One Song - Sister Nancy's "Bam Bam"

Episode Date: December 14, 2023

Today on One Song we’re going to be telling you a story. It’s a story about rhythms and remixes, interpolations and sampling. It’s a story about a song that became huge – it’s been in movies, commercials, and it’s one of the most sampled Reggae songs ever. But one of the last people to find out about its success was the singer. This time on One Song Diallo Riddle and LUXXURY bring you the story of Sister Nancy’s Bam Bam. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today on one song, we're going to be telling you a story. It's a story about rhythms and remixes. It's about interpolations and sampling. In other words, it's about musical reuse and borrowing. It's also a story about a song that became huge. I'm talking instantly recognizable. It's been in movies, commercials, it's been in video games. And it's one of the most sampled reggae songs ever.

But one of the last people to find out about his success was the singer herself. Yeah, it's a story about royalties and who gets paid and who has the power. It's the story of Sister Nancy, and the song is Bambam. It's going to be so hard not to do bad patois all episode long. I mean, I'm going to definitely avoid it. You may decide to get the toe in the water. I kind of want to be like, this is something Della can't understand. Dude, that's so cool.

That sounded authentic to my ears. But not to any Jamaican ears. Hi, I'm an actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ Diallo Riddle. And I'm producer, DJ, and songwriter, Luxury, aka the guy who talks about interpillation on TikTok. And the guy who might write an entire book on this subject. Not just might. Is Am and Doing. And doing.

And we can't wait to read it. But for now, for now. This is one song. Okay, luxury. Let's start here. When did you first hear, Bob. bomb and what does it mean to you? So there's a funny story associated with my first hearing,

basically all things, Jamaican, reggae, and dub. Because in college, I had three roommates, and they all used my sound system, right? Okay, they had my, like, sound system is generous. It's one of those all-in-one $120 machines, right? Oh, yeah. cassette player, not even CD player, record player, radio, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

Iowa was a very popular brand. I might have been in Iowa, actually. A-I-W-A. Whatever happened to Iowa. Shout out to Iowa. Okay, we're already in the week. No, but shout out to Iowa. Those are some good sound systems.

I had a cassette play. I walk in one day and there's a cassette, a foreign cassette, meaning not my own possession. Like, who's been listening in my machine, right? Kind of thing. But I pressed play and it was, I didn't know at the time. I later found out. This was my introduction to Lee Scratch Perry's Blackboard Jungle album from Circa 1973.

Okay. One thing we'll be talking about today is everything is a lot of circa going on because not a lot of credits are being really. written down in Jamaica, but this is my exposure to this sound. So this tape is in my machine. I'm hearing this music. I have never heard it before. There's no writing on it. And nobody is claiming ownership in the house because they don't want to be the one who is listening on my machine against my will without my permission. So for many years in the pre-Shazam era, I'm walking around with this tape, which is now mine, and listening to it obsessively. And it's got least

scratch parry. It's got bomb bomb on it. It's got all these incredible Jamaican iconic songs from this peak era of what I would call kind of roots reggae into the early dance hall era. And it's blowing my mind. And these are some of my favorite sounds, but I don't know what they are. So what year range are we talking here? So it's basically this dub era, which begins around 73, some of the first dub albums. There's dub music prior to that. But recorded and in album form, it's basically in the 70s and kind of ends around 82 when Bomb Bombom comes out. And this music ends up forming a big part of my like, you know, sonic DNA. Yeah.

You know, chemically becomes embedded in my body. And long story short, when I start making music, when I start making edits and remixes, my luxury edit series, which is me taking the stems of famous songs and like dubbing them out for a dance floor play, that's what I'm doing. I am doing, without realizing it, I'm doing what I heard on this tape. I'm extending sounds. I'm putting them in a big delay and echo and reverb and sort of. letting the sound reverberate because this has become a part of what I adore, basically.

Yeah. That's interesting. I got to ask right out of the back. Have you ever been to Jamaica? I've never been to Jamaica. Not been yet, okay. Have you been? I have not been in any substantial way.

Like, I'd love to say I've been to Kingston or something like that. I've been on vacation. I've done the resort thing. What's interesting to me is you discovered it in college, essentially. I discovered it in college. I will say that, look, my father had 3,000 jazz. records. For that reason alone, it was hard for me to get into jazz.

That was my dad's music. And also my brother, who is 20 years older than me, his music was reggae, you know, and specifically Roots Reggae. Huge Bob Marley fan. Jimmy Cliff, I remember the first piece of vinyl, anyone ever

gifted me that I didn't like ask my parents for or buy with my own money. Was pasta duchy by musical youth. And I remember loving the sound of it, but I couldn't get into reggae because that was my brother's thing. Until I got to college. When I got to

college, I went to school in Boston. Being at an East Coast school, there were so many children of immigrants at Harvard. And also because we're on the East Coast, all of our parties are kind of mimicking

the sort of the grown-up over 21 parties on the East Coast at that time. And that's almost exclusively, hip hop and dance hall. Okay. And so when I would, you know, go into these places that sometimes we're 18 and over, I would go in, I would listen to what they were playing. And I'm pretty sure that's the first time that I heard Bomb Bomb, was I heard Bomb Bomb and I heard Don Pins No No.

And there was like this whole dance hall set of music that you could spin, you know, and this is like the mid-90s that it was like, oh, this is we didn't we didn't do roots reggae. What's funny is I feel like Reese Reggae, like every kid at Harvard had the stereotypical Bob Marley legend's poster. It is so annoying. And that CD. Yeah. And so in some ways. The greatest hits of Bob Marley, basically, the starter set. I feel like, you know, the harder they come, all that stuff got sort of, that was for, I'll be blunt.

That was for like Toots original. But we'll get into that. We'll get into that. Let's set the stage. I think that Bomb Bomba is perhaps one of those songs that a lot of people know, but maybe they don't. know much about it. Exactly, yeah. So Bomb Bombam comes out in 1982.

