AUSTIN REGGAE FESTIVAL
Lloyd Knibb (left), drummer for the Skatalites, learned how to play the nyabinghi style on a trap set. Cedric“Im”Brooks, saxophonist (below), plays during the band’s set at the 2009 Austin Reggae Fest.
In the ’50s, radios became more common on the island and Jamaicans were able to tune in stations from Southern U.S. cities like New Orleans. Kingston’s recording industry blossomed, with labels opening and becoming prolific producers of singles, often Jamaican covers of American hits. The city’s top players, many of whom would later become Skatalites, formed the roving house band for Kingston’s studios, including Clement “Coxone” Dodds’ legendary Studio One.
In the beginning they made recordings of jazz standards, but by the mid-’50s newer sounds like bebop and boogie-woogie blues began filtering into the island. Around the same time, drummer Count Ossie established a Rastafarian community on the east side of Kingston. There, many musicians, includ- ing Skatalites drummer Lloyd Knibb, learned about the Rastafari movement, an indigenous Jamaican religion built around reverence for the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie I.
Ossie hosted rambling “Grounation” jam sessions. According to the Skatalites manager and sometime keyboard player Ken Stewart, to the outside eye the sessions looked like “just a bunch of guys sitting around smoking a lot of weed hitting on drums,” but the smoky drum circles conjured musical magic. The Rastafari drumming style was called nyabinghi. The beats were based on African rhythms and constructed with three different sizes of hand drums. When the horn players showed up, things got interesting. “They could play a jazz tune, they could play an old slave tune, they could play all these things over the beat,” Stewart said.
Knibb learned how to translate the rhythms onto a trap set, playing all three drum parts at the same time. He took the sound into the studio and with boogie-woogie melodies laid on top of the nyabinghi beats, ska was born. Suddenly the city’s top vocalists were clamoring to record over the ska beats. Knibb and company found themselves backing a who’s who of soon-to-be Jamaican legends: Toots and the Maytals, Peter Tosh and a vocal ensemble called the Wailing Wailers, featuring lead singer Robert Nesta Marley.
The studio house band was the hottest act in Jamaica, but no one knew who they were. Musicians weren’t credited on recordings. “You were lucky if the name of the song was on the label (of the singles),” Stewart said. To make matters worse, the D Js who ran the popular mobile “sound system” street parties were deliberately secretive because they didn’t want other D Js to steal their material. To garner their due recognition, the Skatalites became their own band in the early 1960s with a 10man instrumental ensemble and four vocalists.
Soon they were playing their own parties, and for several years they toured Jamaica, reigning the island with their hard-bopping jam sessions. “There was actually a story about a woman who tore her panties off and danced herself to death at a ska show,” Stewart said. It reeks of urban legend, but Stewart swears he’s been told the same tale by every original member of the Skatalites.
With the crowds the clubs heated up, and Stewart says it was a combination of trying to stay cool and a desire to dance at a less lethal pace that led to the sloweddown, simpler form of Jamaican music known as reggae.
The Skatalites broke up in the mid-’60s, only a few years after their official formation, and split into a few Jamaican supergroups. The band sporadically reunited a few times in the ’70s as ska music went through a revival with bands like the English Beat and the Specials creating the Two Tone movement in the United Kingdom. By the ’80s most of the original Skatalites had migrated to the northeastern United States, and in 1985 Stewart found himself playing in a Rhode Island reggae band with Knibb.
A few years later when the Skatalites reunited again for a 1989 U.S. tour opening for Bunny Wailer, they brought Stewart along for the ride. The next year, the third-wave ska movement kicked into full effect and the Skatalites went on their first U.S. headlining tour. Soon bands like No Doubt were opening for the ska pioneers. They’ve been touring the world steadily since.
As the years wound on, many of the original Skatalites, born in the 1930s, passed away. It’s been a struggle for the remaining band members, especially when drummer Knibb, who served as a foundation for the reunited band, died in 2011, two weeks after completing a major international tour. These days only two original members, saxophone player Lester “ska” Sterling and vocalist Doreen Shaffer, remain. Both will be at the Austin Reggae Festival on Sunday. “It’s actually kind of funny because the elders deal with (touring) a lot better than the youngsters,” Stewart said. “No matter what time we go to bed, you’re going to see Lester and Doreen at breakfast.”
Stewart and the rest of the band were trained by the original players and they feel an obligation to keep the band’s legacy alive. Close to 15 years ago, the Skatalites became the first Jamaican band to play Russia. Before the performance, they were presented with a branching diagram that illustrated the etymology of reggae. “(It) was us at the roots to this tree that now has grown artistically. It was a really good way to show how this thing went. Dub and dancehall and lovers rock — all this different stuff,” Stewart said. The band has returned to Russia 10 times. They plan to keep reggae’s roots firmly planted for years to come.