Manafonistas

This album is a stone cold classic of Reggae’s history. Almost everything about it is just right. Dennis Bovell’s band is tight yet melodic throughout. The production is spare, giving the rhythms and vocals space in which to reverb and resonate in a typical pared down late 70s dub-style. Even the artwork, with its monochrome precision and clear allusions to the original ska period, helps capture the mood of a lost time when music really mattered. And, of course, LKJ is simply magnificent. His dub poetry is delivered with swagger, soul and elegance. He is deftly sensitive to, but never dominated by, the pulsating rhythms of his band. His abiding mood is one of cold, considered fury at the injustice he sees around him. His lyrics are rich, impassioned and often elegiac, simultaneously articulating a profound rootedness in „Bass Culture“ (the sub-cultures of reggae, radicalism and poetry) and a pained sense of alienation. It is a testament to his supreme skills that „Street 66“ stills sounds as fresh, radical and dangerous as ever. By the way, he didn’t buy the whole Rastafarian mythology. An independant spirit – and a welcome guest on P.J. Harvey’s disturbing new album.