How do we get to Sister Nancy and Bomba? Okay, so the story of Jamaica and music in a very tiny nutshell. Yes. So in 19... Knowing that this could be its own episode. And boy would I... Yeah, I mean... And we will probably do that.

My Jamaican music obsession, I've had to whittle down to like a less than a fair. Yeah, yeah. But basically, in 1962, Jamaica is independent of England. And the beginning of the Renaissance, the creative Renaissance, of Jamaican music begins with Scott, which then leads to Rocksteady, which is 1966. And then in 68,

we get the beginning of what's called Roots Reggae, we were just referring to, which is the Bob Marley and the Jimmy clip we've all heard of. But there's also... When you're DJing a party and someone over 50 comes up to you,

like, can you play some reggae? That's usually the reggae they're talking about. They're usually talking about, right, one love or something like that. Jammin. Could I... Could you be loved? That's what they want to hear.

Which is a very... Fantastic music. Right, but very different from what's actually happening on the island. That's an Americanized version. Yes. That's its own story. We'll do a Bob Marley episode separately. I've been traumatized by people making requests for, sometimes I say ask for ragay,

which I just can't even get into. I have to say, I think I have, too. I think I had a similar experience where the whole, like, Bob Marley poster on the wall thing, like made me a little bit less, like, interested in all of reggae, which is unfair, because it really is just, it's not fair. It's a very specific kind of reggae that Bob Marley was doing. But, okay, so Ruth's Reggae comes in. Roots Reggae comes in, and I just want to quickly talk about, because it's important to this story, is the origin of dubs and dub music.

In a nutshell, there's an apocry, possibly apocryphal story, but I've heard it and read it across many books where there's a guy called Ruddy Ruddwood who's doing a dub, meaning he's running a copy for a DJ to play as an exclusive at the next giant giant giant party, which is a sound system sometimes called at the dance hall. This is in Jamaica, giant open-air party. Everyone's there. This is the heart of music in Jamaica. It's not bands, it's DJs and sound systems. So he's running a special version, and by mistake, mutes the vocal. And according to the story, Bunny Lee or possibly Redwood, is like, that's amazing. Do that again.

Actually, just keep it that way. And then when they go to the club that night and they play the instrumental of a popular song that people are used to with vocals, the crowd goes bananas. They're like, that's something I've heard before, but this is slightly different. And that tiny little insight. The usual combination for a head.

This sounds vaguely familiar, but it's a little different. Right. And that tiny little distinction, we now know to be the core of so much about remixing and musical reuse across all the genres. But it begins here in Jamaica by this accident in the late 60s. And we have this new thing called versioning, where when you buy a song, you start to get used to the flip side of it, not being a second song, but being just an instrumental or a version. sometimes a dub, which is when they started getting creative with how they would bring in the vocal and take it out again. That's right, adding some effects. King Tubby comes into the mix. Again, an entire episode can be devoted to this. I'm just laying the groundwork for the idea of there being multiple versions and instrumental multiple versions.

And a lot of creativity begins to come with, wow, once you take the vocal off, you can do an awful lot with this music. So this is an insight that comes from Jamaica in the late 60s. We take for granted for all things. sampling and remixing in the culture to this day. But it really comes out of this wonderful happy accident. Dude, this is so fascinating. So you're basically saying that by a happy accident, this guy basically handed a plate over that had a version with vocals and then a version that's the complete instrumental with no vocals or maybe like some vocal reminous, but basically no vocals.

And then people just went to town. People went to town. Yeah. They love the audience, the crowd, the dancers, asked for them to, they want to. hear it again, so they did a rewind, rewind. Yeah. And they heard it, you know, it was played a, it was the hit tune of the night. I love that. Yeah, and then you can play it right into the

original. Go ahead. And this is just, and just so I can be cleared, timeline wise, this is the late 70s we're talking about here. We're talking late 60s into early 70s. Oh, okay, late 60s, early 70s. Awesome. Can you play us something that is an example of an early version? So there's possibly

one of the most famous dub songs is called King Tubby meets Rockers uptown. I'm going to play for that, that for you moment. But first, I'm going to play the song where it came from because it's actually a dove version of just a song. So the original song is called Baby I Love You So. It's by Jacob Miller. And here it is. So do you recognize this song, by the way? I do. I used to spin this at the end of my set when I used to DJ at Soho House in New York. Nice choice. This was a good song to play around 215 as they're cleaning up the cups. Absolutely. So now let's hear what happened when that

instrumental track is transformed with the addition of some vocal fragments that are kept. And King Tubby, who's one of the master earliest remixers of all time, is responsible for making choices here of what to bring in, what to take out. And you'll hear how that same instrumental track with a little vocal was transformed into this. This is King Tubby meets Rockers Uptown. So we just have these little pieces of Jacob Miller's voice from the original song, Baby, I Love You So Floating in there. The bass is cranked up. Of course. And the drums have this delay added to them so that that beat becomes like

like 30 second notes, I think, in there with, I mean, it's really beautiful. And there's a reduction with fragmentation of the vocal, a reduction of instrumentation and enhancement of the baseline, the vocal fragment. This is a completely new science, if you will. And it's done, it's created by the engineer by King Tubby. He's transformed this material, this recorded material, and created in the process an entirely new art form. Which I think any good engineer from George Martin to Bob Power,

they'd be like, we're always transforming that crap that they hand us. But no, seriously, like I think that yeah, you can't ever get past a person who does what they're doing in the studio. Yeah, exactly. And just one more version of that song because it exists. Augustus Pablo, who's the producer who... Augustus Pablo? What a great name. Augustus Pablo, if you don't think you've heard Augustus Pablo, you have.

Because almost any time in the 70s at least, you hear a melodica, which you'll hear in a second. That's Augustus Pablo. He made that instrument famous in reggae. So he did a version of that same track using the same rhythm track, the instrumental, but he replaced the vocal with his melodica. This is Casava piece. And that's the melodica there. It's coming up with a whole new melody.

