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The Black Ark was the recording studio of reggae and dub producer Lee "Scratch" Perry, built in 1973 and located behind his family's home in the Washington Gardens neighborhood of Kingston, Jamaica. [1] [2] Despite the rudimentary set-up and dated equipment, [3] it was nonetheless the breeding ground for some of Jamaica's most innovative sounds and recording techniques in the latter half of the 1970s.
From a technological standpoint, the Black Ark was at the low end in comparison to the international music recording standards of its day. [2] The studio's legendary reputation stems from the innovative production techniques employed by Perry to create sounds that baffled his contemporaries, and which have continued to be a source of amazement to later generations of music producers. [2] [4] An example of Perry's inventive style was his ability to overdub layers of sound effects and instrumentation on each recording track of a basic 4-track machine, with such precise timing and in such a way that the resulting sound would destroy the competition from Jamaica's other top producers using the latest 16-track mixing consoles. Perry once buried microphones at the base of a palm tree and thumped it rhythmically to produce a mystifying bass drum effect [note 1] [5] and his drum booth at the Black Ark was for a time surrounded with chicken wire to further his distinctive sound. [6] Many of his songs are layered with a variety of subtle effects created from broken glass, ghastly sighs and screeches, crying babies, falling rain and cow noises. [7] [8] While it was thought that Perry recorded the "mooing" noises from actual cows, it was actually the baritone voice of Watty Burnett through a tin foil laced cardboard tube that produced the cow-like noises. [9] These and other notable recording techniques helped define the Black Ark sound, as well as Lee Perry's creative legacy.
Perry was known for his eccentric and superstitious behavior during production sessions. [5] He would often "bless" his recording equipment with mystical invocations, blow ganja smoke onto his tapes while recording, bury unprotected tapes in the soil outside of his studio, and surround himself with burning candles and incense, whose wax and dust remnants were allowed to infest his electronic recording equipment. [5] He would also spray tapes with a variety of fluids, including urine, blood and whisky, ostensibly to enhance their spiritual properties. [5] Later commentators have drawn a direct relationship between the decay of Perry's facility and the unique sounds he was able to create from his studio equipment. [5]
Perry has described his relationship to the studio thus: [10]
The studio must be like a living thing, a life itself. The machine must be live and intelligent. Then I put my mind into the machine and the machine perform reality. Invisible thought waves — you put them into the machine by sending them through the controls and the knobs or you jack it into the jack panel. The jack panel is the brain itself, so you got to patch up the brain and make the brain a living man, that the brain can take what you sending into it and live.
Artists who were produced and/or recorded at the Black Ark include Bob Marley, Junior Byles, The Congos, Junior Murvin, Max Romeo, Mighty Diamonds, The Heptones, Augustus Pablo and Jah Lion. [2] [11] Paul Douglas mentions, "Scratch had a particular sound and everybody was fascinated by his sound. He had this way of putting things together; it was just his sound and it influenced a lot of people. I’ve even gone to the Black Ark with Eric Gale for that Negril album; I remember myself and Val Douglas, we laid some tracks there, Eric Gale overdubbed stuff on there, but I honestly don’t remember what happened to it. [12] " Lee Perry and his studio were also formative in creating the highly innovative reggae subgenre called dub, in which the producer/engineer becomes the focus of the music, manipulating a pre-recorded track and creating something entirely new using the mixing console as nothing less than an instrument. Perry worked with The Clash and Paul McCartney and his band Wings had recorded there between 1972 and 1979.
In 1979, following years of increasingly bizarre and erratic behavior, Lee "Scratch" Perry, armed with a magic marker, covered every available surface of the Black Ark with impenetrable writings before allegedly burning it to the ground. [ citation needed ] This event, with the loss of the studio's unique sound and a hiatus in Perry's extraordinary creative skills, effectively ended an era during which much of Jamaica's most innovative sounds had captured the world of music. However, it has been related by several Perry family members that the studio in fact caught fire in 1983 after an ill-fated attempt to rebuild it, the result of an electrical accident. More often than not, Perry has claimed that he personally destroyed the Black Ark due to "unclean spirits" - an allusion to some of the undesirable people who were constantly at the Black Ark in later years. There are also stories that Perry was being blackmailed by gangsters who wanted a cut of the record profits. Perry himself stated in an interview with clashmusic.com regarding the fire, "Too much stress in Jamaica, all the time. Everybody want money, everybody want paid. Everyone got problem and want me to solve their problem. Nobody gave me anything, people just took everything. Everybody take this, and take that. So the atmosphere in the Black Ark studio was changing; it wasn’t like it used to be. Then I decided to make a sacrifice as the energy wasn’t good anymore." Shortly thereafter, he moved to London and then Switzerland.
