I go because the people believe in God and there is no other God coming but me. In conversation with Laura Barnett of The Guardian in 2014, Lee Perry said “I like to give something special to people: that’s why I tour. For a Lee Scratch Perry concert is often more religious experience than mere gig. Obviously, due to the current pandemic crisis, his tour has been shelved. In 2019 he released the excellent Rainford album on which he had collaborated with Adrian Sherwood and Heavy Rain a fantastic dub version of the album appeared later that year. I was going to take in a few gigs and write a piece about this towering pioneer of reggae who is still touring and releasing critically acclaimed albums in his eighty-fourth year. We exchanged a few words and had arranged to meet after his show at the Brudenell Social Club in Leeds. He had responded to a piece that I sent him. What are your favourite Lee “Scratch” Perry tracks? Share them in the comments below.I was supposed to be meeting up with Lee Scratch Perry this week on his UK Tour. After all, as Scratch himself said, “ music is magic”. Maybe we can find new freedoms and new pathways to self preservation, maybe we can hitchhike our way and upset time.” We just need to listen. He can, according to Semaj Hall, “help us make new sense – decolonial sense – of time and the various events that are unfolding all at once. Taking a deep dive into African Hitchiker, found on 1990’s From the Secret Laboratory (another collaboration with Adrian Sherwood), Semaj Hall explained how Perry presents himself as hitchhiking from life event to life event, “diverging from a linear western time and returning to an African sense of time, one that is built on a long past that is always evolving into a present.”Īs we all consider the idea of a post-Covid future, maybe we need to turn to Scratch for advice. In April of this year, at the height of the second wave of the pandemic, where each socially distanced day was just like the last, I had the opportunity to listen to Jamaican scholar Isis Semaj Hall discuss Perry’s sense of time. The music he created seems to expand – perhaps explode – all notions of what music can be, so it is more prudent to pick some standouts that demonstrate his breadth and depth than a definitive greatest hits. In truth, Perry – who has died aged 85 – was astoundingly skilled and prolific in both roles, and so it would be laughable to attempt any comprehensive “best of” or representative listing of Perry’s work (though you could turn to this good primer by David Katz, author of the exhaustive and essential 2000 biography People Funny Boy: The Genius of Lee “Scratch” Perry). It was not entirely surprising – Perry, though arguably the most influential Jamaican artist (and therefore arguably one of the most influential artists ever), is most renowned for his work as producer rather than frontman.
I remember tuning in to a call-in radio programme during which Jamaicans were wondering who this guy was. W hen I moved to Kingston, Jamaica, in 2003 for a job, it was in the month that Lee “Scratch” Perry won the best reggae album Grammy for Jamaican ET, a record that, in true Scratch style, contained everything including the kitchen sink.
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