So obviously if you're familiar with any of the songs, and then you hear any of the other versions of it, it's similar to the audience at that first sound system event where they heard the instrumental of a famous song. I think it might have been on the beach by the Paragon's. I'll have to look that up. But you have this sense of familiarity, but a sense of something new, and it's exciting. It extends the connection you have with the material, with the music. I just want to give a round of applause. My man, he has walked us from Jamaican independence through the emergence of Roots Reggae. And he mentioned ska and Rocksteady along the way.

Many books have been written. If you want to elongate that, what just took a few minutes, it can be done. No, it can absolutely be done. But now I want to talk about the end of the decade. I want to talk about the end of the 70s because there is this new culture that's starting to rear its head. in the underground clubs and these underground dance hall parties where the music is changing.

And I think that, you know, you can't ignore the passing of the political torch in Jamaica this time. Michael Manley's party loses to the Labor Party. There's a lot of violence, not just street and crime violence, but there's like political violence taking place.

A lot of the hope that you hear in Roots Reggae, a lot of the Rastafari themes, and a lot of the, just the politics and the black liberation, you start to hear another thing come in. And that is talk of like street life and crime. And, you know, I saw somewhere where someone was like, you know, these, you know, in the late 70s,

dance hall comes in and it's talking, they called it the crass cousin of Roots Reggae because it's like, it's dealing with these different themes. And suddenly there are new people who are rising, to fame. We could not talk about Bomb Bomb without talking about Yellow Man and Yellow Man. I'm going to call him

Yellow Man because, again, I don't want to do a bad patois, but if I go back of four, please forgive me. I'd like to hear a little bad Patua. I mean, why not try? Well, then listen to the song by Dawes Races because they did a great song about fake patois. But, you know, Yellow Man by 1979, he's one of the most popular artists in

Jamaica, and he has a different way of approaching his music. I won't go the way of saying like, oh, dance hall is obsessed with the six G's. And you can look online and see like, you know, the theory that it's guns, gals, gays, ghetto, Ganja God. We're not going there because I think that there are a lot of early dance hall songs that don't deal at all with guns. And I've actually heard sister Nancy say she considers Bob to be a very positive song.

Yeah. But there is a new culture coming in. There's a new culture coming in in the late 70s. So by 1980, you've had political change. You have a young generation coming in doing a different take on the music of the previous decade. Yellowmon releases his first album in 1982, Mr. Yellowman. And that, you know, that artist and his music is going to have an influence on one of the first female, you'd have to call her a female DJ in this genre. Right.

Just don't pause. We should make this clarification because in Jamaica is the. Oh, yes. Let's be very clear. The DJ is called the selector. The DJ is basically the MC in DJ in Jamaican culture. And by the way, growing up, I was always confused by that because you would see things like DJ cool heard. But you're like, but cool hurt, you used to do a lot of rapping.

And Coke La Rock, you know, sometimes would be listed as DJ. But like, you know, Coke La Rock was like, no, I'm an MC. I'm a master of ceremony. So we want to get our terms straight. What's the Sir Nancy says? DJ in the Jamaican sense, we're actually talking about someone who does a lot of chatting and toasting. Just to be, literally the selector has the records and selects the records.

We call them the DJ, but they call them the selector. But they use the word DJ to mean the person up front with the mic, toasting. The disc jockey, it kind of makes a lot of sense. Because if you think about a radio disc jockey, that's the person who's talking over music. It comes from radio disc jackey. The Jamaicans got it right. They got it right. But in the song, Sister Nancy says, MC is my ambition.

So there's a lot to be. So there's a lot of fluid in between back and forth, you know, By the way, shout out to the kids in the Bronx who took that Jamaican culture, put it with James Brown Records, and helped us come up with hip hop. We'll probably have some time to talk about that, too. Oh, absolutely. And using fragments of samples and breakbeats as opposed to the entire record, which is what's going on here.

That's why rhythms, that's what you call the instrumental or the dub. These are all rhythms, the reuse of the rhythm is the entire instrumental track. That's a big part of why this is so different from the sampling and interpolation conversations. Absolutely. So let's get into the story of Sister Nancy and Bomb Bomb Luxury. Where do you want to start? So I want to quickly give a shout out, by the way, this really wonderful book by Larissa Kingston Man.

It's called Rude Citizenship, Jamaican Popular Music, Copyright and the Reverberations of Colonial Power. I read this book. It came out last year. I read this book. That was all the title. That's the entire title. That sounds like one of those Andre Flute song titles. Go ahead.

It is definitely an academic work, but it also, from my perspective, as someone who loves reggae and dub and Jamaican music. She talks about the intersectionality of making music, politics, and money and power and copyright, because I won't get into it now. This is its own thing. We are going to talk a little bit actually later in this episode. We're going to talk about copyright. We're going to talk about ownership. We're going to talk about when you're a musician. But right now, how little power you have. Yes. But part of what I want to talk about comes from this book is it's from the very

epigraph, the beginning of the book. She tells this great anecdote, which I think tells the story of rhythms in Jamaican music and creativity in a perfectly succinct way. So I'm just going to paraphrase from this introduction. In 2009 in Kingston, there's this sort of American Idol type competition. And the three contestants go up there, they do their thing. And one of the judges whose name is, Jamaican producer called Skata goes, is referring to something he just heard and he's saying, I won't do the patois. Do you want to do the patois in this one? I'm not going to do the patois. So he says, that rhythm, it lame. I wish he had used. a more original rhythm, not one that they make themselves.

The one more established rhythm that had been tested, not this amateurish thing, one that has passed the test of being played out. This is the opposite. He uses the word original, the opposite way that we would use the word original here. He doesn't use it to mean he wants to hear something he's never heard before. He uses it to mean something he has heard before. Because framing in Jamaica for what is creative and what is original is something that has been tried and true and the crowd loves it already, and you're putting a flip on it.

