Prospero | Music history

Prince Buster: A Hard Man Fe Dead

One of Jamaica’s greatest musical legends died on September 8th

By K.G.

HIS life is a chronicle of the tropical tempest that is modern Jamaica. As a performing artist, sound system operator and producer, Prince Buster played a pivotal role in bringing the upbeat pulse of Jamaican music to the ears of the world. They called him the Prince, but when it came to the island’s explosive Ska culture, he was king.

Born on May 24th 1938 in Kingston, Cecil Bustamente Campbell was the son of railway and factory workers. His moniker grew out of his boxing aspirations in his youth; “Buster” a conflation of his middle name. Though he wasn’t a large man, his reputation as a scrapper landed him a gig in operations with one of the island’s top sound systems, Clement ‘Coxsone’ Dodd’s “Downbeat”. He soon became skilled at selecting songs that would pump through the massive wooden speakers to delight the crowd. In 1959, he set out on his own. With the backing of his family and a local business owner he opened a record store and launched his own sound system, “The Voice of the People”.

Seeking to dominate the competition—rather than just spinning the popular American hits of the day—Buster was one of the first to record and produce local talent. His debut recording, the Folkes Brothers’s “Oh Carolina” (1960), featured African Nyabinghi drumming by Count Ossie and his group: it was the first-ever recording of Rastafarian musicians on a pop record. It struck a chord with the rebellious spirit of the times and became an island-wide smash.

Seeking a more uniquely Jamaican sound, Prince Buster turned the popular rhythmic shuffle upside down by emphasising the offbeat. The guitar landed on the second and fourth beats of each bar—the upstrokes—and, according to one legend, Ska was born. Brimming with home-grown swagger, the new music brought more than island melodies and rhythms: it crackled with a fresh spirit, a new dance, a sense of cool and a rejuvenated point of view. Though still under British jurisdiction, Ska declared Jamaica’s independence.

Those early recordings forged new musical tools—sound effect samples, the voice as percussive instrument, a talkative rap style—that paved the way for the reggae and hip-hop that was to follow. Rebutting the status quo, nothing was off limits for Buster: poverty, street gangsters, political corruption and sex all found their way into his records. Some, like “Al Capone” and “Downbeat Burial”, were “throw downs”: openly challenging the competition and demanding a response.

Coming into his own with the newly independent nation, Prince Buster was chosen (along with Jimmy Cliff and Millie Small) to bring Jamaica’s new music to the 1964 New York World’s Fair. The same year, after meeting with Mohammad Ali, Buster was inspired to join the Nation of Islam, and return to the boxing ring for a (victorious) professional bout. He changed his legal name to Yusef Mohammad Ali, and established a new label imprint called “Islam”. In a song by the same name, he beckoned out: “Africa is calling—my people, my people, do you not want to go home?”

By the mid-60s, Jamaican Ska was catching on with British youth movements like the Mods and Skinheads, and Buster was gaining international cult stardom. According to Chris Blackwell, the founder of Island Records, Bob Marley’s record label, Prince Buster was instrumental to the music’s international success:

“Prince Buster took it to another level. He produced records of himself singing and soon released a song called “Madness” which became a huge hit in England in 1964-65. He went on to produce many successful records with different artists. He was one of the most important people in the history of Jamaican music, which is still important and still heard in every corner of the world.”

In 1967, “Al Capone” climbed the charts in Britain, propelling Prince Buster on his first international tour. But as the glow of the independence years faded, along with the sweet dream of sugarcane prosperity, tougher times prevailed and the music followed suit: the peppy tempo of Ska slowed into Rocksteady.

Though he helped to pioneer the innovative, spacey music of Dub, with the rise of the Rasta reggae of Bob Marley and the Wailers in the early 70s, Buster moved to Miami and stepped out of the spotlight. He was out of sight, but not out of mind: by the end of the decade, bands like The Specials and Madness openly paid tribute to him as a key inspiration behind the Two Tone Ska revival. In 2001, he was honoured with Jamaica’s Order of Distinction for his contribution to music.

In his 1966 record “Hard Man Fe Dead”, Prince Buster sings the tale of a corpse who steadfastly refuses to die. It’s an ode to the indomitable spirit of his countrymen—and a fitting tribute to his own legacy:

“Now the procession leads to the cemetery,

The man holler out—don’t you bury me!

You pick him up, you lick him down,

Him bounce right back, what a hard man fe dead.”

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