Shame and Scandal in the Family Tree. Mento – the Dad Reggae Never Had
Author: Miguel Cullen
Submitted on: 22 Jul 10
Category: Soundboys
In 1946 or early 1947, Ken Khouri strolled into a repair shop in Miami to get his car radio fixed. There was a strange man from California in the shop, who, left destitute, was pawning off all his belongings. Among them was a Presto disc cutter. Khouri, who’d served in the war as an electrical technician, was seduced, and returned to Jamaica with the device.
The Jamaican record industry started there. All ska, rocksteady, reggae and dancehall that emerged from the island owe its existence to that moment.
Not mento. Mento is sticksman music, with sticksman lyric and sticksman instruments, which survived for at least half a century outside the studio and in the cane fields of St Elizabeth and Clarendon. It would be played at ‘nine-night’ funeral wakes, gospel meetings at abandoned crossroads and on corn night, when the ripe sheaves were harvested and mento played till day.
The music would be played with rudimentary accompaniment – a banjo, a tin can, a crude ‘rumba box’, guitar and in one case, a bamboo violin. Dan Neely an ethnomusicologist who has written the most complete history of the genre, explains: “There was this guy called Jonathan Brown who used to play a bamboo violin. It was knot of really large bamboo and he’d soak it. He’d then pull strings out of the bamboo itself and he’d take another piece of bamboo and play the strings with it. I’ve talked to people who’ve said it was amazing because it sounded like a real violin.”
The song that propelled mento – or calypso, as it was marketed – into the stratosphere was Rum and Coca-Cola, a Lord Invader tune covered in 1945 by the famous Andrews Sisters. The tune – originally a lament at Caribbean girls running after ‘the Yankee dollar’, was given a jaunty refurb and peaked at as top single in the US that year. Previous to that however, mento had discovered its niche as a tourist export in Jamaica – bands would play in coastal hotels and take their names from the hotels they patronized – see the Hiltonaires, or the Silver Seas. If this seemed like a loss of musical dignity then you should meet Albert Minott – a current member of the Jolly Boys interviewed in this feature who would entertain alongside mento bands by dressing up as an African tribesman, and still has a blackened grin from when the kerosene from fire eating bored into his teeth.
Mento is the father of reggae. Many people think ska begat reggae, however in truth ska’s frenetic off-beat bears scant resemblance to reggae’s more sedate ‘two and four backbeat’ time, which mento shares. Dr Neely explains: “This is something that really irks me in the scholarship on reggae. There’s a very definite idea that one influenced the next, whereas there’s virtually no musical relationship between mento and ska. Mento is actually much more akin to reggae.”
Speaking to Clash, Lloyd Bradley, reggae historian and author of seminal reggae book Bass Culture said that he felt Lee “Scratch” Perry’s Super Ape – an album he names as the best reggae album of all time – contained some of the purest mento influences he knew. Other examples he cited were early Perry-produced Bob Marley and Burning Spear.
Ironically, what propelled reggae and ska into the consciousness of everyday Jamaicans also was also mento’s death knell: the sound system. Why hire four musicians when all you needed was one sound man? Mento soldiered on, but it is testament to its waning trajectory that Clement “Coxsone” Dodd, Studio One reggae paterfamilias, had the following attitude towards mento when approached by Dr Neely: “Mr Dodd was very frank with me. He said – “Man I don’t know shit about this music. I just recorded mento because I knew it would sell – you tell me what I need to know.”
Mento musician names would be often prefixed – in typically bombastic Jamaican fashion – as Sir, Lord, or Count – Lord Flea was one example, a proponent of the jazzier end of the genre who bought his first saxophone with his wages as a cab driver. Lord Flea is another international mento superstar. When he died in 1959, he got a funeral cortege five blocks long.
Junkanoo, kumina, revival, maroon – the list of traditional JA music goes further than mento. What is clear though is that mento and reggae are unique in sharing that two and four rhythm. Someone tell reggae. Or just quote it the Sir Lancelot ‘Shame and Scandal’ lyric. Your daddy ain’t your daddy but your daddy don’t know.
Interview with mento artist Albert Minott
Albert Minott, 73 was a part of the Jolly Boys, and 1940s mento band that were huge in Jamaica and are being given a Buena Vista celluloid treatment with a biopic and album out Summer 2010. Albert swapped the rural charm of San Antonio, JA for Soho’s Groucho Club, where, dressed in matching acid green patent leather cap and shirt, he spoke at length about his background, mento’s background, slack lyrics, and, as an aside, proved himself a post-colonial sociologist’s dream subject in a work about western abuse of Afro-Caribbean culture
Are you looking for love in London?
I’m looking to meet a girl in London but it would be too sharp a time before I go in six days. I’d rather wait until I get through all this, I go to a dentist, fix my mouth, then I’ll be a new man – settle down. My doctor said also ‘when you come back I can give you a face lift if you wanted to.’ I’m waiting…
What did your dad do in San Antonio?
My dad he worked at the port aboard a ship as a stevedore. He would go inside the belly of the ship and do ‘the banana pass’ – passing the bananas from hand to hand into the ship bound for England. That’s my daddy’s work. My dad would use the overhead winch that would lift the packets of sugar into the ship for England.
How do Jamaicans of your generation view England?
I am the Queen’s subject. I was born in ’39. From 1939 until 1962, we were always singing the praises of the Queen. ‘God save our gracious Queen – long love our gracious Queen.’ So when I went for a visa – I told them – I am the Queen’s subject. I’m alright to go to England – I’m an Englishman – I was born in ’39.” So they stamped my visa! On my birth certificate is says I’m the Queen’s subject.
How did mento start?
It started in the fields. People would be working, and they’d get a break, everybody would play – some would play a tin can, some would knock two [pieces of] plastic together, and they would sing the mento. That would be break time, then they’d go back to work.
Did mento pioneer the ‘slack’ lyrics in dancehall?
Yeh. Take the song Doctor Teach – ‘I’m not a qualified physician / I don’t know how to give this injection / she was bawling for paining…I no stop until I break the needle in two’
There’s another called Big Bamboo. ‘The big bamboo is always strong / the big bamboo stand up straight and tall / and the big bamboo pleases one and all / I gave my woman a sugar cane / sweet as sweet she did exclaim / she gave it back to my surprise / she liked the flavour but not the size’
What bits of your life will the film address?
Time like when the banana boat would come to Jamaica we would cut bamboo and make a raft and row up by the shipside and say ‘hey ma! hey pa! would you throw something over in the water?’ and they’d throw out a coin and throw it over, and we’d dive for it and we’d come up and show it, and put it in our wallet to take back. English money – a penny, sixpence, a shilling, sometimes they’d throw a pound, but that would float..
Mento Factbox
First famous mento artists:
Slim and Sam [1930s/40s]
Essential mento record:
Boogu Yagga Gal: Jamaican Mento
Jamaican politician who used mento as a political puppet:
Edward Seaga
Mento as one of the first expressions of rasta:
Lord Lebby – ‘Ethiopia’ [1955]
The man who killed mento:
Headley Jones, who built the first sound system in JA
With special thanks to Dr Dan Neely and Mike Garnice, of www.mentomusic.com for their invaluable help
http://www.clashmusic.com/feature/mento-reggaes-forgotten-past
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