The Congos - Congoman

ORIGINATION Heart Of The Congos
LAST LISTENED TO last year?
CHANCE OF WAKING TO IT barry white on the northern line
RATING

To cut a long and complicated story short, it can be seen that in Jamaican music the producer is often responsible for writing the music and organising the musicians in his productions. Therefore the name of the artists on the recording was more often than not that of the vocalists only. In many ways these albums can be seen as more belonging to the body of work of the producers, as opposed to the vocalists. With this album that is almost the case.

The Congos were a roots reggae duo composed of vocalists Cedric Myton and Roydel 'Ashanti' Johnson. The combination of their voices was quite unique in the genre: Myton's voice is a clean falsetto and Johnson's a rich tenor. This contrast is one of the things that is particularly attractive in their music. The other was that the Heart Of The Congos album was produced by the legendarily bizarre producer Lee 'Scratch' Perry. Here he showed his superlative skills in turning out settings for this unique combination of voices. The album is hailed as one of the very finest in the genre, although at the time it was turned down by the likes of Island records and sank into semi-obscurity.

Congoman is the second song in the set and was chosen as a single back in '77. It has a more stripped back feel than almost all the other tracks on the album and is driven by a combination of tribal drumming and 'regular' percussion (as well as, one suspects, copious amounts of weed). In behind this percussion is as big a bass as one could hope for, with further instrumentation present, albeit buried below the rhythm. (This murky sound was all part of the character of Perry's famed Black Ark studio and is part of the ambience that makes this a classic album.) Myton and Johnson's righteous vocals soar over this rich soup of sound, repeating many of the same phrases many times over, giving something of a religious vibe.

It makes for one of the key tracks not only on this album but in roots reggae as a whole. Anyone with the slightest interest in Jamaican music should hear this.