campbell – a younger follower of Jah Sufferer Sound who Bovell plucked from the gang and placed on the mic. Bovell has a knack for taking these untrained voices and training them to a seamless, skilled efficiency whereas retaining one thing of their wide-eyed innocence intact.
It was a matter of delight for Dennis Bovell that he wouldn’t be simply pigeonholed. All these pseudonyms had a twin goal. For one, within the late ’70s, Bovell was terribly prolific, churning out sufficient music that it made sense that he diversify, splitting his product throughout a number of initiatives. For an additional, it was a skilful feat of misdirection. Some sound techniques would flip their nostril up at homegrown British tunes, so by transferring quick and flying beneath the radar he might sneak his tunes into the correct document packing containers with out concern of prejudice.
Has it made his legacy more durable to evaluate? Arguably. However the high quality of music collected on Sufferer Sounds makes it onerous to disclaim: within the area of UK reggae, Dennis Bovell was one of many best to ever do it.