They're not taking the downpressors definition of anything. What's the downpressors definition? I don't know this. That's, you know, because the Rosafarians believe that you shouldn't call them oppressors because it sounds so much like oppressors. Oh, wow. So they're trying to trick you, so you call them downpressers. I love that.

That's what happens when your brothers are Rastafarian. You learn these things. Shout out to Anthony Riddle. I know that he listens to the show, and I hope to get no facts wrong, because I will never hear the end of it. Who is Sister Nancy? So Sister Nancy is born in Kingston, in 1962, her father's a pastor,

their house is a church, and there are 15 siblings. 15. They were the Wayanses. So they're the Wayans of Jamaica. And importantly, her older brother is Brigadier Jerry, who's already an established artist in his own right. So Sister Nancy, when she's like in her teens

is being like, not dragged, but like gets to go with her older brother to the sound systems, to the dance halls. And watch him in action. And she's an awe of him and they have a really close connection. And he really brings her into this world because it is not a very female-friendly world. No, that's the whole point. I mean, one of the things that makes Sister Nancy an important figure in this music is that there are not a lot of women.

No. And in a way, that's what the song Bomb-Bomb is about. Yeah, I mean, in reggae, in Jamaica, you do have in the history, I mean, Millie Smalls, My Boy, Lollipop, bum-bum. That's literally from 1964, one of the biggest reggae, you know, ska songs of all time. It puts Island Records on the map. But between her and then a handful of rock steady artists, and then you've got the I-3s behind Bob Marley, women in reggae are very backgrounded. Yeah, it's a function of there being this strain of conservatism in Jamaican culture. And she kind of talks about it on bomb bomb, the fact that like she's being, you know, steered one way.

And yet she has these ambitions to be an emcee. I want to take a second and just point out that this is a remake, essentially, of a Toots and Matal track. But I got to believe that she changed a good number of lyrics. Tell me about how Sister Nancy recorded her version of BombBomb. Okay. Let's talk about BombBom. So it's 1981. She's got nine songs written for a full album.

And Winston Riley, the producer, says, we need one more. Can you give me one more? So she goes into the studio. And Yellow Mung is in another studio where he's doing his. own version of this song. This is Toots in the May Tal's Bomb-Bomb from 1966. So that What a Bomb-Bam is being vocalized in the background throughout the entire track. So this idea, the title of the track is Bomb-Bom, and what's being sung is What a Bamb-Bom. So we talked a little bit about, you know, this musical reuse culture.

when Yellow Man and Fat Head are in the studio working on a new track, they're thinking of this song, and they come up with this. That is so cool. I have never heard the Yellow Man version of it. And what instantly jumps out to me is how, you know, like, so the two's version is clearly like political. Like it's, it's, it's talking about, you know, this man, you know, don't trouble no one. You know, I fight for what's right, not for what's right. wrong, you know, like, it's, it's political. The Yellow Man version, you know, he also says this man, but then he's like, you know, yellow mine, you know, like, it's like, it's more already you sort of hear the, it's not, it's not bragging necessarily, but it's sort of like the self-reflectiveness of this sort of dance hall. And by the way, it's the same thing's happening in hip-hop right now. It's like, you know, I'm the best and I do the rest, you know, like it's more reflexive.

It's less political. And then, you know, obviously. in the Toots and Yellow Man versions they both say, this man but in the Sister Nancy version Revolution, this woman! You know, like, blue people's brain. Right, right. So cool. Same song, but different lyrics. It's a transformation of an idea

and it becomes a new idea once it's transformed. Bomb, bomb. Do we know what it means? Because I always interpreted like when I heard Toots sing, don't bring a bomb bomb, I assume that was like a gun. And by the Sister Nancy, again, I've never really hurt, the Yellow Man version, the Sister Nancy version, what, bum, bomb.

I didn't really know what it meant. You know, like, by that point, I don't get the sense it means a gun. Do you know? I don't think, I mean, what she has said herself in interviews is that it means I'm attacking full speed. I'm coming for you, or I'm just coming. It's just here I am. It's like, I'm bringing the ruckus.

But I'm bringing the ruckus. I think it's an announcement. I think here I am. Yes. I am here. The whole song has a, here I am. Yeah. I love the phrase, nice up Jamaica.

Yeah. you know, to the uninitiated is basically an early form of turn up. You know, so. MC is my ambition. Like, here I am. I'm making my dream come true because I'm on stage.

I'm a woman in Jamaica. It's 1981 when she's writing at 1980s. It comes out. And here I am. Here I am. I deal with it. I'm a lady and not a man. I mean, it's so simple

and yet so awesome. Bomb bomb. Bomb bomb. After the break, we be getting deeper into bomb bomb. We be right back. Rewind. I think I got canceled. Welcome back to one song.

So you have Sister Nancy's isolated vocals. Can we hear? Yeah, let's listen to some Sister Nancy Bam Bam Acapella. I come three nights of Jamaica So bam bam bam That's a sweet vocal. Such a sweet vocal.

How old is she when she records this? She's, I think, 19 when she records it, comes out. She records it in 81. It comes out in 82. Yeah, and she was born in 62. So, yeah, that's pretty sweet. And, you know, obviously the effect that you're hearing on there, you were just messing around with that in the room, right?

For the mineral announcement. And what's interesting, when I was hearing you do it, I was reminded of the fact that that is always exciting to put a vocal with a slight delay on it. It just always sounds cool. It does. And early stories. It's the reason why everybody likes this thing in the shower, really,

because it's like bouncing off the walls. But that specific bomb, And in the stories of early Jamaican toasting, and the first time, like, Uroy gets on the mic, and then these are the earliest, and Count Machukee in the 50s, who we were talking about, this idea of jumping on a mic at a party with records playing to hype up a crowd.

And what you do is you take the mic and you just add that tiny little effect of delay. Absolutely. It sounds like outer space. It's exciting. It is outer space. And it's still exciting in 2023 here, and you do it just now.

