Leroy Young – The Grandmaster
In Belize City, they have nicknamed the city
prison “Rasta Ramada”. Leroy Young did a couple stints there, for stealing cars
and then again for selling drugs. Born in 1967, Young grew up not just in the
ghetto in Belize City,
but in the toughest area, called Majestic Alley. Life’s full of ironies, right?
After two attempted suicides and watching his best friend die in his arms from
five bullet wounds because of a cassette tape, Leroy went through rehab and
started washing cars in front of the BC Radisson.
After high school
and before his “rocky times”, Young had performed in Fresh Breeze, one of the
first rap groups in Belize.
And, luckily, he had started writing down his poetry. He began reciting his
prose during and between car washing jobs. Eventually, Channel 7, an
independent TV station in BC, gave him a job doing a ninety-second “wrap” of
the evening news at the end of the program. As a result of this job, Leroy had
two small books of poetry published and, more importantly, caught the attention
of Ivan Duran, the president of Stonetree Records, the major recording label in
Belize.
Duran immediately booked recording time for Leroy Young and went into the
studio with him, to lay down music tracks that complimented his prose style,
called “dub poetry”. Duran would later proclaim the result “one of the most
satisfying recording experiences I have ever had”. And rightfully so, since
Duran plays a variety of musical instruments on every one of the sixteen tracks
on the CD, titled, “Just Like That…”
 |
| Just Like That CD Cover |
The music is infectious, drawing from styles as
diverse as Garifuna, Creole, Ska and African percussions. Duran even plays a
little Maya K’eckchi’ guitar on a few of the songs. But it is Leroy Young’s
album and it is his words and voice that take center stage on the CD. A
follower of Jah, Young is a Rastafari, albeit an unconventional one, if such a
thing exists. His songs deal with corruption and love, police brutality and
family values, poverty and the purity of the soul. I would call it free
association humor, with a bite. The whole package reminds me, more than
anything else, of the beatnik scene of the Fifties and early Sixties. I’m not
quite that old, but I caught the tail end of the generation that influenced
mine and I think Leroy Young would have fit in quite well at Lawrence
Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Bookstore in San
Francisco.
 |
| The Grandmaster Doing His Thing |
The music slithers
and meanders as Leroy scats and moans, free-associating on the way, at times
overlaid with some interesting dubbed recordings. He jibes with the musicians
on “Time” and poses serious questions about racial inequality on “Black and
White”, noting that, “the deadliest weapon is the mind of the oppressed…” The
album closes out with a very tongue-in-cheek, mock samba called, “Que Sera
Sera”. The CD itself is enhanced with all kinds of goodies when played on a
computer, including a bonus song that utilizes television news snippets and
marimba in a sobering duet. To be sure, it’s not the kind of album that will
get a lot of radio airplay outside Central America.
In Guanacaste,
Leroy Young and all Stonetree CDs are available exclusively at Jaime Peligro in
Playa Tamarindo, where they will gladly sample the music for their customers. All commetns concerning this article are welcome.
No comments:
Post a Comment