Toussaint Smith, Staff Reporter The Gleaner has had its fingers on the pulse of the entertainment scene for decades. Naturally, our picture archives contain many a 1000-word story about those who have given us happy, memorable moments. In our new series, 'From the Archives', we pluck a pic and take a peek into the past, speaking to the central figure about the moment and subsequent events.
The story reads: Probably this is what the Hon. Paul Geddes, chairman, Desnoes and Geddes Limited, is saying to Ernie Ranglin, as he presents him with the JAMI's '92 Honours (Jazz) Award. 1992.
Sunday Gleaner: What was it like receiving the JAMI '92 Honours Jazz Award?
Ernest Ranglin: Well, as a native person, as a Jamaican, I've got many awards abroad ... They say a person from their own country is never recognised and I was very glad and it was good that I was being recognised in my own country.
Sunday Gleaner: How did you start out in music?
Ernest Ranglin: Well, I'm a self-taught musician. I taught myself by reading guitar tutors and so ... I was number one in my class many times. It was very rarely I came second and, whenever most of the children reached half their books, I would finish. My mother was a teacher also, so I got the knack of helping myself most of the time ... So that's
the same way
I eventually studied music and helped myself.
SG: What is your role in the formation of reggae music?
ER: I used to do a lot of work for Coxsone Dodd. He called me and I was working at Half Moon Hotel at that time, I had a band, and my band was like, ah, Fred Johnson, my bass player, he was with me most of the time. So I took him along with me the Sunday, we discussed what we could do with this new beat and then the Monday well, I left Half Moon. At that time Fred was still working with me because he was at JBC working at that time. So, it was Fred Johnson who was the bass player, so I did this tune for Theophilus Beckford, in 1958, and some of the members were Drum Baygo and then Theophilus Beckford was the pianist. He played and sang and Roland Alphonso was my student and Chico Roderiguez was the trombone player and I was the guitar player and arranger.
SG: How has your life changed since?
ER: Well, I would think, if this was a different field anyway, but I was doing a lot of this stuff anyhow also and before that, I was really a jazz musician. But his was a side thing for me. Well, as life goes on, especially thanks to Bob Marley, who I actually gave his first hit anyhow, It Hurts To Be Alone, and then I'm Still Waiting and tunes like those and Simmer Down and then, after that ... He's the person who took the reggae music there, but really the first part of this reggae music, the father of it, is really ska and if you read Catch A Fire, it is where Bob Marley really says what he said about me about ska music. So I say thanks to him, to the world. I notice that I'm doing a lot of that stuff where, when I go on tour nowadays, my reggae music is more a mixture of jazz, more on a lighter side a slightly different styling.
SG: Tell us about the
Pam Hall project and the one coming.
ER: When I did the album with Pam Hall ... You remember how I used to do things with Sheila Rickard, how we used to do a good thing in the years back? So it was figuring like to find somebody to bring back that type of memory and I suggested Pam Hall to do that album. Well there are other things. I've been doing some African stuff in the '98 going up and I went to Senegal and I did In Search of the Lost Rhythms and that was done for Palm Pictures. After that, I did another album for Thelar Pictures in Ohio and that was Modern Answers for Old Problem. That was done with some Nigerian musicians and I'm really interested in going back to Africa because I'm not finished yet. The thing that I'm doing is trying to make American jazz and Caribbean musicals which include Latin American music mento, calypso Caribbean music and real good jazz music mixed with the African music. That's what I'm really doing.
SG: Have you been incorporating African rhythms in your music and where does that influence come from?
ER: Well, I was being influenced this way when I was Jimmy Cliff's musical director in the 1970s. In 1976 we went to Senegal and I saw where, as we reached there, I never knew Jimmy Cliff was such a well-known person. He is a well-beloved person generally in Africa. But when we went to Senegal, I saw seven groups of people, 12 different busloads of different cultures of artistes. This time I started to listen to instruments and the styling of these people. Really I was real impressed and I promised myself that I would go back there and I really was lucky to go back.
SG: What are you up to now?
ER: I would love to go back to Africa to do some more research into this music, because Africa is such a wide base... You can never cover all the music in Africa and to know that this is where all music
originated. I really would love to see how much, what I could do to mix my culture with their culture musically and see what can happen.