Listen, that's just how it works. As a DJ, there was nothing. Because, you know, when it first started, starting off as a DJ, especially before we had laptops to beat, match all of our songs. Like, you're always like cataloging in your brain. Okay, this song definitely blends with that song. This song definitely blends with that song. And Bomb Bomb, and No, No, by Don Penn, I just, that was one of the first combinations

where I learned that they were literally within one BPM of each other. And as a DJ, there's really nothing easier than mixing a song that starts off like this. like it's one of those things where like the horns are so loud the music the instrumentation is so sparse that coming in towards the end of no no no which you have to figure you have to follow that song up with something good okay that's one of those songs we're like if the next song isn't good the dance floor is going to clear so you have to hit them with another beast we're going to definitely do a dime pan episode and and i guess we should and and i'll never forget that sister nancy that was one of the things that really helped us get into it.

We're talking about the music now. And when you're talking about this music, you've got to talk about the rhythm. So what can you tell us about it? Because I feel like this particular rhythm has been used in a lot of songs. That rhythm, as you were pointing out, like, this is one of the more popular rhythms of all time. It's called the Stalag-Leg-17 rhythm.

Sometimes it's called the Stagalag-Lagrhythm. And it's been used hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times. And not even always the same part of it, because I feel like, isn't there some talking at the beginning of this? So the rhythm itself is recorded. it as far as we understand, I've done a deep dive on this rhythm, and we're going to get into that a minute, but

as far as we understand, this is the sole syndicate performers that are playing these instruments, and here's the rhythm itself. It's called Stalach-Seventeen. It's listed, and this is a little foreshadowing as being by Ansel Collins, but that's not quite the whole truth, but here's what it sounds like.

There's a lot to talk about there, yes. And not the least of which is that, you're hearing an organ in the background, just like a solid cord, a seventh chord, and that's not in the version that's underneath Sister Nancy in that rhythm, in that particular riddle? Yeah, you don't hear that at all. That's already

been muted out because somebody at the controls, and I'm not sure who, I wasn't able to find out. It might have been King Tubby. It might not have been King Tubby has a remix, but it's not quite the same. So, similar in the story that we'll be getting into in a minute, the choice was made for Sister Nancy's rhythm

to use, not the one we just heard, where Ansel Collins, the keyboard player, plays that organ, but he's not playing underneath Sister Nancy Bomb-Bomb. You can't hear him. It actually gets towards what I like about this music in general, is that you earlier you said it sounds spacey. Yeah. You know, I think there's a tendency for a lot of people

to overproduce for the dance floor, for the dance hall. Yeah, yeah. And in hip-hop for the dance floor, because if you think about the Neptunes, just the fact that Neptunes invoke space, like their production was actually sparse. Like you can hear the space in between the notes as much as you can hear the notes.

I feel similarly, somebody made the wise decision that at that organ is in there, it might be more of a song, you know, Bomba might be more of a song that you, you know, sort of, you know, sway to instead of, instead of wine to, in the Jamaican sense, the wine is very important. Right. You know, if you leave more out, it gives it more of an edge in a weird way. Right. Well, let's talk about this rhythm.

And let's talk about where it comes from. And let's talk about who made it. And let's talk about who made money off of it. All of this stuff is struck. outed in a great deal of mystery because just to back up for a second, how does music in Jamaica get made in the late 60s, early 70s, into the 80s and probably even now?

I mean, that's, that's great. What year does Stalag 17 come out? So this song is recorded around 73, or it comes out in 73. And the way in Jamaica, the way it works, is there is a studio. There's studio one, you've heard of, you've heard of Channel one, maybe, Harry Jays. And these

studios are owned by studio owners. They've got money. They've got producers who come in and they hire bands to play music. And all along this road from studio owner and producer down to musician, the power, by the time you get to the musician, there's no power. These musicians are hired to come in

and they play maybe two, three, four rhythms a day. And they are the ones who are writing and making up for the most part the music on the spot. The producers are not musicians. So in this case, this is relevant because Winston Riley is the producer. He's the guy who booked the studio. He's not

even the studio owner. He's just the guy who had enough money to book studio time. to get people to come in who are instrument players. And in this case, it's called the Soul Syndicate, is the name of the band, is the name of the artist, the band who actually played the music. Base was George Fully Fullwood,

full props to George Fully Fulwood, full props to Ansel Collins on Keys, Carlton Sansa Davis on drums. These are some heavy hitters. If you go buy some records right now, some reggae records, you'll see these names, like an awful lot of them.

Who's on the horns? And then guitar, I'm so glad you asked. Because guitar is Tony Chin and Earl Chinas Smith, and I do not know who are on the horns. That's crazy. So many lines. That is a horn, right? That's not my imagination. There are horns on this. There are horns on this. Those are real horns. It might be, it might be Tommy McCook,

who's a very famous tax player, but it might not be, and I do not know the answer. That's crazy. Documentation is sparse. That's like if we didn't know who plays the keyboard on the doors light by fire. It's such a prominent part of what makes the song work. There's two reasons why credits are not being kept. Number one, it just wasn't, so much is happening, so much activity. They're cranking out instrumental songs. Classic Hollywood movies were not stored in good facilities and then the facility burned down and they're lost of time. Totally get it. Think of that. When I tell you this anecdote, there's a great documentary called Dub Echoes where they interview Bunny Lee, who's one of the

iconic producers. And producer in the sense of has money, pays instruments, pays musicians to come and play, but then takes credit, takes the Master Dave's. This guy in this documentary, you see him, walk into this room in Jamaica, which is this little tiny box of a room with stacks and stacks of not well-maintained boxes with like analog tape revolved around on tables. There is no real organizational principle in sight here. And there's no real care and maintenance for the actual items. These are the master tapes of famous Jamaican songs. And they're just like in stacks in a room with maybe an air conditioner in it. So when you see this, you're like, this is, millions and this may be billions of dollars.

