Desmond Dekker
1941-2006
by Eve Adams
Rude boy, weep and wail. Desmond Dekker, the Jamaican singer-songwriter many regard as the father
of popular reggae, died of a heart attack in his Surrey, England, home on Thursday. He was 64.
Dekker's influence on modern music is difficult to overstate. The genesis of ska is
clearly audible in tracks as old as 1963's "Honour Your Father and Mother," whose upstroke-heavy
midrange tempered by classical restraint and overlaid with Dekker's inimitable soul vocals
established him as a popular artist in Jamaica. Desmond Dekker and the Aces garnered international
attention (and inspired innumerable ska bands to this day) with the warmly wistful "Israelites"
— the first international hit off the island. His signature blend of pop, reggae, rock and R&B
exposed millions of American and continental listeners to the splendor of
Jamaican music for the first time.
In the 1960s, England's nascent mod and rude boy cultures
both embraced Jamaican music and culture in its entirety. In those pre-Marley days,
Desmond Dekker was iconic to both pop audiences, who loved his uncanny, almost instinctual fusion of
low-down rhythms and lighthearted melodies, and street youth on both sides of the
Atlantic, with whom Dekker's increasingly politicized lyrics resonated. As he moved artistically
away from radio-clean, moralizing soul hits toward a more frenetic sound and incendiary subject
matter, British and American punks and rudies were picking up more and more Jamaican music every day.
By the time he arrived at "007 (Shanty Town)" in 1967, reggae was a sound in its own right,
no longer merely a subset of ska. Dekker was one of the first authors of the genre.
In particular, this writer cannot imagine life without 1969's "It Mek," a flawless reggae track
if there ever was one.
Dekker continued recording and touring throughout the 1970s and '80s, involved in the two-tone
sound he had helped to create, as well as various funk and rock collaborations. He has left, for
those of us too young to remember a time without mainstream black music, anthem upon anthem of joy,
righteousness and thrill in the fight, a sound that comprised gentle calls to arms and a furious
embrace of the world at large. His death is an enormous loss, and every music lover should be
thankful for his life.
E-mail Eve Adams at ultimaluz at gmail dot com.
