The Perfect Reggae Tune?

Is there such a thing as the perfect reggae song. I think so yes, although perhaps to be more precise I should say a perfect song – not the only one.

Regardless, Bob Marley’s Slave Driver in one such song. It was good from the start but at a certain point in the late 70s it became, to my mind, a timeless reggae classic. Here’s why.

In short: the song artfully blends music and lyric so that its point is embodied both in sound and meaning, seamlessly. It’s the dance between those two forces that turns it into such a great tune.

First, the sound. Carlton Barrett holds down the one-drop drum beat for which he was so famous; one of a handful of classic reggae drum beats. In this version of the song (Boston Music Hall, 1978) you can listen along and count off that beat. Instead of drumming on the second and fourth beats, Barrett plays the first and third. However, he only hits on the third beat, the one being silent (ergo: one drop). You can hear this beat played by Barrett as a thump on the bass drum and, most importantly, a crack as he taps a rim shot on his snare drum. That, right there, is the heart of reggae; everything else he does is merely accent. And the accent is fantastic. Early on, he moves the song forward, sets the loping pace, with a shuffling sound on the hi-hat.

The song has a breezy island feel to it as a consequence. The rest of the band plays along, giving us classic Wailers reggae, and then: the vocals. Again, just in terms of pure sound, this is a perfect vehicle for seeing how brilliant Marley was in his phrasing. He talks/sings his way through the song, landing the sound of his words in a way that is truly fascinating to listen to closely. I think Marley’s phrasing is as brilliant as Sinatra’s, in this way. Most bands deliver the sound (and therefore the timing) to the vocalist. Marley took liberties with the sonic landscape, and placed the sound of his words wherever he chose – his voice was his finest musical instrument. It created a tension unrivaled by most other reggae artists before and since.

But in this song, the thing that combines sound and meaning, the perfect intersection of those two worlds, is actually the back-up singing by the I-Threes. Slave Driver hit its peak when (as with the 78 version above) the first vocal sound was actually the I-Threes sing the lamentation chorus (for lack of a better description) - you can hear it as the song opens in the above video. (Earlier versions of the song, including the album, do not start with this lamentation.)

Reggae is seen by many as relaxed island music; the purview of potheads and frat parties. When I arrived in this country in the early 80s, from a South Africa still in the throes of Apartheid, I was thrown off somewhat by how this rebel music seemed to be relegated to white stoners and college kids. In South Africa, this was a black sound that captured anger, rage, simmering below the surface of what otherwise was beautiful music. As a twelve-year-old white kid in Cape Town, I knew which songs on Rastaman Vibration and Babylon By Bus had been kept off the albums by government censors for their direct reference of South Africa (War, for one) - and invariably one of us managed to get a taped copy of the censored tune from a friend of a friend lucky enough to go on holiday to the U.K. or somewhere else in Europe. Reggae attracted us like moths to a flame for the anger it contained, for the window into a world we simply did not know.

Slave Driver captures Marley’s political message, of course, if you spend half a second listening to the lyric.



Slave driver the table is turned

Catch a fire, you’re going to get burned.

And so, the song starts with a tune carried by the I-Threes that, at first, sounds like a lament. A wail, in the classic sense of the word (think Wailing Wailers, and the African legacy that name carries with it). The first time you hear it, it’s a mournful sound, meant to carry the weight of those Africans transported across the Atlantic by the slave ships.

However, the sound transforms during this course of the song and that’s what makes it so brilliant. It is at times a mournful lament, but it becomes a warning - a taunt. At a point, Bob sings “Every time I hear the crack of the whip…” and those three gorgeous back-up singers, whose accompaniment is usually delicate and beautiful, clap their hands to make the sound of that whip. It’s not just the whip though – that sound, that beat, human hands smacking hard, one-two, is to my ear a form of restrained rage. This was Marley’s art. Rage rendered so beautifully, which makes it even more impactful.

And so the Oooh refrain of the I-Threes, becomes something much more than a wail for the slaves – it becomes a taunt for the slave driver. The table is turned.

The hand clap, skin slapping skin, is both the sound of the whip and a measure of anger not forgotten. The wail is a lament and a taunt. Like a distant object in a camera lense, shimmering in and out of focus, those two sounds shift between each of these meanings with every listen.

The song transforms itself perfectly, simply, in both sound and meaning, while managing to play out in a classic reggae beat. It has always been a good song. During this period (late 70s) it became a perfect song.