He glided by many names. Blackbeard. The Dub Band. African Stone. The 4th Avenue Orchestra. Dennis Matumbi. At present, 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 Nineteen 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 complete recognition he deserves. Blame that rash of pseudonyms, maybe – or that lots of his productions in all probability bought minimize to acetate, performed out at a dance after which filed away, their future having been realised. Properly, if Bovell has been in any method neglected, Sufferer Sounds is a serious step to redress that steadiness.
This compilation has a backstory. Matthew Jones, proprietor of the Warp Data imprint Disciples, additionally runs the Basic 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 assorted misplaced or forgotten tunes. That chat turned an ongoing dialog, and shortly the concept of Sufferer Sounds took form: a set of early obscurities and deep cuts, targeted 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 may 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 not too long ago revived by director Steve McQueen for Lovers Rock, a movie from his 2020 anthology collection Small Axe. As a substitute, Sufferer Sounds options the observe “Recreation 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 underneath 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 chopping dubplates on the recording studio at his college 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 seems like Jah Shaka and Lion Sound throughout the nation.
In tandem, Bovell was honing his skills because the bandleader and guitarist in Matumbi – a reside group fashioned, partially, to play backing band for visiting Jamaican vocalists like Ken Boothe and Johnny Clarke. However Matumbi additionally began recording unique 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 power is clear 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 set of tracks that showcase Bovell’s compositional skills, adventurous dub manufacturing type and can-do, bootstrap perspective. Some tracks right here, like The Dub Band’s “Dub Land” and “Blood Dem” – recorded underneath 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 reminiscences 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 via to abolition. Typically Bovell would usher in a visitor vocalist, however he sings this one himself, scrambling his vocals with whooshing edits. Typically, although, a stray line escapes: “You realize I’m going again to Zion at some point/Makes no distinction if you happen to 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 certainly not a dub purist – quite the opposite, on an album like 1981’s Mind Injury, he appeared pushed to precise the concept that dub reggae was versatile sufficient to embody different genres – and backed by the correct musicians he may put these concepts into follow. That appears to be the impulse behind a observe like Younger Lions’ “Take Dub” – a form 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 may rightly say a determine as versatile as Dennis Bovell had a superpower, it was in mixing the tough with the sleek. By the Nineteen Seventies, London audiences had been tiring of the hellfire and damnation of Rastafarian reggae, and had 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 novice, Errol Campbell – a younger follower of Jah Sufferer Sound who Bovell plucked from the group and placed on the mic. Bovell has a knack for taking these untrained voices and training them to a seamless, skilled efficiency whereas holding one thing of their wide-eyed innocence intact.
It was a matter of satisfaction 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 shifting quick and flying underneath the radar he may sneak his tunes into the correct file packing containers with out concern of prejudice.
Has it made his legacy tougher to evaluate? Arguably. However the high quality of music collected on Sufferer Sounds makes it exhausting to disclaim: within the discipline of UK reggae, Dennis Bovell was one of many best to ever do it.