They're placed near the stack of match boxes and gasoline. There's someone smoking a cigar over there. Because there's no other place to put that stuff except next to these priceless artistic films. It's like a Bugs Bunny cartoon of like danger and fraudness. Yeah, they're at the Acme factory. It's the Acme factory. So to your

point, like the care and maintenance of all of this stuff is not very strong. And this is billions of dollars worth of music. To kind of bring it back to Stalach's 17, I was able to find some stories. Oh, yes. I want to hear some great stories. Well, some of the stories involve how the drummer I mentioned Santa Davis, he's got a really great long interview where I've read, and I won't get that deep in the

weeds other than to say, there's contentiousness about who made this song amongst the players. Oh, wow. Who wrote it? Like, who wrote it? But it's really, for me, as a musician, like I was, I'm in there with it. We should find out who wrote Stelag's 16. That probably will give us a answer. Salag 8 is like some slipped on heat. That'll give us some insight in Slag's out. I know. thought about that. Sequentially speaking. Just listen to who else made songs that sound like this. Right, right. But he's talking about that moment where a guitar player, a bass player, and a drummer are in a room and a keyboard player.

And the money guy says, make me a tune. And what happens is sometimes the keyboard player just starts playing, and the way the story goes is Ansel Collins, the keyboard player, seems to be saying, hey, I kind of got us started. And then I kind of nodded at fully fullwood over there. And he starts playing dung, doom, doom. do do do do do do and then we've got santa davis over there thinking because he's the bass player again it's a george fully foolwood and then we got he put a man i mean other than the horns that is the most

oh that's the hook right there that's the iconic little thing right there right so i agree with you so ansell collins is by the way also similarly unpaid but amongst the musicians all these years later who are unpaid there's kind of fighting for scraps of recognition and also ansel collins is the one name out of that session that I have heard of. Well, he shows up on Spotify as being the owner of Stalach 17. Why? I can't really tell you because he uploaded it first.

It's hard to say... I mean, he might have been the band leader. Amongst the band to this day, there's contentiousness about like who wrote this. It was kind of all of us responding to each other is the main answer. The main answer is in real time when you're a musician with eye contact and listening, you're like,

you're responding and it all kind of comes together as a unit. But as soon as one starts to say, yeah, but I put my fingers on the keyboard first, that's when things get a little bit hot. I'm sure. I'm sure. I don't know Ansel Collins. He's my dad. But I'm sure he would say that it was more than just he was the first person to start playing. Well, I will allow the people of the internet to kind of look for yourselves. This is one song, not one lawsuit. Because there very much is a Roshaman story going on about how did this song take place. And when you listen to all sides of it, you start to realize, man, before you leave that studio.

musician friends, figure out who gets what. If only that were the case, in this case, Winston Riley wasn't even there on the day. The producer who booked studio time had his brother show up and actually be the logistics guy.

But Winston Riley is the man who for 32 years made every dime on bomb. He made every penny on this song. That's unfortunate. So that was the Log 17. We now know where this rhythm begins. My question is, is,

is Bomb Bomb, is she's just singing over their track, or does she have her own musicians in the studio? Yeah, now she's singing literally over the rhythm. She's just got headphones on and they push play. Yeah. Or they spin the record, probably. Wow. Or they've got the master tapes in this case, I should say.

But whatever it is. They have to, because they have to be able to mute the organ, right? So that was part of the mystery. We were just talking about a moment ago. Stahawag 17. There is a master tape. The ownership of this master tape is, probably Winston Riley, because they do have the ability, as you said, to mute the

to mute the Alton's. If you listen to Stalach 17, you'll hear in Oregon that is not in the Sister Nancy version. You'll also hear the bass at the very top. It's EQ'd out. And then the base comes in, do-do don't, don. Whereas in the original Stalach 17, it's just the baseline is playing the whole time. So yes, they have access to the master tape. Somebody has fiddled with it. I'm not sure if it's King Tubby. Wasn't written down, hasn't made it to the public internet at least. So the quick answer is they're using the rhythm, the existing, recorded instrumental bed. Yes.

She is taking, or transforming, I should say, this Toots in the Maetal line, Bomb Bomb, which has also already been interpreted by Yellow Man. And she has taken no small amount of Yellow Man's lyrical concepts and rhythmically where Yellow Man has placed them in time when she comes up with her own lyrics and delivery and combines that with this rhythm to create this completely new, musical original work. She took some words

from one artist. It's important to say. She took words from one artist. She took music from some other artists and she put them together. But I'll add to that and she transformed them. And there's something definitely new. The music's not identical. Like you says, they've muted some things. And the lyrics aren't identical because she's made them more reflective of her. That's right. And this song is the last song on her release. That's right. And it does not blow up in Jamaica. Like this is not the story

like some of the rocket's to the top right off the bat. Her hit in Jamaica was one too, which is the name of the album that this all comes from. It wasn't until, and we're going to talk about the story of Sister Nancy's journey from the song into the next phase of her life. This is a song that took its own sweet time

in gaining the exposure that it will eventually gain. And in time, like you're talking about 10 years later, it's really a long time before this song is the international hit that we think of it. today and over that time it's exposed to more and more people. Right. And when another generation comes along that has grown up thinking,

oh man, that song is great, suddenly it gets sampled so many times. Talk me through when we first start to see samples of the song appearing and how, and let's talk about how the song's been used by other artists. Great idea. Let's do that. Let's jump into some of the great samples and interpretations of Bomba by Sister Nancy. Some of our personal favorites, because there are literally hundreds of them. I bet I know and some of them I bet you're going to surprise me.

All right. Well, let's start with this one and let's see if you know it and then I'll tell you what it is. I'll bet you know it. This one we're going to start with actually an interpolation. By the way, that's not even the only, yes, fantastic use of the sample. That's Lauren Hill lost ones. Yeah, which she says, Elbe in this way since creation. Yes.

