Mutabaruka - Andrew Smith

Peter Tosh has four songs as a solo artiste in poet, broadcaster and disc jock Mutabaruka's list of the 50 Most Influential Jamaican Recordings, plus another as part of The Wailers.

Mutabaruka developed the list for International Reggae Day, July 1, after attending the top 100 Jamaican recordings from 1957 to 2007 presentation at the University of the West Indies, Mona campus, in April.

Still Mutabaruka says Tosh, who was killed in September 1987, is underrated in Jamaica "despite the political influence his music had on Africa". He points out that Equal Rights (8) had a very strong influence on "the political consciousness of African people".

He also told The STAR that "Tosh, more than any other artiste, has been able to push the legalisation and recognition of marijuana. He was called the advocate for ganja". Mutabaruka said in the 1980s the Good Times magazine featured Tosh heavily.

And between Marley's death in 1981 and his own in 1987, Tosh's message was going international with a political consciousness that most artistes were not portraying.

Marley has three songs in the top 10 as a solo artiste, including the number one, Redemption Song.

world influence

Mutabaruka points out that his list "is not based off local influence", saying that they are songs which have allowed Jamaican artistes to be influential all over the world. "These songs are those that help establish Jamaica as a musical powerhouse," he said.

So Harry Belafonte has two songs in the influential 50, Day O (6) and Island In The Sun (11). "A lot of people don't know that the first million-selling album was done by Harry Belafonte," Mutabaruka said. That album was Calypso and Mutabaruka said Belafonte was given an award, which in turn led to the creation of the Grammy Awards.

The Honourable Louise Bennett-Coverley, 'Miss Lou', taught Belafonte many of the songs on Calypso and Mutabaruka said she joked that she taught Belafonte "six hand, seven hand" but he recorded "six foot, seven foot"). "People overlook it still," Mutabaruka said.

And Island in the Sun has been adapted by many tourists as a sort of theme song.

With Belafonte's parents being from Jamaica, one from St Ann and the other from St Elizabeth, Mutabaruka says "I recognise him as a Jamaican recording these songs".

The most recently released song on Mutabaruka's 50 most influential Jamaican recordings is Tarrus Riley's She's Royal and he points out its influence, especially outside Jamaica in the context of the songs that were popular at the time.

"What it did was to encourage a certain hope for the music. Here is a Rastafarian brethren singing about women in this manner, in a way that is palatable. It was almost a feel-good song, to know that all is not lost in the music. It was the same feeling when Sizzla did Black Woman and Child (30)," Mutabaruka said.

controversy

And then there is Buju Banton's Boom Bye Bye (21), which created the conversation that started the discussion of and repercussions from viewpoints on homosexuality and the attendant violence in Jamaican songs.

The ranking for most influential is different from personal favourites, it turns out, as when THE STAR asks Mutabaruka to name his five favourites from the list, he identifies Burning Spear's Marcus Garvey (12), Tosh's Fight Gainst Apartheid (4) and African (10), Marley's Redemption Song(1) and his own Dis Poem.

"I have seen the reaction. It is unbelievable," he said of the last. He said Dis Poem is the most remixed and redone poem any Jamaican has ever done anywhere. It has been utilised by the National Dance Theatre Company (NDTC) and is also used "in schools, colleges and universities all over the world in presentation of a new kind of Caribbean literature".