Edi Fitzroy - Back in the Bay

From: http://www.reggaereview.com/archives/1105reviews.htm

By Ashanti

It was a distinct honor and pleasure to be blessed with an opportunity to be in the presence of a living legend on September 29, 2005 when Edi Fitzroy niced up the Bay Area playing for one night only at San Francisco’s Club Dread.

Organized by our very own Corbett Harvey Bowers, who met Edi at Sunsplash in 1986, this show took me back to the days when the dancehall was all about culture. There were many, many odes to the Black Woman, although there were only two actually in the house. For those lucky enough to have caught the fire of this dynamite stage show, you know you were truly fortunate to have witnessed this veteran caliber performance. I’ll admit I was not anticipating the riveting, high-energy and classic performance I got only because I only came on the Reggae scene during the straight ragamuffin late 80’s and the digital 90’s eras when consciousness in the music was somewhat on the wane. Therefore I was somewhat unfamiliar with Edi’s music and artistry. I have since come to overstand that Edi Fitzroy is one of those classic artists of the highest order. He remains highly regarded in Reggae Roots circles and beyond. The longevity, the respect and the admiration he still carries among his old- and new-school peers and fans alike, can be attributed, to a large extent, to his twenty-seven year career commitment to the exaltation of all things roots and positive.

As a result of his conscious focus, Edi Fitzroy has taken his influence far and wide to even extend beyond just the microphone and stage show talents he perfected long ago. His other accomplishments are equally impressive. In 1982, he received the Press Association of Jamaica Award for his contributions to the development of Jamaican music. In a later capacity, as Reggae Ambassador to England, in 1985 he brought Reggae for the first time to the British Royal Festival Hall, home of European classical music. He was awarded the Rockers Award for Most Conscious Performer, and the Most Culturally Oriented artist in the 7^th, 8^th, and 9^th Annual International Music Awards held in Miami, Chicago, and Jamaica respectively. He also won the Rockers Video Award for his tribute song to the Black Woman, “Princess Black”. This song may be one of his best known among the nowadays massive, since he recently did a remake of it in collaboration with the mighty Sizzla Kolanji.

It was by his trademark graciousness, that I was allowed the opportunity to reason with Edi after his recent Club Dread show and find out what he has been up to, what he has in the works and his general thoughts on the evolution of this music we all love so well. I also wanted to hear about his experience traveling to Africa. I must add that in trying to interview Edi, I had to fight my way through several over zealous, admiring fans and well wishers who were so incredibly enthusiastic that my getting Edi to myself for the interview was a greater challenge than I had expected. Edi immediately put me at ease continually looking back at me from signing autographs and otherwise interacting with fans to politely acknowledge that I was still waiting, so even though I was in the presence of such a legend, I felt relaxed and was able to just chill with him afterwards. I started out asking about his thoughts on the apparent return of culture and one drop to the dancehall, a question near and dear to my heart, and he summed it up by saying that digital dancehall and its attendant lyrical slackness had, “served a purpose in its time.” So this return to culture is just another part of the continuum of the music in its role as reflector of the culture of the people. “Dancehall [slackness] served its purpose and now has come go back 360° to culture. Slackness was just lyrical content. Nastiness was a ting, just a ting. You know? Jah trampled that now. Just Rasta…Back into the fold.”

Since he is from the same era and place, I asked Eddie if he had ever worked with Bob Marley. He said he knew him from Trenchtown days when he lived in the same West Kingston area when they were young. Edi remembered how he would regularly pass Bob, Peter, and Bunny on the way to school or somewhere, and that it was always very exciting to see them. He says he always knew they were going to blow up and be very, very big in the music. Edi never got to work with Bob musically, but he said he was slated to go on tour with Peter Tosh and Free-I “just before we lost them.” Edi spoke very reverently of Peter Tosh, from whom he says, he derived great inspiration early on. He also corrected me when I referred to “Bob Marley and the Wailers”. He preferred that I refer to them by their original and proper calling as “The Wailing Wailers”. He said that of all the great artists that came out of that early era, he believed Charlie Chaplin was the one artist who never got to reap proper rewards equal to his contributions.

These days Edi resides primarily in Jamaica working with his management team, who he called Rick and Claudette, while doing mostly local JA shows and various community projects. He continues to host a radio program which focuses on encouraging youth to cease crime and violence and to put down the gun. He says he is most interested in reaching out and touching the youths he wants to inspire, saying, “I want them to know that if I could make it out, then they can too”. The goal for the radio program for him is primarily to be a vehicle in the community to encourage the children to success and to help them recognize the reality that they too can change their lives just as he himself had done.

As part of Edi’s return to musical performance projects, he has a new album in the works. Hold the Vibes, with Joe Bressler, on his own label, Confidence Music which is expected to drop in March 2006. As a side note, during the San Francisco show, he actually performed a few cuts off the new album and from what little I heard, it is going to be a scorcher! At our meeting, he was also scheduled to perform a few days later on September 7 at the Dub Club in Los Angeles, CA to further promote his new release.