You know, like that's a use of, that's a callback. That's a reference. That's no much. That's a love letter to Sister Nancy. Yeah, yeah. I mean, like, my own opinion, don't come out and meet the comments. Lost On's kind of my favorite Lauren Hill song of all time. It's the first song on Miseducation, but like, for the second I put that record on,

like, you got to realize, White Cleve had come out with the carnival. That album was big at the time. Like, we were like, yo, White Clef killed it. And then she drops this nuclear bomb. Yes, miseducation. And all of a sudden, it's just like, wow, the miseducation of Lauren. Like, even the cover, everything about it iconic, love lost ones. That's a great use of the sample.

Shout out to anyone in America right now waiting for her to come on stage. You know, it's some venue somewhere. You're listening to the podcast while to wait for her to try. It could be a while. It could be a while, but she'll get there eventually. What's another song that uses this as a sample? Okay. And by the way, we go into this knowing there are hundreds, but we're just playing some.

This is Jay-Z with Damien Marley. Bum. Total fucking opposite. Stuff $1 million in a sock drawer. That's a war chest in case you need your chest knocked off. y'all be talking crazy under the Miji pictures So when you get the hell

You tell them Lago sent you Can I just say I love a sample Yeah Where like You know for the lack of a better term You really f***ed up the sample You know what I mean

It's coming from like It's like It's sped up It's chopped up right It's shredded It's like hitting you from every corner It's really transformed And yet you hear the essence of the original

You know what that is Now that said Again I don't really hear too much of the bass line that one, but I definitely hear the horns. I wonder the horns of the signature part of the song, and we don't even know who played. You know what? Maybe I honestly would love for this episode for someone to like, who knows the answer to that. Yeah, it can be our Sugarman. I can be our searching for Sugarman. And that's the name of the documentary? Yeah. I have put hours into research on this.

I'm really proud of some of the things I dug up that were pretty in some dark recesses of the internet, some information I found, but I do not know. You don't even want to know where I found that fact. Let me take the FBI's on to me. Go horns, it could be, it could, my guess is it's Tommy McCook, who's one of my favorite, like, Jamaican horn players. He's on so much of the classic stuff. But I don't know who, and there's two of them. There's harmonized horn parts. So there's two horns on this.

Yeah, there's more than one horn. Who are they? I don't know. Roland Alfonso, Tommy McCook, I do not know. This is like an episode of Unsolved Mysteries. Years from now, it'll be like, update. Who is it? Tell us our comments. Let's do one more.

This is from Homecoming, the live version of Holdup by Beyonce. I think it's, yeah. Hold up. They don't love you like I love you. Hold up. They don't love you like I love you. Slow down. They don't love you like that. Oh, yeah. Pause it. I know what you're going to say. You know what I'm going to say. Yeah, this is a sample of bomb bomb. This is also, we believe, an interpolation of maps by the, yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely is. And it's got a sample of Andy Williams in the background. So this is, Beyonce is absolutely doing what Sister Nancy is doing the same transformation, the same. reuse, the same homage, the same

new thing out of old things. Of her favorite songs. That's right. I think that Beyonce and you and me, we have the same playlist. I think that we could be soulmate. So, Beyonce, if you should have to be listening to this, you know, reach out. Yes, he is a Virgo, I'm a cancer. One of us got to get along with you, right?

Do you go along with each other? I think Virgo's get along with cancer. I don't know many Virgo friends I actually have, but I feel like I'd be friends with Beyonce. Yes, you need to be. And she needs to come on the show. Come on, Beyonce! Any member of Desi Chow, any former member of Desi Chow, come on the show. Try it with a patois.

Maybe that will help. I'm not going to do it. Okay. I like my life. You would think that Sister Nancy would be like Elon Musk, just rolling in the dough, buying social media companies. It's funny. She is money-minded because she ends up working at a bank, I believe, in New Jersey.

Yeah. And it's around like the mid-90s that she actually starts hearing that. So, you know. that her song has actually grown in greatly impotality. And it's not to joke about the bank thing at all, but the fact of the matter is she literally, remember how I mentioned that the musicians got screwed? Because they got $20 on the day per track.

And that was it. They never got a piece of the publishing master. You're going to tell me, they weren't the only ones who got screwed. You know what? You're on to me. Sister Nancy didn't even get the 20 bucks. She what? She did not even get the 20 bucks.

She didn't get paid at all for recording bomb bomb. She was so excited to be in the studio. Bring a dear Jerry not freaking look out. Like, who was her manager? There's no manager. This is an 19, 18, 18 year old girl in Jamaica. There's so many layers here. One is you have to remember, as she says herself, Jamaica, you know, one in three million, right?

It's a very small country. It's a very small island. And we're going to talk about Sister Nancy's journey to getting paid, which there is a happy ending, not to ruin the surprise. But the good news is she goes from being completely screwed over to, and in the middle, we have this moment where she is trying to meet up with Winston Riley. and trying to get paid. And part of why I'm bringing this up is because there is this aspect of friendship. There is this aspect of we all grew up together.

Yeah. We all knew each other. Why are we going to paper that friendship? And there's this discomfort you have when a friend screws you over. I mean, this happens in life. When someone you know screws you over, to bring that up is like, this could significantly change things forever. That's why I hear one song, we paper everything. We paper everything.

I've actually kept the receipt of every lunch we've ever done. So I know that I'm actually up about $30. I think I owe you about $30 right now. That's fair. But tell us about the story about her getting paid. Okay. Well, she doesn't get paid at all. She doesn't even know what to hit, as you say.

At a certain point, she a little bit gives up the music industry, moves to America where her mom has already moved. In 1996, she comes to New Jersey, of all places, starts a new career. She's working in the bank. She's a bank teller. And it wasn't until she starts to get inklings that her song has some reuse, has some popularity.

It's in the movie. It's in the movie. It's in the movie. Which if you haven't seen belly, you should stop the podcast now and go watch Belly. You will never regret it. It's up there. AFI, I think, called it the third best movie in American history.

