Lee “Scratch” Perry

7-18-2023
Walter Benjamin posits a fragmented world, a tangled mass of wreckage blown by a powerful storm into the future. He used Paul Klee’s Angelus Novus as an image of “the angel of history,” staring at the fragments of the world, compassionately wanting to help but blown farther and farther away. We are left to figure it out.

Bombarded with images, sounds, flashes of thoughts, dreams, texts, sequences—we piece together montages—composites often made of distant pieces. The process of making this version of “Dreadlocks in Moonlight” flings distant pieces together. What happens when “Emily Dickenson meets Lee Scratch Perry in The Maltshop in Mike’s home studio?” I don’t know! Yet!

I am not sure when I heard “Dreadlocks in Moonlight” for the first time. The works of Bob Marley, Jimmy Cliff and the soundtrack for The Harder They Come introduced middle class Americans to the vast world of reggae, but to most white kids like me, it was a mysterious world. The spirituality and language of Rastafarianism at first seemed distant, exotic and attractive. As I learned more details of Rasta spirituality, political thought and cultural insight, I began to construct a fantasy. The driving pulse of the rhythms and the sincerity of the world view drew me deeper into my fantasy of what that world must have been like. The ganja was alluring. I was imagining a world of spiritual peace and harmony; this world I had created coalesced in the image of “dreadlocks” standing proudly “in Moonlight.” At first, I only had the sound of the song and the image. It was through this song that I was introduced to the great trickster of reggae music, Lee “Scratch” Perry.

In those early days of our study of reggae, Tom and I had a hard time figuring out the Rasta terminology and Jamaican patois of the words of the songs. A former student, David Hulm, took great pains to transcribe the lyrics to several reggae classics—including “Dreadlocks in Moonlight” (and also “I am a Madman” and the Bunny Wailer anthem, “Armagideon Time”). These songs and many others emerged from Perry’s Black Ark studio in Kingston, where Perry said he created “Black Art.” One of those arts was “Dub.” The first dub I heard was Perry’s work (Super Ape), where Scratch deconstructs some of his classic songs and gives us fragments rooted in sonic chaos. The amount and quality of music Lee Perry created ranges from the early works of The Wailers to the Clash’s punk classic, “Complete Control” which contains the lyric “control in the body/ control in the mind.” That thought suggested imagery from Emily Dickinson which became part of this version.

For the last few years, we have been exploring the works of Emily Dickinson—especially themes of control—in body and mind. Somehow, using principles of “montage” thinking, I wondered “what happens when the Trickster meets Emily Dickinson?” This song begins to ask that question.

Because of his recent death, I returned to Lee Perry and revisited countless musical memories. But one I had not heard before was one of the most weirdly arresting songs I had ever heard: “Bird in Hard” –produced at Black Ark and sung in Hindi by Sam Carty. I include the song and brief list of Perry classics. A true discography would go on for pages. I consider “I am a Madman” one of the greats of all time. “Dreadlocks in Moonlight,” is not, as I first thought, a gentle spiritual hymn but a song about how the biblical forces of justice will triumph over police violence and a systematically unjust system.

Lee “Scratch” Perry aka “The Upsetter” aka “Pipecock Jackxon” is the great trickster of popular music. Once you enter the world of reggae and learn to understand some of the roots classics like Max Romeo’s “War ina Babylon,” you are drawn immediately to hear the dub of the song—then follow dubs of all the songs. Suddenly, the vision is deeper; the fixed spiritual and social messages of reggae start to spin around, echo and morph into the bedrock rhythms that are the real meanings of the music. The trickster has struck.

Short Scratchography—the tip of the tip of the iceberg.

Bird in Hand