Based on his collaboration with Sizzla on the remake of the hit “Princess Black”, I asked Eddie about his thoughts on the other excellent but controversial artists out there now, such as I Wayne, Capelton, Sizzla and Buju Banton, all out of what I call the “fire burn” camp, who pretty much running the roots, culture, and consciousness front these days. He simply, but enthusiastically, responded, “I love them”, with his fist placed firmly over his heart. “Love their fire…Good artists.” I went on to ask who his favorite artist was over all, if he had one, and he quickly responded that his past favorite Reggae artist is actually a tie between Garnett Silk and Bob Marley. His current favorite to this day is Shabba Ranks.

I could not leave the interview without hearing how traveling to Africa had impacted Edi whose itinerary has included time in the Gambia, Senegal, Botswana and Ghana. Of this experience, Edi simply said civilization is turning, “African people in Africa are all one….Africa was very exciting.” His most proud and endearing impression was that “Everything out of Africa is Black.”

Being as committed as Edi is to supporting the youth, when he spotted Dugsy Ranks and Mega Banton chilling nearby, he hailed them and invited them to join our interview saying, “All a wi a one family.” Nice! We are talking about a living legend here folks, from Bob Marley’s time! The two youth were in town for a recent dancehall showcase over in Oakland on September 7^th at the Oasis Restaurant & Bar. They were just stopping in Club Dread to pay their due respect to their elder before heading to the East Coast the next morning for a celebrity soccer match on September 2 in the Bronx, NY featuring Lexus, Captain Barkey, Wickerman and others. They also had other show dates planned in New York and Connecticut.

It was an auspicious occasion and I was thrilled and overwhelmed to have all of these artists together. I started by asking Mega Banton how he got started in the music. What I found out was that he started at the tender age of seven with Ricky General and Black Star, and mainly recorded in the studio after school. Just the fact that he has been doing this since he was seven speaks volumes about the level of skill he currently has in his lyrical arsenal. It suffices it to say that his mash up performance over at the Oasis was a testament to that. As for Mega Banton, he says he is primarily in the studio these days working on two new albums, the first of which is due to be released this month and entitled, Compassion for Humanity: Sounds of Inspiration, which he described as being pretty much Roots, Rock, Reggae. His other creation in the works is called, Enemies on Deadly Ground, also slated for release this month. Mega said the focus here is going to be strictly dancehall. Now that’s the Banton I know!

Also joining us for a brief chat was Dugsy Ranks who’s Man a Gangsta is out now as a fourteen-song, mixed CD that he is currently promoting and for which there is also a video. Dugsy’s actual album is slated to drop in March of 2006. It will include some collaboration with another old school reggae legend, Jimmy Riley. When I went on to my next questions regarding slackness versus culture, the response of these young DJs was telling. Dugsy insightfully attributed the renewed interest in a return to culture in the dancehall to hard times. He said hard times generate a renewed longing for culture. “People need something to hope for and help settle their minds…something to hold onto to ease their heads.” Interestingly both Mega Banton and Dugsy Ranks both hail from Waterford in Portmore, Jamaica. I guess Waterford has a penchant for turning out, respectable, intelligent, articulate, hard working, young men who can totally rip shop, wreck shop (to use some hip-hop analogies) and cork dancehall when they want. Both young men struck me as committed, determined, hard-working artists. When asked about the man himself, Edi Fitzroy, Dugsy vehemently replied, “Princess Black a one wicked tune. Bad! No rate no DJ who naah play it!” When I asked what kind of music they listen to in general, Mega responded by saying he listens to a wide variety of music both for inspiration and to learn. When I asked of them what they wanted to leave the Bay Area massive with, Dugsy replied first saying, “tell them to email the promoters to request the artists they want to see at the shows” and Mega Banton nodded in agreement.

It absolutely warmed my heart to see this joining of the old school with the new in mutual respect and love. It was especially nice to see the younger generation coming out to pay homage to their elder statesman. It was like a coming full circle, 360° back to love. All-in-all, Edi Fitzroy struck me as a righteous, humble, spiritual artist who still has fond remembrances of the early days in the music when he routinely worked with culture artist such as Mikey Dread, whose career he helped launch. He seems comfortable with himself, his career, and his life up to now and having studied accounting in school says he may use his educational background to one day write a book about it all. Though touched by tragedy in his personal life, the loss of his only son and his good friend Joe Strummer, leader of The Clash, his faith remains unshakable despite life’s challenges. He says, “The Lord grants all wishes. All one has to do is just ask him. Seek and ye shall receive.” This appears to be the epitome of what Edi Fitzroy is about, was about, and will always be about: a man of great faith and endurance over time.