Belly. I'm making it up. Okay. Let me not. Belly is a movie that I enjoy, but I cannot. I cannot. I enjoy it for a lot of the wrong reasons, too. But please continue.

I feel like you got a lot to say about Belly. I do have a lot, but I'm going to hold it back because this is not the Belly podcast. Please continue about Sister Nancy. Okay. So it's not until 2014. that she sees or she's told that it's in a Reebok commercial by her daughter, actually, of all things. Bomb, bomb is this Reebok commercial. It's just a girl getting in the shower and the music is bomb bomb.

This is a pretty big usage. And this is the moment where Sister Nancy's like, I'm tired of being nice. I'm tired of reaching out to my old buddy Winston Riley, the producer who screwed me over, never paid me. I'm tired of hearing about it being in belly. There comes a point where it's just, I got to get my money. So she does end up hiring a lawyer. And she does end up getting some compensation. Now, it's 32 years of being unpaid.

They're not able to give her all 32 years. It's not retroactive. It's retroactive by 10 years, which is not nothing. That's not nothing. And significantly, it's 50-50 moving forward. As long as it's got that shoe money. As long as she got that shoe money. And significantly, the Reebok is the big thing.

And significantly, this is 2014, which means when the Jay-Z and Kanye and Beyonce use has come into play, she is paid on day one from that stuff. So it makes it a happy. And I heard that she was actually happy with what Kanye and Jay. And Jay actually went to go visit her. She's in the video. She's in the bomb video. So cool.

She's talking the video. It is a happy ending. So if you look at the credits now to this day, Sister Nancy is now 50%. Winston Riley, who relevant to this story is no longer alive and was shot in the head dead. Like this is not a person making friends. Oh my gosh. We have a true crime podcast now.

Where the money's at? Just the tag on the whole like credits and publishing thing is that in all of this, nobody who is on the Stalick 17 rhythm. is getting any money from Bomb Bomb. So the good news is still kind of 50-50 good news. Winston Riley technically probably should never have gotten any of this money because all he did was book the studio that day. The musicians got robbed.

They haven't gotten theirs to this day. At least Sister Nancy's on there. That is good news. The horns, we have no idea. Tuts. Maybe somebody is going to come to us. You can DM us or come to the comments. If you know the answer, who played the horns on Stalach's 17,

we're all ears. We will do the day. and we will do an update on a future episode. Tuts is not getting paid on this song. Yellow Man's not getting paid on this song. So it's interesting to think about all the participants in the creative process. Toots strung together those, the, he's not participating in any of this.

Okay. So it really, it's a story of power. It's a story of like contracts and it's a story about how much leverage you have. And it shows you how convoluted. You know, honestly, when people come to me and they're like, I want to be a musician. I'm like, you really want to do that to yourself? because I feel like unless you have a really good lawyer,

it is really hard to get paid for music. I think it's easy to get paid from your live gigs and selling some merch. But as far as seeing like money, I think the heyday of that was like the 90s. Maybe. Yeah, yeah, exactly. When there was like the diamond status. Yeah, the backstreet boys in the 90s.

If you were in the backstreet boys in the 90s, that was a good time. You're doing all right. We're not worried about you. Yeah. Luxury, you know so much about this topic. journey. Is there anything else you'd like to say about Sister Nancy's Bomb-Bomb and its legacy? I mean, to me, it's one of my favorite songs of all time just as a song. And all of the other

stuff we're talking about and the mysteries and the rhythms and the sampling, all the stuff that I'm personally passionate about, obviously, musical borrowing and, you know, that to me is clearly with my whole interpolation thing. Very interesting and how songs are connected and how creativity is all connected. But just outside of that whole tale that we wove together just now, the song still has a mystery and a power to it. Yeah. Where hearing it, even though I've heard it a million times, this isn't, sometimes we have songs we talk about on the episode where we're like, oh, I was a little

tired of this one, but now that I've heard it in this way with the stems or with the conversation, this is fresh to me again. This is not one of those. This is one that is just, it's got a magic to it. It's got a magic to it. Again, I came into this song as a DJ and a lover, specifically of dance hall. And what I can truthfully say is that it's one of those songs that to this, day, it's hard to find a song to come out of it without clearing the dance floor.

It says such a vibe that any time her voice starts trailing off, if you don't have sort of like a peak of the night song to play, the vibe goes away and the dance floor separates. So whatever magical energy they put into the studio that day, you know, when they were recording with Ansel Collins. Yeah. And whatever, you know, whatever. Santa Davis on drums. Whatever they put in when she went into the studio and recorded her new vocals on it, it just works.

It just works. And the fact that you've got, you know, producers who've been killed and you've got mystery horn man out there, I think his legacy is not quite finished. I agree. New generations will continue to discover this song and its influence will only grow. And I hope the idea, too, of how musical borrowing and reuse and transformation. And remember the antidote at the top of the show, I talked about how. how in Jamaica specifically the idea of originality.

Like that's pretty extreme to say, actually originality is a thing we've heard before. I think that's so powerful. And I'm really passionate about this as a concept because as a musician myself and a fan of music, time and time again, I'm aware firsthand that musicianship and originality and creativity is not that something completely didn't exist before.

And you completely came up with a whole, no. It's how do you take things that are in the world, the 12 notes. How do you take the, you know, usually there's about four significantly frequently reused chords, the one, four, five, maybe the six. How do you take commonly used elements and do something different and new that is with your own voice? That, to me, is what original is. I'd say, how do you take those 12 notes and constantly make things that feel fresh? Yes.

And I feel like, you know, human beings constantly come up with new ways to make it sound fresh. Yes, we do. Luxury, help me in this thing. Well, I'm producer, DJ, and songwriter, luxury. And I'm actor-writer and sometimes soundclash DJ Diallo-Riddle. And you got one more chance. You don't want to say an Irie or a Jha or anything like that? No.

No, Iri's no Jaws. Well, this has been one song and we will see you next time. We'll see you next time. Ciao, Bella.