Lee "Scratch" Perry was a Jamaican record producer, composer and singer noted for his innovative studio techniques and production style. Perry was a pioneer in the 1970s development of dub music with his early adoption of remixing and studio effects to create new instrumental or vocal versions of existing reggae tracks. He worked with and produced for a wide variety of artists, including Bob Marley and the Wailers, Junior Murvin, The Congos, Max Romeo, Adrian Sherwood, Beastie Boys, Ari Up, The Clash, The Orb, and many others.
Clement Seymour "Coxsone" Dodd was a Jamaican record producer who was influential in the development of ska and reggae in the 1950s, 1960s and beyond.
Dub is an electronic musical style that grew out of reggae in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It is commonly considered a subgenre of reggae, though it has developed to extend beyond that style. Generally, dub consists of remixes of existing recordings created by significantly manipulating the original, usually through the removal of vocal parts, emphasis of the rhythm section, the application of studio effects such as echo and reverb, and the occasional dubbing of vocal or instrumental snippets from the original version or other works.
The Congos are a reggae vocal group from Jamaica which formed as the duo "Ashanti" Roy Johnson (tenor) and Cedric Myton (falsetto), later becoming a trio with the addition of Watty Burnett (baritone), and have been active on and off from the mid-1970s until the present day. They are best known for their Heart of the Congos album, recorded with Lee "Scratch" Perry.
Edward O'Sullivan Lee OD, better known as Bunny "Striker" Lee, was a Jamaican record producer. He was known as a pioneer of the United Kingdom reggae market, licensing his productions to Trojan Records in the early 1970s, and later working with Lee "Scratch" Perry and King Tubby.
David Katz is an American author and documentary radio and film producer. He has been described as "one of the world's foremost authorities on reggae, dub, and dancehall". Originally from San Francisco, California, he has been a resident of London in England for many years.
The Ethiopians were one of Jamaica's best-loved harmony groups during the late ska, rocksteady and early reggae periods. Responsible for a significant number of hits between the mid-1960s and early 1970s, the group was also one of the first Jamaican acts to perform widely in Britain.
Revolution Dub is a studio album by Jamaican dub producer Lee Perry and his studio band The Upsetters, released in 1975 by Cactus. The album, which features nine pared down dubs, was the last in a line of releases that year in which Perry began exploring the possible studio techniques at his recently opened studio Black Ark in Kingston, Jamaica. In addition to making early use of a drum machine, the album is characterised by unpredictable drops in the beat, drastic stereo panning and samples of dialogue from television series, particularly British sitcoms, while Perry sings on the album in an eccentric falsetto and portrays different personas, including television characters from Kojak and Doctor on the Go.
Michael George Henry OD, better known as Ras Michael, is a Jamaican reggae singer and Nyabinghi specialist. He also performs under the name of Dadawah.
The Silvertones are a Jamaican reggae harmony group formed in 1964, best known for their recordings for Lee "Scratch" Perry in the early 1970s.
Roy Anthony Johnson, better known simply as Anthony Johnson, is a Jamaican reggae musician who was a member of the group Mystic I and is known for the 1980s hit song "Gunshot".
Earl Sixteen is a Jamaican reggae singer whose career began in the mid-1970s.
Mike Brooks aka Mikey Brooks, Prince Michael is a reggae singer whose career stretches back to the early 1970s.
Watty Burnett, also known as King Burnett is a reggae artist who had a long association with Lee Perry.
Earl George Lawrence (1946–2003), also known as George Faith, Earl George and George Earl, was a Jamaican reggae singer best known for his work in the 1970s with producers such as Lee "Scratch" Perry and Bunny Lee.
Aura Msimang (Aura Lewis) (4 March 1947– 28 December 2015), born Aurelia Msimang, was a South African singer who worked with Bob Marley and Jimmy Cliff and recorded an album with Lee "Scratch" Perry in the late 1970s.
Roydel Anthony Johnson, better known as Congo Ashanti Roy is a Jamaican reggae singer best known as a member of The Congos but who also recorded solo and as a member of Ras Michael's Sons of Negus.
"Run for Cover" is a 1967 rocksteady and reggae single by Lee "Scratch" Perry, credited as Lee "King" Perry. The recording featured Perry, his band, Lynn Taitt on guitar and The Sensations as backing singers. It was recorded at Clifford Rae's WIRL studio and appeared on the WIRL record label in Jamaica, then in the UK on Graeme Woodall's Doctor Bird (label), both pressings with "Something You've Got" on the B-side.
Leo Graham was a Jamaican singer.
"Cow Thief Skank" is a 1973 single written and produced by Jamaican reggae musician Lee Perry and credited to his studio band the Upsetters. Released in Jamaica through Justice League and in the United Kingdom through Upsetter Records, it is one of Perry's series of 'skank' singles and is a duet between him and deejay Charlie Ace. The song was written as a diss track against fellow producer Niney the Observer, mocking an incident in Niney's youth where his thumb was cut off by a farmer after he attempted to steal one of his cows.
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