Читать книгу Words of Our Mouth, Meditations of Our Heart - Kenneth Bilby - Страница 10

Alerth Bedasse

Tom the Sebastian^* have one of de best sound system, like Coxsone.^† Tom the Sebastian deh far ahead of Coxsone. All you hear dem talking about Coxsone, I can tell you dat! Because, to be frank, I used to go out and play a nighttime, Saturday nighttime, for Mr. [Ivan] Chin^‡ too. I play whole night, and get pay. I was a sound operator also [for] Mr. Chin. And he would send me to handle de whole thing. [We play] anything [on the set]. We mix—just a mix of calypso, waltz, everything. We can play everything—jazz and all dat. You can play everything what’s happening. You mix dem. They [the sound systems] used to play a lot of my songs. When they would go fe play all “Night Food,” man—oh!—sometime you hear “Night Food” blasting down de road. Oh yeah! They had to do it [i.e., play it on the sound systems]. Because de public want it. Is what de public want, they give de public.

Standout Tracks

Alerth Bedasse and the Calypso Quintet, “Night Food” (1952); Alerth Bedasse and Chin’s Calypso Sextet, “Big Boy and Teacher” (1956)

• Vocals, guitar, banjo, percussion

• (1928–2007)

• Active from the 1940s

• Member of Chin’s Calypso Sextet

• Lead singer, session musician

^*Tom the Great Sebastian: one of the most prominent of the early Jamaican sound systems, founded in Kingston by Thomas Wong c. 1950.

^†Coxsone: Clement Seymour Dodd (“Sir Coxsone Downbeat”), owner of the renowned Downbeat sound system and famous record producer who launched Studio One.

^‡Ivan Chin: early producer of commercial mento recordings in Kingston during the 1950s, who also owned a small sound system.

Kingston, Jamaica, 2005